Jack tretton 'Disappointed' In Multiplatform FFXIII
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Speaking at a roundtable Q&A attended by Gamasutra, Sony's Jack Tretton has been discussing Final Fantasy XIII's move from a PlayStation 3 exclusive to a multiplatform title, suggesting Microsoft has spent most of their money "trying to curry favor with third parties".
When asked whether he was disappointed about the surprise announcement that the game would also debut on Xbox 360 in the West, Tretton noted: "I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term."
Tretton then launched into invective discussing Sony's decision to concentrate heavily on internal development, noting that it constituted "over half of our employee base all over the world", and adding that "...we've built up our base and that's where we've chosen to spend our dollars."
However, he warned: "I think Microsoft has spent the majority of their money on trying to curry favor with third parties" - implying that Final Fantasy XIII moving to multiplatform was more of a Microsoft-subsidized decision than one guided purely by sales reasons.
Tretton concluded: "I think software companies look and say 'there's no check big enough for us to do exclusive development' ...I think it's going to be harder and harder to have third-party exclusives as we move forward."
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Tretton On Microsoft
Asked if he was aware of Microsoft's message and what Sony's reaction might be, Tretton joked, "Aware to the point that I feel like I knew everything before they even got up there... We certainly knew all of the fundamental messages."
"I think that every company thinks that they invented the wheel" he said, "but I think that my first reaction is that we must be doing a lot of things right because I see a lot of things that remind me of what we're doing."
Asked if he was disappointed to see Final Fantasy officially make its move to Microsoft's console, he added, "I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term. Surprised or consider it to be something that's avoidable? Probably not so much."
"One thing that's crystal clear that I hope you understand," he continued, "from the beginning when we got into the business, people said, '[Sony has] no software development heritage' and we knew that. We invested heavily in internal development and as far back as '95 we reached out and did some licensed publishing."
"In my opinion," said Tretton, "the decision that we made is that we were going to invest in internal development, the majority of our resources and over half of our employee base all over the world. We've built up our base and that's where we've chosen to spend our dollars."
"I think Microsoft has spent the majority of their money on trying to curry favor with third parties," he said. "I think software companies look and say, 'There's no check big enough for us to do exclusive development.' I think it's going to be harder and harder to have third-party exclusives as we move forward," instead offering that, "Exclusives to me mean Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, and MotorStorm."