Speaking at the London Games Festival this week, Sony Computer Entertainment UK Managing Director Ray Maguire has told Videogamer that there’s no such thing as exclusive downloadable content.
When asked if he had anything to say to PlayStation 3 owners irked by Sony’s refusal to secure unique DLC packs from third party developers, Maguire declared: "One thing to remember, nothing is ever exclusive. Things get wrapped up for a period of time for a large amount of money and if it’s a strategic decision by competition to do that then we have to live with that."
Microsoft has made aggressive moves on this front, "exclusivising" post-release material for the Xbox 360 versions of multiplatform games like Fallout 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld and Grand Theft Auto IV. Sony has signed up the odd bit of PS3-only DLC here and there – Mirror’s Edge is one of the bigger names on the list – but appears otherwise content to let its competitor walk off with the prize.
Maguire went on to observe that he would "much rather that we (Sony) were investing money into making sure that we’ve got great R&D and we start producing games like LittleBigPlanet, rather than paying other people a huge amount of money to stop people playing their product."
He also implicitly reinforced comments by Sony Marketing and Public Relations Manager Mark Levitan, who claimed last week that Sony could no longer rely on third party exclusives to drive its consoles. "You have to remember that most third-party publishers of course have a business proposition that covers all platforms. With our own of course it’s different because our investment would purely be on our own platforms, and that’s the same as any first party."
"That’s a small part of the overall offering nowadays and the days of big exclusives, I think they were over a couple of years ago but they’re certainly over now.