Kutaragi 'slowness' lost PS3 exclusives

News - GTA IV and Assassin's Creed could have gone solo

A report in Newsweek, exposed last night by GameSpot, reveals that Assassin's Creed and GTA IV could have been PS3 exclusive titles, were it not for dallying at Sony Japan - with the report singling out CEO Ken Kutaragi. Whilst it was originally unclear what platforms Assassin's Creed would be created for, the reason for the confusion is perhaps now more obvious, with the Newsweek report claiming that Ubisoft hoped to tie-up an exclusivity deal, but had to go multiplatform after Sony waited too long to offer the terms of the deal.

In his personal blog, Newsweek's N'Gai Croal adds to the Assassin's Creed story, stating "We've learned that Take-Two and Rockstar Games were interested in continuing their longtime relationship with Sony, in which they premiered their Grand Theft Auto games on PlayStation platforms exclusively for 6-12 months before bringing them to other systems."

"Also, Ubisoft was interested in making Assassin's Creed, due in stores next spring, exclusive to the PS3," he added. Croal's report contends that Sony HQ and Kutaragi hadn't concluded their indie publisher terms for most of the year, losing the exclusivity periods some publishers had been interested in. He added that the deals fell through, because "without Kutaragi's signoff, the normally independent American and European branches had no authority to reach agreements on the exclusives they believed could be valuable to the PS3 cause."

Microsoft's generosity is also in part responsible for the PS3 mutineers, Croal writes, meanwhile Sony aren't saying much on any of this - apart from GameSpot's Jack Tretton quote, where the veepee affirms that the Xbox 360 launch of GTA IV was all Take-Two's idea. Which is hardly a surprise. More on this as we get it.