Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[Shifty Geezer]

This was talked about in the 'PS1 strange resolutions' thread. Grab a copy of any game you like, halve the resolution of a copy in each direction and then rescale back to original. Half vertical res is definitely more noticeable, but it'll probably depend on the game. My guess is our environment tends to have thinner objects more horizontally aligned than vertically, such as thin window lintels versus thicker frames, or thin power/phone cables versus thicker posts supporting them, and our perspective to the ground makes many thin shapes out towards the horizon. But as it's so easy to test oneself, the only research needed is one's own.

 

[Arwin]

In other news, PS4 streaming now 10% of all Twitch streaming:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...counts-for-10-percent-of-all-twitch-streaming

 

[patsu]

How do people make money on Twitch ? Advertising when watching their live gameplay ?

 

[Arwin]

Yes, you get ads before the stream starts.

 

[Shortbread]

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2013/12/13/ps4-launches-in-15-more-countries-brings-total-to-48/

The PS4 community just got a little bigger as Sony’s new console has launched in 15 more countries. As of today, the PS4 has become available in the Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, South Africa, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The addition of these countries brings the PS4′s total availability to 48 countries.

If Sony by 2014 year-end has a 4:1 ratio over MS in worldwide sales, which seems plausible when factoring in the Japan domination card and possibly controlling the mindshare of the EU sales. MS will be in a bad situation... a very bad situation. Even if MS somehow gets the larger share of US sales by 2014 year-end, it still doesn't represent any growth around the world.

My strongest belief is that MS needs "stronger" 1st party / internal development teams. As of now, they can't really compete against Sony or even Nintendo's internal house wares. What made the XB360 such a strong contender last generation was that every 3rd party developer supported them, XB360 hardware wasn't alien to them, had a year start, and great services along the way. The only thing that kept PS3 afloat was its internal wares... PS3 would have been a complete disaster if it weren't for their strong internal development houses.

This time around its quite different. Both systems will have equal 3rd party support (right out the gate), launching in the same month - but at different price points. The key factor that I see this generation is "internal wares" followed by services (the better experience of those services). As it stands now, IMHO, MS falls very short in the internal wares department... solely relying on exclusives, which Sony can mimmic as well. Hopefully MS will get Kinect 2 working optimally for the average joe (hate that phrase by the way) to use, and the games on supporting it. But most importantly, allocating the needed resources on finding the right people/teams for its own development house(s). Only time will tell...

 

[BRiT]

My strongest belief is that MS needs "stronger" 1st party / internal development teams. As of now, they can't really compete against Sony or even Nintendo's internal house wares.

And what exactly are the stronger first party internal teams that Sony has? I'm told the entire Killzone series was never, is not, and never will be a system seller. So what's left from Sony?

Nintendo's first party internal teams are laughable for their OS/Core experience as it's a farce. The only thing they have going is the IP for the games, but even with that they're not selling systems and have the lowest attach rate ever.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And what exactly are the stronger first party internal teams that Sony has? I'm told the entire Killzone series was never, is not, and never will be a system seller. So what's left from Sony?

Naughty Dog, Team ICO, SCE Santa Monica, Polyphony Digital, San Diego, Japan Studio, Bend Studio, Sucker Punch, Evolution Studios, Media Molecule, Project Siren, London Studio. No doubt I've missed a bunch and the ones in bold are those where I don't believe the next project has been announced, not that they are all necessarily going to produce a PS4 title.

 

[BRiT]

Do any of them make or produce system sellers?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Do any of them make or produce system sellers?

How do you define system seller, is there an accepted metric?

 

[djskribbles]

Do any of them make or produce system sellers?

Polyphony Digital, Sony Santa Monica and Naughty Dog do IMO. If The Last Guardian is a PS4 title (most likely) and is reviewed well, then I think that will be a system seller too. A select few even buy PS just for MLB The Show (Sony San Diego) because it's by far the best baseball game out there. So it depends how you define system seller.

The rest of Sony's teams don't produce what I would consider system sellers, but It's not really just about a select few... Sony WWS as a whole is a system seller. They have ~20 teams and almost all of them have produced quality titles covering a wide variety of genres, which is why Sony doesn't put much effort into securing third-party exclusives like MS does.

 

[ERP]

And what exactly are the stronger first party internal teams that Sony has? I'm told the entire Killzone series was never, is not, and never will be a system seller. So what's left from Sony?

Nintendo's first party internal teams are laughable for their OS/Core experience as it's a farce. The only thing they have going is the IP for the games, but even with that they're not selling systems and have the lowest attach rate ever.

Polyphony is by far the largest Sony first party. So large that the last set of figures I saw broke them out as a separate region so they didn't swamp the other 1st party Japanese software.
I think Naughty Dog is 2 followed by Santa Monica, San Diego is also in there somewhere with baseball.

 

[Shortbread]

Do any of them make or produce system sellers?

I'm more concerned on what keeps them (systems) afloat during the long term. What keeps me coming back to the Playstation brand is knowing that most of the studios that DSoup noted, did or does produce quality software. Now that both systems have parity - parity in the sense of being equal, in what they provide outside of their internal development houses. Sure many can argue Live is better the PSN, or vise versa... but at the end of the day, they both allow you to do the needed online actives (game/music/movie/apps/streaming/ect...). As for 1st party stuff, equal as well, with a few minor differences in graphic IQ and performance, but nothing unplayable.

So in my opinion, this time around internal development wares will be the "major" deciding factor on worldwide sales. Sure, reducing price will push a few thousands units on both sides, but that doesn't guarantee success on a global scale without the proper software. It was only then PS3 started seeing certain success when it's own development teams started showing the goods.

Let me ask you this. Would the PS3 be remotely successful in sales, if it didn't have its 1st party / internal teams providing software?

 

[Strange]

It's that plus the fact that in the past two years a lot of Japanese studios pretty much only had PS3/Vita to go to to penetrate into the console market. 3DS is big but is hardware limited, Wii was also hardware limited, and the WiiU never remotely hit critical mass. I don't have to explain Xbox 360/One I suppose.

Think of the Alchemist series, SRW series, Falcom titles, Persona titles, Tales of titles. They're all on PS3 now and given some Japanese developer comments they are really excited to move over to PS4 given the relative ease in porting stuff for PS4.
Many people ignore these games but interestingly these games do have a decent size market in NA/EU. Not great, but sizable.

Of course these studios aren't first party developers but for the console market, they pretty much act like first party.
You're not expecting to see many games for the WiiU, let alone Xbox One given how much Microsoft is betting on them having success in Japan now.

 

[DrJay24]

And what exactly are the stronger first party internal teams that Sony has? I'm told the entire Killzone series was never, is not, and never will be a system seller. So what's left from Sony?
.

Well your complete disconnect about anything not MS is showing. This information is readily available via Google, or ...Bing.

Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch and Polyphony Digital to get you started.

 

[Inuhanyou]

The amount of support Sony gets in Japan is directly proportional to how PS4 does in that region. Majority of non multiplatform devs won't bother making games for XB1, hence many more japanese exclusives by definition. This is why GGXrd, Idolmaster and a few others right out of the gate are exclusive. Tales is coming next. Which i cant wait for btw. And if JapanStudio can get its act together, it can be the premier Japanese studio for in house things. Maybe an Arc the lad reboot?

And in the west, we have Santa Monica(which is my favorite in house Sony dev), Naughty Dog(second best, loved Jak), we have Media Molecule, Polyphony as well as several other strong houses.

I don't understand the thought that Sony doesn't have any strong in house devs. Maybe the people who say that have never played a PS game before?

 

[BoardBonobo]

Guerilla are also working on a new IP. It will be interesting to see if they stick with FPS. Something by Guerilla thats not weighted down by the Vekta\Helghan canon. I think the have the developer chops to create a system seller. If they could just tie down the narrative content they would be up there with ND et al.

Sony definitely have the strongest internal dev roster with the most consistent output that covers the diversity of a worldwide market.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I'd say Guerilla needs a storyboard writer if they are going to make a new IP. The gameplay has always been solid and the graphics amazing, but the stories of the KZ series have been terrible drek from the outset, along with the script writing.

In KZ2 everyone talked like a terrible Brodude parody, and it sounded like European script writers trying to emulate what they hear in US military games, which actually came out worse than those games they were based on. Rico was the worst offender.

Like Naughty Dog, a new IP could do them well. Of course they still won't have Neil Druckmann

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If Sony by 2014 year-end has a 4:1 ratio over MS in worldwide sales, which seems plausible when factoring in the Japan domination card...

Possible, maybe. Plausible? There's nothing about the current sales to suggest that. A 4:1 ratio would need either massive more production capacity from Sony, or a drop in interest in X1. Everything else you go on to talk about is predicated on this early, unrealistic extraction, so doesn't merit discussion IMO.

And what exactly are the stronger first party internal teams that Sony has? I'm told the entire Killzone series was never, is not, and never will be a system seller. So what's left from Sony?

The common misconception with system sellers is that it needs to be a single game that sells to everyone. In reality it's a game that sells the system to one new owner, and that can be anything from GTA to KZ to LBP to SingStar to whatever. It's Sony's diversity of first parties that attracts sales. A platform without exclusives cannot differentiate itself from the competition regards what gamers can do with it, so can only compete on services and price.

Edit: Couple of examples - it was LBP that was the title to get me to pony up for a PS3, and a friend is waiting until something Uncharted-like from ND appears on PS4 before he'll consider getting one. There's presently nothing on any console that's attracting me, but I recognise a possibility of MM doing something fabulous I'd want to buy into, based on their very limited tech demo.

 

[temesgen]

reposted from other thread - first party studio discussion comment

Sony first parties offer a lot of diversity in entertainment which in part is what many people appreciate about the company. Individually many of the titles are not system sellers but in aggregate you get gaming experiences which you won't find anywhere else and that does move hardware.

And as someone said in the other day the term system seller is thrown around way too much and applied to IPs which really probably don't deserve the association.

Granted Sony isn't Nintendo with Mario but again IPs like God of War, Infamous, Uncharted, Grand Turismo, LBP, Puppeteer, The Show, Motorstorm, Killzone, Singstar, War Hawk and so on all show the dedication to offering experiences which appeal to a wider segment of the gaming public which again individually might not move millions of units but in aggregate impacts hardware sales. The variety on the platform is something many appreciate and support.

Third parties do a fantastic job of covering the basics and combined with the additional variety offered by Sony first parties most consumers should be quite happy.

I decided at the start of this generation to break tradition and only own one platform versus all 3 as I have done since PS1, N64 and Saturn and I chose the PS4 in large measure due to the fact that almost all of what I would buy will be available on the platform.

MS focuses on timed exclusivity and DLC head starts and there is nothing wrong with that and yes there a couple IPs I will miss out on but to be fair some like Fable and Gears really have lost their charm over the years. Titanfall looks to be a step in the right direction but with titles like Destiny on the way I'll manage.

I would also add that Sony habitually releases titles every year that cover the bases whereas while MS has shown the ability to invest in a genre like RPGs we saw very little from them once it was clear that subsidizing development wasn't going to move units like Halo historically has or help them gain a foothold in Japan. Perhaps its speculation but it appears that Sony is a little more faithful in that regard where as MS seems to get caught up with initiatives like Kinect games and other offerings suffer - all of which should matter to gaming enthusiast.

 

[joker454]

Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch and Polyphony Digital to get you started.

Generally speaking if a game is included in a bundle pack like the ps3 Uncharted bundle complete with customized box, then I'd say it's likely a system seller.