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Sony aiming PS3 at young gamers and families in 2012

"There's still a lot of PS3s potentially to be sold."

In 2012, Sony will focus on enticing families and younger gamers to PlayStation 3.

"You will probably see us taking the console more towards a slightly younger demographic - more family market," Sony's European leader Jim Ryan told OPM.

"The core gamer will absolutely not be neglected," he quickly added. "There's going to be tons and tons of great stuff for the core gamer from our own studios, third parties.

"But there's some quite interesting stuff happening in a number of areas, which would allow us to open up a market that we accessed pretty successfully on PS1 and PS2, but we haven't yet got to on PS3."

That family market was driven by games like SingStar and Buzz! on PS2. And by a low barrier to entry: a low price point.

"If you look back at the history on PS1/PS2, the vast majority of the business that we did on both those platforms was done at sub-£129 price points," said Ryan.

"We only just got to £199 in the UK a couple of months back, so you can see ... there's still a lot of PS3s potentially to be sold."

Microsoft targeted a similar audience with Kinect and has enjoyed headline dominating sales success, noting 10 million device sales in March 2011 (no update has been given since).

Sony's more modestly marketed PlayStation Move device had shipped 8.3 million units as of October.

We expect Move will be a central part of Sony's 2012 plans.

Meanwhile, however, reports of Kinect 2 and lip-reading accuracy are surfacing. As is talk of a next Xbox.

Will Sony Santa Monica's new Move game attract a different audience?