Entroper said: Diomedes1976 said: naznatips said: Did anyone else read this and think "Nintendo 64" right away? Just curious, because it sounds exactly like the attitude that lost it for Nintendo. Sony offered TONS of benefits to Square Enix and other 3rd party developers to get them over to the PSone. Any proof of this please ?Or do we have to just take your word ? Or you could spend 5 minutes trying to find out yourself before insinuating that he's just making stuff up. If you paid attention to video gaming in the PS1/Sat/N64 era, you'd remember. For everything else, there's Google. I swear, if Sony's PR becomes any more transparent, it will be invisible. "We don't buy exclusives, we earn them." There isn't a single part of that statement approaching something believable.

If you paid any attention at all to gaming media 12 years ago you would have known this. It's pretty hard to provide an internet link for an event that took place in 1994, before there was much gaming stuff on the internet at all. Let's just say if you are currently older than 20, you should know this. If you don't, I'm sorry, but ESPECIALLY Square Enix was constantly being courted by Sony's deep pockets. After Yamauchi refused to make a CD based system he accepted an offer from Sony and Final Fantasy VII's platform was changed, with some nice subsidies provided by Sony to change the development of the game (which was already a year into development). Sony did NOT on the other hand hand out much money during the PS2 era, and since Jack Tretton wasn't hired by Sony till 1995 (and even then only in the sales department) he probably never noticed that the PSone was built on buying out 3rd party exclusivity.

I do remember something about Final Fantasy moving off the SNES to the Playstation... I was pissed at them for doing it and the only reason I remember reading was that the lead designer wanted to use video and other affects to tell his story in new media instead of another tile based version (and required more space than the old cartridge would handle.) But as you say, news like that is hard to dig up.

ckmlb said: Steve 3.2 said: Here's a great article on what Sony has lost to date: Sony's Lost Exclusives: A Timeline - http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/07/sonys-lost-excl.html Indeed a good article. Especially shocking is how they didn't say yes to Assassin's Creed and GTA IV...

It's not really that simple.  It's not like Take Two came to them and said "hey, we'd like to do GTA IV as a timed exclusive again," and Sony said "nah, that's OK."  The offers from T2 and Ubisoft probably came with some monetary requirements -- and in case anyone hasn't noticed, Sony's gaming division is losing an awful lot of money lately.

The original article linked by Wired goes into a lot more detail. 

Andir said: I do remember something about Final Fantasy moving off the SNES to the Playstation... I was pissed at them for doing it and the only reason I remember reading was that the lead designer wanted to use video and other affects to tell his story in new media instead of another tile based version (and required more space than the old cartridge would handle.) But as you say, news like that is hard to dig up.

Yeah thanks Andir.  He seems to assume I'm saying that as an insult to Sony.  It's not an insult, it's just what happened.  When Sony started in the gaming industry they did exactly what Microsoft did, they bought up 3rd party games to get enough support on the system to kickstart it.  It's a tough industry and that's what they had to do to survive.

Andir said: I do remember something about Final Fantasy moving off the SNES to the Playstation... I was pissed at them for doing it and the only reason I remember reading was that the lead designer wanted to use video and other affects to tell his story in new media instead of another tile based version (and required more space than the old cartridge would handle.) But as you say, news like that is hard to dig up.

The story goes that Final Fantasy VII was supposed to be the first 3D foray for Square. A budget of $45 million was assigned to develop assets. Square used SGI workstations to create a tech demo which featured polygon-based 3D renderings of characters from Final Fantasy VI in a real-time battle and incorporated interactive elements. The use of pre-rendered backgrounds and cut-scenes further increased the meory requireents.

Square was resigned to the fact that it would require several cds to make full justice of their visions. Once Nintendo announced that N64 would use Carts, prolonged negotiations were held between Square and Nintendo. Square tried to reason with Nintendo about the benefits of a CD-Rom based console. Somewhere during this stae, negotions broke down and their relationship was re reaching a stage of no return.

Once Play Station was announced as the Lead platform, Square offered the N64 another version in keeping with its hardware.  Hiroshi Yamauchi was so incensed with Square "betrayal" that he snapped all ties with Square and he refused to allow them to workon any N64 titles.

The rest is history..

At this point, anyone could say anything about how Final Fantasy VII ended up on the PS1, and there really would be no way to prove or disprove the theory.

Personally, I heard Nobuo Uematsu was forced to work on the PS1 at spearpoint.  

I think I hadn't said it enough. Sony reps need to shut up... for a while... maybe a long while.

konnichiwa said: HAHA HAHA X D. What about Square? They gived Square a whole big building to develop their games (FFVII).

but sony actually made money off that game cause they published it in US and Europe.

 

the fact the square didn't work with sega back then makes the ps1 the obviouse choce as FF7 wasn't possible on the n64 due to it being cartrage based and not have the space to do it. it took 3 CD's to make FF7. That shows how far ahead of its time FF7 was. 

personnaly, I dont consider the way microsoft get exclusivity is the same way sony get exclusive game.

In general, sony put money in game developpement that start from nothing.
FF is more a special case that a generality, and may be a more complexe story that just "we give money, u make the gmae for us only"

At the opposite, Microsoft has stolen game already in creation for sony and has made them exclusive for ... Microsoft !!!
Exclusive content for GTA or full exclusivity for AceCombat6/Bioshock are simply amazing ...
Developpements were all started on PS3 and then PS3 project were stoped !!

Assassin creed/DMC are different since the PS3 will be released too.

ssj12 said: they did.. remember its part of the dev kit and UT3 was announced in 2005 for the PS3 and is the primary console for the Unreal Engine 3. Its completely optimised for the cell and rsx. Its up to devs to actually know wtf they are doing. Thats the major problem with 3rd party right now, they suck at programming. They had problems with the PS2 when it was new. Only devs that could use the console well was 1st and 2nd parties for the first 2 game generations.

You're right. Epic, creators of the most versatile and widely used game engine on Earth, don't know what they're doing. It has nothing to do with Sony creating difficult to program hardware, lack of decent dev kits, or lack of marketshare.

It's all Epic's fault. Thanks for clearing that up for us.