PlayStation Was "Worried" About Xbox, Which Prompted GTA Exclusivity Deals

According to PlayStation veteran Chris Deering, Sony was anxious about the original Xbox and that concern prompted the company to sign an exclusivity deal with Take-Two for Grand Theft Auto.

"We were worried when we saw Xbox coming," Deering recalled at a recent EGX event in London, as reported by GI.biz. "We knew exclusivity was the name of the game in a lot of fields."

With that concern in mind, Deering said he approached third-party publishers and developers to ask if they would be interested in taking a "special deal" for timed exclusivity for any of their upcoming games. Deering and company didn't realize GTA would become such a massive franchise, but that bet seemed to pay off, as GTA III took the series into a new direction with a 3D open-world approach.