"Publishers are getting the living crap kicked out of them by Microsoft," said Rob Dyer, Sony's senior vice president of public relations.
Rob's comment comes as a response to the unveiling of Microsoft's Xbox publishing policies which prohibits games from being released on Xbox 360 and XBLA if they were released first on any other console or if they contain less content than that in other versions.
"Titles for Xbox 360 must ship at least simultaneously with other video game platform, and must have at least feature and content parity on-disc with the other video game platform versions in all regions where the title is available," Microsoft's Content Submission and Release Policy reads. "If these conditions are not met, Microsoft reserves the right to not allow the content to be released on Xbox 360."
European Xbox boss Chris Lewis defended his company's policy, saying that "we seek to maximize our own advantage to ensure the playing field is even, and certainly plays to our advantage wherever possible."
That last comment was what agitated Rob Dyer to say the opening statement of this article.
"I think what Chris and the other representatives at Microsoft are doing is protecting an inferior technology," he added. "I think they want to dumb it down and keep it as pedestrian as possible so that if you want to do anything for Blu-ray or you have extra content above 9 gigs or you want to do anything of that nature, you'd better sure as heck remember that Microsoft can't handle that."