Sony: In-house Studios Will Produce Most PS3 Exclusives

by Kev Lochun on July 8, 2008 at 2:52 pm

President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has confirmed Sony will be investing in their first party development to ensure a steady flow of exclusive titles as third party devs increasingly opt to go multiplatform.

Speaking to Three Speech, Yoshida explained that they could no longer rely on third party loyalty in light of soaring development costs.

“Because, in this generation, it costs much more to develop one product, it’s just natural for third-party publishers trying to recoup the investment from multiple platforms. I think that’s pure economic pressure, pushing most of the third parties to move from some exclusive titles to more multi-platform titles,” said Yoshida.

He went on to add…

“Because we know that is the trend, we, as a company, can invest in our first-party studios; in terms of exclusive titles, our role becomes more important.”

Nonetheless he was pretty optimistic about how multiplatform titles would perform, adding that he expected some to “have something extra” because of the system’s abilities and the Blu-Ray format.

Still it seems like a good time to be investing. Yoshida anticipates that the second and third year of PS3 will be the ones where we see a shift in focus from next-gen graphics to next-gen gameplay – and no-one’s better placed to do that than first party devs right?

“This is a time when we feel more comfortable with the technology, so we can focus more on the actual game development. I think that’s the same for the major developers and third parties. So, many games have focused on the graphics side, and it’s often the case when a new platform comes out that the gameplay kind of goes back. But now, in the second and third years of the platform, we will start to see something really unique and interesting.”

Keep your eyes peeled for Little Big Planet then –- it’s got Yoshida practically wetting himself in excitement.

Source: Three Speech

Share This: