Andrew House, the new President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (to say nothing of perfectly named, if they ever need a spokesperson for PlayStation Home), conducted an interview with Edge Online in which he discusses a variety of the usual subjects. But one part in particular seems to be sticking out to a lot of people.

House explains that he expects that people who own a Wii will, in time, become PlayStation 3 owners:

What are the key battlegrounds, as we go through the ten-year cycle, on which Sony will engage Microsoft? Is it encouraging people that have bought Wii into HD gaming?

I think you're absolutely right. If you look back at previous lifecycles, like PS2 versus N64 [sic], we have lots of data that suggests that lots of people bought into N64 as their entry level gaming device, and were happy to upgrade to a more powerful machine later in the life cycle when the price point was right for them. I think we're going to see this later on PS3, and the fact that it's a Blu-ray player as well and that there's a [greater] wealth of network based experiences than are perhaps available on the device they already have will add to the proposition. I think that will definitely be a factor in the marketplace. There are a few things that drive this to a significantly longer than ten-year lifecycle for me. One is the traditional market dynamic that as prices come down you build down and out through the pyramid to a new type of consumer, and the motion controller we showed yesterday – and gave a firm release date on – changes the experience and allows us to bring in a new audience. And then over that there's the network offering and a different way – and PSP Go is another aspect of that – for consumers to consume content. All three of those give us a tremendously strong opportunity to really build that platform lifecycle up over the long term.

I remember Nintendo 64 versus the PlayStation 2. It must have been a rough 13 months for Nintendo.

Perhaps what he meant to say was that those who bought into the Nintendo 64, when the next console lifecycle arrived, often went to the PlayStation 2. How, exactly, that applies to the Wii and PlayStation 3, I'm not entirely sure. I guess that's where the ten-year lifecycle comes in.

You can find the entire interview with Mr. House here, at Edge Online.