Exclusive MGS4 needs to sell 1 million on day one

Due to production costs, Metal Gear Solid 4 needs to sell over a million copies on its first day, according to one of the game's assistant producers.

Speaking to Reuters, Konami's Ryan Payton defended the game's PS3 exclusivity.

"The PlayStation brand has always been good to us, and we're pretty bullish on the PS3."

"We're telling our fans that if you want to play 'Metal Gear Solid 4', you have to buy a PS3," he said.

Rising production costs means that it is tougher for third-party games to turn a profit if they are exclusive to a single console. PS3 exclusives face a tougher battle since sales of the console have lagged behind its rivals.

According to IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon, top next-generation videogames cost between USD 10 and 50 million to develop.

"You might be able to weather one title coming in at 500,000 in sales," said Pidgeon. "But two or three failures like that and even big publishers are going to be hurting."

Even so, Sony said it has been preparing for the demise of third-party exclusives for a long time.

"We understand publishers are needing to recoup their investment," said Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony.

"From our perspective, as long as the games aren't going exclusive to other platforms, PS3 gamers are not actually losing anything."

Dille told Reuters that Sony has compensated by ramping up its own game production and has 15 internal studios working on PlayStation titles, more than Microsoft and Nintendo combined.

He added that there will be 15 PS3 exclusives released between September 2007 and April 2008.

To date, only two PS3 games have sold more than 1 million copies, whereas the PlayStation 2 has had nearly 100 games sell more than a million copies during its seven year lifespan.