Thursday, March 22, 2007

Why Sony is not dead. Yet.

Yes, Avenger, giant robots are cool. And yes, strategy is awesome. However, that doesn't make Ring of Red a good game. I can think of lots of better ways to spend 45 minutes than one round of combat in Ring of Red.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a Sony fan-boy, I feel the need to inject some positive opinions about Sony into everyone's day. Everyone knows that Sony has been almost hemorrhaging exclusive titles, from GTA IV, to DMC 4, and now maybe even FF XIII. For the most part, except for the Final Fantasy news if it's true, is to be expected. The costs of game development make it nearly impossible to all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak. This console generation, as least as far as the PS3 and the 360 are concerned, will come down to first-party titles. Everyone talks about Microsoft's first party IPs, mainly Halo and Gears, but Sony isn't exactly a slouch in this department. Check out this list:

Ape Escape
God of War
Dark Cloud
Hot Shots Golf
ICO
Shadow of the Colossus
Jak and Daxter
Killzone
Lemmings
PaRappa
Ratchet and Clank
Resistance
Rogue Galaxy
Sly Cooper
Wild Arms

That a list of franchises that Sony owns the rights to. This includes notable second-party studios like Incognito, Naughty Dog, and Level 5. I think that we all need to give Sony some time. They made a decision to continue supporting the PS2, and while I don't disagree with that decision (look at the sales numbers from this past holiday season), having games like God of War 2 come out of the PS2 instead of the PS3 has really handicapped their next-gen software library. Once we start seeing the new generation of some of these franchises, Sony will probably start gaining some major ground.

Also, keeping FF XIII exclusive wouldn't hurt.

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