Activision Close to Dropping Sony Support

According to The Times(UK News), in an interview with Bobby Kotick, head of Activision, the company is dangerously close to yanking support for all of Sonys consoles. They are worried, considering that the PS3, despite an earlier boom last lear, is starting to lose steam, once again. Games tend to cost less to create, and are easier to create, on the other two systems, the Wii and Xbox 360, respectively.

And he definitely thinks cutting the price would be an important factor in this. “They have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates [the number of games each console owner buys] are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony.” Ask when and he says: “When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP [portable] too.”

Despite rumors to the contrary, PS3 did not indeed drop the price this year. The rumors were rampant earlier in the year, but at every turn Sony has denied a price cut. Despite no actual price cut, however, sales of PS3 hardware have actually been fairly steady, despite declining inbetween big releases.

Here's the link to the full, original article.

Now, Mr. Kotick has a little bit of a point, but pulling support entirely? Granted, them doing so might not truly hurt the PS3, anyhow. Activision does not publish very many games for the PS3 as it is, the most notable being the Guitar Hero franchise, and the Call of Duty franchise. It seems to be a bit bold to condemn a system that Activision has yet to actually give an Exclusive game to, at this point. Perhaps if they had a few exclusives out that had sold poorly, they might have a bit bigger of a base the stand on.

We'll have more on this as the story develops, but I can't see Sony really caring that much. They have shown a rather ballsy attitude with most third-party developers with the PS3, rarely paying for an exclusive, or even exclusive content. Activision themselves seem to be on a 'We do what we want!' roll, what with them sueing the studion behind Brutal Legend, and now this. Are they starting to over-step themselves, with their relatively 'biggest game publisher' status? We'll see how this turns out.