Insomniac - Sony Japan now paying more attention to Western feedback

Sony Japan used to be rubbish at listening to western punters concerns about PS3. No longer, according to Insomniac senior community manager James Stevenson.

"The challenge has always been that the [PS3] operating system (XMB) has always been developed in Japan, and at first it didn't seem like it reacted to the US and European markets," Stevenson told CVG. "But now it seems like there's a far better feedback loop in place, which I think was the biggest issue.

"The example that stands out was when they did the update to the look of the XMB - version 3.0 I think. They boxed out everyone's names and it became really clunky-looking and the community started complaining. I feel like that feedback really made it over to Japan, and that's something they're trying to get addressed.

"Two years ago, or a year-and-a-half ago, I don't feel like there was that kind of response. I now really think that the development group that's working on PSN is really listening to the community more, and listening to development feedback. So that's a good thing in the long term, and that was the biggest thing I'm glad to see has been fixed."

Phew. Glad that's cleared up.