Billy Idol
Legend
I really hope that ms drops this clause. It is anti consumer through and through and could be reason for game delays...something that is against all gamers.
Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
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shredenvain
Regular
The parity clause you guys keep discussing doesnt have anything to do with graphical parity.
It is about release date and content. I too think it should be dropped and I think Ms is begining to understand that. They have made a few exceptions recently. As far as I understand it is aimed only at digital only titles. If I am wrong about any of this please let me know. I just noticed a few posters making references to the "esram problem" and 900p when everything I have ever read on the subject clearly refers to time of release and content.
It is about release date and content. I too think it should be dropped and I think Ms is begining to understand that. They have made a few exceptions recently. As far as I understand it is aimed only at digital only titles. If I am wrong about any of this please let me know. I just noticed a few posters making references to the "esram problem" and 900p when everything I have ever read on the subject clearly refers to time of release and content.
They are linked; developers need time to work around hardware limitations; it's not simply a case of dropping resolution and calling it a day. If the SDK is more difficult, then that is a problem as well.
And the bigger indie titles doesn't care about the stupid policy because Microsoft needs those titles.
This is clear cut case, Microsoft is losing games and in an natural extension their buyers and supporters are getting the middle finger thanks to what I would call borderline anti competitive behavior.
There isn't a solid business case for anyone to jump into bed with Microsoft, actually doing so would only encourage Microsoft to come up with something more stupid. I am certain that Microsoft will do another 180 on this because it's something they lose money on, not because it's wrong if course.
When I get mine I can safely say that Microsoft made another choice for me, don't buy the indie games on that platform.. But let's see if they actually care about selling their one in Denmark..
Its not anti consumer. There is nothing pro consumer about the XB1 being flooded with PS4 hand me downs that aren't feature complete.
The XB OG experienced less than stellar porting from the PS2. MS implemented clauses to avoid that situation on both the 360 and XB1.
MS has shown it will make exception for successful PS4 or PC titles. But MS doesn't want to get into the prospect of providing free dev kits, tools, engine, marketing and submission cost, only to have those investments met with lackluster attempts at XB1 porting.
MS gives 1st class access to the XB1 in return for 1st class support. MS is essentially acting as a pub in the case of ID@Xbox. And as with any pub, their support is going to come with conditions.
You need more money to make bigger indie titles. It's a business so most of the indie devs want to be on all platforms even someone like "Jonathan Blow" who made bold statements against Microsoft. So it would be a lose-lose condition not win(devs)-lose(MS) if they choose to not release their games on XB1.
There isn't a solid business case for anyone to jump into bed with Microsoft, actually doing so would only encourage Microsoft to come up with something more stupid. I am certain that Microsoft will do another 180 on this because it's something they lose money on, not because it's wrong if course.
When I get mine I can safely say that Microsoft made another choice for me, don't buy the indie games on that platform.. But let's see if they actually care about selling their one in Denmark..
If you think they will do more stupid things in future with their money, you shouldn't buy their products or support them at all (XB1 or any other software on it, not only some indie titles).
Microsoft will take those titles and ignore their own policy because they need those games, yeah it's a win win but it´s also Microsoft bending their rules as they see fit.
Haha, why? And miss all the fun stuff on the XBOX ONE, Microsoft back tracked on the stupid DRM and even did a 180 on their LIVE paygate (that one mattered less to be honest). So there is absolutely nothing holding me from buying one (except Microsoft themselves). But the prime platforms for anything Multiplatform and or indie will of course be where the best experience is going to be, the PS4 or the PC, the XBOX ONE is purely for the Kinect 2 and whatever extreme exclusives Microsoft buys.
Do you have any examples on indie titles doing this? And how can Microsoft not live with indie titles being lesser ports when they accept AAA titles being below the PS4 versions? It´s the AAA titles that shows their poor choices, indie titles hardly pull headlines like that. And i am pretty sure that piss poor indie ports would sell bad anyway.
Its the nature of the beast. You only have to look at the Kickstarter and see evidence of indies devs underestimating the cost of producing a quality product.
Im not talking about small visual or framerate discrepancy or even DLC content. I'm talking wholesale differences that you don't readily see on consoles because of vetting that AAA games have to go through already. Remove that vetting process from devs that don't have the resources of big pubs, and you more likely to see some indie engage in practices that pubs would never consider.
Or maybe those indie developers who signed a timed exclusive contract with Sony to bypass this policy needed (I prefer to say "interested") to be on XB1?
http://www.vg247.com/2014/03/10/idx...ussed-on-a-case-by-case-basis-says-microsoft/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/12/19/idxbox-vlambeer-blows-the-doors-off-microsofts-parity-clause/
How can you have fun with XB1 while your overall tone about Microsoft is negative, even when you'r talking about their exclusives you'r referring to it like all they are doing is moneyhatting. Also you think they are stupid, it's not wise to buy a product from a stupid company.
shredenvain
Regular
That is only a hypothetical situation. In fact most indie titles are developed for Pc first.
You know the whole making your game play on the widest variety of setups thing.
Also Im sure alot of those Pc developers are also using Visual Studio anyway.
This parity clause is only for digital only release titles. Most of them are indies and arent pushing either platform hard to begin with. So esram and 900p and resolution and SDK are completely unrelated to the parity clause which only applies to digital only games and is only in reference to release date and content parity. Bottom line. If you have any proof that it does involve graphical parity please someone post it.
The tone around the ONE is negative for a very good reason, every major idea about the ONE has been reversed, it's now a completely less powerful standard next gen Console.
TV TV TV, 180'd , DRM, 180'd , Kinnect 2, 180'd , Paywall 180'd,
So stupid may be the wrong word, clueless seems better. Imho Microsoft did everything right with the 360 and earned the rewards from that, and they did everything wrong with the generation.
To some degree i am surprised that they sell the numbers they do, they must have a very very strong core audience. I am in it for the technology, i want it for the Kinect 2 and the moneyhat exclusives and i collect consoles. So what i feel for a company has in this case nothing to do with what i spend my money on and i look forward to playing with Kinect 2 and the Halo Remix games.
If Microsoft had stayed with the DRM they originally planned they wouldn't have seen any money from me.
The problem with MS's plans is that underneath its sugar coated vision that they openly sell to the consumer, the major strategic plan is how to have control in the industry by making content providers and the consumer more dependent to the company. Their negotiating methods and business plans hide some aggressiveness which is fully unleashed when there isnt an alternative in the market that provides better terms to consumers and partners. The market is very fortunate that there are other less secure participants in the market that provide better partnership terms and consumer freedom.
To me MS's tries to force control when they feel they have the negotiating power. When they dont feel they have it, they try to convince that their methods are for everyone's best interest. On the other hand less secure competing participants are trying to give incentives that are easily recognized as being beneficial for consumers and partners alike.
MS is the equivalent of a politician
Luckily no one has forced anyone to buy an Xbox ever. Lots of people freely choose to, though.
People can talk til they're blue about MS is evil etc. Really the only screwup they made that matters imo is a weak box (which was incredibly dumb in itself, and now they are paying for it). The rest is just a million posts of talk. There's almost always loads of competition in any area, short govt sponsored monopolies like cable TV. Even in the unlikely event there were zero competing consoles to Xbox, there would still be a vast PC and mobile ecosystem as competition.
If XOne was 3 teraflops it would be dominating. Instead PS4 has the edge and is doing quite well.
I ever remind people for example, Sony is the one who had anti-used game, "anti-consumer", $10 1st party online passes, until those turned out to be a dead end anyway as the business became selling online content that you dont want to wall people off from. Now they charge people for online just as MS was vilified for all those years (and Sony's fanbase gave them a standing ovation at E3 2013 for it, no less). Maybe because, turns out they like money. I dont really see a materiel difference between the companies. Also I think a lot of Sony's more hand off attitude (such as it exists in reality) is because they revel in people praising them so they sort of just do the opposite of MS, in pandering to people online, not necessarily their true intentions.
MS made a few very very key terrible decisions this gen. Price, power, focus on Kinect. But they aren't losing because they're some mythical overbearing monstrosity. 360's popularity last gen shows that. Whether they can "recover" remains to be seen. At any rate, as long as they get basically all 3rd party support (and they will, as there's no other option in a console duopoly), does it really even matter? We all reload and do it again next time.
People can talk til they're blue about MS is evil etc. Really the only screwup they made that matters imo is a weak box (which was incredibly dumb in itself, and now they are paying for it). The rest is just a million posts of talk. There's almost always loads of competition in any area, short govt sponsored monopolies like cable TV. Even in the unlikely event there were zero competing consoles to Xbox, there would still be a vast PC and mobile ecosystem as competition.
If XOne was 3 teraflops it would be dominating. Instead PS4 has the edge and is doing quite well.
I ever remind people for example, Sony is the one who had anti-used game, "anti-consumer", $10 1st party online passes, until those turned out to be a dead end anyway as the business became selling online content that you dont want to wall people off from. Now they charge people for online just as MS was vilified for all those years (and Sony's fanbase gave them a standing ovation at E3 2013 for it, no less). Maybe because, turns out they like money. I dont really see a materiel difference between the companies. Also I think a lot of Sony's more hand off attitude (such as it exists in reality) is because they revel in people praising them so they sort of just do the opposite of MS, in pandering to people online, not necessarily their true intentions.
MS made a few very very key terrible decisions this gen. Price, power, focus on Kinect. But they aren't losing because they're some mythical overbearing monstrosity. 360's popularity last gen shows that. Whether they can "recover" remains to be seen. At any rate, as long as they get basically all 3rd party support (and they will, as there's no other option in a console duopoly), does it really even matter? We all reload and do it again next time.
Don't be ridiculous. If any of the consoles were 3TFlop machines, they'd be way too expensive to dominate anything ever.
I think the argument is principally hypothetical. Plus a company could release a 3 TF monster and take crazy losses until they went bust... The main point is XB1 is underpowered enough that it's showing in titles and platform-agnostic gamers are making a choice by-and-large in favour of the machine that plays their preferred console games the best. If the performance differential was lower, the sales wouldn't be as imbalanced.
Well, I strongly disagree. Difference in power has never had much influence over sales number. And the One is most definitely not losing because it's 'lower powered', it's losing because of MS's complete lack of focus and a series of bad decisions. As has been discussed already a few times on here.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I think it has made a difference and lack of power is a very real problem for the One. Also a 3TF (or close to it) console would have been possible had the manufacturers went as aggressive after it as they did last time around.
Yes I know Wii sold the most, PS2 sold eight times more than Xbox 1 etc, but Wii's legs faded first and PS2 crushed Dreamcast. If 360 had been a weakling, I believe it wouldn't have fared as well against the PS3 as it did, and now PS4 is benefitting of its advantage imo. Power is something that gives your platform a boost, it's certainly not the only thing that matters, but it matters. When everything else is close to equal its importance grows and when there are some or many differentiating factors its importance shrinks. These "core" consoles have relatively similar features and that's why the power difference matters quite a bit.
I do agree that the mixed messages and in general their PR last year didn't do them any favours either.
To be honest:
If the PS4 used slow DDR3 ram as video memory, with 30 megabyte of esram, forced a camera. with about 50% less computing power on the video front than it's competitor; forced TV stuff that isn't even compatible in my country, hell, the console wouldn't even be released yet because the Netherlands, besides being among the richest countries in the world, as well as super Microsoft minded, is apparently a tier 2 country, but anyway..
Even if the PS4 was a weak system like that -hell it could even be 100 euro's more expensive than the hypothetical better other system,
Even then, I would still get it.
You know why? Because of Sony Santa Monica, Media Molecule, Quantic Dream, Polyphony, Naughty Dog, Evolution to name some.
I know they would be capable to come up with excellent games.
Maybe Xbox fans feel the same way, but value studios like
Fable, Bungie 341 studios, Turn 10, ??? well, and all the other 1st party MS studios that created innovative, bafta-winning, genre-defying games.
So yeah, I can totally see a MS- exodus happening
You need power, but above all; you need games.
edit: if a PS4 game is 59.99, and MS could price all the games on their platform at 39.99. I am pretty sure that more people would be able to accept Xbox One as their main platform
If the PS4 used slow DDR3 ram as video memory, with 30 megabyte of esram, forced a camera. with about 50% less computing power on the video front than it's competitor; forced TV stuff that isn't even compatible in my country, hell, the console wouldn't even be released yet because the Netherlands, besides being among the richest countries in the world, as well as super Microsoft minded, is apparently a tier 2 country, but anyway..
Even if the PS4 was a weak system like that -hell it could even be 100 euro's more expensive than the hypothetical better other system,
Even then, I would still get it.
You know why? Because of Sony Santa Monica, Media Molecule, Quantic Dream, Polyphony, Naughty Dog, Evolution to name some.
I know they would be capable to come up with excellent games.
Maybe Xbox fans feel the same way, but value studios like
Fable, Bungie 341 studios, Turn 10, ??? well, and all the other 1st party MS studios that created innovative, bafta-winning, genre-defying games.
So yeah, I can totally see a MS- exodus happening
You need power, but above all; you need games.
edit: if a PS4 game is 59.99, and MS could price all the games on their platform at 39.99. I am pretty sure that more people would be able to accept Xbox One as their main platform
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In the past, but the differences between machines were always more pronounced. eg. PS32 versus XBox, XBox was more powerful but PS2 had a headstart and market dominance when it came to library and mindshare. XB360 vs PS3, about the same performance and features and about the same sales, with perhaps PS3's USP BluRay offsetting XB360's USP of releasing of year earlier.
XB1 and PS4 are pretty much the same hardware playing the same multiplatform games - in that respect the choice between machines for the platform agnostic is pretty clear in my mind. They're more like DVD players than ever. Want a machine to play COD and FIFA. Here are two options, one plays them better than the other and is cheaper (changed with Kinect free version). Which would you like to buy?
