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Sony's early struggles with the PS3 have been well documented, but 2009 truly did seem like a breakthrough year for the platform holder. With a slimmed down model, a lower price point and more publisher support, the PS3 finally came into its own. IndustryGamers spoke with Rob Dyer, SCEA Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations, about the changing landscape with PS3 and third parties. Dyer, unsurprisingly, feels the tide has turned in PS3's favor for good at this point.
“I've been on the road literally non-stop since the beginning of the year with every top 15 publisher, and there's been nary a word of discouragement. Having been in Japan, and here with EA and Activision and Ubisoft, and everyone else, it's good to walk in there right now versus, say a year ago when it wasn't so easy [to win support]. The $299 price point has resonated and it has a huge impact when you're sold out in so many locations, but the better news is that it's translating into software sales.When I walk into an EA, they're telling me that for Madden, the one platform they're seeing year-on-year growth is the PS3, or when I walk into Activision and they tell me the same thing for Guitar Hero. Those are big statements, given what has transpired with those franchises," he began.
For Dyer, the game sales of PS3 software SKUs have been impressive considering the difference in installed bases between Xbox 360 and PS3. Ultimately, he says the statistics show that PS3 is now a better performer for publishers.
“They had a year's head start against us, so we've been playing catch-up ball. Before the price cut, they had a two-to-one advantage; if you were a third-party publisher looking at the index, you should have been selling twice the number of units on the 360 as you would on the PS3. So what we did when following a particular title was see if we over or under-indexed against that. So anything below 2, we over-indexed, meaning we did better, and above 2 meant it was under-indexing. What it shows you is that as our installed base has been growing, we're now down to a 1.6 to 1.0, and what we've been finding is that outside of the shooter category we literally over-index every single category – sports, fighting, action/adventure, music, etc. We do better for our publishing community than 360 does," Dyer stated. "As our installed base starts catching up and gaining on 360, you're going to see the publisher side much quicker get to par than even if we had the same number of [360 hardware] units. So for instance, with a title like Madden, I think the index was 1.4 to 1.0, which meant we way oversold on PS3 versus 360, given the installed base. That's only going to get better and better as the installed base continues to grow."
Although historically many publishers have worked with Xbox 360 and ported to PS3, resulting in sometimes not-so-pretty graphics on a machine that's very capable, Dyer sees this trend reversing. And a big part of it comes with the marketing campaigns behind the games.
“I point to a couple big examples. One is Batman: Arkham Asylum, with what the guys at Eidos and Rocksteady did, and I point to Madden and the unique campaign EA put behind it with us, showing promotions that were very PS3 focused. And that really drove sales," he explained. "Look, we're not going to get the exclusive games. The Mass Effects, Gears of Wars and Left 4 Deads aren't going to happen nearly as often. But we have our own first-party development and exclusives like Final Fantasy XIV and Agent. Exclusives just aren't as commonplace as they were during the PS2 days. What is going to be the driving force is either exclusive ad campaigns, like the Madden campaign, or exclusive content like we had with Batman. The PS3 version outsold the 360 version, and what we've said to [developers] is 'If you take advantage of what the PS3 can deliver – more content on the Blu-ray disc, better graphics, being able to get more of what the player wants onto the disc – you're going to see those sales translate.' [EA Sports and Eidos] would both tell you that by focusing on PS3 and its virtues and what it provides, it translated into much bigger sales and bang for the buck.
"So what we've been doing is going to publishers and using that as our basic story, and going after exclusive content. You're going to see a lot of that, and for example, you're seeing it now with Dante's Inferno. EA had the collector's edition only on PS3. They filled up that Blu-ray disc and were able to do a lot more that they couldn't with 360. The consumer is starting to understand that – there's a lot of cross-ownership between PS3 and 360, and so we're now trying to differentiate that and give that consumer a reason to buy the PS3 version instead of the 360 version.”
We further pressed Dyer on the exclusives issue and if Sony felt at a disadvantage since Microsoft does have the money to secure exclusives for 360. "Sony counters that with its own first-party," he stated simply, before ripping into Microsoft Game Studios. "They have very few first-party studios at Microsoft. Bungie's next Halo is the last one, Rare rarely puts out anything, you've got Peter Molyneux with his Fable stuff... but they don't have first-party development studios inside at Redmond or anywhere for that matter. We do. So rather than putting their money behind that, they've been going to Epic or Valve or BioWare to do what they did with Mass Effect, and that's where they throw their dollars."
He added, "Candidly, we're not going to compete with Microsoft on that front, but what we have is a global business here. Our global business is bigger than 360's and will continue to get bigger than 360, and people are seeing that. We passed them in Europe and they don't even exist in Japan, and we're going to catch them and pass them here in the U.S. as well."
One other area that Sony intends to counter Microsoft in is at retail itself. Dyer seemed particularly excited about Sony's strategy on this front. “The problem with retail is you really have to give them the ready-made package. So what we're doing is we're going to make that callout on the front of the package. If you walk into a Wal-mart or Target, so many of the titles are behind glass, and if you're the consumer you might strain your eyes trying to pick which game you want. What you'll see is we'll have a new packaging template that is going to call out the additional features you get on PS3 that you can't get on the 360, that exclusive content [like Dante's]," he noted. "That's something that's ready-made, spoon-fed for the retailer, and they put it up there and the consumer sees that and it jumps right off the shelf. So you'll see a lot more of that – it's something we're very focused on. You'll see announcements on it from us at DPS (Destination PlayStation) as well as E3; it's something our publishing partners are extremely excited about – again, because they saw the results that came from the Madden or Batman campaigns.”
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