John Koller, SCEA hardware marketing chief, has accused rival Microsoft of throwing money at game makers because they’re not confident on first-party projects.
The Sony exec says they don’t ”feel the need” to post cheques with every publisher, they ”feel very strongly” about their first-party games. Koller nods toward the Microsoft-Rockstar deal.
”Microsoft has had a much more lenient policy to writing cheques than we do,” said Koller, speaking with VG247. ”We don’t feel the need to write cheques necessarily with every publisher, like they did with the Lost and Damned and some other titles, because we feel very strongly in our first-party line-up.”
It’s been rumoured that Microsoft peeled off some bills, around $50 million, and flew them Rockstar’s way to secure two exclusive DLC episodes for Grand Theft Auto IV - neither Microsoft nor Rockstar have ever confirmed such a figure.
”I think it’s safe to say that we’d put our first-party line-up against anyone’s, and Microsoft and other manufacturers probably lead a little bit when they’re writing cheques about how they feel about their own internal line-up,” continued the SCEA man.
No statistics have ever been released for The Lost and Damned’s performance over Xbox Live, but it’s believed it has sold around 1 million according to a ”good source” reports Variety.
The second episodic content for Grand Theft Auto IV is due sometime before October this year.
