E3 2008: Sony Says 'Harder To Have Third-Party Exclusives'
During a roundtable discussion at E3 earlier, Sony's Jack Tretton pinned his disappointment at losing exclusive publishing rights to Final Fantasy 13 on Microsoft spending money to "curry favor" with third parties. Bold, intriguing, and of course completely unverifiable claims, but leave them aside for a second, because I think they're only half as interesting as the ones he went on to wrap with:
I think software companies look and say 'there's no check big enough for us to do exclusive development'... I think it's going to be harder and harder to have third-party exclusives as we move forward.
Harder to have third-party exclusives...hmm. Start of a trend? Or recognition of an existing one?
News flash, we're in the throes of a social networking transition. Anyone can see that. A lot of us are sick of hearing about it, and some of us are completely overwhelmed by it, but it's happening, and I don't think we'll be backpedaling anytime soon. Call it whatever you like, e.g. the millennial-mobile-instant-social-cachet-etcetera era, but it's accumulating speed at a kind of compound interest, be it MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, or what I'll call "venture social capital," e.g. stuff like Nintendo's Mii Network, Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony's PlayStation Home, or PC games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Will Wright's upcoming Sims-killer, Spore.
What does that have to do with third parties going multiplatform?
Simple: In the future Jack Tretton's hinting at, hardware vendors like Microsoft and Sony won't sell games, so much as places to play them.
Square Enix's ballyhooed Final Fantasy 13 is, for the first time in the company's history, going to be available at launch on two mainstream competing consoles simultaneously. One thing's certain: The experience of playing either version will nonetheless remain notably different...but not for the reasons you're probably thinking.
Forget the vile, adolescent fanboy squabbling about niggling visual or performance differences. What'll distinguish one version of a multiplatform game like FF13 and others going forward is going to be their "meta" experiences. Voice chat, party play, friends that can follow you in or out of the game, avatars, and whatever other little extracurricular tie-ins to each company's proprietary environment a developer cares to cater to. We saw this in its infancy with Rockstar's "exclusive downloadable content" for the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. It requires virtually no imagination to see where that goes when you start taking all the new "meta" services Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft and more are developing into account.
Stop thinking about future consoles wars as Halo 3 versus Metal Gear Solid 4 or frame rate versus visual quality, in other words, and start thinking in terms of service providers versus service providers. What does my play-space look like? What can I do with it? Where can I go today? How many ways can I extend the developer intended experience out into all these other meta layers? Can I take it with me on the go? And does it flow seamlessly from one aspect of my life to another?
So I think Tretton's exactly right about third-party exclusives going bye-bye, or at least dwindling in the wake of a divided market. I also think he deserves a clap on the back for having the courage or clarity or even indignation to say so.
(Turning briefly back to Tretton's comments on Microsoft "currying favor" to secure Final Fantasy 13...because Sony didn't do any of that when it came to securing Blu-ray as the de facto HD optical media format, right?)
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Well, I for one play "games" on my consoles. I don't care one lick whether of not my "friends" are online or whether I can take "it" with me on the go. What does my "play-space" look like!?! Are you kidding me? I want a console that plays the best games with the best gameplay and best graphics and technology! I don't want to be forced to play online with a bunch of Wii-brats and Mii-cheaters! "I am pwning U" Give me a break! If this is the future of gaming then I guess I'm all done gaming. Single player campaign mode is what gaming is about for me. I game to get away from people not to be forced to play with them. Oh, well it's a sad day for gaming indeed. At least I have a large backlog of games I haven't played yet. They should keep me busy for a while.