eat. sleep. game.

Last week saw the not unexpected, but still telling move on the part of Capcom to announce that Devil May Cry 4 would come to both the PS3 and the 360; it was also announced for the PC, but if you played the PC port of Resident Evil 4 or Onimusha 3, you’ll understand why no one in any corner of the world should be excited about that aspect of their announcement. Anyway, in the wake of seeing one of the more sizable guns in the fanboy war of mine-is-bigger-than-yours be stripped unceremoniously away, a petition was started in protest of the move.

There are a lot of things that are both surprising and a little sad about this petition: first, that it was started in the first place, which is a pretty big supposition of influence on the part of the people behind it. I understand that we’re in the age of Web 2.0, of the interaction of entertainment and media with the people, but that’s like signing a petition demanding that a film not be released to a particular theater chain (and if you understood the nature of media consolidation and vertical integration that runs rampant in the movie industry, you’d understand that this is a more apt comparison than most know). I mean, it’s obvious that they know Capcom moving the title to multiple platforms will get it out to more people. The sad thing here is the thought of the rage and anguish it caused in them, so much so that it would inspire them to write a petition. Of course, the petition was created by one Derrick Hall, and judging from his email address, he’s on the unable-to-buy-porn side of 18, which is sort of the prime fanboy demographic. I’m not going to make the leap of accusing him of it, especially by name, but it does seem like an easy accusation to make. But hey, if Derrick wants to email us here and give us his side of the petition story, I’m definitely curious to hear it.

Capcom responded yesterday to the petition with the following statement:

We are certainly moved that people are so passionate about our products that they would go to such extremes. At the same time we feel that allowing more people access to our content pleases far more people than it displeases (after all, we’re not denying DMC4 to anyone that was already going to get it). It really is the best decision for the company and for consumers.

I think this statement is really important to keep in mind moving forward, with some caveats. First, as has been discussed elsewhere, it is a difficult proposition to sell enough copies of a huge budget game on the PS3 right now, and I think that there are a lot of studios and publishers that have just decided to hedge their bets on PS3 investments until it actually dominates marketshare in the way it did in the last generation. I don’t know that consumers are as much of an impetus in this move as Capcom’s bottom line is, but I think that it’s right that this is good for consumers.

However, as a recent joystiq article pointed out, I don’t think that we’re going to see a similar exodus of “exclusives” going the other way, and if there are moves in that direction, it won’t be in the same quantity for quite a while. Right now, moves toward the PS3 from existing 360 games involve a pretty major investment of dev time and a hell of a lot of money, for not as much return of investment. In the future, with parallel development for both the PS3 and 360, any claims of 360 exclusivity will be called into question (Ace Combat 6 comes to mind), and rightly so, but I think people should view statements by Japanese developers that a title will be exclusive to an American console with slightly fewer grains of salt. It’s a bigger cultural contradiction I think, and not a statement that Japanese developers would take lightly. The bottom line speaks louder than cultural biases or personal preference now though. Still I don’t expect the 360 to hemorrhage exclusives in the same way that the PS3 has. If nothing else, it doesn’t have the exclusives to lose in the same number.

-Aegies