In an interview with The Guardian, SCEE boss David Reeves has claimed that PlayStation “has to suffer a little” in the battle with its next-gen competitors, conceding that the machine’s high price has caused problems but insisting that the priority remains staying profitable – a goal the European PlayStation business is still on course to achieve.

“We simply have to suffer a little,” he explained, “Go down in market share and mind-share. It's like Ali v Foreman – go eight or nine rounds and let him punch himself out. We're still standing, we're still profitable and there's a lot of fight in us. I don't say we will land a knockout blow, but we're there and we're fighting.

“My objective is financial - to make a profit in our territory by the end of March, and we will. Our priority has always been the PS3; the forecast was 10m at the beginning of the year and it's still 10m. If we'd cut the price, lost another billion dollars, we might have had a huge Christmas but it would have been followed by a huge loss. The company could have thought: 'Hmm, I'm not sure I want to be in this business at all.' But we've shown Sony this is still a good business to have."

Reeves did concede, however, that the £299 RRP of PS3 has proved an obstacle for the machine – and hinted that a price cut is indeed on the way.

“Admittedly, in the current climate, more people will go for the lower price, but we still make a profit and that is our objective. We introduced PS3 as a multimedia device – we had to because it had a high price tag. But now you're going to see non-game apps appear: video downloads, music and, of course, it will still play Blu-ray.

“Will it be the cheapest player by end of ‘09? Probably not – but it will make progress.”

Reeves also spared a moment to praise both Nintendo and Microsoft for the advances they have made in the games space.

“We've learned from Nintendo how to grow the market and move from handheld device to device – they've done it brilliantly,” he said. “And we've learned an enormous amount from Microsoft, too. Overall, the market has sharpened up individual competitors to do better – we should celebrate the industry and how we've collectively grown it beyond all recognition.”