05.25.10
Microsoft is Paying to Exclude Rivals
Xbox lock-in
Summary: Microsoft is excluding rivals by paying companies (common practice that Microsoft brought to PCs too)
• Microsoft Will Have To “Pay More” To Keep Gears Of War Exclusive Says Pachter
• Grand Theft Auto 5′ Predicted For E3 By Analyst
“Microsoft paid a lot of money for exclusivity on the downloadable content for GTA IV, which unfortunately did little to move consoles for Microsoft. Back in 2004, the Grand Theft Auto was a huge brand, but only relative to the other brands that existed at the time,” Divinch said. “While the GTA brand is certainly bigger now than it was five years ago, others have emerged to reach similar levels of success, such as Call of Duty or Guitar Hero. In other words, if Sony gets an exclusive deal on ‘GTA5,’ it would do little to disrupt Microsoft’s ability to move hardware, and vice versa.”
• E3 2010: Grand Theft Auto V, No Exclusive DLC?
“Microsoft paid a lot of money for exclusivity on the downloadable content for GTA IV, which unfortunately did little to move consoles for Microsoft,” he said. And, “if Sony gets an exclusive deal on GTA V, it would do little to disrupt Microsoft’s ability to move hardware.”
“Having all the government resources against a company like this is mindblowing.”
Will said,
May 25, 2010 at 8:59 am
And let’s not forget how the GTA 4 DLC ended. The “Xbox exclusive” DLC wound up being released for the PS3 a few years later. The same story has happened with many “Xbox exclusive” games, sometimes with the later PS3 release receiving additional content:
Bioshock
Fallout 3 DLC
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Star Ocean 4
Tales of Vesperia (in Japan, at least)
Eternal Sonata
Braid
just to name a few.
These days, the term “Xbox exclusive” means “timed exclusive” more often than not. I won’t make a prediction here, but I won’t be surprised at all if we see the Mass Effect trilogy come to the PS3 eventually.
Jose_X Reply:
May 25th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
I’m not familiar with the game dev scene, but I always felt the PS3 came with more potential and companies would need more time to exploit it (besides that the XBox came out first and perhaps the API would be more familiar). It would be easy money for companies to focus initially on the XBox. .. Since I don’t follow this stuff much at all, I really don’t know.