FF13 exclusivity in discussion, says Sony France

[Thorlief]

uh oh, looks like the bad news are not over yet...

"Final Fantasy XIII exclusivity in discussion, says Sony France
Posted Mar 22nd 2007 11:28AM by James Ransom-Wiley
Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, RPGs

SCEE France president Georges Fornay didn't choose his words carefully. Just days after Devil May Cry and Ace Combat, two long-time Sony exclusives, were announced for Xbox 360, on the eve of PlayStation 3's "official" European launch, Fornay told French newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, "Enfin, pour Final Fantasy XIII, je peux vous dire que l'exclusivité est en discussion." That's something like: As far as Final Fantasy XIII goes, I can tell you that the exclusivity is in discussion. Well Georges, it looks like you'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

But the repercussions of Fornay's vague remark go beyond losing pillow-talk privileges with Mr. Kutaragi. His words have ignited a polarized frenzy of paranoia and glee -- despite the obvious ambiguity of "l'exclusivité est en discussion." What does Fornay mean?"


http://www.joystiq.com/

[Jmacq1]

Pretty much exactly what he said, I'd imagine.

In other words, FF XIII isn't "locked in" as an exclusive yet, but Sony's courting them to try to get it that way. The real question is whether or not Sony will be able to offer Square/Enix enough money to offset the smaller installed fanbase (though undoubtedly there are some, myself included, who would consider buying/have already decided to buy a PS3 for the Final Fantasy series if it remains exclusive to Sony) and allow Square to actually make a profit on the game?

It seems the rumors are already flying fast and furious as to possible multi-platform play for FF XIII. I wonder how soon we'll get confirmation either way?

[Thorlief]

I'll giv it a couple of days max for some Sony PR to strongly deny the rumors. But that wouldnt really coun since we know how things go..just look at the RE4 exclusive

if Sony cuts the price for the PS3 I wonder how much money they will lose

[Phrozen]

If you were a publisher with a hot franchise you would be an idiot to go exclusive. You lose out on a huge market for your game.

[Jmacq1]

Yeah, it wasn't so bad with PS2 which was massively dominant in its' generation of consoles. But in the current situation....you're really hampering your potential profits if you go exclusive with any of the systems. Though 360 is still the safest "bet" for now, with Wii closing the gap.

And I'm quite certain it'll be many many years before we potentially see Mario or Zelda (or even Starfox or Metroid) on non-Nintendo systems. In other words, Nintendo would have to go the way of Sega first....

[Thorlief]

Nintendo are damned proud about their franchises, and I personally dont see it as a bad thing since they are able to develop some helluva games (they're the best imho, but thats another story)

if they started crapping on Mario and Zelda (but it will never happen) then I'd think "they might sell em"

[titanfan]

I know that I will go where FF13 goes. If FF13 goes exclusive, then that will be enough to get me to finally buy a PS3.

[Serik]

If you were a publisher with a hot franchise you would be an idiot to go exclusive. You lose out on a huge market for your game.

Yeah, I don't understand why any major franchise would want to limit itself to one system. More copies sold = more profits. Can one of you console aficionados explain the benefits of exclusivity?

I can understand why Nintendo limits their IPs to their systems, but not a third-party dev like Square, etc.

[Lester C.]

I feel bad for Sony. They have developed the most powerful gaming console of all time and no one wants to buy it despite the fact that Sony takes a massive loss with each console sold.

[Thorlief]

Yeah, I don't understand why any major franchise would want to limit itself to one system. More copies sold = more profits. Can one of you console aficionados explain the benefits of exclusivity?

I can understand why Nintendo limits their IPs to their systems, but not a third-party dev like Square, etc.

someone already answered...it was the PS2' monstruous installed base that guaranteed exclusives to sell a bazillion
hence they didnt need to go multi

[Jmacq1]

I feel bad for Sony. They have developed the most powerful gaming console of all time and no one wants to buy it despite the fact that Sony takes a massive loss with each console sold.

Not enough of a loss. It's not our fault Sony was arrogant enough to believe that its' corporate name and a piece of technology a lot of people don't have any use for and wasn't guaranteed to not become all but obsolete in a few years would make up for the seemingly-exorbitant price of the system.

If Sony had left the Blu-Ray out and kept the price equal or less than 360, they'd be selling like hotcakes. I understand Sony's reasoning for including the Blu-Ray, but so far it appears their reasoning failed as far as a gaming console goals. The weird part is that it's still technically more successful as a Blu-Ray DVD player than as a gaming console. (In other words, even with the weakest sales of the game consoles of this generation so far, it's still sold better than HD-DVD players). So maybe in the long term Sony's strategy will work, and they'll win the "format war" in stealth mode. Even if they sacrifice gaming console dominance to do it, I think there's probably more money in having a monopoly on the next-generation DVD than there is by winning the "console wars" by a smaller margin.

[Xero Kaiser]

Seems like it'd be a monopoly on a market nobody cares about. Kinda like UMDs.

[Jmacq1]

Difference being that eventually either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will be the "next generation" of video technology (unless something else comes out before it acquires dominance.

The only reason less people care about it right now is because not everyone has the HDTVs necessary to get anything out of them. But as the HDTV prices drop, the "installed user base" will go up, and demand along with it.

You didn't see everyone and their mother buying DVD players the first year they were available either. It'll still be a couple more before Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD are truly "mainstream." But once they are, and once one of those formats "wins" and the other goes the way of Betamax, the winning company (Sony or Toshiba) stands to make billions of dollars.

[Agent Helix]

The only problem with that is that the studios, big ones like Warner Bros., are going to start releasing hybrid discs, and I believe hybrid players are already hitting the market. The format change was completely forced for this iteration, and I don't think there's going to be a clear cut "winner" this time around.

[Xero Kaiser]

Difference being that eventually either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will be the "next generation" of video technology (unless something else comes out before it acquires dominance

Why? It isn't the same jump VHS -> DVD was. Same deal with 1080p. To even see the difference you need a massive HDTV anyway.

Still, even if Blu-Ray does become popular in 5 years, it's obviously not doing Sony any favors now.

[BlairH]

They have developed the most powerful gaming console of all time.

Actually, that's not quite true:

-PS3 has a higher CPU throughput when used effectively, with its single PowerPC core and 8 SPE's in the Cell processor. The SPE's are the digital signal processing cores for number crunching - although in the PS3 only 7 are used, 1 is left redundant. And an SPE is always used for the core system code and another has to be relinquished when required by the system.

-Despite the PS3 having higher CPU computational power, with only one PowerPC core it takes good use of the SPE's to ensure even spread throughout them to get them all working effectively (constantly improving to better dev tools though to split number crunching tasks between them all evenly) but at the moment it's easier for developers to fully utilise the three full PowerPC cores in the 360 processor.

-XBOX360 has approximately 20% more rendering capability with it's ATI Xenos Graphics, compared to the PS3's nVidia RSX. It's about 74 gigapixels for the PS3 compared to 94 gigapixels for the 360. The Xenos has 48 pipelines, which can be configured in groups of 16 as either pixel or shader - compared to the RSX's 24 pixel pipelines and 8 shader pipelines. So the complexity of the graphics rendered can be higher on the 360. (One example of a cross-platform game is the new Ridge Racer - which has more scenary objects detail on the 360 compared to the PS3)

-XBOX360 GFX can access all the 512MB of memory, PS3's GFX can only access 256MB of the total 512MB. For that reason more memory can be devoted to textures, and quite a few games show the 360 to have much sharper visuals than the PS3 equivalent.

Really, it's hard to say which system will be better - the PS3 has more CPU power, the 360 has better GFX rendering and internal archetecture.

Conclusion: It's all about the games!

[Black Atom]

Why? It isn't the same jump VHS -> DVD was. Same deal with 1080p. To even see the difference you need a massive HDTV anyway.

Still, even if Blu-Ray does become popular in 5 years, it's obviously not doing Sony any favors now.

What he said. HD will be a slooooooow phase in, unlike DVD was. By the time it really catches on, other Blu-Ray players will be as cheap, if not cheaper, than the PS3.

[Alex]

Devil May Cry 4 is coming to 360?
Cool...i kinda got my fingers crossed for FF coming to 360, haven't played the new one since my ps2 broke a bit before it came out.

[BlairH]

Devil May Cry 4 is coming to 360?
Cool...i kinda got my fingers crossed for FF coming to 360, haven't played the new one since my ps2 broke a bit before it came out.

I've never really played DMC. It's one of those franchises that just sort of passed me by.

[Thorlief]

me neither, but it should be decent. If I were to listen to my friends it 'd be the best shiz ever, but they're the typical sony fanboys who think every banal game for their console is ZOMFG

[Xero Kaiser]

For what it's worth, I LOL at Sony on a regular basis and I still kneel before DMC.

[Lester C.]

If you are going to buy a PS 3 you might want to do it soon. It turns out that it isn't just the European PS3 models that will achieve backward compatibility through emulation. Soon all PS3 are going to require software emulation and if you have a ton of niche titles like me this means you are going to be screwed if you want to play your ps1 and ps2 games on ps3.

[Xero Kaiser]

Is there anyone out there who's seriously going to run out and drop $600 so they can play PS1 games?