Sony paying more attention to West

Blog - Not all about Japan, says Insomniac

Sony aren't as inwards-looking as they once were, according to Insomniac's James Stevenson, who says the platform holder are paying a lot more attention to Western players.

"The challenge has always been that the [PS3] operating system (XMB) has always been developed in Japan, and at first it didn't seem like it reacted to the US and European markets. But now it seems like there's a far better feedback loop in place, which I think was the biggest issue," the community manager told CVG.

"The example that stands out was when they did the update to the look of the XMB - version 3.0 I think. They boxed out everyone's names and it became really clunky-looking and the community started complaining. I feel like that feedback really made it over to Japan, and that's something theyre trying to get addressed.

"Two years ago, or a year-and-a-half ago, I don't feel like there was that kind of response. I now really think that the development group that's working on PSN is really listening to the community more, and listening to development feedback. So that's a good thing in the long term, and that was the biggest thing I'm glad to see has been fixed."

No more Japanese focus for Sony, it would seem.