PS3 Informer

Why Are So Many PS3 Exclusives "Secret"?

Sony has been trying out an interesting marketing strategy over the last couple of months, and so far it appears to be working. Amid a lack of high-quality exclusive titles for the PS3, Sony has been leaking whispers of “top secret” games to members of the press. Journalists have helped the company build hype for a number of games that we know absolutely nothing about. First, there was the infamous BBC reveal, in which a journalist claimed to have seen a game of incredible quality behind closed doors. Then this week, Sony Worldwide Executive Shuhei Yoshida dropped the ambiguous hint that “more big titles that we have not even announced yet” on the horizon in the coming year.

What’s up with all of this secrecy, Sony? Surely if you have a big game in development there is no harm in telling us about it so we have something to look forward to.

One possibility is that the games are so far from being ready that the software companies involved have very little to show a curious public. This is Sony’s way of telling fans that they have exclusives coming, without having to reveal that they may not be ready in 2009. Mounting development costs and the complexity of current-gen systems means that games often take several years to complete. Games that were started in 2008 might not be ready before 2010/2011. Of course, Sony can’t wait that long to sell hardware, or it risks losing even more market share to Microsoft’s cheaper Xbox 360.

Another possibility, and one that fanboys will undoubtedly prefer, is that these secret games are being kept that way because of their immense awesomeness. Perhaps Sony and the development studios involved have crafted games so amazing, so innovative, that they don’t want to risk them being copied by unscrupulous competitors. If this is the case, maybe we really will see a true, top secret game surface in 2009.

Regardless of the reasons behind this stance, Sony is the only company among the big three hardware manufacturers that has been aggressively promoting “secret” games. They had better have something incredible up their sleeve when it comes time to reveal these projects.

A teaser image for an unnanounced secret game from Team ICO.

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