MS to buy Sony first party development!

[Maximus]

Every once in a while, you bear witness to someone pulling off a phenomenal feat of strategy and skill. Even more rare, is when a feat like that has anything to do with the video game industry. Well folks, it’s happened again, and I’m not referring to Microsoft “neutralizing” Sony’s exclusivity of Final Fantasy XIII. No, this bit of financial and strategic genius will make that seem like something you wouldn’t even bother talking about.

Have you ever wondered exactly what kind of pull Bungie had over Microsoft when they ripped themselves from the Borg Collective and because independent again? Many say that a large number of the key people threatened to walk out if they weren’t given a plan to their independence. What this illustrated to many was that owning a company, owning rights to key IPs, and even having a roadmap laid out for future success is useless if you don’t have the people there to execute on it. A company is only as good as its employees. A video game is only as good as its developers. These facts are not lost on Microsoft, arguably the biggest single software development company in the world… and even more arguably, the most financially backed software development company in the world.

News from both the United States and Europe this morning seem to indicate the unthinkable has happened. In a massive sweeping move of virtually unfathomable scale, it would appear that Microsoft has financially lured virtually ALL of Sony’s in-house first party developers away from their parent company. How can this happen you might ask? Money. Sources within the FTC have indicated ENORMOUS shifts of Microsoft funds (to the tune of over $16B) to not only secure the services of programmers, artists, and management within Sony’s various development studios, but many are being paid to actively NOT work in the field at all!

We were able to speak to some developers in the US under condition of anonymity. John (his real name isn’t John) was working for Sony Santa Monica for a modest salary of $62k per year. He was approached by an individual that had him sign a contract saying he would not work in any capacity related to video game production for the next three years and in return, he would be paid $100k the first year, $120k the second year, and $150k the third year. The contract allows him to seek employment in any field that isn’t remotely related to any media or video game development outside of Microsoft Games Studios. John said “That’s $370 thousand dollars for doing nothing! That’s about SIX YEARS worth of work at my current salary… of COURSE I’m going to take it. I plan on touring Europe for 4 months with my wife!”

Similar stories are being reported out of Europe where the damage seems to be far worse for the Sony development scene. In addition to luring away virtually all Sony first party production personnel, we’re getting reports that third parties are being paid revenues amounting to 2.5x the normal rate to shift all of their multiplatform titles to be 360 exclusives, even when beta code for the Playstation 3 version is in testers’ hands.

This move would appear to be more than the proverbial 1-2 punch for Sony, closer to a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 punch, as in out for the count! We actually heard that Microsoft tried to make a play at buying 51% of Sony’s stock but was shutdown (presumably because the time it took them to convert Microsoft Points to Yen allowed Sony to rally the troops and stop the sale of the last crucial few percent of stock.) As it is, apparently Microsoft owns 33% of Sony and virtually all their European and US development staff. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

[Show spoiler]lulz!!!!! fiction Friday rules!!!!