Kojima, Nomura back PS3

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima and Square-Enix's Tetsuya Nomura both believe PlayStation 3 will be the best outlet for their games in two or three years' time.

Speaking in an interview with Japanese Ge-Maga, partly translated by IGN, Kojima, who has been a staunch supporter of PS3 since its unveiling in May 2005, compared the Sony console to a movie theatre - while Xbox 360 "is watching a DVD at home" and "Wii is a television program".

"If you think about the future of the industry and game creators, I get the feeling that the winner had better be the movie theatre," he said.

Nomura, meanwhile, was less flamboyant in his praise but backed Sony nonetheless.

"Thinking two to three years from now, the PS3 will be the most appropriate," he said. "We feel that when the games that we're making are released, the PS3 will be strong in the market."

But while both developers seem to be content with the Sony console, despite its apparent loss of momentum at E3, neither is entirely happy with Sony's announcements.

Unusually for Kojima, who typically echoes Sony's own sentiments about the high quality of the PS3 hardware, the MGS man expressed some concerns about the loss of rumble functionality - and even said he felt that, "The best thing would be a PS3 with controls like the Wii."

Describing the loss of rumble functionality as "unfortunate", Kojima also questioned why, if its removal was down to incompatibility with motion-sensing as Sony has claimed, the company hadn't simply allowed players to switch between the two.

Nomura's criticism focused on the price. "Right now, as a game machine, it's too expensive," he said. "If the hard disk and Blu-Ray spread, in line with that, the situation for the PS3 will change in one to two years," he added, before arguing that "when the games are there", the machine's profile will change "naturally".

Both Kojima and Nomura will have some say in that, of course - with Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Nomura's Final Fantasy XIII two of the system's most highly anticipated titles.