Home Gaming Sony failed to push Limbo around

Sony failed to push Limbo around

1 min read
0

LimboGeoff

Limbo, the beloved indie title of the last year that had you running around being terrified of spiders was released a full year earlier on the Xbox 360 simply because Sony tried to force the indie developer, Playdead, to hand over the IP to Limbo and they refused.

In a surprisingly frank announcement at the last Develop Conference in Brighton the Executive Producer of Sony Computer Entertainment, Pete Smith, revealed that they were in talks to bring Limbo exclusively to the PSN but in the end talks broke down after Sony insisted on owning the Limbo IP.

Playdead refused and in the end made a deal with Microsoft to release the title exclusively on the Xbox 360 for a year before porting it to the PlayStation Network and Steam.

In Sony’s defence the reason they ask for rights over the IP is to ensure that after they’ve invested so heavily in a title that the developer doesn’t instantly ship it out to the competitors therefore diluting the profits for the investing company. But the trick is knowing how hard to push someone and in this case Sony pushed to hard and lost out in a big way as Limbo went on to sell over a million units on the Xbox.

In the end it arrived on PSN and sold well but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that if it had launched on the PSN the sales would have been a lot higher.

Last Updated: July 17, 2012

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

Uncharted Movie Passes $100 Million – Sony set to Make a Franchise

After 14 years Sony finally released the Uncharted movie to medium reception. The movie ha…