By Nick Place
The oft-maligned PlayStation 3 finally launched in PAL territories last week, going on sale last Friday in Europe and Australia. The launch completed the PS3’s treacherous journey to retail, ending a period of extremely negative public reactions to the machine’s $600 (for the premium model) price point, lack of controller rumble, sloppy online plan and, in the PAL territories, removal of much of the United States’ and Japan’s backwards compatibility.
Sony-sponsored launch events in Europe and Australia drew rmodest crowds, certainly smaller than the swarms that surrounded American retailers last November and with none of the violence or Ebay-profiteering that accompanied the U.S. launch.
Now that their product is finally out the door, Sony’s strong showing of their online application Home at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and the company’s strong portfolio of exclusives could be enough to help the PS3 gain ground on the Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Nintendo’s Wii console.
That is if Sony does not lose all their exclusives first. Former console-exclusive titles becoming multiplatform titles is nothing new, as games like Assassin’s Creed have started as PS3 exclusives and ended up being announced for Xbox 360. This week, two high-profile, Japanese-developed, traditionally PlayStation-only franchises were revealed to be showing up on the 360 in the future.
On Tuesday, Capcom revealed that Devil May Cry 4, the next-generation sequel to the successful PlayStation 2 action series, would see simultaneous release on the Xbox 360 as well as the PS3 and a later release on PC. Devil May Cry 4 was one of the first games demonstrated for the PS3 back at 2005’s Electronic Entertainment Expo and the franchise has long been associated with Sony.
Capcom has experienced success on the 360 so far with its original titles Dead Rising and, more recently, Lost Planet, the third-person shooter that spent time on top of the console sales charts. Devil May Cry 4 currently has no release date for any platform. Then, on Friday, Namco Bandai Games announced that Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, the latest installment in the long-running and previously PlayStation-only aerial combat series, would be coming to the 360, and only the 360-as no statement was made regarding a PS3 version of the game as of yet.
Ace Combat 6 will be the first game in the series to feature online play and will arrive later this year.