Activision Threatens To Pull Sony Support News

Although they'll admit otherwise, the simple fact is that Sony is struggling to match its dominance with this generation.  Although 2009 is marked as the year that the PS3 would emerge as the superior platform, we've yet to see any tangible proof to such claims.

More troubling for Sony is the fact that its under-performance could begin to affect its relationships with third-party publishers; a concern that the world's biggest publisher today expressed in an interview with The Times.

In a candid interview, Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick claimed:

"I'm getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform. It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation."

Kotick moved on to demand a price-cut to stimulate demand,

"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."

When asked what sort of timeline this would be based upon, Kotick suggested that Sony hasn't got too long to change around its fortunes further stated that such a decision could also impact their support of the PSP.

"When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console - and the PSP [portable] too."

Such a decision would rank up there with EA's (then the world's number one publisher) decision to not support the SEGA Dreamcast; a decision that  helped to drive a nail (albeit not the final one) in the format's coffin.