Koei PS3 Titles Add Xbox 360 SKUs

Japanese publisher Koei has announced that two of its forthcoming titles, previously assumed to be PlayStation 3 exclusives, will in fact also be released on the Xbox 360. Blade Storm: The Hundred Years' War is similar in nature to Koei’s popular Dynasty Warriors series but with a European setting, while futuristic race game Fatal Inertia is the first title to be developed by Koei Canada – the studio set up by Koei specifically to create titles more focused towards Western gamers. Both games are currently scheduled to be launch titles for the PlayStation 3 in Europe next March, but no announcement has been made concerning the release dates of the Xbox 360 versions. Although a decline in the number of format exclusives was widely predicted at the start of the new generation, due to the increasing costs of development and the need to recoup as much profit as possible, this trend has appeared to hit Sony harder, since the PlayStation format previously enjoyed a much larger range of third party exclusives compared to the Xbox and GameCube. Nevertheless, the news that such important titles as Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto IV were to become multiformat titles, without even a short period of exclusivity, has generated some negative press for Sony – most notably in recent comments from Newsweek reporter N'Gai Croal which suggested that Sony had been too slow in finalizing publisher deals, despite approaches from third parties.