Sony's Jim Ryan: Giving Away FIFA 14 on Day One is "Rather Odd'

Sony's European boss Jim Ryan has called Microsoft's decision to give away FIFA 14 to those who pre-ordered the Xbox One in Europe "rather odd."

In a revealing interview with UK website Metro, Ryan defended PlayStation 4's position against the Xbox One in the face of Microsoft's series of u-turns, which have arguably aligned the two consoles in consumer's minds.

"(Microsoft has) clearly, and I don’t want to impute too much to anybody else’s behaviour – it’s improper – but they obviously concluded that they had made some decisions that they needed to change and they did that," said Ryan. "I think that it has resulted in there continuing to be some confusion round exactly what they stand for now. And I think there continues to be no ambiguity about what we stand for."

Although he didn't cite exact pre-order numbers, Ryan claims the PlayStation 4 is "still doing fine" against the Xbox One.

"It varies from retailer to retailer and it varies from country to country, but I’m not hearin’ of too many places at all – at all – where they’re ahead of us."

Ryan is confident there is no need for Sony to offer consumers a direct equivalent to Microsoft's FIFA 14 pre-order deal.

"Why should we do that? Our problem is gonna be matching supply to demand. It’s perfectly rational when a platform holder, or indeed a publisher, runs a pre-order campaign to engage in promotional behaviour to dial it up if you feel it’s not where you need it to be. That’s a rational thing for any businessman to do. We’re perfectly happy with where our pre-orders are.

"Our problem… we’ve actually had to turn off the day one pre-orders and now we’re onto day two. So why would we go out and add something? Giving away stuff on day one of a new platform launch, in my mind it’s kind of odd."

Ryan has no concerns over inadequacy of supply come the PlayStation 4's launch, and that any lack of stock would be driven by consumer demand being greater than Sony anticipated.

Lucy is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on IGN and Twitter. 

Source : ign[dot]com