Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
At the risk of being accused of picking on you (I’m not, your comment basically encompasses much of the criticism that is directed at Sony as a company).
Reading through your post a couple times leaves me with a couple questions concerning your various points:
It seems you don't trust Sony because (paraphrasing in bold below)
1)With the PS1 they bought exclusives to get into the industry
This is something both Nintendo and MS have also done so I don’t understand why you’re singling out Sony for criticism here… Did they do it worse or more? What’s the rub?
2)With PS2 the device didn't have much software in the first year and was primarily a DVD player
a) PS2's software library dwarfs pretty much all other platforms in terms of content and depth, the delays likely had as much to do with developers getting familiar with the hardware and little to do with the format – not to mention that all 3 platforms used some version of DVD tech at that time…
b) Isn't the XB1 being praised for going beyond gaming and offering additional services? So why is it a problem when Sony does it? Especially when the very console you are singling out had such a large and diverse library (see earlier point)
3)PS3 was delayed by a year and released with poor specs
I think this is debatable on several levels. The PS3 came with state of the art home theater quality Blu Ray player and HDMI standard among other things, many of the hardware reviews at that time praised it for its quality and overall design. Further what proof is there that Sony wanted to launch earlier?
4)Sony set the precedence for releasing unwanted features
I am assuming you are referring the fact that PS2 and PS3 included new media formats. The part that is confusing is many gamers don't want fantasy football, don't care about voice command channel changing and so on but in this instance you go on to say MS is innovating and Sony is releasing a system which will do business the old way by presumably because it focuses gaming and not including all these other features.
I guess what I am confused by is if you don't like Sony because they bought off publishers and added in features to their consoles (PS2 and PS3) that raised the cost why does MS’s business approach appeal to you? Why aren’t Sony’s decisions with the PS2 and PS3 examples of innovation? It’s probably fair to say you don’t like the direction but certainly it can be characterized in the similar ways. Microsoft has bought exclusives; they are forcing new innovation on you not only with Kinect but also with the some of the OS features. So what’s different here? Is it because you think they are better at execution of the business plan? Is it because the other services tie into the way you use your phone, tablet and computer?
Furthermore if you are saying that Sony is arrogant and forced consumers to adapt in ways that anti-consumer it appears that they have learned some lessons from the previous generation. I think a good argument could be made that Sony has realized (right now anyway) that they need to focus on the core reason why someone buys a console in the first place (games) and has made the decision to invest in hardware in a way that they feel maximizes the performance at a price point consumers will be able to accept. In other words I don't think Sony is the same company they were in 1995 or 2000 or 2007 - whereas if your criticism is to be taken as response to some of these decisions MS who you seem to like resembles much of what you don't like in Sony....
Again this post isn’t an attack, I’m asking questions and I hope there can be civilized conversation about this stuff which is why I bring it up to begin with.
I am wondering if there's a big market for shorter (and cheaper) core games.
Some games are short but I keep replaying them.
If someone came up with a good way to serialize AAA games they could be on to something.
@ERP: or you could make the cost of publishing a game extremely low. In these times of iOS and Google Play stores, that is a real possibility. XBLIG and Paystation Mobile are examples ofvsuch, but there could be somethg inbetween. A patch to a title should be made much cheaper.
Do they really?
Do games which feature the voice acting or even the mo caps of famous stars sell better?
They showed a demo of the game featuring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. How much of the budget is going to these actors? Do their faces and voices make games sell better?
And I don't need fancy movie-quality cut scenes in games.
And what about COD which use famous actors in their commercials?
Who is really demanding all these expenditures?
And if they can't sustain it with $60 games which gross them hundreds of millions, then there is no market for those high budget games.
The cost of publishing compared to game development on even a B title is basically insignificant, outside of inventory cost if there is physical media. The patch issue is over blown, MS give you 1 free patch I believe Sony give you 2 after that you pay to patch, patching isn't free for either MS or Sony so they'd rather people weren't shipping games with the intent of patching (which does happen).
The problem with the app store model is it's even more hit driven than the AAA games market. For every angry birds there are 10000 other titles that don't make money, it's just that the losses are smaller.
In the IOS App store It's all about getting featured so people will find your app. It's the reason people are willing to pay companies a lot of money to game the system, so they can get ranked or featured.Your only other option is investing heavily ion advertising.
You really need a way to eliminate the utter crap and a way to identify good games in the market place that can't easily be manipulated by the game producers. I'm not sure such a mechanism really exists.
But even with all other factors the same, cutting out both publisher and retailer will reduce costs quite significantly. Kickstarter and/or dev reputation based investment funding will fund the game development. Customers can give quick feedback on bugs and such, either behind a beta wall or straight up.
Not saying this is the best solution for everything, but let this be the basis and then publishers and retailers can try to prove their additive value against that background.
I never said it was easy to do.
You have to have some sort of review process by people not directly involved with the project. Clearly they can't be just anyone, and they can't be your average executive, they have to have the vision to see what the game can be and be dispassionate enough to kill it if it's not working out. You also have to go beyond just pretty renders.
Polling people not on the team would probably give you a pretty good picture.
Of course the danger here is you make it impossible to be innovative because of the review process. The story goes that EA didn't get the Sims and tried to kill it multiple times during development, and it was only saved because one exec stood up for it.
See that's the conundrum this biz has because there's no real way to know if a game is good or bad at the early stages, nor can one know if a bad game will sell well or if a good game will sell bad, or if a bad game will eventually lead to a great game. For example should they have cancelled Grand Theft Auto while they were making part 2? Was Resistance 2 a bad game or good game? How about Crackdown 2? We could probably fire off lists of games here and ask people if they were good or bad, and get polar opposite opinions, or get opinions that don't match games sales at all. Some will insist that game 'X' is amazing even though it lost money, and likewise I'm sure others would insist that game 'Y' is awful yet it went on to be profitable. I just don't think there is any way to know if a game will resonate well with customers until you put it out there and see what happens.
While I agree with the sentiment, I have a couple of comments.
The first is, I've seen way too many games start with 20-50 person teams and continue to be funded because of the existing investment long past the point of it being clear that they are not good titles. Hell in most of those cases you could probably just ask the people on the team and they'd tell you.
To be successful you can't do that.
And to be fair I've done this myself, I've let projects run long past the point it was clear they would be at best mediocre holding out hope they would some how get pulled together.
The second point is if it's impossible to predict what will sell how do some developers continue to put out hits?
My argument is that in general quality sells, yes you will have a few great games that fail in the market place, but if everything you ship has a a high level of quality you have a much better chance of success.
Now unfortunately I believe delivering quality is more about the people involved than anything else, having the right core group of people, and infrastructure that lets them complete what they set out to build.
I think Sony has been largely successful with 1st party development because they allow the already successful teams they acquire retain their identity and culture.
If your EA and you have 50 people you think are worth retaining sitting around because you just shipped something, and have nothing for them to roll on to, split them up have them start 5-10 titles, have them compete. Don't randomly nominate a designer and spend 50 peoples time for 6 months discovering the great looking paper design actually doesn't work, then try and figure out how to fix it on the fly.
I think big marketing budgets do create best-sellers.
So the Assasin's Creed series, which apparently sells well enough to put out sequels after sequels, was built on big marketing budget.
They had a photogenic marketer hitting all the media sites and then on the eve of the release of the first game, they had practical infomercials on the game.
It's a risk, because games could flop despite a huge marketing budget. Maybe that budget includes paying for good reviews. Supposedly high metacritic scores correlate well with sales, not to mention the bonuses and compensation given to the development teams.
So the Assasin's Creed series, which apparently sells well enough to put out sequels after sequels, was built on big marketing budget.
They had a photogenic marketer hitting all the media sites and then on the eve of the release of the first game, they had practical infomercials on the game.
It's a risk, because games could flop despite a huge marketing budget. Maybe that budget includes paying for good reviews. Supposedly high metacritic scores correlate well with sales, not to mention the bonuses and compensation given to the development teams.
I agree the story is interesting the graphics were good but the gameplay was very superficial. Never understood the hype for this game after I actually played it.
I don't understand his premise. It's a generalization to claim the market expects the visual fidelity and feature set of games like Gears of War. If Assassins Creed was the most profitable game of all time, then perhaps I would understand the need to have contractual obligations with thousands and an annual release schedule. However, there are games that outperform Assassins Creed's entire body of work both critically and commercially with ease, so I don't see the point in pushing yourself towards insolvency. Wish them best in fulfilling the expectations and demands of that market. And I hope they figure out a way to recoup their investment.
While developing anything including games don't not try and determine what a hit will be up front, but develop in a way that allows for you to easily throw out bad ideas even half way in without killing the entire project. I get the sense when playing some games that there are aspects left in simply because the developers got so far in before they realized something wasn't working but were so committed that they couldn't back out.
Develop ideas or features in modular way so you can plug them in or out and have options.
Develop ideas or features in modular way so you can plug them in or out and have options.
1) It didn't exist before sony came in with the playstation. They bought their way into the console market much like ms is accused of doing.
2)The playstation 2 didn't have many games at all for the first year or so of its life. The xbox one already had a better stable of launch games than the ps2 had its first year.
And remember i'm not the one who is complaining about a system going above and beyond gaming. I'm reminding that sony did that long before
3) once again , that doesn't matter , I was referring to the fact that people are upset that the xbox one supports so many non gaming features and is pushing them forward. My point is to remind people that beloved mother sony did the same thing for the last 2 generations of games. With the ps3 not only did they push non gaming movie viewing they did it at the expense of launch a year later and $100-$300 more than the xbox 360.
The xbox one is launching at the same time (maybe a month later or a month early or even just days apart) and is only priced $100 more
4) I'm talking about ms innovating with drm . They are just following the logical conclusion for consoles in regards to its media functions . Something sony long ago started but are unable to finish
While sony was pushing new media formats (a thing ms isn't doing ) MS was actually innovating with online . The past 2 generations MS has been far ahead of sony in that regard.
now we are at a point where the added systems to the xbox one innovate gaming again . That's why I like the xbox one . Because it makes playing games easier to accomplish than the xbox 360 or ps4.
The issue is MS's DRM innovation solve the wrong problem. It hits the innocent people as well as the folks who resell games. What's more, the latter group of people are not breaking any law in the first place. It might have been different if MS says game price will drop to $40 for everyone, but no one made that promise. So why give up existing rights ?
They will also think that if Microsoft is allowed to do this unchecked, it will execute even more outrageous move later.
The MS executives themselves didn't seem to know what's happening, and how to explain their mess when confronted earlier. This caused even more rage amongst their fans.
They will also think that if Microsoft is allowed to do this unchecked, it will execute even more outrageous move later.
The MS executives themselves didn't seem to know what's happening, and how to explain their mess when confronted earlier. This caused even more rage amongst their fans.
Steam games are still $60 at launch. Also, even with the really great Steam summer sales model, Steam doesn't go around telling you "Don't buy this $60 now, wait until its really cheap in a sale later!" They aren't idiots.
And Microsoft doesn't set the floor or ceiling of its games, publishers do.
Yes, Messenger is integrated with Xbox, but it's like the bastard step-child. LOL I tried it a couple of times & it wasn't that great. Plus, I only had maybe 2 friends that Messenger accounts. I have tried it in years. Integration with laptops is already there, but it mainly requires staying logged into Xbox.com or using a 3rd party tool. I don't use Windows anymore on my laptop. I use a Ubuntu-based OS instead. To keep in contact with my Live account I installed a custom 3rd party Chrome browser plug-in that shows me how many friends I have & any messages I have waiting. So there are alternatives for supporting your Xbox account on your laptop. It's just not nicely done if you don't run the latest Windows OS.
Tommy McClain
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