I can see what he's saying as far as it looks like something that is pretty much spiriling out of control.

Logically per diem paying 1mil. for exclusitivity of a game that is expected to sell say 3mil. multi platformed will typically yield about a .75 extra number of copies sold (estimated statistic that I just made up on the spot) I don't know what SONYs royalties are, but if it's only $1 a copy sold than they are losing money.

One could see it as worth it if collectivly it is considered to boost sales in other places as a profit but still, if the rates are going to be raised to 3 or 4 million per title than they may as well be burning money in the street and then becoma a political Party.


Now, what this means for the gaming culture IF IT BECOMES TRUE to form, I think. It would have a definate impact on this gens sales. XBOX360 is already winning in software sales (both collectivly and per title vs. PS3) and this would reinforce those market trends).

Overall and in the long term I don't think this is epic news. I'm sure many publishers will elect for multiplatform as they always have done. the SONY name is big enough to hold it's own (even if I do feel thats stupid, it doesnt matter what I feel in market analysis) and people will still want Gran Turismo and ............... whats the other one that they make... others... I knoe the have their own franchises which will do just fine fanbboys allocated or not. Could it hurt them statistically in overall sales by a certain percent, probably. but SONY should be just fine (Unfortunatly for me, just me, no trolling, you SONY fans have your fun, its cool)

You lost any credibility you had with that one statement.

I say, screw exclusive deals. Make all your exclusives by yourself, and use them to push your system.

Here is what I see as the SCE "Dream Team":

Platformers/Action Adventure: Insomniac (Spyro - gold, R&C beats the crap out of Mario for me), Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot games - all very good, Jak is great, even though I played only through the first one, Uncharted is and will remain one of PS3's best titles).

Shooters: Insomniac (Resistance - great, R2 is shaping up to be my shooter of choice for the PS3), Guirella (KZ: Liberation - great title, KZ2 is shaping up to be a spectacular game, even though it's too colourless).

Racing: Polyphony Digital ('nuff said, no one will ever be better than these guys)

J/S/ARPGS: Atlus... if Sony acquires Atlus, their home studios are complete. They are a terrific RPG dev, and my 2nd favorite RPG series belongs to them (SMT). Given that a big part of the Sony audience are adults, SMT will have an appeal (not they are only for adults though - I'm not ). Advertising and hyping those games up could make them much bigger than they are now... reaching far higher levels of poularity and sales, thus making them system sellers.

PSN: Media Molecule+various others. PSN games are far more innovative than the regular PS titles, and Media Molecule seem like a quality dev and an innovator. While PSN games are not system sellers, they are good passtime between releases of new titles, and sometimes occupy for tens of hours... making the PS audience happy with their console.

In short: Sony, keep the focus on 1st party, buy Atlus (or Level-5, preferrably Atlus though), and you'll soon be independent. Maybe even a Nintendo first party even. 

The first link doesn't mention specifically who was laid off, and the second link mentions that staff from various marketing departments, mostly related to E3 prep (which had been downsized around that time, if you recall) were laid off.  It doesn't sound like any specific developers were laid off, and if they were, we likely would have heard about it, just like we heard when David Jaffe left Sony Santa Monica, when Naughty Dog guys left to form Ready at Dawn, etc.

Every one of Sony's studios makes at least one pretty well known franchise (whether it be MediEvil, or whatever), and if one of these studios had been significantly downsized, let alone shut down, we would've heard about it.  According to every source I know, even the studios that don't have a title announced at the moment are all still working at full force (like Sony Cambridge).

And then there's Team ICO, the second best action/adventure developers after Anouma's Zelda team, imo.

Team Siren, led by the director of the original Silent Hill, make pretty good survival horror titles as well.

Sony Santa Monica makes some of the best hack n' slash around. God of War also has fun puzzles and platforming.  :)

And there are a bunch of others I don't feel like naming (Hot Shots Gold, MLB: The Show, Twisted Metal, Warhawk, etc.).

Btw, Sony actually publishes more games for it's home consoles year for year than Nintendo.  They just don't have quite the level of quality as Nintendo across the board, imo (though between Uncharted, God of War, and the Ico games, it's close).  If they were to buy Media Molecule, I think my opinion might change, though.

Another important aspect is that it seems Microsoft is actually struggling with this too. The amount of exclusives they seem able to secure seems to be on the decline as the amount of PS3s out there increase.
Paying a former PS3 exclusive like FF13 to go cross-platform is probably cheap, ie the amount of financial incentive a publisher need to support another platform (increasing their potential market) is obviously a lot less than paying someone to not release for a specific platform or platforms (reducing their potential market).

Currently we seem to be in a position where Microsoft for the most part seem only be be able to secure relatively short timed exclusives. So where originally timed exclusives maybe held the titles of the PS3 for over a year, at this point it seems 3-6 Months is the max they are able to get the publishers to accept.

Sony's plan of working either directly with 3rd party developers and focusing mostly on their own 1st party IP is the only solution which is viable in the long run for any of the platform holders for getting exclusives.

What I've given here must've been very general. I forgot a couple of genres, devs and games... thanks for covering it for me. Also, Why can't Sony get Atlus? shouldn't cost too much.

I suppose they could in theory, provided either they or Atlus actually bothered to initate the move.  And even then it seems somewhat unlikely.

Sony usually buys studios that they already have a good working relationship with.  They usually start by forming second party contracts, then a few (or hell, 5-10) years later, they actually buy the studio.  This happened with Naughty Dog, Zipper, Geurrilla, and most recently Evolution Studios.  Based on this, possible next targets are either Sucker Punch, Level 5, and now Media Molecule and Quantic Dream.  Out of these, it's most likely Level 5, given that they are currently very weak in the JRPG area, and they generally focus on their weakest areas at that point in time (like the shooter genre a couple of years ago, which is why they aqcuired Geurrilla and Zipper in 2006). After that I'd say Media Molecule, given how damn talented they are.  I'm sure Sony REALLY wants them to stick around.  Either they'll buy them, or they'll give them the plushiest second party contracts ever, ala Insomniac.  In all depends on how intent Media Molecule are at staying independent, like Insomniac.

@Makingmusic: You're right, they didn't say. Still they sacked staff. I recalled them closing a studio (on top of what i linked), but didn't find anything about it, so i propably didn't remember that right.

SCEE propably aimed to cut down their internal byrocracy, so i'd guess most of the people that got fired were working on "non-productive" jobs.

Ah yes someone saw the joke.   Thanks for actually reading my posts.

Yeah the intention bieng that Sony making over 20 games for the PS3 (which I think is pretty close to Nintendo for the Wii)

5 of them Million sellers (33.3333% of PS3s million sellers), yet all the posts I HAVE seen typically only point out Gran Turismo which isn't even the highest selling, I think Motorstorm is, so I'm taking a stab at that.  And yeah the underlying point is given those statistics, as my post indicates, they aren't hurting one bit.

Thanks for tuning in :)