Greenberg reckons Reach will lap GT5
Xbox exec gets a bit fighty.
Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg reckons Halo: Reach will be king of the sales castle come the end of 2010 and has even dismissed competition from Gran Turismo 5.
"Is it launching next year?" he joked about the PS3-exclusive Polyphony Digital racer, speaking in an interview with Gamasutra.
"I've seen years and years of mini-games, but I haven't seen that the game is done. They just released the PSP version - maybe that's what they've been working on. I feel confident that there's nothing that will compare in size. Halo: Reach will be the biggest game of 2010."
While a lot of console executives refrain from directly referring to the competition, Greenberg's happy to do so. Next year, he added, Xbox 360 will "continue to remain $100 cheaper than PS3", and it will "have more games, more blockbuster exclusives, no matter the genre".
One source of Greenberg's optimism, he said, is the ongoing success of third-party games on Xbox 360 relative to other formats. Indeed, according to the latest NPD figures for US sales, Modern Warfare 2 performed substantially better on 360 than PS3 despite the simultaneous release.
However, it's Sony who appears to be lining up the stronger first quarter of 2010, with MAG, Heavy Rain, Gran Turismo 5 and God of war III all likely to hit before the end of March.
Microsoft can boast of a couple of exclusives - Splinter Cell: Conviction is only coming out on PC and Xbox 360, for example - but its earliest first-party exclusive is likely to be Alan Wake. Which we'd probably try to get out the door before we started poking fun at Gran Turismo's slippery release date, but y'know.