Team17 Being Bribed by Microsoft? “Bollocks” Says Brown
July 27, 2009 by urloc
As it was covered by us, Alien Breed, the reimagining of the retro arcade game for Amiga was going to be released first for XBLA. This timed exclusive of the new game from Team 17 wasn’t planned when the project was mentioned first time and since then, Team 17 has received accusations of being “bribed” by Microsoft.
Martyn Brown, Team 17 boss spoke to Videogamer in an interview at the Develop conference in Brighton to refute such accusations and state they will get “more promotion” from Microsoft in exchange for exclusivity.
“The reason is that we’ve got a long relationship with Microsoft’s first party unit. We get on great with them. In exchange for exclusivity we get a lot more promotion. We’ve got a closer deal with them. That’s just how it is. It’s unfortunate. That’s just how we work.”
Ok, this may sound like a “bribe” for some people, but business is business and each company has the right to choose the better options for their marketing. He also stated he wouldn’t mind in getting money either, after all a developer house is meant to earn money no matter if it comes from the customers, Microsoft or the White House.
“If we were a standalone publisher, then yes we’d do both formats. But the sales and promotion we get on LIVE Arcade far outweighs the reason for doing that. It isn’t the case of here’s some cash in a suitcase. It just doesn’t work like that. It would be nice if it did!” he added.”
He also replied about those angry PS3 fans who are potentially upset because of the timed exclusivity deal with Microsoft:
“I understand that. It’s difficult. Obviously we’d like everything on every platform day one. The LIVE Arcade thing… we get accused of being bribed or we’ve took Microsoft’s money, and it’s all bollocks.” And also stated “I appreciate PS3 owners getting pissed off because it’s not on their platform immediately, but that’s up to Sony I guess to address that.”
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