Jack Tretton, the new chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, may have the toughest job in the video game business (with the possible exception of his boss, Kazuo Hirai, who is taking over Sony’s global game operation).After years of relentless hype, last November Sony introduced its flagship game machine, the PlayStation 3, with a resounding thud. The brainchild of Hirai’s predecessor, the engineer Ken Kutaragi, the PlayStation 3 has been hobbled by its lackluster online service, a dearth of “must-have” games and, perhaps most important, its stratospheric $599 price.

A result: molasseslike sales for a product that must succeed if Sony is to retain its global leadership in electronics and entertainment. According to the NPD Group, a market research firm, Sony sold just 82,000 PlayStation 3s in the United States last month, fewer than half the number of Xbox 360s sold by Microsoft (174,000) and less than a quarter of the number of Wii consoles sold by Nintendo (360,000).

But recently Tretton took the vital first steps toward rehabilitating the PS3’s already tattered reputation. At a three-day presentation at the company’s game studio in San Diego, Sony showed off an impressive lineup of new games and online services in development. There is a long way to go before the PS3 becomes the home run that Sony desperately needs, but display was strong.

Almost as important as the substance of the presentations was their tone. In recent years, Sony’s game operation has hurt itself badly in the eyes of consumers by overpromising and underdelivering. No longer. Tretton adopted a refreshingly low-key, realistic approach.

“We know we face a challenge,” he said. “The long-term goal, and one we will not fully get to by this Christmas, is to get people to understand what the PlayStation 3 can do and all the technology that is under the hood. The short-term goal is to give them proof points in gaming experiences that blow them away. One software title at a time, we want people to say: ‘Wow, check that out. I’d like to have that machine.’