Sony is already starting to buy exclusives too now, why do you think Haze is a timed exclusive and the rumors about the PS3 version of Unreal Tournament being a timed exclusive to be announced at E3...

This is getting very competitive, but at least Sony is finally countering MS' willingness to drop millions of dollars on exclusives... 

I hate to admit it,but if both those games went multiplatform,SONY is screwed.SONY really has to open their wallet and keep these games exclusive.I can really see MS actually paying that kind of money.SONY has to put away it's Japanese pride and pay for these must have exclusives.MS can't beat SONY like men,so now they will just pay to get their main competition out of the way.

I don't think it's a good direction. I think own studios should decide about this war. These numbers are insane. How much money will generate MGS4? Even with 5 million units sold (it will not happen) it's only 300 million and this is revenue... How about real money (for devs and console producer)?

Hence, why it is a rumor.

Funding gaming companies for ports, exclusive games and even just to prevent the game from being ported to another console was common in the previous generation and was widely rumored to have started with Sony on the Playstation. The fact is that exclusive third party games on a non-dominant platform are typically bought in some way; 'shared' marketing expenses, traded IP (Nintendo's favourite) and cash transfers are common ways to capture exclusive games.

The scale of this deal is what seems so off ...

Unless these deals are based off of multiple games and involve a large portion of joint marketing I can't see this as being true. If you assume that these numbers represent 2 games for each series and that 75% of the money is joint marketing it would become more plausable.

it's not a matter of gaining something on a game...it's a matter of making Ps3/X360 the leading multimedia/interactive device in the world, and actually the first multimedia/interactive device that enter the houses of millions of customers...you start selling a videogaming machine and end up having introduced in millions of houses a device that make you browse the internet (and for example purchase movies, music or whatever you can think of) with a remote controller.

In other words i don't think we can read this "next-gen-war" only in terms of making the no.1 videogaming machine, the prize is actually much more interesting for Sony and MS: it's the first true chance to define a standard for the years to come for what MS calls mediacenter....by the way the first wise move is: "kill the opponent at ANY cost"...and given the actual situation in which PS3 is vulnerable (poor installed base) MS is just tryin' to hit as hard as possible (stealing the games that could save PS3 from failure...and under this light even spending a ridiculous amount of money for two games could make some sense) :)

 Actually the $50 million wasn't for exclusive content. It was an advance on the games estimated sales.

Maybe it's in yen? lol

 MGS4 - Confirmed by Sony to be exclusive so 0%

FFXIII - White engine wont run on the 360 so 0%

 They are probably just making a new dev studio or something with that amount of money

chances of a new dev studio announcing a game at E3 for 360 is 100% 

to requiem,
"Actually the $50 million wasn't for exclusive content. It was an advance on the games estimated sales. "

==> so in fact, if I follow u, we are all false ?
Everybody was claiming that Microsoft has bought some exclusive content for 50M $ ? It is false ?
In fact, they get exclusive content but the amount of money they gave to Rockstar for this is unknow ?

I just want to understand.

AND

another link to a heavenlySword video (london show),

http://www.play3-live.com/news-ps3-presentation-de-heavenly-sword-a-londre-3993.html

have you saied God of War ?