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greenmedic88 on 15 July 2008
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Bodhesatva said:

In all honesty, I think FF XIII was a symbol to those who faithfully devote themselves to the Playstation Brand. It isn't just that the game was exclusive; it's that it's been apparent for a long time now that porting this game to the 360 would ease the financial burden this mammoth game is clearly causing Square Enix. What kept it exclusive? We couldn't really tell -- Square Enix's fear that they would upset their fans, or uncertain relations with Microsoft, maybe.

Whatever the reason, Final Fantasy was a game that seemed to almost magically remain exclusive, despite financial reason or economic sense to say otherwise. It implies a sort of grandeur about the Playstation Brand; even in times when the brand isn't shining its brightest, the major titles stay on because of history, because of a loyal fanbase, because this.is.Playstation.

I think there have been many chips in the armor, but to me, this is the knock out blow: not to the Playstation brand (far from it), but to the notion that the Playstation brand is somehow chosen or blessed, that it can acquire third party exclusives simply by existing. Like the Xbox 360, the PS3 is a mortal console, and it will need to prove itself to acquire the games it desires.

The PS3 and PS platform overall will have sell under its own merits. What a concept.

Someone probably should have brought this up to SCE during the development of the PS3, seeing as how how they seemed to be under the impression that "everyone" (the 100+ million PS2 owners at the time) would buy their $599 console simply because "it's a Playstation!"

Even if it meant "working extra hours," "getting a second job" or robbing someone as they were leaving the store with their PS3.

 

And I totally agree: a lot of Sony fans are guilty of seeing FFXIII as some sort of magical messiah that would have turned everything around for the PS3 had it remained an exclusive, when the reality is, even rare games that sell in the tens of millions do not sell millions of consoles by themselves.

So now we have some looking to FFXIII Versus, a game that we know next to nothing about, as the next messiah (or KZ2 or LBP, or whatever), when there is no such game that can instantly and permanently change a platform's market share. Not even Halo.