Sony's Andrew House has revealed why the company decided to announce the PlayStation 4 before Microsoft could do the same for the Xbox One, and also admitted the decision not to show the box wasn't a deliberate decision.

“ I think we were probably earlier in the announce than we have been previously, and that was very deliberate.

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In the months preceding the next-generation console reveals last year, there was lots of back-and-forth about which company would be first to come out with its new machine. In the end, it was Sony that took the first leap, and now SCEI president Andrew House has revealed why at the Develop Conference in Brighton."I think we were probably earlier in the announce than we have been previously, and that was very deliberate," House admitted. "I wanted to be out there first with the first announcement for this generation so you've got an opportunity to stake the ground and hopefully take something of a leadership position. Again, we'd had the experience of launching later than our competitor and that played very heavily to many of the thought processes and decisions made about PlayStation 4.""This is one where I think honestly we were a little caught off guard and wrong-footed," he admitted. "If you look back at our history of previous reveals, we generally always went with explaining what the concept would be, articulating what package the overall consumer experience was going to be and then later revealing the hardware. So this felt very natural and normal to us."House went on to explain the original design for the PS4 didn't quite fit with his hopes, so he had to offer feedback to design chiefs and send them back to the drawing board. Following this, five sketches were brought forward, all of which House thought could have worked. After narrowing it down to just two, he found himself unable to choose between them. As a result, he asked for two mock-ups to be made, and these sat in his office for a week as he asked various long-standing members of Sony to come and pick one. In the end, the familiar parallelogram we know today won the vote, though House admitted his gut feeling was what really cemented the winner."My benchmark at the end of the day was knowing I was going to get up there at E3 and have to do this," he said, raising his arms aloft. "What would I be proudest holding?"

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter