Sony: PS3 better serves publishers than Xbox 360

Rob Dyer, SCEA Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations, has told IndustryGamers that PlayStation 3 offers publishers better service than Xbox 360 does.

“We do better for our publishing community than 360 does,” Dyer stated. “As our installed base starts catching up and gaining on 360, you’re going to see the publisher side much quicker get to par than even if we had the same number of [360 hardware] units. 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.”

Dyer points out some of Sony’s exclusive marketing campaigns, such as Batman: Arkahm Asylum and Madden.

“I point to a couple big examples. One is Batman: Arkham Asylum, with what the guys at Eidos and Rocksteady did, and I point to Madden and the unique campaign EA put behind it with us, showing promotions that were very PS3 focused. And that really drove sales.”

Dyer goes on to explain that exclusives don’t come as often as they did during the PS2 era.

“Look, we’re not going to get the exclusive games. The Mass Effects, Gears of Wars and Left 4 Deads aren’t going to happen nearly as often. But we have our own first-party development and exclusives like Final Fantasy XIV and Agent. Exclusives just aren’t as commonplace as they were during the PS2 days.”

When pressed further on exclusives, Dyer was asked if Sony felt at a disadvantage since Microsoft has the cash to secure exclusives.

“Sony counters that with its own first-party,” he stated simply, before ripping into Microsoft Game Studios. “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. 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 concluded: “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.”

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