Sony: Exclusive deals are fading out

With Sony adamant that PS3 is closing the gap on Xbox 360, SCEA has said that third party platform exclusives are going to become increasingly uncommon – something that the platform holder believes will work in its favour.

“We’re not going to get the exclusive games – the Mass Effects, Gears of Wars and Left 4 Deads aren’t going to happen nearly as often,” senior VP of publisher relations Rob Dyer told IndustryGamers.

“Exclusives just aren’t as commonplace as they were during the PS2 days.

Sony has tried to pull in more exclusives in the past. A year ago the firm lifted the lid on its Pub Fund – a new scheme that sees the platform holder contribute to a game’s development costs in exchange for guaranteed PSN exclusivity.

“What is going to be the driving force is either exclusive ad campaigns, like the Madden campaign, or exclusive content like we had with Batman. The PS3 version outsold the 360 version, and what we’ve said to developers is: ‘if you take advantage of what the PS3 can deliver – more content on the Blu-ray disc, better graphics, being able to get more of what the player wants onto the disc – you’re going to see those sales translate’.

“So what we’ve been doing is going to publishers and using that as our basic story, and going after exclusive content. You’re going to see a lot of that, and for example, you’re seeing it now with Dante’s Inferno. EA had the collector’s edition only on PS3. They filled up that Blu-ray disc and were able to do a lot more that they couldn’t with 360.

"The consumer is starting to understand that – there’s a lot of cross-ownership between PS3 and 360, and so we’re now trying to differentiate that and give that consumer a reason to buy the PS3 version instead of the 360 version.”