Investing in Games Is More Important Than Buying Exclusivities, Says Sony

The PlayStation 3 is a console that hasn't enjoyed such a great amount of popularity since it was launched some time ago. Many argued that among the reasons for failing to sell very well was the lack of high-end third party exclusivities. Sure, games like Resistance or Uncharted, which were developed by an independent game and then published by Sony, have appeared only on the PS3, but other traditional franchises, like Grand Theft Auto or Tekken, have or will also appear on the Xbox 360.

Such a thing isn't important to Sony, as revealed by David Reeves, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, who talked with MCV about the importance of second-party games rather than exclusivities to a console maker. He went on to say that his company would rather invest money in creating high-quality content by working with other studios than just going to a developer and publisher and buying their exclusivity, subtly hinting at what Microsoft is doing with a lot of important developers.

“What we’re doing now is focusing a lot on our own IP,” said Reeves. “We’ve found companies like Media Molecule, Insomniac and Naughty Dog who have provided key games for us. I’m not saying we’re completely abandoning exclusives, but we don’t have the $50m dollars to spend on securing exclusive content – and we’d much rather put that money not into securing an exclusive but developing another innovative game like LittleBigPlanet.”

While it does sound like a pretty good plan, this resulted in a lot of big selling games, like Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360, which guaranteed Microsoft's console a lot of popularity, as it was lower priced than the PS3 and had a higher presence in households across North America and a few other territories.

Hopefully this strategy won't completely backfire on the Japanese company and that future second-party games that will appear later this year, like Killzone 2 or Heavy Rain, will move more PlayStation 3 consoles.