It seems that this generation will be defined as one of the last that we see platform exclusives. We've seen Bungie go from Microsoft to Activision for an upcoming multiplatform title, and now another major "2nd party" studio is Insominiac - famous for the Resistance and Ratchet and Clank franchises - are now partnered with EA to bring a brand new franchise to multiple platforms.
You may be wondering why we’re announcing this game now, and how it relates to our existing projects. We’ve been developing games on an annual pace during the last 16 years. One thing that has become apparent to us though is that in order to live up to our own high standards of quality, we want to give ourselves more development time to iterate and polish our games. All future Insomniac titles will benefit from longer development cycles, which will directly benefit you, our fans.
More polish is always a good thing. But to be clear, this doesn't mean we'll see Resistance 3 on the Xbox 360. Sony owns and controls that IP as well as R&C. This is partially the reason for Insomniac's departure from exclusivity - control of their own IP and destiny. Insomniac will continue to develop both IPs for Sony though.
A recent interview with G4TV explores this with Ted Price, Insomniac's President.
G4: Especially with EA Partners, we're seeing them collaborate with studios that want to control their IP. How prevalent do expect this be? How many studios can really demand that?
Price: I think it really depends on the developer and what the developer wants to do and the developer's track record. Craig can probably speak more to that than I can.
Craig Rechenmacher: I think we are seeing a shift towards IP ownership but it's the bigger studios that have the ability, have the pedigree, they're the ones that we're seeing really push for this IP ownership and I think you're going to see them taking their franchises into new gaming mediums and that's probably what predicates that IP ownership.
It'll be interesting to see what Insomniac can produce with Electronic Arts. Hopefully more will be told at E3 2010.