Well my line of thinking is that it's for people who think "I don't want to pull out a giant phone for something simple." HTC has released/is releasing a device that's almost like a mini-phone as an accessory to one of their big phones. Same sort of concept. I'm just talking about purely about advertising both of them together though. Product synergy and whatnot. Some exec probably got off on that.
Oh you mean that company that doesn't make games exclusively for Sony anymore and was never owned by Sony? I just don't see the need for something that's usually temporary.
So they're technically a third party studio. Also wow they only have 85 employees. That's a lot of money made per employee. Not as high as Valve level but that's probably second best.
What's the fun in that?
My beef with the term is that a studio can be both second and third party under the definition based on the game. They're always third party. They're always separate from the publisher. They just happen to be making an exclusive.