How difficult is it to make peripherals for the PlayStation 3?  Is there a licensing process and such?  Also with the addition of the motion-sensing technology in Sony’s SIXAXIS controller, is it possible to create a third-party controller with the same technology?

All our peripherals are unofficial, so we don’t need a licence for them. Being unofficial means we can do our own thing, without having to play within the rules. This is great for the gamer. For example, there could never have been an official product like Datel’s FreeLoader for the Nintendo GameCube, a region-enabler which allowed you to play ANY region of games on ANY GameCube. Nintendo would never have approved it. But Datel’s unofficial product proved immensely popular…

Do you feel it was smart for Sony to remove vibration from the PS3 controller?

There are two issues at stake here. Firstly, there was the patent dispute with Immersion Technology. Secondly, there’s the reduced battery life. All things considered, dropping vibration seems a sensible move at the time, but now the court case has been concluded, it seems likely that Sony will release a controller with force feedback for the PS3 under a licensing deal.

Speaking on controllers, any PS2 to PS3 controller adapter in the works?

It’s not something we’re planning at the moment.

With the launch of the PlayStation 3 in North America, Japan, and now Europe not going particularly smoothly as many hoped, what are your thoughts on the launch of the PlayStation 3?

Being such a high-priced product, the PS3 will take longer than most consoles to achieve a decent market penetration. Remember, though, the high price of the PS3 is largely down to the Blu-ray player, an emerging technology which is bound to drop in price as it matures. A price drop for the console seems inevitable, and when it happens, take-up will improve.

To Sony’s credit, they put sufficient units on the shelves to avoid the mad scramble we’ve seen in the past, with queues of punters with sleeping bags outside the stores, fights breaking out at the tills and consoles selling on eBay for three or four times the official price. Unfortunately, Sony had generated such bad press by then, many gamers saw this as a bad thing because it didn’t sell out on launch day.