My god, if this is true then Sony have really let their market domination sliiiiiiide!
Sony dallying cost PS3 exclusivesNewsweek report says Ken Kutaragi's "slowness" allowed Assassin's Creed and GTA IV to go to the Xbox 360.
By Tor Thorsen, GameSpot This past spring, Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed, a visually stunning PlayStation 3 stealth-action game that impressed members of the gaming press at E3. While the French publisher did drop many story details about the game, which is set in medieval Jerusalem during the Crusades, it danced around the question of whether the game would be exclusive to Sony's new console. Though early Assassin's Creed press releases only mentioned the PS3, the game was shown off at Microsoft's X05 event last fall as "Project Assassin." For their part, Ubi reps danced around the subject of whether or not the game would would be released on other consoles...until they finally fessed up the game would come to the Xbox 360 and PC.
At first, many chalked up the confusion to the dissembling that is all too common in game-publisher public relations. However, a recent Newsweek article says that, for a time, Assassin's Creed was indeed intended to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive. In his blog Level Up, correspondent N'Gai Croal reports that both the Ubisoft game and Grand Theft Auto IV were both slated to debut solely on the PS3--but slowness on the part of Sony cost the electronics giant both franchises.
"We've learned that Take-Two [Interactive] and Rockstar Games were interested in continuing their longtime relationship with Sony, in which they premiered their Grand Theft Auto games on PlayStation platforms exclusively for 6-12 months before bringing them to other systems," wrote Croal. "Also, Ubisoft was interested in making Assassin's Creed, due in stores next spring, exclusive to the PS3."
So what happened? According to Croal, "For the greater part of this year, PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi hadn't finalized the business terms for independent publishers on the PS3," wrote Croal. "[But] PlayStation's Japanese headquarters was effectively radio silent, and without Kutaragi's signoff, the normally independent American and European branches had no authority to reach agreements on the exclusives they believed could be valuable to the PS3 cause."
According to Newsweek, while Sony played the waiting game, Microsoft contacted both Take-Two and Ubisoft and offered them very generous terms to bring Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto IV to the Xbox 360. Croal cites an unnamed source at one of the companies as saying, "I do have to give Microsoft a lot of credit for going after titles and doing whatever they can to generate third-party support. They've been magnificent in this generation."
Though Sony Computer Entertainment America had not returned GameSpot's requests for comment, its executive vice president, Jack Tretton, told Newsweek that the 360 GTA IV was all its publisher's idea. "There was interest on Take-Two's part to bring Grand Theft Auto onto Xbox platforms," said the executive. "We wouldn't encourage them to do that. The interest came from them."
I find it incredibly hard to believe that Rockstar/Take Two just called up Microsoft and said something like: "Hi, fancy having Sony's most well known exclusive title on the 360 at the same time as the PS3? Oh, and we'll make 360-only content for it as well?" Sony have dropped a bollock this generation. Check this out:
Bloomberg: Sony missed PS3 ship targets[/size]
Analysts surveyed say number of launch PlayStation 3s available in US was "even lower than expected;" Sony says it shipped as many as possible.
By Tim Surette, GameSpot Many gamers who have been searching desperately for a PlayStation 3 since the console's launch in North America on November 17 have come up empty handed. A combination of high demand and low supply has resulted in nationwide sellouts of the console, many stores exhausting their initial supplies within minutes. Gamers winced when Sony announced that only 400,000 units would be up for grabs in North America on launch day, but according to Bloomberg, even that number may have been optimistic.
Several industry analysts have come forward with the belief that Sony may have missed its shipment target by as much as 50 percent. Retail expert SooAnn Roberts told Bloomberg she believes that Sony won't ship more than 200,000 PS3s to North America by the end of the year. Other analysts predicted a similar shortfall prior to the console's laumnch last week.
Todd Mitchell of Kaufman Bros. Equity Research said the number of PS3s at launch was "even lower than expected," says Bloomberg. The news service also claims that several other analysts echo Mitchell's sentiments.
Sony representatives told Bloomberg, "We shipped as many PlayStation 3 units into the North American market as possible and continue our efforts in supplying systems to retailers nationwide through the holidays." The rep went on to claim that Sony is planning to ship 1 million PS3s to the US by the end of the year. Sony has previously said that it plans on shipping 2-2.4 million PS3s worldwide by 2007.
Let me get this straight, Sony came out and said that the launch of the 360 last year was basically crap...well, yeah, it wasnt that great i suppose...but at least they got a load of machines to every territory, not just saying: "fuck the PAL regions". Sony then came out a few weeks ago and said they were going to ship 100,000 consoles to Japan and 400,000 to the US. Thing is that they only shipped 88,000 to Japan and now this. And they reckon theyre going to have 1,000,000 in the US alone by the end of the year!? I doubt it, like the above article said, they were saying they were going to ship 2 > 2.4million by the end of the year. Sony have fucked up BIG time.
Little things make a system shit i think. Like having a carbon copy of another systems features, but one that doesnt work as well. A machine that needs a firmware upgrade as soon as its released. Wireless controllers that need to be synched with the machine through a USB cable first and then have no way of changing the battery inside without physically taking it apart. Nothing is saying to me "buy a PS3". I really liked the PS1 & 2, the PSP is a great little machine but the PS3 has nothing that makes me want to buy it. If i want motion sensitive games i'll buy a Wii, if i want an online game service then ill upgrade to Xbox LIVE Gold.
Sen
Topic: Sony's slowness cost PS3 exclusive titles (Read 639 times)