A Catalog of Lost PS3 Exclusives

Game|Life has a breakdown of the numerous PlayStation 3 exclusives that might have been. The high cost of making games and Sony's slow start out of the game means that titles like Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry IV, which may have been exclusive to a Sony console at one point, will now be leading a double life on Microsoft's Xbox 360. "Grand Theft Auto IV -- Peter Moore shocked the world at E3 last May when he announced that GTAIV would appear day-and-date on Xbox 360 and PS3. Months later, Newsweek reported that Take Two had wanted to continue its long-standing practice of giving Sony a lengthy timed exclusivity on the game, but they didn't want it. Newsweek says that former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi's 'radio silence' on the issue left Sony's American execs without the authority to make deals, and nothing happened. Same with ... Assassin's Creed -- Again, Newsweek revealed that Ubisoft had actually gone to Sony with an offer to make the game a PlayStation 3 exclusive. Although Sony did go through the trouble of asking Ubisoft to make it seem as if their multiplatform action game Assassin's Creed was indeed PS3 exclusive , it came out shortly after E3 that it would ship simultaneously on both platforms."

Re:Cross platform is good for everyone but fanboys

[grapeape]

Oh give me a break. Sony has the money to do the same and with many exclusives that have left had the comfort level of prior exclusives to keep many if they wanted. The problem with Sony is more ego than anything, they have been king of the conosole world for two generations and still believe they are indomitable. There is an interesting article at
http://kotaku.com/gaming/gag-order/scea-prez-we-do nt-buy-exclusivity-274862.php [kotaku.com]

about how Sony refuses to pay for exclusivity (though that wasnt the case when they were trying to kill Sega and Nintendo two generations ago, look at square), IMHO this will be their downfall. It's amusing that Sony bashes Nintendo's over-dependence on 1st party development yet they are well on their way to the same dependancy. When it comes to product wars you do what you have to do to win, if MS gets the leg up on Sony only Sony will be the blame.

Re:PS3 Going Strong

[Doctor_Jest]

What did they overpromise? I don't think it under-delivers at all. (And yes, I have both the 360 and the PS3) What you're comparing to is 360's 2nd year with Ps3's first year. Look at the first year of the 360... lackluster titles, QC issues (that haven't gone away)... I think Resistance and Motorstorm are solid titles (YMMV)... and no, I'm not in denial and trying to justify my purchase... I look forward to Heavenly Sword, and Lair... I'm one of the few people who couldn't care less about Halo 3.... and no, it's not because I hate Microsoft... it's because it's yet another FPS... (like Resistance... but Resistance has a story... I am guessing Halo 3 will be all about multiplayer... Halo 2 was sorta devoid of story as well... focus shifted to multiplayer. That's fine... just not my cup of tea.)

Consider this... this is the same boat the PS2 was in during its launch... people complained it was hard to program for, that it under-delivered (it actually did... didn't make the hype)... turned out to be the best-selling console (and still selling) of that generation. So, counting them out... "sticking it to them" for whatever reason is entirely too fanboyish... even for Slashdot. What did Sony do to you personally? Kill your dog? Rape your mom?

MS can't keep consoles running, won't admit they have a flaw, and has a failure rate that makes the PsOne's problems seem tiny... yet no one is giving them shit about it... well, besides the people who have to return their console a 2nd or 3rd time for the "red rings of death".

Am I saying that for Fanboy points? No. Just for some perspective. Sony's not all bad, and MS is not all good. They both have their strengths... and having them both competing for your entertainment dollar makes for a better experience... add the Wii as a wildcard and we all win. :)

Stomp and run Sony out of town with pitchforks and torches serves only to divide... We are talking about faceless corporations here. :) Not Ma and Pa organizations "fighting the man."

And just for the record: More games != better games. I would rather have 3 great titles than 30 mediocre ones.

Re:Ken strikes again

[I'll Provide The War]

Look at the top selling PS2 games in the US:
1. GTA:VC
2. GTA:SA
4: GTA 3

Can the fact that these titles sell so poorly in Japan really cause Japanese execs to ignore their importance? Talk about myopic.

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=&console= PS2&publisher=&sort=America [vgchartz.com]

Either he's incredibly stupid or was completly blinded by pride and assumed that consumers would flock to the new console regardless of whether or cost two dollars or two thousand and regardless of whether or not there were any good games on the platform.

Just look at his public statements:

> PS3 is "for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."

And statements from other Sony execs:

> "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even [if] it didn't have games"

Sony is smart to lose some exclusives

[DrXym]

Sony would have loved to hang on to GTA but when you consider that Microsoft paid them 50 million dollars just for some downloadable content, is it any surprise that they did not? Imagine how much Take Two must have been demanding from Sony for exclusive rights. It wouldn't surprise me if they were asking 50-100 million at least.

That is a lot of money, enough in fact for Sony to fund 5-10 1st party titles or maybe 30 PSN store titles. No wonder Sony told TTWO where to stick it.

Other than that, most of the other exclusives really don't mean much for system sales. Devil May Cry might be a great game but I doubt it sold many consoles. And if it would have cost 10 million to keep it exclusive, perhaps the decision was that the money is better spent elsewhere.

Sure that means losing exclusives, but it also means that the money goes to making new exclusives. People talk of Sony losing exclusives when they have something like 15-20 games in the works at present, many of which are new exclusives. Think Resistance, Motorstorm, Lair, Uncharted, Heavenly Sword etc.

At the end of the day, it's not like you can't play GTA or Assasins Creed or Devil May Cry. They're still all there so I really don't see the fuss. If someone asked me if I'd rather your game had 5 great exclusive sequels, or 5 great cross-platform sequels and 10 brand new exclusives (some of which are also great), I know what option I'd choose.

Re:Ouch

[donaldm]

If you are willing to look around you can probably do a deal for a PS3 although the same could be said for the Xbox360 and Wii. I got my PS3 (Australian) for AU$499 (approx US$407 at the time) with the trade in of a 5 year old working PS2 plus 10 old (to me) games. So far I have only one PS3 game (Oblivion) but I have over 50 PS2 and over 20 PS1 games and I find since version 1.8 of the firmware video upscaling to 720p (my HDTV) and 1080p (a friend of mine) makes PS2 games look so much better that I have started to play them again. Since more good (IMHO) PS2 games are coming out I can wait a long time because they look so much better than playing them on a PS2. In addition you can also play DVD's upscaled via HDMI as well and the result is excellent and if you really want you can play Blu-ray movies as well :-)

Of course you can also make it into a media center/player and/or install Linux on it. Don't like the 60GB disk then swap it for a 160GB disk or even bigger. If you have a PSP (you can get some good deals here as well although get one with a minimum of 2GB memory card) you can do some interesting things with this as well. My son can play his movie and TV downloads via the PSP to the PS3 and the result is very good. Home brew for the PSP is really popular but if you get one make sure it has version 3.5 or less. You can even convert movie or TV downloads to a form suitable for the PS3 or serve from your media center.

I would definitely say that Sony has done something with the PS3 it is just that the people who don't have one don't know or don't want to know. To find out more go to some of the forums or blogs (caution some rabid fan-boys) but some of the rants/blogs are really good and informative. Don't just take my word do some research and if after that you feel the Xbox360 or Wii is better then go for it after all it is your money.

One final word definitely get a HDTV fist and the bigger the better although this depends on what you can afford. All the new consoles particularly the PS3 and Xbox360 look good on a HDTV.