Third Party Exclusives Are More “Difficult”

Oh, Giant Kaz Face, how we’ve missed you. But you’re back! Back to talk about PS3 things. In an pr stunt interview with Sony Three Speech blog, Kaz reminds us all how it was his idea to bring the focus back to the PS3 as a game console — and not a super computer or whatever. There’s some good stuff in there, like Giant Kaz Face talking about digital distribution and how exclusives work in this generation. About that, Giant Kaz Face says:

But generally speaking, because of the investments that publishers need to make in this round of hardware, it’s going to be more difficult for publishers to make that decision. Where we come into the picture is to have that dialogue with the third-party publishers, to say: “OK, what can we do together if it’s not exclusive that makes the PS3 version of the game more compelling for the consumers than any other version?” Let’s face it – all the games are coming out on a Blu-ray disk which has 50GB capacity, so let’s put in some making-of content, or maybe additional levels. Also, it really becomes important for the first-party studios to really come up with some envelope-pushing, genre-defining content.

Interesting to see how the playing field has changed this generation.

Kaz Hirai Interview [Three Speech]