New Head of Worldwide Game Studios For Sony Recognizes the Social/Casual Gaming Trend

Shu Yoshida from an interview with Dean Takahashi on VentureBeat:

We see trends toward casual and social gaming. Like SingStar, Guitar Hero, and the Nintendo Wii. All of those are bringing in more consumers to games. That’s great. Including the Nintendo DS handheld. The gamers might stay there because such games are fun. But they also might leave and stash the console in the closet until next Christmas. The whole industry has an opportunity to cater to the new audience that hasn’t played before.

Sounds like he's hedging his bets. And the fact that he name-checks Guitar Hero and the Wii as social or even casual games, suggests that Sony is still focused completely on consoles and not the online free-to-play model. Which makes sense, since as he states in the interview, his core job is to promote their platforms, Playstation and Playstation Network.

I'm not going to be expecting anything from Sony any time soon. I'm still waiting on Home, their virtual world for Playstation owners, that they announced two years ago.