I agree... the truth is that they are extremely important to the industry, but even if a console looses the support of a major 3rd party publisher he will still survive... if a 3rd party relies on one console alone and that company colapses, there is a chance that the 3rd party will go down to. Yes there are counter arguments for this theory, like the loss of EAs supoort for the DC, but that console would have failed even if EA would have helped them alone. Look at Nintendo even if EA and AB would both stop supporting it they would still do well... not as well as now, but they would still own worldwide sales.

And for Activision/Blizzard: dont be that arrogant. You have CoD, GH and Warctraft under your belt, but so did EA with NFS, C&C and Battlefield, and look how much they had fallen. Same is with Sony. The only difference? Activisions fall stiull lies ahead while EA and Sony IMO went past the rough times

He has a point, but that is not the whole truth.

3rd parties need console makers and console makers need 3rd parties. You can't point at one of those two and say, this is the bad guy.

Activision invested 25 million (estimated) to create a game for the PS3. Sony gets money for every copy sold and Sony gets money for every console sold. So Activision takes a risk as well and Sony benefits twice. If the PS3 is not selling well, they won't break even with this 25 million USD - game.

wow, what a dickbag.

Again with the "nintendo is great" babble.
Third parties have the right to threaten. If sony losses MW2, there would be MASSIVE hardware boosts for ms, and more than 50% of the sales from the ps3 version would sell on the xbox. I mean, it's called the shooterbox for freakin' sake!
Not only this, but just low-profile games only being on xbox would be a big deal, since devs could focus their effort on one version so there would be lower dev costs and acti could release the game in any time frame they want.

Ditto

And what H_A said.

On a side note: H_A.., H.K... Hmm, sounds like Alien vs. Terminator... XD

I agree with him completely.

@DirtyP2002

But Activision is not making the (25 million) game exclusive to the PS3, so there is no real risk....no?

Yup just like EA. WE will start getting 2 or 3 CoDs a year and they will sell a shit ton just like need for speed. Then it will just go downhill and downhill until a new 1st party developer king takes the crown and repeats the same mistake.

of course there is a real risk! Every 25 million USD investment in this industry is risky.

Let's say you are a 3rd-party-developer. You plan to release a BIG game 2011. Your budget is something like 25 million. You expect to sell 5 million copies (50% Xbox360 / 50% PS3). To reach this 5 million sales you need a userbase of 80 million (PS3 and Xbox360 combined). Now it is August 2010 and you realice, the needed userbase simply won't be there, because one of the hardware producers did not make it to mass market price. So the chances that you are losing money are pretty high, even though you made a good game.

So this would lead to cut down developing costs, which would lead to less console sales and / or a smaller attach ratio etc.

As I said before: 3rd parties need console makers and console makers need 3rd parties.

Malstrom is a broken record. He makes a few valid points but they always drown in his Nintendo propaganda imo.

You know, if he had more examples that JUST Activision, then he might have something. But that's all he has. Sure, others have made suggestions that the PS3 needs to be a lot cheaper, but so have MANY consumers and probably retailers too. So why does that make them bad?

This is a rant by an either imbalanced or very clever blogger. Based on his record, I'm leaning toward the latter . . .

Yeah i agree. Other than that raising the price of MW2 is a good idea, people will still buy it.