Kristin Kalning, the games editor from MNSBC, has just published a very interesting interview with Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

While the last year was considered to be, by gamers and analysts alike, just a plain disaster for Sony’s PS3, which was crushed in term of sales by its competitors, Nintendo and Microsoft, Jack Tretton assures us that everything is going well and there is no reason to panic.

The interview was taken before Thanksgiving when Sony has announced the price cut on the PS3 has helped sell over 100,000 consoles in America. Meanwhile SCEA issued a new statement saying that since November 2, the launch date of both the 40GB and the cheaper 80GB PS3 models, PS3 hardware sales have increased by 298%.

But lets’ see what Jack Tretton said. He acknowledged that the first year wasn’t so great for PS3. This is maybe the first time when a Sony official speaks openly about PS3’s shortcomings.

“I don’t think there’s any question that there were missteps, but I don’t think anybody is being honest with you if they say that the first year of any platform goes perfectly according to plan. I think the biggest miss for us was the launch, in that we had easily a million consumers in North America alone that wanted to get their hands on a PlayStation 3 … and we had roughly 200,000 units to take advantage of that demand. … I think that that was probably the biggest disappointment for the first year.” said Tretton.

Still, despite the disappointing results registered by PS3, Tretton considers that the game is far from over.

“The first year is important, but it’s the first inning of a nine-inning baseball game,” he says. “You’re not going to win many baseball games if you panic when you’re down 1-0 in the first inning.”

The price cuts, the innovation and the upcoming games titles releases are seen by Tretton as the strong points in the PS3 future.

“I think there’s a tremendous amount of software for the holiday season — 160 games coming out on PS3 alone for this holiday, on top of the 200 games that have already been out there, so there’s more than enough great software for consumers to sink their teeth in for the holidays. And as you pointed out, there’s some absolute blockbusters coming post-Christmas”, Tretton explained.

After all, we have to agree that maybe Jack Tretton is right and after only one year it’s maybe to soon to draw some conclusions about PS3’s fate.

But all in all, the Sony’s gaming platform need to catch up a lot as Nintendo and Microsoft has sold somewhere around 13 million units of their consoles compared to 5,6 millions PS3s sold by Sony.