As if the console wars weren’t already piping hot enough, Sony stirred it up a bit today saying the PS3 is better for publishers than the Xbox 360.
Rob Dyer, SCEA senior VP of publisher relations said the recent PS3 price drop has had a “huge impact” on Sony’s sales and that the company is now breathing down Microsoft’s neck.
“They had a year’s head start against us, so we’ve been playing catch-up ball,” he told Industry Gamers. “Before the price cut, they had a two-to-one advantage; if you were a third-party publisher looking at the index, you should have been selling twice the number of units on the 360 as you would on the PS3.
“What we’ve been finding is that outside of the shooter category we literally over-index every single category – sports, fighting, action/adventure, music, etc. We do better for our publishing community than 360 does.”
“So for instance, with a title like Madden, I think the index was 1.4 to 1.0, which meant we way oversold on PS3 versus 360, given the installed base. That’s only going to get better and better as the installed base continues to grow,” explained Dyer.
He says Sony will use this advantage to counter the exclusivity deals Microsoft often has with developers and that Microsoft has fewer significant in-house studios than Sony does.
“They have very few first-party studios at Microsoft. Bungie’s next Halo is the last one, Rare rarely puts out anything, you’ve got Peter Molyneux with his Fable stuff… but they don’t have first-party development studios inside at Redmond or anywhere for that matter,” said Dyer.
“We do. So rather than putting their money behind that, they’ve been going to Epic or Valve or BioWare to do what they did with Mass Effect, and that’s where they throw their dollars.”
Dyer ended on a strong note, proclaiming the Sony brand as a global brand that will pass Microsoft soon enough.
“Candidly, we’re not going to compete with Microsoft on that front, but what we have is a global business here. Our global business is bigger than 360’s and will continue to get bigger than 360, and people are seeing that. We passed them in Europe and they don’t even exist in Japan, and we’re going to catch them and pass them here in the U.S. as well.”
I understand why statements like this are made, and actually, I believe Sony, but I urge fans of one system or another to not blow this out of perspective.
Source: CVG