Sony joins the iPhone knocking crew

Sony Computer Entertainment's UK MD Ray Maguire has made some puzzling comments about the threat posed to PSP by Apple's iPhone - as puzzling, in fact, as those voiced by his Nintendo counterpart David Yarnton earlier this week.

Maguire tells MCV that he's not been worried by mobile gaming in recent years, and to be honest, his reasoning is pretty sound:

"The mobile phone market for games has been around for a number of years, but the overall quality despite some strong titles there has been limited because of the different handsets and infrastructure in that business."

He at least admits that iPhone is different in that regard, with its single-device nature (actually two if you include the iPod touch, but anyway) and its 17-million install base.

But our problem comes when he talks about why it's no threat to the PSP:

"It doesn't have the production power that a PSP has. As a specific games machine, the PSP is always going to win out... We're in a great position to take on the interest in these snacking games and produce them at better quality, lower prices, with lower cost of development that's a great business model."

So hang on: the PSP is better than the iPhone because it's much more powerful, so it's going to make use of that advantage by... getting people to make much less powerful games?

Oh, and at lower prices? Has he been monitoring the App Store lately?

We can't help thinking that promising to take on iPhone with low-priced snack-sized games is playing to Apple's strengths, whereas Sony should be making more of the PSP's own advantages (buttons?).

Still, it's good to see Sony and Nintendo squaring up publicly to Apple at last. But then we would say that, as journalists who love a good industry ruck...