If by relevance we mean something that a company did that had an effect on the industry as a whole I'd say that the 360, Live and Gears of War were the last thing that MS did that was relevant. Right now MS is aping Sony so if any company is actually relevant right now it's Sony. MS does seem to be learning faster than Sony did 7 years ago and that is good for all concerned.
How (ir)relevant/replaceable is Sony/MS/Nintendo? *spawn
- Thread starter eastmen
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Betanumerical
Veteran
It seems to me that the only company that is doing this is Nintendo, I wouldn't call what Microsoft nor Sony is doing as being something 'new'.
I don't want to get into game lists because I can all but guarantee that mine will be completely different from yours. However what I can say is that there are millions of gamers out there that never touched any of the games you mentioned above. And yet they are totally satisfied gamers. That's because to countless millions of gamers Sony doesn't matter at all, they are replaceable just like anyone else for the simple reason that there are a billion other quality games that can be played today. You can be a totally satisfied gamer and never touch anything Sony. The same thing can be said for Microsoft, I can guarantee you that there are plenty of gamers that never played Halo, Gears, etc and yet they don't care as they are totally satisfied with the myriad of other games available to play. There's no shortage of games to play today and at the same time there is no one standout developer that is "setting the standard" to such an extent that to not play their games would send one weeping in the corner. I don't see either as all that relevant to gaming in the grand scheme of things, they are just the flavor du jour who happen to get more attention because they also make the boxes that gamers currently play on. If Sony or Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, gaming would continue with others taking up the mantle.
Seriously ? Seriously bro ? More out there titles than friggen Sea Man ?
Look , Sega actually pushed the industry. They were in the console space with DD through sega channel , First in console space with the netlink and sega Saturn. That's right about 6 years before sony had a single online game , I was racing others in sega rally . With the dreamcast they were first to put a modem in each console and then built an internet provider to give us great play experiances and they had a ton of great games.
Look if sony or MS went away we'd still get an amazon or apple or Samsung.
Amazon has pushed unique hardware , they are supporting voice control with the new tv thingy.
Samsung is working with occulus on VR and their phones allways have a slew of new features built into them.
I wouldn't see a problem with any one of the current companies leaving gaming. To be perfectly frank this generation none of them really deserve any success. They put out under powered weak systems , failed to even have a general idea of how to move console gaming forward into the future or completely back tracked on those plans.
What we have now are systems that will be outclassed by an apu in another year or two that really have nothing unique about them
This isn't my list its 3 games from the past three years that were named GOTY by many different gaming journalist and websites. My point in listing these 3 games was to present facts that Sony is relevant and has been for some time unless we want to pretend that the accolades and reception to titles is meaningless. You are free to say whatever you want about any of the big 3 and that would be your opinion but as you said facts are something else an its a fact that Sony has been delivering great games year after year.
before long we'll be hearing sales discussion is irrelevant if the past year is any sort of a guide....
shredenvain
Regular
I really dont want to see any of the big 3 go under. We would all suffer greatly in my opinion. Alot of the best gaming experiences console gamers get are a result of companies trying to out do each other. If Halo never existed Sony would have never funded the Killzone series. Forza Motorsports is a direct result of Gran T. Halo probably influenced Nintendo to allow Retro to take Metroid into the fps genre.
I hated that Sega stopped making consoles, I still have and play my Dreamcast. I know alot of people are fanboys of one console or another, I happen to prefer the Xbox brand over the others but I still absolutely love Nintendo and Sony. No mater your System of Choice the death of any of the Big 3 would be bad for gaming period.
I hated that Sega stopped making consoles, I still have and play my Dreamcast. I know alot of people are fanboys of one console or another, I happen to prefer the Xbox brand over the others but I still absolutely love Nintendo and Sony. No mater your System of Choice the death of any of the Big 3 would be bad for gaming period.
specwarGP2
Regular
Sony made that game with the rubber ducks. Also Loco Roco and Patapon were pretty unique (and fun unlike seaman) games.
Sony was first with dual analogs and essentially created the modern controller layout.
I'd say more replaceable than irrelevant. It's like an old senior coder told me years ago when a company I was at lost a critical member of the team, and he said at the end of the day everyone is replaceable. He was right and we kept on truckin. It's the same with games. Sony has some good stuff out there as do others, but they are all replaceable and are not necessary to gaming as a whole.
So they sold more than any other game those years right? Nope they didn't, meaning the public at large doesn't agree with them irregardless of what some publications say. GOTY is one persons opinion which they are entitled to, but it's not etched in stone nor does it indicate that said company is critical for gaming to exist. They are just another company making games, not some messiah sent to bless us with gaming excellence only attainable by them.
I can name multiple things Nintendo could learn from Sony: Cross-buy, Cloud Saves, Instant Game Collection.
Like temesgen mentioned earlier, Sony have been the most consumer friendly platform holder for a while now. Nintendo's inability to offer virtual console titles that can be played across multiple systems and devices is borderline criminal. A cloud save feature coupled to a good unified user account should go hand in hand with that. And a PS Plus style subscription service to play legacy titles is something people have been hoping Nintendo would do for a while.
Just fyi none of those were introduced to gaming by Sony although maybe that's not what you were intending to say. I just don't want the Apple Effect (tm) to take hold where people start crediting a company for introducing new ideas even though they didn't.
Sorry but using the words "consumer friendly" together with non backward compatible consoles to be a total oxymoron.
The original Playstation controller was a SuperNES controller with an extra set of shoulder buttons and a horrible Dpad. The Dual Shock was that with a pair of analog sticks shoehorned in, in response to N64 having analog. All newer PS controllers are just tweaks to the same design really. When you really think about it, the modern controller layout is still the old SNES pad with some additions.
They brought them to the console space. They created the first subscription game collection service people actually like after numerous failures. These are things Nintendo still has not emulated despite obvious consumer interest.
That's horseshit.
Oh yeah, I forget gaming outside of consoles doesn't exist. No wonder people think Sony invented things that they really didn't.
No backward compatibility is total horseshit, it's the most consumer unfriendly practice possible.
Really? Worse than usury? Price gouging? Fraud? Selling contaminated or toxic products? It's the most consumer unfriendly thing in the world?
Backwards compatibility is not the litmus test for anything. Would consumers really have been better served by a $600 PS4? Or one that used Cell again?
You're trying way too hard to make a point here, are you really saying that unless a title outsold everything else it wasn't relevant?
Since you brought it up, what are the sales numbers for these 3 titles? I doubt you knew when you made this post. As I said you are trying to way too hard to make a point which at the end of all this isn't making any sense.
A game that is voted GOTY is fine benchmark to use to state a publisher is relevant which how we got on this whole tangent to begin with. All the hand waving won't change the fact that Sony is and continues to be relevant in the software entertainment space - no amount of personal preference can change that.
Edit:
You keep moving the goal post - the discussion was is Sony even relevant. I said they've been extremely relevant if for no other reason than the software they are making in recent years has been well received by multiple gaming journalist, blogs and websites as well as the public. You keep arguing they can be replaced which I already conceded is true.
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If Sony folded this console gen would see the loss of the benefit of competition and all the ways MS has been pushed. A new corp would have to take years and years to develop their hardware/software and establish a foothold in the industry.
Another corp would buy up MS? I could see Microsoft would probably be the 1st to outbid any competitor purchasing the Sony's gaming division, ensuring they have a monopoly and nobody like Apple or Amazon could buy it, and for them it'd be home free stretch. For competitor
Then we'd have a monopoly on our hands like in the Windows market. MS would be able to lock people into Xbox since x86 will be the future for the 2019 console. People will pay to remain with their friends on XBL and to get that backwards compatability with their large XB1 library on their XB2019.
Itd probably be 3-5 years before you start seeing a profit, maybe longer when competing against MS.
Another corp would buy up MS? I could see Microsoft would probably be the 1st to outbid any competitor purchasing the Sony's gaming division, ensuring they have a monopoly and nobody like Apple or Amazon could buy it, and for them it'd be home free stretch. For competitor
Then we'd have a monopoly on our hands like in the Windows market. MS would be able to lock people into Xbox since x86 will be the future for the 2019 console. People will pay to remain with their friends on XBL and to get that backwards compatability with their large XB1 library on their XB2019.
Itd probably be 3-5 years before you start seeing a profit, maybe longer when competing against MS.
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No, you had implied that they were setting the standard for a generation with their games. I'm saying that they are just another game developer among a sea of game developers, and their exit from the game creation business wouldn't be a big deal on the game creating industry.
We're obviously taking about the gaming world, not dumping oil into a lake.
I doubt it. If a void is created then there is always someone ready to rapidly fill it.
Maybe it's just your choice of words, but I can only gape at posts like this. If Sony exited from the game creation business today, you think the gaming world would barely bat an eyelid? It'd be HUGE! And that's just the game development. If Sony stopped their entire gaming operations, that'd be in the mainstream press and financial press as well as the gaming press.
Doesn't mean they'd be any good. The thing with Sony is they've proven they're a positive influence, both in reaching a wider audience and in investing in developers. the loss of a good teacher in a school is rarely accompanied by an equally good teacher replacing them, because good teachers are hard to find. I reckon good console companies are few and far between too, and should Sony exit, we'll get a period of super crappy machines and maybe even EA and Ubisoft boxes, fragmenting the hardware base even moreso.
Sony are replaceable - everyone's replaceable. Would anyone else be as good to the business as Sony? That's a complex debate based on a lot of speculation, but I'd say Sony overall have been very good for the industry and helped in considerable part to get it where it is now.
Is Sony irrelevant? Definitely not! Their loss would be huge, make massive shockwaves, and leave a vacuum in the console space. Sony's contributions have not yet been made small enough that if they fizzled out, barely anyone would notice. Heck, in real terms Sony are probably the single largest identity in gaming. Just as Apple is synonymous with mobile and their departure would be huge, despite being half the size of Samsung and an even smaller piece of the overall pie, Sony and PlayStation is synonymous with home gaming. They haven't struggled and faded and become a non-entity that no-one will miss.
Actually I don't know of anyone else that does a cloud backup of your local saves like ps+ does. It's not a cloud save it's copy done to the cloud. Proof me wrong.
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