Microsoft’s Shane Kim has a lot to be happy about, following a relatively successful E3 showing. One of the biggest Xbox-flavored shockers this year was arguably the appearance of Hideo Kojima, who announced a whole new Metal Gear Solid experience for the Xbox 360. For Kim, this announcement has ‘leveled the playing field‘ for third party exclusives.
“I still think exclusive content is really important. First of all, in games, we’ve said for a long time that a key part of our strategy with Xbox 360 was a level third-party playing field. Now we’ve effectively done that with Metal Gear Solid [Rising] coming to the Xbox 360,” boasts Kim. “The economics are such that third parties also have to support multiple platforms, and you can’t ignore Xbox 360. It’s the second leading platform.
“It’s too much of a business-driver to just be focused on a single platform if you’re not a first party. So, it’s up to the first parties to deliver the bulk of the exclusive game content. Now, we’re having success with third parties because we can still get exclusive downloadable content, because of the service we’ve built with Live and the business we’ve been able to generate for third-party publishers there.”
It’s certainly a coup for Microsoft to finally crack the Metal Gear case, even if it’s not MGS4. Luckily, Sony still has Ragdoll Kung Fu. Nobody’s taking that feather from the PS3’s cap!
