PS Vita: Interview with Managing Director of Sony Ireland, Niall O’Hanrahan

We recently got a chance to speak with the Managing Director of Sony Ireland, Niall O’Hanrahan at the Irish launch of the PlayStation Vita.
We’re still pressing him for an answer on that last question…

Q: You say that the Vita is set to revolutionise the portable gaming market, how do you feel this is going to happen?

Niall: The PlayStation Vita has been built around gaming and gamers. We’ve listened to feedback from gamers and they’ve always asked for dual analogues, multi-touch screens, even a rear touch screen – which they weren’t expecting alongside six axis motion control.

Features such as Near, Live and Party introduce a whole new element of social gaming to mobile devices that are not available on any other device and I think that is what’s going to revolutionise the market.

Q: The 3DS received a lot of criticism for lacking compelling titles on its’ launch, was this a focal point for Sony to be determined to offer a huge array of launch titles for the Vita?

Niall: Absolutely, six of those 22 titles are from our own in-house studios. That’s the difference between how Sony operates and other companies operate – we very much embrace the third party community and the third party community have embraced this product.
I’ve been involved in every PlayStation launch since the original PlayStation in 1995 and I have never seen any platform launch with the level of support that this product has.

Q: Uncharted Golden Abyss is Vita’s flagship launch title, is there any other big Sony Franchises that we may see coming to the Vita further down the line?

Niall: The most pre-ordered game at this point in time is Uncharted, but some other franchises from some of the third parties such as FIFA look brilliant, plays brilliantly [and] that’s gonna be a big launch title.
Of course, as we go through the year we’ll have the likes of Resistance coming, Call of Duty and Assassins Creed are coming too.

Q: You mentioned that you were involved in the launch of every PlayStation console so we’re guessing that you’re a gamer.
What’s your favourite game of all time?

Niall:  That’s an interesting question and I would probably have to say the one game I’ve played the most in all my years was the original Tomb Raider.
But Crash Bandicoot has always been very close to my heart, I’ve downloaded it from the [PSN] Store and I play it with my 7 year old Godsons and they absolutely adore it.

Q: What game are you most looking forward to this year?

That’s a very good question; I would have to say… [Pauses] A game that hasn’t been announced yet [laughs].

We’d like to give a massive thank you to Niall for sitting down and chatting with us, be sure to keep an eye out for our continuing PlayStation Vita coverage.

You can contact the author of this post, Luke Hoare Greene at Luke@TechTV101.com or Follow him on Twitter.