Well I have, the only hole I can see is he is underestimating how ill informed the American public can be, they may mistake it for an Xbox exclusive after seeing this advert, however, I do not think that this will make much of an impact considering that anyone who is already planning to get the game will know that it is multiplatform and that the PS3 version come on only 1 disk.

The holes you have found must be very minor since there is nothing else I can see that would possible give MS any kind of real advantage even within the US.

If I were Microsoft, I would be spending the advertising money on first party games to try and broaden their appeal.

it may seem desperate, but it has worked..

they stole every RPG the ps3 had in JAPAN, and took away a load of system sellers, which are now just ports that won't boost any hardware at all.

I am suprised that HEAVY RAIN which originally was a PS3 AND 360 GAME was canned on the 360 because the dev wanted to work on the PS3 only.. that is a developer, not people that do anything for $$$

The greater the marketing effort and the better the game is the more likely it'll do better on the 360 relative to the PS3. The wider the audience, the less any previous attachment to consoles may effect things, see GTA IV for example then say Resident Evil 5 then Tekken 6. The less it sells the more it'll skew towards the PS3.

Since I believe that its going to perform a bit disapointingly in the west, it will probably give the PS3 the edge as I suspect the game will not be able to grab as much outside of its core audience. Pre-order numbers can be misleading and they aren't accurate either so I wouldn't place too much stock in that. A game which has a hardcore following will get a lot of pre-orders but casual users still make up the bulk of all multimillion selling games userbases.

Thanks for this comment Squilliam, i couldn't have said it better myself. I especially agree with the underlined-bolded.

On the contray, the PS1 was hailed for it's openness to third party developers, they came to Sony because it was a better console to develop on, not because of any cash transactions.

Just go onto the PlayStation youtube channel and watch the history of PlayStation videos!

If you were Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo you would probably have the lowest selling console whichever company you were directing.

Btw the insult on the American public is not cool.

While this kind of marketing buy out isn't to my taste (and let's no remember Sony do it a fair bit in Europe, too) it makes sense for MS.

They clearly have two goals

1 - if you haven't already got an HD console and FFXIII is going to tip the scales they want to try and get as many such people as possible by having the only bundles for the game combined with marketing to focus the title on 360. This will be particularly important in US where MS is clearly going to fight Sony tooth and nail for every console sale and to preserve its lead.

2 - they want to raise awareness with 360 owners about the title to maximize sales and further expand 360 success with former Sony (and yes Nintendo, I remember) exclusives. MS know how most people associate the title with Playstation and they clearly feel (as with GTAIV) that they have to do all they can to get FFXIII aligned with 360.


It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in Western sales for FFXIII on 360 vs PS3.

There is a chance, which is the only interesting part of the article IMO, that this is all money being spent more or less for nothing - as I wonder how many people are really wandering around without either a 360 or a PS3 who'll plump for a 360 bundle, while I think most PS3/360 owners already know which platform they're going to get it on.

But MS has spent billions and is arguably still in the red in terms of total spend around Xbox so I doubt MS are too worried about that risk vs the possible upsides.

Sony is making the right move, they should save their advertising dollar for GoW3. They will sell more of FF13 even without marketing.

Funny how Sony are not a bunch of tards for funding SE who will make games for other consoles. Now, who's really wasting money?!?

really true.