Earlier this month Sony claimed that Microsoft is "kicking the living crap out of publishers" and that it has better relations with publishers and developers than Microsoft. An ex-Vivendi whistleblower called Sony on those claims which he described as "laughable."
"I'd say any comment by Sony that they have better developer relations or fewer insane hurdles is laughable," he said. "The TRC/TCRs [technical requirements checklist/technical certification requirements] for the PS2 and PS3 were so much worse than anything needed for the Xbox 360 -- the cases themselves were written confusingly, but the real clincher was that they weren't even consistent between SoJ, SoE, and SoA."
"You could fail a lot check because of a space (or lack of a space) between the text 'PlayStation 2 Memory Card' and the text '(8 MB)'. SoE and SoA had different requirements (one mandated that there be a space, one mandated that there be no space), and each of them had to be perfect."
The whistleblower noted that the PlayStation development kits are pricier than those of the Xbox 360 and are much more difficult for developers to learn and to use. A lot of developers have made the same complaints about the development kits during the console's first 2 or 3 years in market. We haven't heard those complaints for a while now, but we are not sure if this was caused by the kits being enhanced or by the developers getting accustomed to them.
"Again, things may have changed," the ex-Vivendi developer concluded. "But it still seems pretty funny to me that they could possibly try to call themselves always the better chance for small developers to get in, or some sort of indy safe-haven."
