Now you know how those Nintendo fans felt in 96'.......

It doesn't matter if PS3 still has it. The multiplatform announcement scrambled the brains of Sony fans all over the internet (and world) and had fanboys livid. With FF13 being multiplat, the PS3 has no system selling killer app of its own. No, Killzone, Resistance, and LittleBigPlanet are not system sellers. I wonder how long it will take for the PS3 to hit 20 million now?

This definitely impedes heavily on their progress, no matter how much you want to deny it and ay it isn't important. The loss of a 10+ year franchise is huge and lowers the status of the Sony brand name.

They need The Strength of Ra to recover from this in their presentation, or else this will overshadow the whole thing.

Many would have argued GTAIV was Sony's biggest exclusive prior to the decision to go multi-platform. It wasn't an exclusive, and everyone saw the complete lack of any lasting effect it had on the console industry.

In Japan, FFXIII could be reasonably argued as being Sony's biggest franchise. But if current news is accurate, this hasn't changed since for whatever bizarre reason, Square is allegedly not releasing it in Japan for the 360, presumably because the install base is too small.

As for the few third party companies developing large budget PS3 exclusives, I can't think of a single one off hand as they're all multi-platform barring MGS4.

The only significant exclusives being developed these days are studios from Microsoft Game Studios and Sony Computer Entertainment and their second party partners (Bioware, Epic Games, formerly Bungie, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, etc.).

It really doesn't change anything beyond pissing off a lot of Sony fans and making a lot of 360 fans very happy.

The result in terms of consoles being moved due entirely to FFXIII will still only be measured in factors of six figures, not eight figures or even seven.

I seriously doubt FFXIII is going to suffer due to being developed for two platforms. The game's been in development for so long already that a sizeable percentage of the resources have already been made for the PS3 platform. They'll just be ported over to the 360 when that stage of development comes. The PS3 is still the lead development platform since it was originally intended as a platform exclusive.

No one actually thinks that the game is going to be downgraded since it's going to be published on DVD9 as well do they? Seriously. If the final build hypothetically requires 40-50GB of resource and code space, it just means that the 360 version will be published on 5-6 DVD9s. Not a big deal.

There will undoubtedly be little differences between the two, same as any multi-platform title, due to differences in how coding is done on the different hardware architectures, but nothing is going to be "watered down" as you put it.

I have to disagree with you, Chrono.

A LOT of RPG fans were waiting to buy a PS3 instead of a 360, because of Final Fantasy. Seeing as the 360 already has many games similar to Final Fantasy, those people will probably skip the PS3 entirely because of this announcement.

This is a major blow to the PS3, because, along Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy was the biggest title for the PS3. Now MGS4 has been released, PS3 has little left to really convince people to buy a PS3 instead of a 360.

@Greenmedic, well that also depends on how long they've known they were going multi-plat. The white engine was made to work with all platforms afterall right? That alone means they're not taking advantage of one systems strengths. ESP not if they want the games to be of equal quality. Something is for sure going to take a hit. Something will be watered down.

@Chrizum. Yeah and then Microsoft announces Mistwalker Studio's. A collaboration of literally, and I mean LITERALLY, the best minds ever showcased throughout RPG history. And they make 2 titles, one of which (personally the better one), is struggling past the million mark. Please. I never said this wouldn't be a hit to Sony. Believe me I understand this. But a "Death-blow"?, a R.I.P. Sony 2008? a Sony better find something in it's arsenal to stop MS from an absolute rampage? Please.

Microsoft is losing ground as every day passes, they might gain some steam from the excitement of this title, but what happens when the title's been around for a while? Is this the momentum they needed? Another Multi-plat? Don't kid yourself. This will have nowhere near as much impact as some people are predicting -_-;

The decision was made fairly recently, although I imagine the option had been on the table from the beginning due to the less than stellar adoption rate of the PS3. That's keeping in mind that development on FFXIII began before the PS3 was available at $399 and the subsequent increase in sales that the lower price point stimulated.

I hope nobody is realistically going to think after playing the final build of FFXIII on the PS3 platform that "this game could have been SO much better if it had been exclusively coded for the PS3."

My guess will be about zero people will be thinking this as they are enjoying the game.

With every multi-platform game being coded by any developer worth the skin they're printed on, they will take full advantage of every capability a given hardware platform provides within the limits of their abilities and the resources at hand.

(Off topic, but FFVII/N64 analogies are completely unfounded here since the decision to develop the game for the PS platform due to the heavy FMV resources meant that FFVII never showed up on the N64 AT ALL.)

White Knight Chronicles IP is owned by Sony, and the game is developed by Level-5 with support from Sony's Japan Studio. And it is published by Sony.

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@ChronotriggerJM

I totally agree with your posts. Excellent explanations and told from an objective viewpoint.

I don't think it will look aweful at all by practically any standards, I'm just saying, when given exclusive resources, the PS3 hardware show's off some impressive technology, if they had made it PS3 exclusive, they could probably have higher poly counts, farther draw distances, more effects on screen, uncompressed audio, shortened loading times, etc etc etc. I just have a feeling if versus stays exclusive, and I mean is currently planned only to be on the PS3, it will probably be more impressive from a technical point of view. But if they have any remote plans to make it multi-plat anywhere down the line, they'll just develop it to be easy to port, meaning sacrfices :/ We'll just have to wait and see lol.

Well so far since the game is exclusive to the PS3 on Japan, nobody sane would think that the game will save the 360 on Japan (Funny that some peolpe thought that the game will save the PS3 on Japan)...

The game will not move 10,000,000 (But a lot o people believed that the game should move a lot of PS3s WW)

The only people who will leave the PS3 in order to buy the game for the 360, are the ones who only care for that game, if you are able to buy a game on console of your choice... you are going to get the one that shuit you the most...

The software sales will be stronger, but the hardware sale will show a similar trend to GTA4, probably the PS3 version will sell more, but due to Japan...

This is not a death blow to Sony, but surely they are in pain now... it was a major exclusive... like MGS or GTA...