Speaking to an intimate gathering of media this morning, SCEA boss Jack Tretton opened up about PlayStation, and how the brand has taken a few wrong turns in the past.

During the presentation, attended by Edge, Tretton admitted that Sony “has had a weakness” in how the company organized its different hardware and software engineers.

“We have some great engineers working on software and hardware. But we’ve had situations in the past where the hardware guys just presented their work to the software guys, and where the two just didn’t meet up enough. It’s been a learning curve.”

He said that this problem had been identified prior to PS3’s development, but that the technical advances of PS3 out-paced improved internal communications.

Tretton also said that Sony “showed a lot of naivete” when the company began work on Home, and when it showed the product prematurely to the media.

He added that the internal development of Home had been hampered by a lack of understanding of what exactly the company was developing, “We had to figure out that this wasn’t just a piece of software, and not just a service, but something that needed a specific team, including hardware expertise,” he said.

He added that he would not release Home until it was completely ready.

Partly, he said, the problems of the past were the cost of doing business with someone as driven as former PlayStation supremo Ken Kutaragi. “There was just no stopping him,” Tretton said. “When he wanted something to happen, it happened. It’s very exciting but it did leave us open and vulnerable to criticism.”

Tretton talked plenty about the positives of PlayStation 3, including the company’s video download system, which went live this week. He was unapologetic, for example, about the lack of backwards compatibility hardware in PS3, explaining the company’s financial rationale behind that decision.

He was also scathing about Microsoft and Nintendo’s avatar-based online communities. “What they’re doing is very simplified. It might be enough for some people, but we won’t reverse our approach.” He said that Microsoft's announcements this week offered "nothing we didn't already know about".

On the appearance of Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox 360, he admitted to "feeling some disappointment" but added that he "wasn't at all surprised" explaining that third-party exclusives are a rarity now "except in Japan where Xbox 360 has no user base to speak of." He reminded the media that FFXIII is still a PS3 exclusive in Japan.

He was also open about his own position, saying that it often affected him personally to see some of the criticism he, and Sony, faces in the press, even on blogs and forums. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t read this stuff, or that it doesn’t affect me. It does,” he said.

Asked about a hard-drive version of PSP, he said it was something he had considered, but was still working on whether or not it would release alongside the current model “or whether it might be an evolution”. He added that he had nothing “to pull out of my back pocket right now” but indicated that it would be a likely release in the future.

Full transcript of the interview coming tomorrow.