Microsoft 360 product manager, Aaron Greenberg, has said that Microsoft and Sony ”were very neck and neck” in Europe but 360 has pulled ahead.
It’s been ”important” to poach traditional PlayStation franchises like GTA, Final Fantasy, Resi Evil, Tekken etc. Holiday sales ”year over year” declare 360 and Wii the victors.
”While we had a pretty large lead – around five million plus in the US over PS3 – we were very neck and neck with Sony heading into this year in Europe,” Greenberg told G4TV.
”Now, we ended the year with more than a million unit lead over PS3 in Europe, conservatively an eight million units global lead.” Price cuts for Xbox 360 have put dents in the PS3 retail performance.
”We never had a Resident Evil game so we wanted to have that. We never had Grand Theft Auto day-and-date. We didn’t have Final Fantasy. So we’ve added all the biggest franchises, such as Tekken,” he continued.
”These are franchises that were frankly, built on the PlayStation platform. Making sure that we have all those games on our system is important.”
The initial reaction that GTA was coming to Xbox 360 as well as PS3 was something of a shock, and seen as a rather big coup for Microsoft as they muscled in on a guaranteed platform shifter. Scoring Resi Evil and Final Fantasy are yet more troubling blows for Sony.
”Both the Wii and the Xbox 360 are really the two big winners. Actually, the only two winners right now if you look at holiday sales year over year.”
Resident Evil 5Source: MCV
