Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
Its not the graphics. Full games are a different endeavor. Don't think so? How willing are u to pay $60 for any of the indie titles listed on either console. I like to parse out what is what. Take away the full games and I doubt any of us would put down $400-$900 on these consoles.
If u are not parsing out indies which tend to be more diverse and cover more genre than u know nothing about the diversity of the meat and potatoes of consoles. Placing all titles into one bucket is not painting a full picture just a superficial one.
Would u hold the same opinion if someone produced the same infographic including the iPad and its library against consoles?
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Bagel seed
Veteran
Launch window should be about 6 months? For me it was Resistance, Motorstorm, Lemmings, Fl0w, GTHD (and GoW2). But the first real game I enjoyed and sunk a bunch of time into was NG Sigma.
PS4 launch will be much better. Decent multiplats (though will probably skip aside from maybe Watch Dogs), KZ for the multiplayer, Driveclub for racing eye candy and a ton of smaller PSN/indie titles. Of course this is all just to keep us busy before Infamous in Feb
PS4 launch will be much better. Decent multiplats (though will probably skip aside from maybe Watch Dogs), KZ for the multiplayer, Driveclub for racing eye candy and a ton of smaller PSN/indie titles. Of course this is all just to keep us busy before Infamous in Feb
D
Deleted member 11852
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Motorstorm remains one of my all time favourite games of this generation and it got my through those early weeks. I still play it on occasion and I am deeply disappointed that Evolution went in a different direction for PS4. I tried the PSN Resistance demo but didn't take to it, it hooked me nine months later though. I should have persevered with it in the early weeks.
If it was comparing the iPad at launch, sure. Or even iPad versus consoles, as long as the breakdown of titles is clear then I wouldn't exclude the non-indie stuff. These graphics are only for at-a-glance comparison and aren't intended as consumer reference materials. For a real understanding of what each console has to offer, one needs to go look up all the titles. There'll be people out there crazy for Octodad, for example, and they shouldn't be excluded from the infographic as it was portrayed, but netiher would the infographic tell them that there exists Octodad and they should check it out.
I've sunk hundreds of hours into smaller/indie titles too. I love them. And I have a host of devices that serve those type of titles. I just put down Halo: Spartan Assault (which I find way more enjoyable then any console version of Halo) to reply to Shifty's comment.
But the core experience of consoles are full titled games. Lumping indie/small titles with full titles only serve the purpose of muddying the waters. I rolled my eyes every time someone told me the 360 had more games than the PS3 and used figures that included XBL Arcade titles. And I rolled my eyes when I look at this infographic because it does little to highlight any useful info about the core experience of either console.
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Summer 2007 had so few good games that I bought Lair despite having read the reviews A few weeks later we got both Ratchet and Uncharted, that was a superb recovery just in time for xmas.
I know they don't have any control over third party releases, but I hope they will align their first party releases and production schedules to have a steady flow.
A few weeks later we got both Ratchet and Uncharted, that was a superb recovery just in time for xmas.I know they don't have any control over third party releases, but I hope they will align their first party releases and production schedules to have a steady flow.
Yeah, this is an at-a-glance comparison. But the at-a-glance comparison would be dramatically improved if you simply parsed out indie/smaller titles from core titles. If these were indie titles that any of us would readily pluck $60 down to purchase, I would see no problem. I don't see any use of infographic that practically treats KZ and an ad sponsored game of tic tac toe as the same.
Its practically not a big deal. But I sighed when the first thing I did was go "ohh" when looking at the genres to see how diverse the offerings will be on both consoles and then realized I couldn't determine whether I was looking at 8 PS4 RPGs with 60 hours of gameplay and graphics that a $10-20 million dollar budget will buy you. Or eight 99 cent PS4 RPGs that would provide a similar experience that I can get on my smartphone.
Okay, you're complaint is in the second half when it summarises game types, and treats all games as equal. You sort of have a point, although the quality of a game can't be guaranteed by how much was spent on it or what publisher backed it. There are plenty of proper disc titles that are utter crap. What if PS4's lineup was filled with hundreds of disc games like Fast and the Furious: Showdown and Kung Fu Panda 2 (taking this from the list of lowest rated games on PS3 at Metacritic)? All those games would be meaningless because there wouldn't be be a single one worth buying.
As an at-a-glance reference for the quality of titles, I'm not sure it's fair to rate disc based games above indies.
As an at-a-glance reference for the quality of titles, I'm not sure it's fair to rate disc based games above indies.
It really comes down to the cost in production to realize the potential of a gameplay concept. Chess, Poker, Bridge all are great games and don't require lots of investment in development to create great games. Unfortunately of fortunately those games don't belong to any specific company so anyone can make a new version for little cost and as a result the marketplace is flooded with many titles in those genres.
RPGs & FPS generally require more investment to reach the potential that the creator envisioned but that doesn't mean higher production cost = better games. It means when there is less creativity typically there will be more production cost to make games that consumer will pay money for.
Developers generally start with make a decision; do I focus on a creative new experience/concept or do I want to enter into well established genres and raise the bar with production values. Of course the designer has to get someone to fund the project as well and investment much more likely to want to fund less risky more predictable projects where the success or failure is easier to gauge.
Whilst I know what you mean...
- Minecraft is an indie title.
- Below is a 3rd party MS title, and so "not an indie".
- AFAIR half life 3/dota2/portal 3 would technically be indie titles.
"indie" in 2013 isn't very meaningful... whilst a 'tier 1/tier 2' system would be rather arbitrary.
When I think indie, I think small titles. I know there is a difference but the lines are becoming so blurred as Minecraft was published by MS Studios on the 360/XB1 and you see small companies like Zynga turn into full blown publishers.
To me its not a question of quality but of expectation. I feel like core titles should be segregated out from small indie titles because the expectations are different. I expect core titles to somewhat fully exploit the hardware. For smaller/indie title I have no expectation for it to stress a console. In fact I readily pay for a small/indie title if its fun even if it looks like it was released on the Atari 2600 be on PC, XB1, PS4, ipad or smartphone.
So its hard for me to see any usefulness of an infographic about next gen consoles that does nothing to parse out the games that can be expected to push the hardware.
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I can go with that. It'd be better to identify download only and disc games as separate entities for the reasons you've described. That's the distinction I'd draw though - not Indie and non-Indie.
I agree. I see that my use of "indie" is not really applicable.
1. Your expectations may not match other people's expectations. There are those who may want a healthy amount of both, and are willing to pay to get all those kinds of experiences on one console. Your iPad can play Angry Birds, but can it play Angry Birds and the next graphically intense AAA title? Will that iPad audience pay 10 to 60 bucks for good games?
2. If anyone has some common sense, they'll be able to make the distinction between the bigger and smaller games regardless. Why they want those games will depend on how good they are, how well-marketed, and if they're reasonably priced.
3. Launch titles is just the beginning, so meticulously counting and splitting up major titles between smaller ones doesn't matter much. It's all about delivering good games that satisfies the consumer until some other great games come along year-after-year.
If you think the XB1 exclusive launch line-up is better then fine, you're definitely not alone in that opinion. Some may pick it up for that very same reason and Kinect. But others will disagree, and those that don't still might buy a PS4 because it's cheaper and offers almost the same amount of games.
If those games don't come out until towards the end of next year, would they really show them now before launch?
That might make people think, hmm, the launch titles pale in comparison to these games coming a year after launch, so why buy at launch?
It builds interest in the platform whether they are available immediately or not. People not interested at all in launch titles might wait, but how does not showing them help at all? There isn't really an upside to not showing them unless they look bad.
And that's apart of the whole balancing act that comes with the territory. You want to show or announce enough games that'll appear within that launch window, but you want to save other announcements for later so those new upcoming games are still fresh in people's minds.
Then there's also the fact that what some developers are working on may not be ready for previews/demo'ing right now (See 'The Order 1886'). Some of those great and huge exclusive AAA titles may not even ready until the later half of 2014 or early 2015.
