We all know that Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas are PS2 classics, but apparently PlayStation made sure they were exclusive because it was afraid of Xbox.
GTA is obviously a multiplatform series these days, but the likelihood is that you think of it as a PlayStation series. That’ll be because Rockstar found its initial success with them on the PS2, with titles like GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. And as it turns out, these three games were purposefully made exclusive to the PS2, not because Sony just felt like it, but because it was concerned about the at-the-time upcoming release of the original Xbox. Former PlayStation Europe boss Chris Deering (that same guy that made that off comment about how laid off devs should just “go to the beach for a year“, so not the most stand-up of gentlemen) recently spoke to GamesIndustry.biz looking back on 30 years of PlayStation, where he specifically spoke of acquiring the exclusivity rights for GTA 3 and the two games after it.
“We were worried when we saw Xbox coming,” Deering explained. “We knew exclusivity was the name of the game in a lot of fields, like Sky TV with sports. Just as Christmas was approaching when Xbox would launch, a few of us went out to our favourite third-party publishers and developers, and we asked them, ‘How would you like a special deal if you keep your next generation game on PlayStation exclusive for a two-year period?’
“And one of the deals we made was with Take-Two for the next three Grand Theft Auto games. At the time, it wasn’t clear that Grand Theft Auto 3 was going to be as huge as it was, because it used to be a top down game.”
Deering went on to note that “it was very lucky” for PlayStation at the time, given just how successful that series went on to become. Who knows if people would be checking Rockstar’s socials every day for some kind of update on GTA 6 if GTA 3 had ended up an Xbox exclusive – as a reminder, the classic console only sold 24 million units compared to the PS2’s 160 million. Though, if it had gone multiplatform, I imagine GTA would have done just fine, it’s PlayStation that wouldn’t have benefitted too much. What could have been, ‘ey!
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