Important takeaways
- Sony made GTA a PS2 exclusive due to concerns about Xbox.
- GTA 3's success on PS2 was unexpected due to gameplay changes.
- The exclusivity deal helped boost PS2 sales and GTA popularity.
A former Sony head has revealed it Grand Theft Auto was a PlayStation 2 exclusive because of the Xbox. The executive spoke during a recent interview, where he admitted that Sony had been worried about the upcoming Microsoft console, and it led to three GTA games exclusive to PS2.
Grand Theft Auto 3 was a huge success, but its overwhelming popularity came as a bit of a surprise to some members of the game development community. Although it was already an established series, GTA 3 dramatically shook up the game, switching from a top-down view to third-person and away from a level-based scoring system. GTA 3 became one of the best-selling games on the PlayStation 2, and that's partly due to this exclusivity deal.
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In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, former PlayStation Europe president Chris Deering spoke about the PlayStation 2 and Sony's concerns about the then-upcoming Xbox console. Ahead of the Xbox launch, Deering said the company approached some of its “favorite” third-party publishers and developers with an offer for a two-year exclusivity period. Take-Two was one of those publishers, and it agreed to the deal, locking its next three games to the PlayStation consoles. As a result, GTA 3, Vice cityand San Andreas all launched on PlayStation 2 first, remain available only on PlayStation and PC during the exclusivity period.
GTA Deal worked great for PlayStation and Take-Two
As Deering says, the deal was good for Take-Two, because the publisher “got a discount on the royalties they were paying.” GTA likely helped sell PlayStation 2 consoles, while those who had already purchased PS2 consoles were enticed to try GTA when it began to explode in popularity. Ultimately the above GTA the trilogy became three of the top five of the PS2's bestsellers during its lifetime, with GTA 3 comes in fifth place, GTA: Vice City in third, and GTA: San Andreas in first.
While the games would eventually be released for the Xbox family of consoles, Xbox gamers had to wait to get their hands on them. Interesting, GTA 6 is currently slated to come to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S at the same time, but no announcement has been made for a GTA 6 PC release. It will almost certainly reach that platform eventually, but for now, players will have to wait and see when that will happen. While the PlayStation and Xbox families continue to compete with each other, there is virtually no doubt that both consoles will see a massive influx of sales when the game finally launches on their platforms.
