On its official blog this morning, Sony officially confirmed what had been mentioned on the TV show GameHead last night: a new franchise from Rockstar is coming exclusively to the PS3. This is likely what Phil Harrison referred to in our interview with him at E3.
The blog entry, posted by Michael Shorrock, Director of 3rd Party Relations at SCEA, reveals that this exclusive title is a brand new game -- not L.A. Noir, the detective thriller slated for next year -- and that it is being built to take advantage of the PS3 hardware.
Everyone knows to have success in this business you need to look ahead, identifying the talent and titles that are going to give consumers new kinds of gaming experiences that help set the bar for the rest of the industry. Rockstar has a heritage for doing just that. We have had incredible success with the GTA franchise and are happy to continue to offer those titles on our platforms, and even more excited about what's to come from the current and future relationship between our companies. Rockstar really wanted to make a game that you can truly only do on PS3, harnessing the power of CELL and Blu-ray disc and this deal lets them do just that. This is really a win-win situation for both companies.
It's interesting that he, like SCEA President Jack Tretton did on the show, is positioning this deal as more important than securing downloadable content for the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which, as you know, Microsoft has paid quite a bit to do so for the Xbox 360. Whether or not this proves true, we'll likely have to wait quite some time to find out.
