Sony’s President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida had the opportunity to discuss his company’s gaming division with ThreeSpeech.com recently and although he obviously needs to toe the company line and make sure he says the right thing, what he did say speaks volumes about the state of the gaming industry.

“My role is to run first-party development, and we are always exclusive,” he told the publication. “Because, in this generation, it costs much more to develop one product, it’s just natural for third-party publishers trying to recoup the investment from multiple platforms. I think that’s pure economic pressure, pushing most of the third parties to move from some exclusive titles to more multi-platform titles. Because we know that is the trend, we, as a company, can invest in our first-party studios; in terms of exclusive titles, our role becomes more important.”

With third-party developers selling titles for multiple platforms, first-party developers will need to step in and try to create games that matter to people and make them want a console. And although major games like MGS4 are exclusive, they’re becoming a rarity and it’s quickly becoming apparent that first-party titles are the only games that matter.

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