Sony Suggests Microsoft 'Writes Checks' to Cover First-Party Insecurities

While SCEA continues to tout its PS3 lineup for 2009, with games like Killzone 2, inFamous, MLB 09 The Show, Uncharted 2, MAG, and more, Microsoft's first-party efforts are not as clearly defined. After all, Bungie is independent, FASA and Ensemble Studios were both shuttered, and Rare arguably has not lived up to expectations since the company was acquired several years back.

Now John Koller, Director of Hardware Marketing at SCEA, has called Microsoft out on paying publishers for exclusive deals. He believes Microsoft must do so to cover up its first-party weakness at Microsoft Game Studios.

"Microsoft has had a much more lenient policy to writing checks than we do," he commented to VG247. "We don't feel the need to write checks necessarily with every publisher, like they did with the [GTA] Lost and Damned and some other titles, because we feel very strongly in our first-party line-up."

He continued, "I think it's safe to say that we'd put our first-party line-up against anyone's, and Microsoft and other manufacturers probably lead a little bit when they're writing checks about how they feel about their own internal line-up."