It wasn’t cheap for Microsoft to carve out space in the gaming industry in the 2000s. Peter Moore, an Xbox executive from 2003-07, recently explained that the company spent millions of dollars just to get third-party games day and date with Sony’s systems on Xbox and Xbox 360.
Appearing on the Iron Lords Podcast (spotted by Peter Ovo on Twitter), Moore brought up the challenges going against Sony after the success of the original PlayStation. Basically, it wasn’t easy to get games on Xbox initially. “You’re writing really big checks at this point to get content,” he said. “You don’t have an install base you can point to. You have forecasts, if anyone’s going to believe them.”
That meant, according to Moore, spending $5 million to $20 million to sometimes just get day and date parity with PS2 third-party games. He said developers and publishers in the 2000s were very much in “Sony’s pocket” following the aftermath of the Sega DreamCast and original PlayStation.