In the early 2000s, Sony faced a new competitor to its PlayStation business when Microsoft launched the original Xbox. With that new competition sparked a genuine concern from Sony that led to them getting exclusive release rights to the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games of the era for the PlayStation 2.
Chris Deering, the former president of PlayStation Europe, recently spoke to GamesIndustry.biz, and shed some light as to why PlayStation wanted an exclusive agreement for GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas.
“We were worried when we saw Xbox coming,” Deering said. “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.”
Deering added that PlayStation was “lucky” with the deal because of how it paid off for the company.
“It was very lucky for us,” he said. “And actually lucky for them, because they got a discount on the royalty they paid.”
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The games ultimately saw a release on Xbox, but not before they became the best-selling games in the history of PS2. San Andreas became the best-selling PS2 game ever while the other two games, Vice City and GTA 3, became the third- and fifth-best selling games.
GTA 3 and Vice City released on Xbox on November 4, 2003 while San Andreas came to Xbox in June 2005.
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