| RPG said: The one thing people do not understand is how business works, you have to keep other businesses happy in order to make your business successful. FFXIII went to 360 but SE kept it exclusive where Sony wanted it most, then a few months after that FF Agito, PE3 were announced for PSP and Versus a worldwide exclusive. Why do you think SE did all that? It's to keep Sony happy, now if they went through all that just to put Versus on 360 Wada wont be making any friends. Nomura wants it to stay PS3 exclusive so Wada would piss off Sony and his most important dev just for a million extra sales. Business is business, you have to think of the future not just gains in the present. |
I don't think you have a grasp on how the business world works. Especially in a publically traded company like SE. When you're a publically traded company, you generally have two goals: maximize profit in the short term, and to reinvest profits to grow and diversify their business (so as to maximize profit in the future). Going multiplatform accomplishes these things, since they will be open to a new market that is bigger than the one they are currently working on (PS3), and have the ability to cultivate a fanbase where previously there wasn't much of one (360). This way, when next-gen rolls around, they'll be in a better position to sell more games to more people in a greater geographic setting. No company would want to confine themselves to the whims of one country and its userbase for one system (as you suggested earlier saying that as long as PS3 was beating the 360 in Japan that was all that mattered to them). That's a suicidal business strategy in the long term in a market like gaming, where every gen a reset button is pressed. The fact that the 360 is getting all these SE games proves this, since SE made the mistake of assuming the PS3 would dominate, so they were caught offguard when the Wii took over, especially brutally in Japan. Simply put, for a publicly traded company that SE is, staying exclusive to Sony requires one simple question to be answered: What do we get out of it? If the answer to the question is less than what they think they could get out of porting it, it will be ported. There will be no "honor" or "loyalty" or some other BS nebulous concept that doesn't bring in money.
Even going into your notion that Wada isn't making any friends, it's not Wada's place to in this market. SE provides the software, but they wouldn't have a business if there was no hardware to sell it on. It was Sony's job to provide the userbase to 3rd parties, it was Sony's job to keep those 3rd parties happy so that other wouldn't be able to woo away SE's top franchises that saw releases ONLY on Sony systems last gen (FF and DQ). They didn't do that, so SE made the decision to spread out their line up. And most importantly, it's not as if SE back stabbed Sony. PS3 is still getting these games. FFXIII and vXIII and Last Remnant are going to be on the PS3, and the only reason IU isn't is because MS helped fund it. SO4 will see a PS3 release as well (though there is a rumor that MS funded IU so that tri-Ace would have the engine to use on SO4, and in return asked for timed exclusivity).
Finally, Nomura. Nomura is an employee. If he doesn't like it, he can protest and try to convince the higher ups. If he really doesn't like it, he can find another job. In a corporate setting, he's not the one that makes those decisions.
To be honest, I find it a bit ironic that you consider my analysis of this to be very low level. Your argument is extremely simplistic.
@cgi-quality
Remember the FFXIII trailer that said it was exclusively on PS3? How did that end up working out?
