Sony in talks with third-party publishers for Cross Buy promotions

Sony is currently in discussion with third-party publishers to adopt the Cross Buy scheme. The service, which gifts free Vita games to player who have bought a compatible PS3 title, is not a reaction to discount trends across the gaming market, says the company.

Speaking to GI, European boss Jim Ryan claimed it is Sony's responsibility to sell the Cross Buy initiative to other developers.

"We'll obviously encourage third-parties to adopt it but ultimately whether or not a game includes Cross Buy is a publishing decision and it will be at the third parties' discretion whether or not they want to go down that route."

"We'd obviously like to encourage it, whether it's Cross Buy or cross functionality across the two devices," he added. "It's like any of these things, the platform holder has a burden of responsibility to blaze a trail and if it works out others will follow."

Cross Play initially appeared with Motorstorm RC, and has since made an appearance on a number of first-party titles. Ryan believes the scheme has a positive knock-on effect for the entire brand.

"It advances the overall PlayStation eco-system, and it can't harm because we have in excess of 20 million players and obviously they are into PlayStation and that's a pretty sensible place to start when you're looking to get people to buy in to Vita."

With this said, Ryan was quick to say Cross Buy and PS Plus discounts aren't a reaction to cut-price products across the wider gaming spectrum.

"It's definitely not a reaction to anything anybody else is doing," he said. "There are two aspects to this. These are really rather challenging economic times in the UK and Europe and it's our responsibility to sharpen the value proposition and value that we offer to our consumers as much as we possible can.

"And in the digital space PlayStation Plus is something that we've launched and taken a lot of learnings and we think we've got a great opportunity to grow big business there and really offer lots and lots of value to our consumers."