A new interview reveals that Sony’s exclusivity on Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas was a reaction to concern over Microsoft’s launching the Xbox and entering the video game industry.
That tidbit was revealed in a new interview with former PlayStation Europe boss, Chris Deering, who spoke to GamesIndustry.biz for a “Stories From 30 Years of PlayStation” feature. In September, Deering faced criticism for suggesting that laid-off game developers should “go to the beach for a year or drive an Uber.”
Deering tells GI.biz that the exclusivity deal “Was very lucky for us.” GTA 3 released on PS2 in October 2001 as an exclusive, just barely a month before the launch of the Xbox. That exclusivity deal was for three games, resulting in Vice City in October 2002 ands San Andreas in October 2004. All three GTA games eventually came to Xbox after the exclusivity deals ended.
“We were worried when we saw Xbox coming,” says Deering, “We knew exclusivity was the name of the game in a lot of fields, like Sky TV with sports. Just as Christmas was approaching when Xbox would launch, a few of us went out to our favourite third-party publishers and developers, and we asked them, ‘How would you like a special deal if you keep your next generation game on PlayStation exclusive for a two-year period?’ And one of the deals we made was with Take-Two for the next three Grand Theft Auto games. At the time, it wasn’t clear that Grand Theft Auto 3 was going to be as huge as it was, because it used to be a top down game.”
It’s fair to say that exclusivity bid really worked out in PlayStation’s favour, as it cemented the franchise as a PlayStation brand for a long time – and that GTA trilogy is often heralded as some of the PS2’s defining games.
Of course, newer versions of those games are available in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, which launched in 2021 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. That release was filled with catastrophic performance issues at launch, but has since been patched with some improvements.
While GTA is one of the most interesting tidbits of Deering’s interview, there are plenty of others packed in as well. He talks about how Sony gave out PS1s to loads of “cool people,” how Crash Bandicoot’s marketing campaign somehow resulted in a man attacked by pimps, and how much of a financial risk EyeToy and SingStar were.
