Sony: MS has "very few" first-party studios

[wraggster]

Rob Dyer, SCEA's senior VP of publisher relations has said that while Microsoft is more likely to attract third-party developed exclusives such as Mass Effect, it doesn't have enough first-party studios delivering the same level of content as Sony.

"They have very few first-party studios at Microsoft," Dyer said, in an interview with IndustryGamers. "Bungie's next Halo is the last one, Rare rarely puts out anything, you've got Peter Molyneux with his Fable stuff... but they don't have first-party development studios inside at Redmond or anywhere for that matter. We do.

"So rather than putting their money behind that, they've been going to Epic or Valve or BioWare to do what they did with Mass Effect, and that's where they throw their dollars."

"We're not going to compete with Microsoft on that front," he added. "But what we have is a global business here. Our global business is bigger than 360's and will continue to get bigger than 360, and people are seeing that. We passed them in Europe and they don't even exist in Japan, and we're going to catch them and pass them here in the US as well."

The PS3's $299 price point has "resonated", Dyer said, to the extent that many US stores are now seeing shortages.

But the even better news, he added, is how the increase in the console's installed base has translated into software sales.

"They had a year's head start against us, so we've been playing catch-up ball," he said. "Before the price cut, they had a two-to-one advantage; if you were a third-party publisher looking at the index, you should have been selling twice the number of units on the 360 as you would on the PS3."

However, that hasn't been Sony's findings, and Dyer says the ratio is down to 1.6 to 1.0 - "What we've been finding is that outside of the shooter category we literally over-index every single category - sports, fighting, action/adventure, music, etc."

"We do better for our publishing community than 360 does," Dyer stated, drawing attention in particular to Madden, which he says had an index of 1.4 to 1.0. "That's only going to get better and better as the installed base continues to grow."

"We're not going to get the exclusive games," he admitted. "The Mass Effects, Gears of Wars and Left 4 Deads aren't going to happen nearly as often."

"But we have our own first-party development and exclusives like Final Fantasy XIV and Agent. Exclusives just aren't as commonplace as they were during the PS2 days.

"What is going to be the driving force is either exclusive ad campaigns, like the Madden campaign, or exclusive content like we had with Batman.

"The PS3 version outsold the 360 version, and what we've said to [developers] is, 'if you take advantage of what the PS3 can deliver – more content on the Blu-ray disc, better graphics, being able to get more of what the player wants onto the disc – you're going to see those sales translate'."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-party-studios

[symbal]

Another completely meaningless swipe by Sony, everyone knows MS is massively better at working with other developers and creating more user friendly hardware and SDK's, so it's only Sony that needs quality first party developers.

[VampDude]

Rare rarely puts out anything

When they worked with Nintendo, the releases from RARE never stopped.

Another completely meaningless swipe by Sony, everyone knows MS is massively better at working with other developers and creating more user friendly hardware and SDK's, so it's only Sony that needs quality first party developers.

SONY have the better developers, or with the same developers delivered more content to the PlayStation 3 with larger disc capacities 25-50GB over the standard 4-8GB with the Xbox360. Microsoft would have still had a chance (for the extras SONY have) if they continued the HD-DVD format purely for their gaming media, with the capacity of 15-30GB for more developmental freedom with a higher definition.

[symbal]

I think there's 2 sides to the capacity coin though, more content is better for us but for developers more content means higher production costs and the smaller disks mean they have excuse to make more DLC they can charge us for.

[Eviltaco64]

The only game I actually cared for from Rare after the move from Nintendo was Conker: Live and Reloaded (which still didn't top the original).

They've really slipped in quality. :/

[VampDude]

I think there's 2 sides to the capacity coin though, more content is better for us but for developers more content means higher production costs and the smaller disks mean they have excuse to make more DLC they can charge us for.

Not all DLC is worth the purchase though, which is why the larger capacity of the PS3 discs bring exclusive contents to the PS3 that the Xbox360 misses, such as the PSN extras on Arkham Asylum.

The only game I actually cared for from Rare after the move from Nintendo was Conker: Live and Reloaded (which still didn't top the original).

They've really slipped in quality. :/

RARE were only good for Nintendo, during the 64-BIT era. I believe they preferred working for Nintendo, which is why they aren't as good... Just like SEGA, RARE was Nintendo and SEGA was SEGA, but without the consoles for the base of their games the quality then fades into nothingness. The 128-BIT era was to blame, SEGA were too early and Nintendo didn't have the majority in RARE for the exclusive titles in which Microsoft purchased the remaining 49% after their initial 51% which prevented the GameCube from having some of the best games continuing from the Nintendo64.

[Eviltaco64]

Not all DLC is worth the purchase though, which is why the larger capacity of the PS3 discs bring exclusive contents to the PS3 that the Xbox360 misses, such as the PSN extras on Arkham Asylum.



RARE were only good for Nintendo, during the 64-BIT era. I believe they preferred working for Nintendo, which is why they aren't as good... Just like SEGA, RARE was Nintendo and SEGA was SEGA, but without the consoles for the base of their games the quality then fades into nothingness. The 128-BIT era was to blame, SEGA were too early and Nintendo didn't have the majority in RARE for the exclusive titles in which Microsoft purchased the remaining 49% after their initial 51% which prevented the GameCube from having some of the best games continuing from the Nintendo64.

Rare cranked out some decent titles during the 16-bit era as well (e.g. the first two Donkey Kong Country games and Killer Instinct).

[ICE]

I think there's 2 sides to the capacity coin though, more content is better for us but for developers more content means higher production costs and the smaller disks mean they have excuse to make more DLC they can charge us for.

Im sorry but any argument that the higher capacity disks of the PS3 are anything but a positive is just stupid.