Sony president Andrew House "surprised" over initial Xbox One policies, confident about dual console launch

Sony worldwide president Andrew House has said he is confident PlayStation 4 will holds its own in a market where two new consoles will be vying for consumer attention this holiday season.

Speaking with The Guardian, House said such rivalry is a "huge benefit for the industry," as a whole because choice, is a "good thing."

"At the risk of sounding over-optimistic, I think there is a huge benefit for the industry overall in having two platforms launch very close together," he said. "It creates a large focus on our form of entertainment that wouldn't exist unless there were these two powerful organisations, both playing in the same space.

"I think it's already happening in that there's so much strong interest, so much excitement and demand. Competition is a good thing for this industry, offering choice is a good thing. These are all positives."

House also touched upon the perceived jabs he made at Microsoft and its Xbox One console during Sony's gamescom press conference earlier this week.

According to House, his comments weren't meant to be an actual dig at the company, but to drive home Sony's "very clear and defined," goals with its PS4 console. He said he was actually surprised at both Microsoft's earlier message with Xbox One, and its policy reversals not two months later.

"We constructed our E3 presentation because there was somehow a suspicion that the policies and approaches taken by our competition would create an industry trend in that direction," he said. "The reason we made such a strong statement at E3, and continue to do so, is because we were surprised by that.

"As I said in my presentation last night, we have some very clear and defined goals about what we want this next generation of gaming to be, and what a new platform should deliver; we feel right now that we're on track to deliver that."

PS4 will release in North America on November 15 and in Europe and Australia November 29.

Microsoft has not set a date for Xbox One beyond the estimated November launch window.