"Sony's Tretton: 'Disappointed' In Multiplatform FFXIII Through MS' 'Currying Favor' Speaking at a roundtable Q&A attended by Gamasutra, Sony's Jack Tretton has been discussing Final Fantasy XIII's move from a PlayStation 3 exclusive to a multiplatform title, suggesting Microsoft has spent most of their money "trying to curry favor with third parties".

When asked whether he was disappointed about the surprise announcement that the game would also debut on Xbox 360 in the West, Tretton noted: "I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term."

Tretton then launched into invective discussing Sony's decision to concentrate heavily on internal development, noting that it constituted "over half of our employee base all over the world", and adding that "...we've built up our base and that's where we've chosen to spend our dollars."

However, he warned: "I think Microsoft has spent the majority of their money on trying to curry favor with third parties" - implying that Final Fantasy XIII moving to multiplatform was more of a Microsoft-subsidized decision than one guided purely by sales reasons.

Tretton concluded: "I think software companies look and say 'there's no check big enough for us to do exclusive development' ...I think it's going to be harder and harder to have third-party exclusives as we move forward."

Gamasutra will have more from Tretton's roundtable Q&A in the near future, including lots more detail on the state of Sony."

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19448

Looks like they really were suprised by this announcement.

He's right and honest about it. Good man.

I am disappointed as well... but damn that is cold, that means that sony didn't know.

Microsoft have set a nice bar it is going to be more and more expensive to get third-party exclusives from now on but who cares Microsoft got the cash :P

Yeah, they were, as were the gaming industry at large, and probably MS too

MS should focus on internal development though. Especially as the PS3 userbase rises closer and closer, multi-plats may wind up doing better on the sony console *cough* DMC4 *cough* and not make it worth Microsoft's while. We've all conceded that FFXIII PS3 > FFXIII 360 in sales, so I'm not too sure what it helped MS to do that for.

So basically Sony thinks M$ paid for it, which is not very surprising

well, there goes the question I wanted to ask Sony.

Since we all know Microsoft has money to burn, I guess I won't blame Sony too much. After all, I don't expect Sony to match whatever check Microsoft gave out.

How could they be surprised about the announcement? Take2 GTAIV sell better on the 360 then PS3. The only thing I'm suprise about was MGS4 didn't jump ship yet.

Hopefully PS3's FF won't be screwed up because it has to be a multiplat.

what a stab in the back. thanks a lot square enix.