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Forums - Sony - SCEA President: "We don't buy exclusivity."

rocketpig on 04 July 2007
Entroper said:

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. 


Actually there's an in-depth article on why this happened on ArsTechnica. Sony, in a fit of madness, declared complete radio silence on all western developers while they ramped up for the Japanese releases, final specs, and future release of the PS3. It's a practice they used before but as we all know, the situation was wildly different back then.

Hearing nothing and receiving no response, western devs started to take Microsoft's calls (and apparently they were calling A LOT).

Now, here we sit. This is another case where Sony took things for granted and handed away potentially generation-winning games to the opposition.




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Ackmed Tepish on 04 July 2007

This is no different than how Sony bashed Microsoft for releasing a core console or how they bash them for emulating reverse capatibility on the 360 then turn around and do the same themselves by releasing a watered down PS3 and making PS3 Euro emulate reverse capatibility. How about Sony calling the Wii controller a fad then making their own sixaxis to compete? Eventually Sony will have to buy exclusivity in this gen too. They just trying talk big game, its part of their smug arrogant PR.

Sony gamers, don't bother to try and get behind this one, Sony is just going to go back on their word anyway and start buying exclusives despite what said, don't bother trying to act like there is high ground to be had on the issue, just ignore it and enjoy your console, simple as that.



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360=14m

PS3=7m

 

DS=64m

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jman8 on 04 July 2007
Legend11 said:
jman8 said:

Personally, if i were running a gaming company, I'd rather spend the money on smaller devs with fresh ideas, especially considering that every generation there seems to be one or two new IPs that seem to blow up. Last gen those two IPs were GTA and Halo. When MS bought Bungie they definitely didn't spend so much on so little like they did with the GTA extra content.


It's the big games and well known IPs that sell the most games though. Why fund smaller devs when the chances of them creating IPs that sell in the millions (which is what would be required to move systems) is slim?


 Because, like I said, often smaller teams can create the biggest franchises in the long term. Look at Halo. Look at GTAIII. Who the hell knew about Bungie and Rockstar North back in the day. Now those two teams are the biggest in the game industry. I guess I'm looking at a more long term strategy where minimal investments can lead to big things rather than making massive investments for minimal gains (GTA DL content). 



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megaxl on 04 July 2007

is very obvious how Sony win the last two generation, with money, Nintendo and Sega could not compete with Sony Corp in a money fight, and Sega and Nintendo have to suffer this, Sega became a 3rd party, and Nintendo lost prestige, but now Sony have to face the same strategies that he did in the past, with Microsoft and a very rich man like Bill Gates support the xbox 360, they killed the first xbox soon to put all the energy to the xbox 360, and now Sony have to use the head if they want to finish good this generation and stop to cry.



ssj12 on 04 July 2007
Bodhesatva said:
ssj12 said:
Bodhesatva said:
Andir said:
I guess it depends on how you interpret "buying exclusives". You could say that you paid for production fees or what not, or you could say that a game was scheduled to come out multi-platform and it suddenly changed it mind with their bank account seeing a healthy rise.

I agree, that would be a great idea. I also think it would be smart to get Epic to make a definitive version of their UE3 engine on the PS3 platform, for the ease of use of 3rd party developers. It's hard to tell if the lag in UE3 engine development on the PS3 is entirely due to the obtuse/complex nature of the PS3's design or if they're upgrading the engine in some manner for the PS3 in particular.

But I don't think it's fair to suggest that Microsoft is, in some way, spending their money in a crude, dishonorable fashion. Sony has done a lot of the same things in the past (paying for publishing/advertisement, or simply buying up developers, such as Psygnosis), they just haven't done it as lavishly as Microsoft has.


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.


Where did you hear that PS3 is the "primary console" for the UE3 engine? o_O

For one, I know that the BASE of development was the PC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine_3#Unreal_Engine_3_2

But that's all the information I can find, and I assume you're splitting hairs (you said primary console, which I suppose the PC doesn't qualify as). Obviously I think it's possible that the UE3 engine could be optimized for the PS3 -- as I just speculated about it -- I'm just saying it's not apparent yet. Do you have evidence otherwise?


Its the fact that the PS3 had the Engine on it before microsoft. Microsoft paid for the engine to be included in their dev kit after Sony's E3'05 announcement. I never said that it wasnt made for the PC. We all know 99.9% of all game engines are made on PC (well mostly on Macs).

Also theres a few coming out that shows the PS3 can use UE3 quite well. Wait wasnt the darkness running on UE3? If I remember right the PS3 version looks better.



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z64dan on 04 July 2007
ssj12 said:
Bodhesatva said:
ssj12 said:
Bodhesatva said:
Andir said:
I guess it depends on how you interpret "buying exclusives". You could say that you paid for production fees or what not, or you could say that a game was scheduled to come out multi-platform and it suddenly changed it mind with their bank account seeing a healthy rise.

I agree, that would be a great idea. I also think it would be smart to get Epic to make a definitive version of their UE3 engine on the PS3 platform, for the ease of use of 3rd party developers. It's hard to tell if the lag in UE3 engine development on the PS3 is entirely due to the obtuse/complex nature of the PS3's design or if they're upgrading the engine in some manner for the PS3 in particular.

But I don't think it's fair to suggest that Microsoft is, in some way, spending their money in a crude, dishonorable fashion. Sony has done a lot of the same things in the past (paying for publishing/advertisement, or simply buying up developers, such as Psygnosis), they just haven't done it as lavishly as Microsoft has.


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.


Where did you hear that PS3 is the "primary console" for the UE3 engine? o_O

For one, I know that the BASE of development was the PC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine_3#Unreal_Engine_3_2

But that's all the information I can find, and I assume you're splitting hairs (you said primary console, which I suppose the PC doesn't qualify as). Obviously I think it's possible that the UE3 engine could be optimized for the PS3 -- as I just speculated about it -- I'm just saying it's not apparent yet. Do you have evidence otherwise?


Its the fact that the PS3 had the Engine on it before microsoft. Microsoft paid for the engine to be included in their dev kit after Sony's E3'05 announcement. I never said that it wasnt made for the PC. We all know 99.9% of all game engines are made on PC (well mostly on Macs).

Also theres a few coming out that shows the PS3 can use UE3 quite well. Wait wasnt the darkness running on UE3? If I remember right the PS3 version looks better.


Great well the UE3 engine costs like 500k or something right? Can't you just make a DS game for the cost of the UE3 engine and probably make more money?