Frankly, as an owner of a 360, I’m happy to know that MS is giving their customers more options than just what their first party studios can churn out. I mean, don’t you want the company you’re supporting by buying a PS3 putting forth some effort to give you the games you want to play, or at least give you more options? Unless Sony becomes like EA and just flat out takes over the developers of good games, there is only so much that first party developers can do before quality begins to suffer.

I guess it just bottles my mind how Microsoft is somehow pictured as this evil mega-corporation yet Sony is honorable and justified in all it’s dealings. I don’t see how they can have this image when it’s the same company that has touted backwards compatibility at the system’s launch then quick nixed it when sales figures weren’t in their favor. The same company that said that the tilt axis function was not possible with the rumble feature of controllers because of sensitivity, and yet now we have that. The same company that has been caught on more than one occasion using another game as images for their own game. The same company that stated people would buy their system no matter what because it was a muthafuckin PLAYSTION, bitch! The list goes on and on of things that they’ve said or did that was just a slap in the face of gamers.

I’m not saying Microsoft are the good guys, I’m just saying they hide it better. Neither company gives too shits about their customers outside of their statistical value in outmaneuvering their competition or increasing the value of their stock. Frankly, the fact that MS is willing to throw down cold hard cash while Sony is not just says one more thing about what they’re willing, or not willing, to do to keep people buying their shit… and to get people to buy their shit they have to make customers happy.

I mean, really, Sony doesn’t have fifty million to spend to get some exclusive DLC? They have it, they’re just not willing to spend it. Hell, maybe they are spending it, but on shit games no one cares about, like Haze. Either way, it seems to me that MS is just better at running a business than Sony, and I don’t see how you can fault Microsoft for that.

Focusing on the market cap to back up your “Microsoft has deep pockets and Sony doesn’t” idea (and ignoring the rest of the numbers) just leads me to believe you don’t understand what market cap is. The numbers are really only related to the stock market value, which is not necessarily indicative of the amount of money the company itself is capable of throwing around. If Ripten gets valued at $10 million, that doesn’t mean that we all of a sudden have millions of dollars to go buy shit.

Furthermore, Sony’s game division has operated at a loss, but THEY aren’t just throwing in the towel. So, based on your logic, that means money is of little concern to Sony as well.

Moreover, that the game’s division worked on an overall loss during the whole Xbox enterprise, and the company were able to continue their gaming venture, demonstrates that money is of little concern to them.

Krisp: We already have evidence of a GTA pay-out around $50million, and Sony can’t compete with that when all their money is invested in 1st party and 2nd party games. There’s more than a monetary offer of course, but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t such an offer.

Microsoft has made it very clear that they have a list of games they want to have, and they will do anything they can to tick them off.

Besides that, it’s not like Final Fantasy has always been a Sony exclusive title. There are plenty of FF games on Nintendo systems all over the place, and if anyone out there happens to be over fifteen years old, you may recall that Final Fantasy started on Nintendo’s systems, and was pretty much a Nintendo exclusive for about ten years. Square “jumped ship” when the N64 went cartridge based and the PSOne jumped to CDs. To me, Square is perfectly happy putting their games on whatever system they feel can do the game justice technically and financially. This time it happens to be Microsoft AND Sony’s systems are up to the requirements a Final Fantasy game… requires. Hell, Final Fantasy XI is on pretty much every system out there already and there are FF games on every single hand-held ever conceived, so it’s not like a multiplatform Final Fantasy should really shock anyone.

Not that I care, really, Final Fantasy has been getting stupider and stupider ever since it went to 3D with Final Fantasy 7. I miss the good ol’ days when a good game could come from some greasy nerd in his basement with nothing but a good idea and too much free time. Now it takes millions of dollars and huge teams of programmers and artists (of whom some may not even be nerds… the HORROR!) to make a piece of crap movie tie in, let alone a triple-a blockbuster and I think that dilutes the creative process a little, but I digress.