Things are happening quickly in this industry and competition is becoming stiff. Games are becoming more expensive to develop and independent studios, big and small are looking for partners to help fund their "big” projects while retaining the Intellectual Property and at the same time reach a wider audience.

There will be a lot of surprises in the future, and many third party titles gamers thought would have remained exclusive will eventually end up going multiplatform. Think Mass Effect, Splinter Cell: Conviction and even Gears of War. Just like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid amongst others did, they too will find their way on other consoles.

THQ has just announced the creation of a new Partners Program dubbed THQ Partners, which operates the same as EA Partners: forge relationships with developers to fund and publish their products. It’s a smart move and there are yet a few developers out there who are great at what they do but would love to reach a broader audience.

Sucker Punch is one of them.

As of now, Sucker Punch has only developed games for the PlayStation brand, and this generation they’ve released one title: the critically acclaimed inFamous, exclusively for the PS3. But these guys must be thinking hard on what to do next. Of course the relationship with Sony will continue, the hardware giant usually treats its partners with respect and compensate them generously. But at the same time there are over 40 million Xbox 360s out in the wild, and on top of that publishers with deep pockets are knocking at Sucker Punch’s doors trying hard to entice the studio into a partnership.

I personally see nothing that would stop them from moving in said direction; unless Sony acquires them altogether turning the studio into a first party team. It’s not impossible, just recently Media Molecule, the creators of LittleBigPlanet were gobbled up killing all rumors of said studio going multiplatform. But as of now Sucker Punch is still independent and no one knows what’s going on behind closed doors.

No one but the studio and other parties involved. Will inFamous come to the Xbox 360? Most likely not, the game’s a Sony owned IP. But will Sucker Punch themselves embrace the Xbox 360 in the near future? If Sony does not acquire the studio quickly, the answer’s almost a sure yes.

THQ Partners, the newly formed division from the publisher will be meeting with developers at E3 to have talks. Don’t be surprised if Sucker Punch, the creators of Sly Cooper is one of them.