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chakkra said:
Kyuu said:

My two cents: Sony likely allocate an annual "moneyhatting budget" to complement their 1st/2nd party studios which are at full capacity; budget isn't the only bottleneck. Also, they're probably not paying anywhere near enough to fund a full decent game. Some of these exclusivity deals are initiated by the 3rd party publisher who may have little faith in an Xbox version selling well and think "Hey, let's see if Sony can moneyhat us and help market our game". They won't necessarily ask for much.

Finally... part of the Playstation appeal (PS1 and PS2 in particular) was "high quality 3rd party exclusives" that may no directly sell that much (especially not on Xbox to warrant PS exclusivity) but constitute the reputation and diversity of the console's game library. Their sales figures don't reflect their full benefits; they add value upon accumulation.

Zippy6 said:

Most likely it's easier and cheaper to negotiate such a deal with a Japanese company as native sales for Xbox are almost non-existant and typically globally Japanese style games sell far more on PlayStation than Xbox even when simultaneously launched and even taking Xbox's lower installbase into account.

It's easy and cheap to persuade these companies to not release on Xbox and they do it with titles that are popular and will give them an advantage in the West.

They're not getting exclusive final fantasy to help them over Xbox in Japan, it's just not necessary. They're doing it for western markets and they'll get it cheaper than they would a third party western exclusive.

You know.. that is why I keep saying that this Activision deal is actually the best case scenario for Playstation owners. If Microsoft had decided to allocated at least 20 of those 70 billions into their moneyhat budget, they would have managed to convince quite a few developers to put their games on exclusively on Xbox, and like you said "add value upon accumulation".

And I actually agree that MS hasn't been aggresive enough on the japanese market; I mean, while it is true that it would be a lot more expensive for them to get the same exclusive deals that Sony gets, it is also true that they have the money to pull it off.

I actually disagree.  There comes to a point where the amount of money you spend does not give you the same return, especially trying to money hat games in the Japanese market when your own hardware barely sales.  The amount of money you would need to spend which is no guarantee that you would even make a dent in the market is probably pretty stiff.

I've been to Japan, the amount of games that come out for Nintendo and Sony system compared to MS is on a whole different level.  What can MS really offer to combat that type of output especially when both Nintendo and Sony has all the contacts and agreements.  This belief that you can throw a bunch of money at the problem would mean shorting efforts in other areas.  Instead I always believe MS best bet is to put that money in more developing markets as the barrier for entry is much cheaper with a better investment on your money.