Tag Archives: exclusivity

The PS3 exclusive status of Final Fantasy Versus XIII is under siege once more after Square Enix listed a vacancy on the game team for a “Battle Planner”.

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Epic’s Mark Rein has said that the developer owns the Gears of War IP, and can do with it what it pleases.

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Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has hit back at recent comments made by Sony on exclusive 3rd-party deals made by the Seattle firm for 360 the only way it can: by saying it “offers more exclusives than” the black behemoth.

Shit + fan?

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Michael Pachter has voiced the belief that Epic Games “regrets” signing an exclusivity deal with Microsoft on the Gears of War franchise.

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Both having Microsoft as a publisher and concentrating on 360 as a single format has aided the Gears of War IP, executive producer Rod Fergusson has told VG247.

“Yeah,” said the developer when asked if keeping the franchise exclusive to 360 had been a benefit.

“Microsoft is just an awesome publisher. They’re a great partner for us. They help us in so many ways, both in terms of the obvious with marketing support, and also in terms of usability, tested, play-testing, design reviews, support on the art side and a whole bunch of different things.”

Fergusson described the restriction of having to keep Gear on 360 as a “tax” for working with Microsoft, but explained that the set-up allowed Epic to attempt to make the best possible title for one format.

“We benefit a lot by having Microsoft as a publisher, and one of the ‘taxes,’ if you will, of working with them is that we’re only on one platform, but also it allows us to focus our efforts in terms of development,” he said.

“UE3 runs great on PC, it runs great on PS3 and 360 as well, but for us as a team it allows us to focus and make the best game we can for that one particular platform, which has been great. I think it has helped the IP from that perspective as we’ve been focused on creating the best game possible.”

Gears of War 2 has sold around 4 million units so far.

Fergusson was talking at GDC.

SCEA hardware marketing boss John Koller has told VG247 that Microsoft’s apparent need to pay for exclusivity on certain products – such as the Lost and Damned – is borne from a self-perceived lack of strength in its first-party line-up.

“Microsoft has had a much more lenient policy to writing cheques than we do,” he said.

“We don’t feel the need to write cheques necessarily with every publisher, like they did with the Lost and Damned and some other titles, because we feel very strongly in our first-party line-up.

“I think it’s safe to say that we’d put our first-party line-up against anyone’s, and Microsoft and other manufacturers probably lead a little bit when they’re writing cheques about how they feel about their own internal line-up.”

Microsoft reportedly loaned Rockstar $50 million for two episodes of GTA IV DLC, although the figure’s never been confirmed.

The first episiode, The Lost and Damned, is rumoured to have sold in the region of 1 million units.

Koller was speaking at GDC last month.

Speaking to Golem.de, Microsoft Germany product manager Boris Schneider-Johne has mirrored the opinion of SCEE president David Reeves in saying that console exclusives from publishers are becoming a thing of the past.

“Given the production costs of the games, it is hardly possible for developers to commit itself exclusively to someone,2 he said.

“Now Sony makes its own games for the console, we make our own games for the console. The titles are exclusive, as they are also attempts turnout the best of the console, but someone like Electronic Arts or Activision can have a business model of rarely developing for a console exclusively. Therefore, the exclusive title is a little less important.”

Thanks, GameRush.