I have never seen or heard anything like this before, has this ever happened in this industry before? Damn imagine having the biggest games publisher say that to you, that they maybe boycotting there machine.

Bobby has cajones, and now finally he gets to roll them around the big table. This is not a message for Sony, though, because if he needs to talk to Sony, he can pick up the phone and have a discussion; this is politics, and I wonder if we'll be seeing poor performance of some of Acti's Sony SKUs this year, which would be the real reason of the critique (both at WSJ and at Times).

It's not the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last.

Square abandonded Nintendo for a generation over the N64 cartridges.
EA didn't publish on the Dreamcast, can't remember why exactly.

Oh dear, PS3 owners better make the most of Modern Warfare 2 because it might be the last in the series they see. Oh well...

3.....2.....1.....

And que the Fanboys!!!

It's the devs and publishers that decide the fate of these consoles and I suspected long ago that something like this would happen to the PS3. It was always on the cards and Sony have only themselves to blame.

The secong time in four weeks he has threatened this Machines are priced to suit Wiis are for everyone 360s are for the hardcore gamer but PS3 consumers buy it for its premium quality I have no consumers who want to down grade from PS3 to 360 More and more people want to upgrade this christmas i think he is moaninig about the cost of development which will drop over a period of time when bluray tech gets cheaper I think to pull out as early as 2010 could be disasterous

Any way this is the man who is making us pay 54 99rrp for modern warfare2 which has no license issues unlike all their other Movie based titles so i think he should be thinking about dropping his RRP first of all instead of moaning about the price of hardware.

this is ridiculous. he's just an attention whore.

COD4 sold 4.34 million on the PS3 only.

he can't spit on that, or he is just retarded.

Games like KZ2 took way more time and money to develop on the PS3, it's not selling as well as COD4 and they are still making money out of it.

I can this bullshit or he is just stupid.

I'd be pretty confident this is just posturing by Kotick - everyone would like to see the PS3 price drop (even Sony) but Sony are intent on making a profit first. I'm sure it'll happen eventually - probably later this year.

As for the precedents: Square moved from Nintendo to the Playstation primarily because of the CD format versus cartridges. The space was necessary to be able to fit all of Final Fantasy VII on and even then it needed 3 CDs.

And I don't think the PS3 is quite comparable to the Dreamcast - if nothing else, Sony is a much more solid company.

No, it seems to me that if Activision did drop the PS3 they'd just be cutting their nose off to spite their face. Outside of the US and UK, the PS3 is generally leading the Xbox 360 and even with those markets factored in, Activision would still be shutting off a massive sector of the market if they dropped PS3 support.

No, he's either after a price cut to boost the installed user base or this is a sly way of trying to get Sony to cut the license fees they charge to Activision just to keep them on board.

as someone already said this prick has increased the trade price on MW2 and im pretty sure its just because he can, predictions for sales on this game is 11 million, and again if this is a true concern he has the contacts to talk to sony directly

Read what Kotick says - its more expensive to develop the same game for PS3 as it is for any other platform.

Doesn't matter that it sold 4 million on PS3. If it's twice as expensive to develop it for the PS3, it would have to sell over 3 times that just to profit from 360 sales (rough math based on over 7 million total sales on the 360).

Sony needs to pull its head out of the sand (or other dark places) and realize its not business-as-usual in the current market...

If your engine technology is made properly, the cost difference between developing for 360 only and for both PS3 and 360 is minimal, so this doesn't make sense to me. They should just use some proper developers instead of trying to cut corners all the time.

When OddWorld switched its development from PS2 to XBox, they said the same thing as Bobby -- that it was too costly to develop for that platform.

Of course OddWorld also had an infusion of cash from Microsoft, to the tune of $12-$15 million, so there's no telling whether the PS2 dev costs were indeed an issue.

Surely it can't be that much more expensive to develop for PS3 as it is for 360 - sure, you need to port your game engine across and that might be tricky, but most of the assets of something like Call of Duty - the map designs, the artwork, the script, the music, the voice acting, the box art, the promotion and advertising and so on and so on are identical and complementary between the versions, so those costs should be split 50/50.

Yes if you make a game for 360 and port it to PS3, it'll seemingly cost you more, but that's the choice you made. If you made it for PS3 first and ported to 360, then that version would "cost" you more. But if you're making a multi-platform title, why split budgets in this way?

I am so tied of people defending the PS3 it is a Flop its not a gaming console its just a cheap DVD player for a Dead Format. Bobby is right if the PS 3 made it cheaper to make/ convert games too then maybe they will get some good games And the people who are freckling out over MW 2 should just go buy a Xbox , PC or something to play the game on because you have plenty of money to do so if you bought a $600 Paper wight in the first place

Wii = Familys XBOX = concole gamers 15+

PC = for everyone PS3 = Trash Bin

Another developer sating the complexity of converting a game to PS3's format

see the article about Vale and L4D 2

your mom is a flop.. have u seen the games coming out on the ps3? to talk like that u ignorant noob.

This website is not for children like you,
take your silly fanboy comments to bed with your milk & cookies.

Anyway, I'll have my say,
What he says is true, development costs and returns on the PS3 are nowhere near as good as the 360 for instance.

For example;
Just look at the sales of infamous compared to what the sales will be of prototype. Ps3 fails to push software like 360 and costs alot more to produce. Why should activision waste their time on a system that was purposefully hard to make games with the lowest install base?

Although saying that, I would seriously doubt Activision would withdraw from the PS3 altogether. Franchises such as Call of Duty & Guitar Hero net them plenty of money of PS platforms.

Neither InFamous or Prototype are exceptional games.

InFamous is PS3 only.

Prototype is mutli-platform and incidentaly, texture speaking, much better on the PS3 :/

I would post the source but URL's aren't allowed in comments.

Go look up what Gabe Newell from Valve said about the PS3. He said Sony should pull it off the market and apologize to every person that bought it primarily because it's so difficult to code for it makes games prohibitively expensive to port to. Or go look up John Carmack's similar comments about the PS3. Plenty of developers have said as much as Activision. They just don't carry the same weight.

Developers have also discounted those comments and stated its EASY to develop for. I'm not a developer, although I can understand WHY it's easier to develop for the XBox given that it shares the same principles of developing for the PC (from what I understand regarding DX versus OpenGL and system architecture). I suspect it's a case that new practices must be learnt regarding developing for the PS3 given it's cell processors etc, hence "difficult".

As an owner of all three major systems PS3, Wii and 360 I feel like I have a little unbiased perspective on the topic of which console is better.

Lets talk about my personal attatch rate.
In the 2 years I have owned a Wii I have picked up about 10 Wii games. Most of them are major titles such as Zelda, Mario Galaxy, Boom Blox ect. Problem is, I just have no interest in playing my Wii for the most part. Zelda was a game I picked up when I bought my Wii and I have yet to play it. My son has, but I havn't.

I have owned my PS3 for about 1 1/2 years. I own about 6 games. Again, major titles or exclusives. MGS4, LBP..and most recently Imfamous. My PS3 has basically become primarily a blue ray player for me. I own way more blue ray movies then I do PS3 games.

I have owned a 360 for a little over 2 years. As I am a pack rat and I never trade my games in I currently own close to 70 360 games. If the game comes out on both consoles I prefer to play it on my 360. I am sure that this has something to do with the fact that I owned the 360 first, but I just prefer the 360 over the PS3.

Bottom line, is that companies are looking at which console is selling the most units. (Attatch Rate) Now I don't have the numbers but looking at my specific attatch rate, I think it illustrates why a company might find the 360 more attractive in that respect.

Now I don't mean to hurt Sony fanboy's feelings, cause they are just like Patriot fans, they have been on top for so long that they can't accept that maybe their console isn't at the top of the market or maybe they aren't the best team in the league.

I'm not a fanboy of microsoft, quite far from it, I just know which console I prefer to play my games on, and I own all three major systems.

Like somebody mentioned earlier, Activision isn't the first one to come out and make comments like these against the PS3 so I am sure there is a little more to it than the Sony fanboys want to admit. Or admit to themselves.

My guess is that he's trying to get a better deal with Sony and pay less royalties. But Sony just refused, so he is making this public statement to get scare them and get what he wants.

I love all you idiots who dump on the PS3 and probably don't even own one. I've had a 360 since launch, 2nd shipment actually, oh wait, I had to replace it because it RROD'd. In fact, of all the people I know who own 360's. There have been 1 Replacement for me, 2 For another friend, 3 replacements for another.... Guess what? Microsoft just includes those in their consoles sold collumn. I guarantee 1/3rd of the Consoles Microsoft has "Sold" are replacements. So their sales numbers are skewed to begin with. I bought a PS3 when they decided to discontinue the 60 Gig with Onboard PS2/PS1 hardware. And it was the best decision I ever made. I went from owning 20+ Xbox games, and like 3 PS3 games to now owning over 20 Games on my PS3 and less than 10 on my 360. So those of you who are trying to bullshit others into beleiving that the PS3 has no good games need to go elsewhere. Microsoft has Gears and Halo to try to survive the next 5 years on since they want to "Match Sony's 10 year plan". Halo is dead, Reach and ODST look boring, they've exhausted the series and now just rehashing crap in an attempt to keep a stranglehold on the market. And they can't, because Sony has a whole stack of exclusive IP's they can still pump out that are better than any Halo or Gears game. The tide is turning slowly in PS3's favor, with the acceptance of Blu Ray into more homes (The one idiot up there who called it a dead medium? Gimme a break) the PS3 is becoming a better and better option for families who want to enjoy Blu Ray and have a gaming system. Your an idiot if you think Microsoft has outright won this round, they have an uphill battle ahead of them for the next 5 years. I don't even care about the Wii, it's a kids system, and if you think anything more of it you're just kidding yourself. This generation is between PS3 and the 360, leave the kiddy toy out of it. 360 has had it's time in the spotlight for the past few years, I used to love my 360 and not even think about buying a PS3, but as the games became lamer and lamer, I had to look to Sony to find amusement. And god am I glad I did. My 360 hasn't even been turned on in the past 4 months (whenever it was the exclusive content for GTA4 came out on Xbox, which sucked so bad I played it for an hour and got bored, totally not worth the wait) soon your 360 will be the expensive paperweight and you'll be wishing you had plunked down on a PS3 earlier. The console war is slowly flipflopping in Sony's favor. Get over it.

Jay are you ill?

(I own multiple 360s...and yes, two of mine died from the RROD...a Wii which I bought at launch and rarely use...and a PS3 which I waited to buy after the first price drop)

With higher development costs, expensive technology, and the ability to update consoles through hard drives/internet, this current generation "battle" is a long distance race, not a sprint.

Microsoft sprinted off the line. Good for them. But they aren't able to keep that pace indefinitely, and now they are slowing down. Their big hits have already come out. They have had the RROD issues. They don't have family friendly titles. Sales have peaked and are dropping.

Wii is running on an even pace. Not increasing or decreasing. Just chugging along. Now that supply is no longer an issue, everyone who wants one has one. Software sales are awful beyond a handful of first party titles. They've lost the hardcore gamers for the most part, in exchange for casual gamers who'll play WiiSports, WiiFit and not much else. And now they are selling a new contraption to make their first contraption more accurate (In other words, they are admitting the Wiimote isn't very accurate as is). They have a limited online presence, and graphically are far behind. No DVD or Blu-ray. A flash memory, not a hard drive. Definitely not as "future proof" as the others. They've done extremely well, but this is the sort of system that people will start out with and then "move up" to the others...or put it in the closet.

Sony stumbled out of the gate. Too focused on the fact that it won the last two races. The hardware was far too expensive, and they were relying upon consumers embracing Blu-ray as they did DVD. But the leap from VHS to DVD was monumental compared to the DVD to Blu-ray difference (which you won't even notice without a high-end TV). They definitely were pushed into the race to keep up with Microsoft when they weren't ready. The PS3 today...with all the updates, the Network/Store, the Dualshock, the AAA software...is almost an entirely different system than when it first launched. So it is picking up speed, and unlike the others, it still has a lot in its tank. When Sony drops the price to $299 as it eventually will, a lot of people who have waited to upgrade will finally make the jump (and I bet they'll even get some Wii and 360 owners).

Will they ever catch up to the competition? That depends where the finish line is. If this is year 3 of a 10 year cycle, they've got a lot of time. And the momentum is finally with them.

That is exactly what I was saying, granted you said it a bit more eliquently. I get a little huffy with the Microsoft "fanboys" who call themselves gamers, yet own only one system. Maybe thats a bit snobbish of me since, well, not everyone can afford to have both, but I only make about 26k a year and I afford my gaming habit.

But yeah, you pretty much state it exactly, they came out of the gate slow, but this year is a prime example of how much they are picking up steam, a ton of great exclusive IP's being released. Blu Ray is becoming huge (I still laugh at the guy who called it a Dead Format, and the one thing I disagree with you about is needing a high end TV to tell the difference, I can tell the difference on my 32inch HD tv, and it's 2 years old)

When the PS3 Slim comes out in August as everything suggests and it finally costs them less to make systems and they can drop the price to 299, this will be a big christmas season for the PS3, no doubt about it.

My 360 has become a sad little paperweight ever since Gears 2 came out, nothing interesting to play on it.

*puts on flame retardant suit*

Wow sure is hot in here, anyway Bobby has been calling for a price drop for the last year at least this is not a new statement. Also he has three main franchises that are the driving power of his company and that is World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and Guitar Hero, one is PC only so he is really only offering two things to Sony to begin with. So I am not sure Sony is overly worried about his threats. Also as someone mentioned above this is just him grandstanding for the public to see, if he wants he could have the CEO of Sony out for a round of golf on just about any day to talk about his concerns. Maybe they have and maybe Sony told him sorry not today so he is going to the press to make it look bigger than it actually happens to be at the moment.

And yes the PS3 cost much more to develop on than the 360 does, *lets flames fly*, now there are several reasons for this but Blu-ray is not a big issue, if anything developers love themselves some Blu-ray. It has massive more storage than the region 9 dual layer DVD's the 360 uses with a slight increase to manufacture. I think it is like $1.20 per disk vs. .28 per disk something along those lines. Here are the real issues as I see them:

1) The libraries on the PS3, are antiquated and honestly horribly written. Most companies literally have to build every function they use when coding for the PS3. This takes a lot more time than having a pre-set library to access. This gives the advantage to the 360 with its .NET compact Framework.

2) No one really knows how to work the cell processor at this point though there are those that are learning fast. The cell is marval of the times but Sony has done little to support developers on how the most important piece of hardware in their system works. There are 9 cores in that bugger folks, 9, and that is a lot of extra software engineering going on to make them work to their best showing.

3) Sony's Iwatwa (sp?) said himself that programming for the PS3 is difficult and meant to be that way. They only wanted the crim de le crim making games for them. Which goes back to the very low developer support.

4) Honestly the cell driven PS3 can do more than the 360 and with being able to do add more shiny things to games it takes more time and money.

Those are just 4 reasons that the PS3 is more expensive to develop games on. Take some time to go read gamedev .net and find out what the people making your games are saying about it. Then speak educated about the topic instead of flaming how you used to own all kinds of 360 games and now you have seen the light of the greatness of PS3 (which was never the topic at hand).

"Activision could the plug on its PlayStation development."

Pull maybe? no, no, Proofread?

I do find it fascinating how people flack on the PS3 all the time. at last count world wide xbox only had 9 million more systems sold than PS3, i know 6 people that have 2 xbox's just in case 1 goes down. so there other box dont even see the light of day.

I belive the current figure from the RROD is around about the 10 million mark although i could be wrong on that. the point is in actual terms of install base, on paper have more. in reality those consoles that are working take there actual install base down.

but thats all bull statistics that no one ever reads. i agree that this is activision just blowing steam to try and get ps3 development cheaper. maybe if they actually put some effort into PS3 development they may see a better return from the console. making all your DLC xbox only or at least xbox first isnt doing your profit margins any good.

the comment someone made about Valve saying that ps3 is too hard for them to develop for. do you forget that the big wigs in valve are microsofts buddys, some former employees. it seems to me that ps3 may cost more to develop for but Valve are the only ones having trouble coding a game for it. maybe the Valve developers are just not that good.

by all means flame me if you will. i have all 3 platforms and they all have there pros and cons. it just seems to me that for some reason allot of people come on here without putting there actual names down claiming to be "Gamers" and have nothing to say other than "ps3 baaad"

weve been running online tests comapring XBL to PSN and so far the games we have tested shows the PS3 running faster online.

*Instert normal fanboy flames about how XBL is better that PSN here*

truth is PS3 has come along way. yeah its expensive to develop for, but the tech is already coming down in price. so when it comes time for the next generation of console, who's will be cheaper? PS3 they as was previously stated has 9 cores in that cell. they dont need a new engine. just a graphix boost and more ram for there next console.

nintendo and microsoft have old tech. that when they need to develop a new console will have to redo there entire architecture. which will bumb up there costs in the long run.

i think PS3 is a milestone in technology, people may look at it as if its too complex, difficult, hard. but with the extra power it can pump wont that mean to advance gaming forward, with new generes,and experiances. the PS3 is the console of choice?

Yet again Mr.Hindhaugh you making yourself look silly, why are you even bothering to compare the PS3 with the Xbox 360, when this article has nothing to do with the other 2 consoles. it's to do with Activision and Sony, not Microsoft and Nintendo.

Why are you trying to prove that the PS3 is the best console when this is completely unrelated to the article.

Back to topic,
I'm sure this is just words for the time being, I really can't see Activision dropping Sony at this present time, i'd be stunned if they did, although developing for Sony maybe quite hefty, surely at this present time it is not worth dropping it, potentially this could lose Activision even more money.

People who dont believe its difficult to program for should try programming for a single core machine.
When they have got that, try a dual core.
360 has 3 cores, and the ps3 has 10, which makes it more difficult, without taking in the other factors like directX.

I have both machines, and I am happy to say that the first PS3 only game that I enjoyed has recently been released in the form of InFamous. It was good. Nothing great but good.
I can't help think that it would have been as good on the 360.

I heard reports of differences in Ghostbusters, too. Which is a game I have recently sat through.

On top of the differences in technologies, and the difficulties in programming, the PS3 doesnt have a good achievvement system!

just read through my post and id just like to clarify. i have all 3 machines. i dont mean to compare. but thats what everyone else is doing and thats what activision did. they compared install base. so that argument is a valid one about the dead xbox's.

i expected to be called a ps3 supporter because of my post. that seems to be all anyone says to people who actually like there ps3 so well done on your origonality there jimothy.

and i stand by my statement YES! the PS3 is harder to code for. HOWEVER when it comes time for developers to want to take the GAMES to the next level PS3 can handle more than 360. that is why i think what activision are saying is bull they would lose money on doing it that way. because it may not make them as much money as 360 will however they still make MONEY, PROFIT, it maybe little return.

BUT any return is worth it. if they get back what they spend and make a profit on top then why this threat? unless they just wanna make more money. either way its just gas to see if sony will bite and lower development. i dont belive even for a second activision will drop the sony contract. they may make more exclusives in favour of the 360 but thats about it.

again im not trying to say that the ps3 is the best console, clearly its not as bad as everyone else makes out. and the fact is. while 2 cores is better than 1, and 3 better than 2. ps3's processor is better than 360's its just a logical conclusion. its just a shame sonys software isn't.

i also just played ghostbusters danny g, thought it was great. still have to wait untill november to see if the rumors on the 360 version are true. however the rumors came from game trailers dot com and they have a habbit of not having the ps3 configured to show the graphics running poorer. they do the same with pc games so its not unique to 1 platform.

avoiding as much as i can any mention of the 360 as it's off topic (please remember that people), activision are trying to bully folks here. they're trying to block the release of Brutal Legend and i'm sure they are trying the same with scratch. they complained recently about the price of ALL consoles, in the same breath that they announce games like the new Tony Hawks (?) and DJ hero that, including periferal, will cost almost as much as an arcade 360 (sorry, didn't mean to mention the Xbox!:). he's being pretty immature bringing this to the press as people have mentioned.

all in all, i'm likely to boycot any Activision releases on principle, and that's a big statement cos i really wanna play MW2. I REEEEEEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYY WANNA PLAY MW2!!!!!

does anyone think MAG could be the reason Acti are acting all heavy handed with Sony? i don't think it'll be as good, but there is an outside chance that the online aspect may outlive MW2 and so becomming the PS3s flagship FPS.

don't bother coming back to me about MW2 kicking MAGs ass, if you read it properly you'll see it's a question and not a statement, but please do tell me what you think about Activision's recent behaviour within the industry.

further to above, i would actually like to hear what folks thing about MAG vs MW2; seems stupid to ask a question and then not want an answer lol. just don't gimme shiz about it:)

So, MW2 v MAG and Activision being C-U-Next-Tuesday's: discuss.
does either Sony or Acti need one more than the other? personally i think they could live without each other, but Sony has more to lose.

Personally I believe MAG could be a good game, it has lots of potential.

"does anyone think MAG could be the reason Acti are acting all heavy handed with Sony"

To be really honest no, Activision would not worry about MAG too much, because at the end of the day MW2 will sell itself. It could be the worst FPS out there and it would still sell the most.

somebody earlier mentioned Valve. difference here is Activision are publishers and Valve are devs. If Infinity Ward started moaning about PS3 then fair enough. but it's just a bit of an eyebrow raiser when one dev moans and another seems to have no trouble releasing what is arguably the best (definately biggest) games ever in COD4 and MW2 on both platforms, and making loads of money.

the protests from Valve and Activision can be argued to have ulterior motives. true or not? who knows? who cares?

this Kotick guy's a douche-bag. not for threatening over a price drop, cos everybody wants to see that, but for posturing up and pressuring people. seriously, everything i've said about Brutal Legend and Scratch is true, and loads of Activision games cost a butt-load of cash when you factor in the new peripheral controllers.
it could be the case that if Sony dropped their prices too soon (for them) they'd go bust.

the real pisser is i'm probably gonna launch whore MW2: CE with whistle and bells.

I think sony will be looking at this very hard, the company is in a financial mess as it is (they were told to restructure their finances as early as January i believe) the possible (probable even?) loss of activision would be a severe blow to a platform that is already in trouble, you only have to look at the new ghostbusters game too, to see that there are some issues, (graphic quality of the title was under 70 percent that of the xbox 360 version, and for no good reason apparently) if activision are threatening to withdraw support for the ps3, because its expensive to develope games for, then thats a weakness that could become terminal, at least for the PS3.

I guess many in here are still in high/grade school so have no understanding of the ROI concept (return on investment). Game development is an investment for these companies just like buying stocks or real estates. The fact is these companies are trying to do what all good companies do and that is to maximize profit and reduce risk. Sony through its arrogance and numerous well documented mistakes has affected the ability for 3rd party companies to maximize their investments in Sony's platform as well as increased the risk of companies losing money (by selling less consoles than their partners were expecting as well as requiring a larger investment up front to release a title). The fact is making a high selling game on any platform is very much an art and a hit or miss proposition. When making these large investment the 3rd party companies very much look at the kind of support and overall environment the platform maker provide. It really comes as no suprise that microsoft provides a more friendly and cheaper development environment as that has been one of their core strengths from the beginning. It seems to me Sonys core strength has moved from making the best cutting edge hardware into locking their customers into overpaying for their media studio. The iPod should have been called the digital walkman and would have been if Sony hadn't sold in and bought itself a studio whose head now controls the whole company. Sony maybe in trouble financially but come on they are just stalling for the next Spiderman movie to save them.

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