Kaz Hirai Talks About Back Compat, Monster Hunter, Home

Famitsu recently got to sit down and chat with SCE CEO Kaz Hirai and asked him about a variety of topics, including why the 40 GB PS3 wasn’t announced at the Tokyo Game Show and Kaz’s thoughts on Monster Hunter’s move to the Wii.

1UP has the translation; some excerpts are below:

The new PS3 models no longer have backwards compatibility features. Removing this must have been a big decision.

Hirai: We have gone through many discussions but we concluded that it is only one of many features of the PS3. What is more important is for the users to play PS3 games on the PS3, so our top priority is for them to be playing Bluray games and downloadable contents. There are users who probably want to play PS3 games but feel it is too expensive. By removing backwards compatibility and be able to sell at a lower price point is just another strategy of ours.

There were reports on Sony selling its manufacturing facilities of the Cell processor to Toshiba and a subsidiary company will be established between the two companies.

Hirai: This is part of [our parent company's] strategy so we are not in the position to make any comments on the matter but we believe this will have a positive effect as well. With a stronger partnership with Toshiba, this should be a merit to the Sony group as a whole. So this would not be a disadvantage to the PS3 at all.

It wasn’t the most hard hitting interview, but it’s still worth checking out.