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Sony Europe's Exclusive Game Deals Raise Ire

Posted by simoniker on from the spoiling-everyone-else's-fun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Eurogamer has an editorial up about Sony Europe's recent practice of paying for PS2-exclusive titles from Namco, Ubisoft, Rockstar and others for European release. The author doesn't seem to mind short-term platform exclusives too much, as long as there's a PC version around at the same time, but complains loudly about Kill.Switch and I-Ninja, which were both released on other formats in the USA but are permanently exclusive to the PS2 in Europe." What do you think of hardware manufacturers locking in games to certain platforms, whether a territorial decision or a universal one?

1 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. No problemo by wan-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What do you think of hardware manufacturers locking in games to certain platforms, whether a territorial decision or a universal one?

    This is where the companies actually make money - through software and licensing fees for the platform. They always lose money on hardware and securing exclusive titles is one of the only ways to make money. Exclusive content is one method that they can try to guarantee licensing revenue for a that platform (since the amount is actually tied into the number of games they sell).

    Now, some people might not like this, but I will try to draw an analogy here. Does your copy of iMovie run on Windows XP? iMovie works the same for Apple the way that exclusive content works for game console manufacturers. However, in Apple's case, it's the reverse: they make money on the hardware and not so much the OS.