“There are a lot of features that are still part of our roadmap. When we release new features we want to make sure that we have a baseline set of features to put out there and that they work properly. We feel that these new features are ready and that they offer consumers a great advantage over what they have today.

“However, we’re not going to stop enhancing the features. Every time we do a firmware update we enhance old features as well as providing new features, so we’re taking a lot of the feedback very seriously. Going into this we knew there were some things that wouldn’t make it but there’s always time to fix those and get them in, but in the meantime this should keep consumers satisfied for some time.”

While gamers are a hard bunch to please, some will be satisfied with the update, but some will only be partially satisfied with it. We asked why it had taken Sony so long to implement in-game XMB access and an achievements system.

“Some of the [features] people have been requesting for some time, some of them are a bit newer. We have a roadmap and there were a lot of other things on the roadmap that we had to deliver prior to these features,” Lempel said.

“The other thing is that we don’t release anything until it’s ready to go, until we have a strong program behind it and strong support, and until it offers a strong consumer experience. We hit that point a few weeks ago and realized that we were ready to go, so we scheduled the update and here we are now.”

 PlayStation Retro

On the subject of rumors that Sony is preparing to unveil its answer to Xbox Originals by releasing PS2 titles over the PlayStation Network, Lempel simply offered, “It was news to me when I read about it." He was, however, happy to talk about boosting the range of gaming content available from the PlayStation Store, and while keen not to dwell on the strategies adopted by Sony’s competitors, he did take a thinly veiled swipe at Microsoft following the company’s admission that it was planning to delist underperforming Xbox Live Arcade titles in order to avoid cluttering its online service.

"We definitely want to make sure that [the PlayStation Store] offers quality titles and games that our consumers are going to enjoy just like we do with our console and disc-based titles, and I think there’s a lot of room with virtual shelf space to put a lot of things. Depending on what type of UI you have you can accommodate a lot of titles, and specifically with our new store redesign which launched back in April we have a great ability to merchandise a wide variety of titles.

“While naturally we only want to keep quality titles on the network we do have room for a lot of them. I think if I look over at the competitors’ UI they may have some issues just displaying content, and scrolling up and down lists isn’t the easiest way to find things."

Lempel was also keen to stress that Sony wouldn’t be going down the route of charging a subscription fee for the PSN.

“We’re happy with what we’re doing right now and we’re going to stick with it,” he stated. “I think being free is always an advantage. The fact that it’s free is nice for consumers who want to try out the online experience, those who may be new to it and may not be ready to commit to spending dollars, and that’s a really good message for us. Being free also gives them the opportunity to spend the money that they may have spent on a subscription on online items or online games instead. We have a ton of games for the price of a subscription and offer a significant amount of great original content that you can’t get anywhere else.”