Every once in a while, you bear witness to someone pulling off a phenomenal feat of strategy and skill. Even more rare, is when a feat like that has anything to do with the video game industry. Well folks, it’s happened again, and I’m not referring to Microsoft “neutralizing” Sony’s exclusivity of Final Fantasy XIII. No, this bit of financial and strategic genius will make that seem like something you wouldn’t even bother talking about.
Have you ever wondered exactly what kind of pull Bungie had over Microsoft when they ripped themselves from the Borg Collective and because independent again? Many say that a large number of the key people threatened to walk out if they weren’t given a plan to their independence. What this illustrated to many was that owning a company, owning rights to key IPs, and even having a roadmap laid out for future success is useless if you don’t have the people there to execute on it. A company is only as good as its employees. A video game is only as good as its developers. These facts are not lost on Microsoft, arguably the biggest single software development company in the world… and even more arguably, the most financially backed software development company in the world.
News from both the United States and Europe this morning seem to indicate the unthinkable has happened. In a massive sweeping move of virtually unfathomable scale, it would appear that Microsoft has financially lured virtually ALL of Sony’s in-house first party developers away from their parent company. How can this happen you might ask? Money. Sources within the FTC have indicated ENORMOUS shifts of Microsoft funds (to the tune of over $16B) to not only secure the services of programmers, artists, and management within Sony’s various development studios, but many are being paid to actively NOT work in the field at all!
We were able to speak to some developers in the US under condition of anonymity. John (his real name isn’t John) was working for Sony Santa Monica for a modest salary of $62k per year. He was approached by an individual that had him sign a contract saying he would not work in any capacity related to video game production for the next three years and in return, he would be paid $100k the first year, $120k the second year, and $150k the third year. The contract allows him to seek employment in any field that isn’t remotely related to any media or video game development outside of Microsoft Games Studios. John said “That’s $370 thousand dollars for doing nothing! That’s about SIX YEARS worth of work at my current salary… of COURSE I’m going to take it. I plan on touring Europe for 4 months with my wife!”
Similar stories are being reported out of Europe where the damage seems to be far worse for the Sony development scene. In addition to luring away virtually all Sony first party production personnel, we’re getting reports that third parties are being paid revenues amounting to 2.5x the normal rate to shift all of their multiplatform titles to be 360 exclusives, even when beta code for the Playstation 3 version is in testers’ hands.
This move would appear to be more than the proverbial 1-2 punch for Sony, closer to a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 punch, as in out for the count! We actually heard that Microsoft tried to make a play at buying 51% of Sony’s stock but was shutdown (presumably because the time it took them to convert Microsoft Points to Yen allowed Sony to rally the troops and stop the sale of the last crucial few percent of stock.) As it is, apparently Microsoft owns 33% of Sony and virtually all their European and US development staff. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.
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AAArgh!! I forgot it was friday… you tricked me!!
I was halfway to believing this as well.
Damn you fiction friday!
DAMN YOU!!!
And you Sean!
haha lol you had me until the comments
no but really they do buy out exclusive content, (which pisses me off) even though they just want more poeple buying their console, it still gets on my nerves cuz i cant play it
Man that would blow donkey nuts if it were true, the entire gaming community/industry would collapse if that happened,
Wow you really had me there I was sh*tting myself….until I read the comments
lol it can’t be all of them FAKE. Are u fanboy MC.
Where is your source.
U must be a FANBOY OF MS.. Where is your SOURCE ?? ..
Phew, i thought it was real :LOl:
It would honestly be a travesty if this actually happened. If it did I don’t know if I could ever buy another MS product-I’d probably loath them too much.
oh man i almost believed this… if i hadn’t scrolled down to the first comment i would’ve been really pissed.
but still… damn you M$
Microsoft would never be allowed to do this anyways do u remember when the US government sued Microsoft for malpractice by buying out all the competition
if they bribed all the sony staff like this it was really not go down well and they could be closed down all together for using there power to affectivly shut down their only threat
wow, this website is really S H I T, here i was extending my hatred for Microsoft when this waste of my time was all a bunch of bull designed to get your S H I T Y excuse of a website more hits… Shame on you… stupid website…
phoooooo!! that,s my whorst nightmare! i,am glad this aint true,iam a huge sony ps3 fan,and after have seen all that nice E3 footage i could,nt believe my eyes when i read this!!!!
Man!! I friggin hate you! My eyes were about to pop out of my head after reading this.
I kept getting more and more infuriated after every paragraph, and I think my heart beat is finally slowing down to normal.
I’m glad this isn’t real, but I still hate MS and they’re endless bags of money.. I heard the bags are made of virgin uterus’ses..
lol i hated this!!! im already having enough trouble fending off microsoft/xbox fanboys from constantly dissing my amazing ps3 =) and this made me angry…. and worst of all i believed it!!!! till the last paragraph lolz…. but it is frustrating becuase soo many people wright articles like this!!!! lol on a friday do one dissing xbox 360 for once!!!! lol ooh.. ps. i wish this would happen
“Microsoft would never be allowed to do this anyways do u remember when the US government sued Microsoft for malpractice by buying out all the competition
if they bribed all the sony staff like this it was really not go down well and they could be closed down all together for using there power to affectivly shut down their only threat”
lol =) peace out
Microsoft is handling this like they did with Netscape. If anyone remembers MS tried many tactics to push NS out of business and got hauled to court for it. Bill Gates sent an e-mail to top staff about how to handle it and when questioned about it he said he never did such thing and had a breakdown. Buying the exclusives is acutally hurting the market and customers wallets. especially if they suceed in pushing Sony out, people with PS3 would have to buy 360’s and endure the hardware malfunction. I would say more but I dont have to time. Your article is very good, I would love to see your sources of infomation for my own personal viewing.
good points. thanks for your posting.