14 DAY TRIAL // The console war between the top three manufacturers, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, has given birth to a lot of controversy and acid comments about each of the companies from its rivals. From bragging about features to game lineups and exclusivities, heavy words have spanned them all.
Now, after quite some time in which big statements haven't been made, Sony's John Koller has talked to VG247 about exclusivities and how his company's Arch rival, Microsoft, is “writing checks” left and right and buying third-party DLC because it isn't comfortable with its own lineup of titles.
“Microsoft has had a much more lenient policy to writing checks than we do,” Koller explains. “We don’t feel the need to write checks necessarily with every publisher, like they did with the Lost and Damned and some other titles, because we feel very strongly in our first-party line-up. I think it’s safe to say that we’d put our first-party line-up against anyone’s, and Microsoft and other manufacturers probably lead a little bit when they’re writing checks about how they feel about their own internal line-up.”
Even though Koller might have a point, let's not forget that the first DLC episode for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned, has supposedly set new records for a piece of DLC on Xbox Live, according to Microsoft and Rockstar. So, it seems that writing checks, while a frowned-upon practice, if done right, can yield some very good results.
Let's hope that Sony will at least try to put up a fight and stop letting Microsoft get all the important pieces of DLC, as in the case of GTA IV and Fallout 3, for a lot of people have gravely complained that these versions of the game weren't supported at all on the PS3.