The Final Fantasy XIII XB360 announcement discussion* (spawned)

[Archgamer]

The FFXIII news is a bombshell that Sony will never recover from. I always had predictions of MGS4 coming to the 360 at some point, but never would I believe that Sony would allow a game like FF to go multiplatform. It was their most important 3rd party title. There is nothing Sony can do now that's going to change their fortunes at all.

The day they lose FF is the day they lost the console war. This was always what I believe. Good job by MS. You secured your position in the market.

 

[deepbrown]

You don't think it could just be the reality of the installed user base on a global perspective?

Nah. The other SE games are for that. Sony were in big talks with SE to keep FFXIII - the only thing to sway them would be money. Question: Why wouldn't Microsoft pay SE massive amounts of money? They are insanely rich.

 

[expletive]

Is FF XIII timed Sony exclusive, or not coming at all on 360, in Japan?

 

[DeadlyNinja]

The FFXIII news is a bombshell that Sony will never recover from. I always had predictions of MGS4 coming to the 360 at some point, but never would I believe that Sony would allow a game like FF to go multiplatform. It was their most important 3rd party title. There is nothing Sony can do now that's going to change their fortunes at all.

The day they lose FF is the day they lost the console war. This was always what I believe. Good job by MS. You secured your position in the market.

Does FF even matter all that much anymore? The series has been on decline and 360 is on life support in Japan. I mean, FFXIII has excellent potential to do some good, but can they sustain it long term? There are still more people owning a PS3 than 360 in Japan, and I have to ask why they would suddenly go out of their way to buy a 360 when they already own the system to play the game. As for NA, well, does it even need FFXIII!?

I'm more interested in Banjo and Gear 2. I never use my game systems for movies so doesn't really matter what movie services they offer. Let me see more games, dammit.

 

[Butta]

Does FF even matter all that much anymore? The series has been on decline and 360 is on life support in Japan. I mean, FFXIII has excellent potential to do some good, but can they sustain it long term? There are still more people owning a PS3 than 360 in Japan, and I have to ask why they would suddenly go out of their way to buy a 360 when they already own the system to play the game. As for NA, well, does it even need FFXIII!?

Square has confirmed no FFXIII for 360 in Japan...

 

[-tkf-]

Does FF even matter all that much anymore? The series has been on decline and 360 is on life support in Japan. I mean, FFXIII has excellent potential to do some good, but can they sustain it long term? There are still more people owning a PS3 than 360 in Japan, and I have to ask why they would suddenly go out of their way to buy a 360 when they already own the system to play the game. As for NA, well, does it even need FFXIII!?

I'm more interested in Banjo and Gear 2. I never use my game systems for movies so doesn't really matter what movie services they offer. Let me see more games, dammit.

Every former Sony exclusive be it timed or "real" is a win for Microsoft.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The day they lose FF is the day they lost the console war. This was always what I believe. Good job by MS. You secured your position in the market.

Once upon a time, FF's home platform has been Nintendo. And look at the Wii today... FF isn't the end of all things. Major step for MS, but it won't destroy Sony...

 

[Cornsnake]

But Sony have repeatedly said they aren't pursuing 3rd parties! Anyone expecting Sony to secure FFXIII was ignoring what they were saying. Okay, it's not uncommon for PR to talk completely at odds with reality, but still..

I think that statement was only ever released to lessen the impact of the third party games movement towards multiplatform. If Sony wasn't trying to keep FFXIII exclusive it would have been announced a long time ago. SE was in a good position to make the most out of that situation.

 

[AzBat]

Regarding when SE made the decision to go Xbox 360 in Europe and US.

hashimoto: "it wasn't a long time ago that we made the decision. we had to adjust things, like our relationship with microsoft. it was recent."

Tommy McClain

 

[DrJay24]

For studios that Microsoft doesn't have agreements with: Sony Pictures Studios and Columbia Pictures are a few.

Tommy McClain

Well except the list of Netflix DD films is extremely poor. I've had it on my HTPC since it was announced, yet I've watched maybe 1-2 things. It's too bad they don't make more mainstream stuff available, but I guess they don't want to hurt their main business.

 

[eastmen]

Once upon a time, FF's home platform has been Nintendo. And look at the Wii today... FF isn't the end of all things. Major step for MS, but it won't destroy Sony...

yes back in the nes and super nes days.

Then what happened , no more ff and the n64 and gamecube happened.
I dobut its going to be the same with sony , but it is a blow to them and a plus for ms .

Ms now has 4 diffrent square rpgs coming out within a year plus fable 2 and fallout 3. that is an amazing rpg line up and when you add in past rpgs this is now the rpg console of the generation

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Guys, as far as I know the console makers can't just simply pay off studios, it doesn't work like that. They cna't justify such expenditures for their shareholders, and so on.

What they can do is to offer some pretty good deals to the publisher or developer.
Financing a game is always complicated - banks expect high returns of their investment, large publishers take a lot of the profit just as well and they even try to control the development to reduce risks. The console maker can offer some help here, just as MS did with GTA4 DLC - sort of loan the money with an insignificant interest rate and leave the developer to use it as they wish.
And the other very interesting option is the amount of licence fee per sold title that the publisher has to pay for each copy of the game, ranging from $5 to 10. If a console maker wants a deal badly, there's quite some room here as well. Selling the same n million copies can make up to n*10 million dollars more on a platform with a good deal.

So, while the result is a lot of money, it's still not as simple as paying off the developer or publisher, it's not an expenditure.

 

[assen]

Strangely, FFXIII Versus is still PS3 exclusive.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Nah. The other SE games are for that. Sony were in big talks with SE to keep FFXIII - the only thing to sway them would be money.

I dont understand your logic. Sony probably wanted FFXIII to be exlusive right? So SONY offered SE money first. Maybe SE felt they could make more money by going multiplatform than by getting Sony's deal. Ms didn't necessarily have to pay them.

Why wouldn't SE want to earn as much money as possible with their biggest title? But yet they want to make as much money as possible on their small budget titles? It makes no sense. SE cares about money. You said it yourself, thus, if Sony's deal was worse than what SE believes they could make on making the game multiplatform, they would port. It doesn't necessarily have to be the big bad MS who had to bribe SE.

Its only logical to believe that this is the main motivator, until you have some hard evidence of the contrary. Not just spew of speculation based on your own perception of MS bribing everybody left and right.

Question: Why wouldn't Microsoft pay SE massive amounts of money? They are insanely rich.

Because Microsoft stockholders want the highest possible ROI, and thats not necessarily throwing money at SE. Just because you have money doesn't mean that you should spend it on buying multiplatform for FF when that money is maybe better invested somewhere else.

Im not saying that its impossible that Ms paid of SE, but the arguments people present here are based on nothing, aspecially considering there are perfectly logical reasons for SE going multiplatform that does not involve MS bribing them.

 

[AzBat]

Why they did it...

Hashimoto: "We considered the hardware situation. Because of that, we considered the spread of the hardware, so that's why we decided that."

Hashimoto: As I have already mentioned, considering that the install base was one of the reasons why decided to release it in the West on the Xbox 360...

Tommy McClain

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Square has confirmed no FFXIII for 360 in Japan...

Really? I missed that. Then this is a good thing for the 360 then... I guess. I don't know if NA still cares about FF in general. Maybe a PC version as well? They did it with FFVII and FFVIII.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

According to VGChartz, FFX sold ~8 million worldwide, ~3 million in Japan, 2.7M in NA. FFXII sold 5 million worldwide, about 2.5M in Japan, 1.8M in NA. I think there's a couple of million possible sales, especially if it's a very good game, that SE would miss out on without going cross-platform. Worst possible case for SOny would be people holding out for PS3 for FFXIII number the millions and instead get XB360, and XB360 wrestles all PS3 sales from Japan for jsut that reason. But we all know that isn't going to happen!

This isn't the end of PS3 by any stretch. No game rules a platform. It's one less reason to choose PS3 over XB360, but the competition is still there.

 

[DrJay24]

The FFXIII news is a bombshell that Sony will never recover from.

Oh the drama, sometimes these boards are as bad as the rest

 

[patsu]

I am actually happy that FF go multi-platform. Hopefully they earn enough to make the next big leap in gaming.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

According to VGChartz.

I dont know how VGChartz gathers software data, but if its anything like hardware data i can guessestimate just as well as that guy can.