Tretton On FFXIII

Our man Kamiboy has written his feelings on the issue (which we’re editing for publication tomorrow) but tonight Sony’s Jack Tretton has spoken out on FFXIII going to Microsoft’s 360. According to Gamasutra, speaking at a round table Tretton suggested Microsoft had spent most of their money “trying to curry favor with third parties”.

Seemingly, he wasn’t aware of the bombshell and was as shocked as the rest of us. “I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term, or surprised,” he said, adding that “we’ve built up our base and that’s where we’ve chosen to spend our dollars” referring to internal first party development as Sony’s path this generation.

Whether he was implying that the move to multiplatform for Square Enix was more of a Microsoft-subsidised decision than one guided purely by sales reasons we’re not prepared to speculate on.

Speaking on Home, Tretton said that Sony showed “a lot of naiveté” when the company began work on the ambitious title, and the showing to the public was “premature”. He openly went on to say that the development of Home had been hampered by a lack of understanding of what exactly the company was developing. “We had to figure out that this wasn’t just a piece of software, and not just a service,” he said, “something that needed a specific team, including hardware expertise.”

He added that he would not release Home until it was completely ready.

Via Gamasutra, Edge. Edge will have the full transcript of the discussion tomorrow, Gamasutra has a full report already.