Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.
This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.
Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.
Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
Loved the talk about sharing achievements across consoles and PCs!
Great show. Always fun to hang out with the guys. I’m psyched to finally check out Spider-Man.
Hi guys.
You know it: thanks for the episode 🙂
I did not played so much the last weeks, little bit God of War and some Magic Arena… that’s all.
Can’t write so much this time, cause I don’t know all the games you talked about.
I don’t care a lot about achievements except in WOW.
Alle hear launcher you talked about: it really is annoying! I have this one installed, which combines all of them … GOG … at least it’s better than having 5 or 6 of them 🙂 It’s not perfect, but it is the right way!
I am still waiting for some Metroidvania games to come out. Maybe there will be more if I will watch, what they showed at the indie booth at GamesCom … but until now I have not seen anything from the GamesCom.
That’s alle for this time!
Please stay as you are and stay healthy!
Greetings from Germany!
Ralf