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Crispy Gamer: As far as launch stuff goes, though, what's been the hardest thing to launch?
Panico: In my PlayStation Network role, the hardest thing was when we launched the PlayStation 3. At the time, we just didn't quite know what was going to happen when the switch was turned on. We had been working really closely with Japan and providing them with a lot of our product requirements and telling them what works culturally in our market, telling them about a lot of the features we wanted to see and what we needed to be competitive. So they took all that information in, and we waited to see what it would be like when it launched. We were very happy with where we netted out.
Crispy Gamer: But you weren't satisfied completely?
Panico: We've made a lot of improvements and we have a really great relationship with Japan and the engineering team there. It's a very collaborative process. For example, the video delivery service (for movies) launched on Tuesday. We were planning it for months and it was a united effort. We were proud of that.
Crispy Gamer: What's your proudest achievement so far?
Panico: You know, there are actually a few. I have a very, very talented team of about 30 people who are all very passionate about our end goal, delivering this complete entertainment service. They all work their butts off. Regarding the video delivery service, the PlayStation Network team has been working 20 hours days for a few weeks now. They pulled it together and took the stress in stride.
Crispy Gamer: Personally, what game do you like the best so far?
Fat Princess is Panico's favorite game right now. She's chunky -- the Princess, not Susan.
One of the games that hasn't come out yet is called
Fat Princess. It's a multiplayer online game where you're the blue team or the red team. You basically want to keep the princess and you can keep getting her chunkier by feeding her cake. It's kind of like capture the flag, but you do it with the princess.
Crispy Gamer: Why do you want to keep her, er, chunky?
Panico: [laughs] I was trying to be politically correct. You're trying to make her more difficult to move. You want to keep her in your zone. By feeding her, you make it more difficult for the other team to move her to their zone. I think the great thing about the Network as a whole is original content like this, and original programming. You're not going to see ideas like that on other consoles.
Crispy Gamer: Do you look at the competition to see what they're doing at all? Do you ever wish, gee, I wish we had 300 games, or whatever the total is on Xbox Live?
Panico: Obviously, we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't look at the competitive marketplace across gaming and video services. We're really focused on the consumer. For us, it's not about quantity, but about quality. We would rather have a hundred really funky, indie games that you can't get anywhere else than have 300 arcade titles that you can pretty much get online on the PC for free. For us, it's more about delivering [games like]
PixelJunk Monsters and
Fat Princess.
Pain is a great title as well.