Sony and MS's approach to exclusive contents: which is better?

[starcraft]

Impulsivity said:
To be honest I think Microsoft is thinking about moving out of game development in favor of something else (maybe shoring up windows development, giving the media PC thing a try again, who knows). I mean if you're in it to win it why would you shut down one of the handful of studios you have? They have one exclusive studio now I think, Rare. They killed Ensemble and let Bungee go independent so is there anything else they own?

Nintendo has proven one thing. First party titles are where the money is. Sony has learned this lesson well; there are a lot of big sellers on the PS3 that carry the SOE logo (and Sony gets a lot of the profits from the games that carry that logo) like the GT series, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and others.

One reason I'm almost positive Sony isn't headed to the door is they keep acquiring a lot of very very good developers, contrast that with Microsoft letting developers go and closing their few studios and it seems someone is sticking around while someone else is heading for the door.

RV is right though, its risk vs reward. On the plus side you get more of the money if the game is a hit (GT), but if its a flop you're left holding the bag (Too Human, MS published it and you can be pretty sure they fronted money to do so).

The really smart money for Sony would be increasing their stake in Square as it continues to drop (its been as low as 18 dollars, less then half its 52 week high of nearly 40 bucks). They could almost certainly turn Square around from the crappy 2nd rate developer it has become since the merger with Enix. The company that made Parasite Eve, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy 7 and Xenogears can live again! Sony already owns about 10% of Square/Enix, they could easily pull in another 10-20% of the company and get a controlling interest going from there.

It is unlikely that Microsoft lost money (certainly not significant money on Too Human).