PS4 price not determined by Xbox One RRP announce - Tretton

The PlayStation 4's price tag was decided well in advance of Microsoft's E3 2013 Xbox One conference, SCE America boss Jack Tretton has said.

Microsoft was the first of the two competing platform holders to present at E3 2013, and revealed a $499 launch price for the Xbox One. Sony's immediate follow-up of a $399 RRP for the PlayStation 4 had the cynical thinking that the company had deliberately undercut its rival in the break between conferences - which is, of course, kind of ridiculous.

"A multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporation makes those decisions months and months in advance," Tretton told IGN in an episode of Up At Noon, as transcribed by Polygon.

"We felt we had a great value proposition that people would respond to but you don't know how you're going to be positioned against your competition. We felt good about it regardless of where our competition came in, but lower is better than higher, we learned that with PlayStation 3."

In fact, Tretton wasn't even watching Microsoft's gentle collapse.

"We were doing rehearsals and I was going through my stuff. I heard a little bit of applause and I figured if there was applause and it was in our arena that was probably good news," he said.

The executive said he was elated to have "won" E3, receiving several bouts of ovation during Sony's E3 conference, but knows the console war is still to be fought.

"I really had to allow myself to enjoy the moment for a couple of minutes after the press conference finished and then you kind of have to shake it off and say, ok, day one of a ten year battle, and we have to win the consumer's support one consumer at a time, so it's back in the trenches," he said.