SCE president says Sony can ‘re-evaluate’ paying for PS3 exclusives

Microsoft has been shelling out big bucks to keep some exclusive games, and where possible, even exclusive content. Now many would argue that Sony‘s game division, being the same one that kept Sony afloat during the golden age of the PlayStation 2, could do the same if it wanted. But what is the consumer electronics giants’ thoughts on the idea? Sony Computer Entertainment president, CEO, and PlayStation boss Kazuo Hirai comes to the rescue. Get his thoughts at the full story.

An interview with Kazuo Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment’s CEO, president, and Playstation creator successor, has allowed for the opportunity to extract Sony’s thoughts on securing PlayStation 3 exclusives by way of financial compensation.

Hirai responded to an inquiry on the consumer electronic giant’s policy on financing exclusives and said, “ThatÂ’s something that we can re-evaluate, but itÂ’s also something that the publishers need to make a business decision on.”

He explained that the matter would then unfold into just dialogue with the developers. Ultimately, going through with exclusivity will still be their decision – not Sony’s.

Hirai was even able to point out that financial support from other publishers would greatly influence what the developers would want to do with the game. The publishers would have their own reservations of this generation’s hardware, and thus their support would be driven accordingly. He added:

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.

Though the division’s market rivals, Microsoft, has been known for paying for content exclusivity to the Xbox 360, Sony is no stranger to exclusives either. Thanks to the gaming division’s support, Media Molecule‘s LittleBigPlanet (which was first an independent game before Sony agreed to it) is shaping up well, and there’s much anticipation over Quantic Dream‘s ambitious Heavy Rain.

Via ThreeSpeech