| S.T.A.G.E. said:
GTA was paid for by Sony to be kept exclusive for the trilogy of games (until the trilogy was complete. Aka "Timed exclusivity") that came out during the PS2 generation. Final Fantasy was a Japanese and target market affair. Sony didn't need to pay for FF exclusivity because they swallowed the lionshare of the market and also expanded the size of it to greater heights than any other generation before. EA didn't make sports games for the dreamcast in the genesis era because of Nintendo swallowing up marketshare and keeping third party to themselves. (opposite of Sony, devs actually ran to them) Nintendo held them and they listened because they had the lionshare of the market during their reign. They had nowhere to run until Sony joined the industry. Sega was forced to create Joe Montana and other Sega brand sports games games because no one could take the risk on Sega with Nintendo around. During the Dreamcast era 2kSports had their games on the Dreamcast. Sony's entrance into the industry loosened Nintendos grip on third parties because they didnt have to fear for making profit elsewhere. Whatever Sega screwed up with the Saturn, they screwed up for themselves and those devs ran back to Sony. Forced parity is apart of the Microsoft contract with third parties. They have the right to deny a third party if a game loses 100% parity with Sony. Sony works the opposite. If they do not have parity with Microsoft or Nintendo they demand the extra content be included in their game for their consumers. We saw this alot after Bioshock, Ninja Gaiden 2, Madd Effect and many other games. Sony gamers got all the DLC bundled in a lot of the games MS paid to keep away from them. |
Thanks, STAGE. I'm glad that somebody actually gets it. I mean 150M PS2's vs 25M Xboxes. Why GTA and FF were exclusive to the PS2 during that gen is obvious as heck. MS's parity clause with 3rd parties was also obvious.
