Console Exclusives: Significance and Impact *spinoff*

[Nesh]

We've been told that year after year for decades. We're also only going to have to work 3 days a week some time after the 1950's because technology will do all the work for us. In reality, no matter how far tech will take us, we'll want to reach further and make up the difference through hard work - it's human nature (and even if not individually, one will be swept along by society).

That is actually not a rule. The reason why we still work so many hours it is not because everyone just inheretely wants to make a difference through hard work. The socioeconomic environment of our system forces, for multiple reasons, to work long hours, regardless what difference someone can make and regardless if that's the job that truly fits the maximum contribution the individual can give under other conditions or occupation.
A little study on anthropology will show different aspects of what is "human nature" that does not agree with the explanation "it is because we want to reach further" that the larger population still work many hours in the "developed" world. In some countries people work so hard to the point of mental and/or biological over exhaustion with little or zero satisfaction or real incentive. Often it destroys the balance of what the individual considers normal.
Free time on the other hand, in well structured societies actually offers the chance for a person to explore, discover and choose a path that the individual feels can contribute or develop his/herself farther in whatever direction (work or not) and in such occasions motivation is the real driving force of "hard work" and "long hours spent" which cannot be described necessarily as "work" anymore.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think you're over-reading the context. Game makers want to make bigger, better games. That gets them excited, and that's human nature. It's why the likes of Pixar work hard to add fur shading instead of being content with shiny Phong-shaded surfaces. No where do I even suggest human beings like to be workaholics.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I find the whole thing disingenuous. People claiming they watch streams and call the game play of some of the highest rated games mediocre.Saying they are not interested in God of War (95% MC) because of some character history shit? What we really have here is bias, plain and simple. You can't claim you like TPS like Gears and then say you don't like Uncharted and TLoU. They are the same genre and top rated games at that. If you run everything through a "I hate Sony" filter then you will find or exaggerate reasons not to buy or play them. "I don't like the story or the character". Sure....

How can someone say Dark Souls 1-3 are their favorite games and not mention Demon Souls or Bloodborne as top games to play? Oh ya, they are Sony games.

I'm calling bullshit, sorry if that is not PC.

I liked Gears of War, yet I never really got on with Uncharted. TLoU is a mediocre stealth game in my opinion. I think Dark Souls was a watershed moment for gaming, yet just like a ton of other DS1 fans, I do think DS2 is a bit crappy. Only the dlc chapters are truly excellent. I also wouldn't be suprised if a fan of DS couldn't get into Demon's Souls. Just like DS2, it's also a very different game. Bloodborne and DS3 are probably the most similar games in From's catalogue. So similar in fact that you'd be forgiven to feel a bit bored if you played one right after the other.
Point is that even very slight differences can make or break a game.

 

[Jupiter]

The SONY games are excellent for those who want many third person singleplayer story driven action games. SONY has recently brought out some of these and there will be more to come. Now even God of War has changed its direction into this story driven area. As a result SONYs games lose diversification. People who want mainly multiplayer titles which they can play longer than a few weeks or first person games are hardly interested in those titles.

Some want an epic plot in the next The Division but that's not what makes players consume these games for years. There are also many people who don't get hyped about something like a story driven game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

On the flip side of those arguments, people who want the games you talk of are already well served by 3rd party. Those who like those games and also Sony's games, or just Sony's games (looks like a good 10 million+ peeps) are going to get PlayStation.

But that's also an unfair assessment of Sony's first parties. We've had/will have Tearaway, Dreams, The Tomorrow Children, DriveClub, Wipeout, Wild, TLG, and numerous second parties like R&C. PlayStation exclusives continue to cover a wide range of genres and styles.

 

[djskribbles]

The SONY games are excellent for those who want many third person singleplayer story driven action games. SONY has recently brought out some of these and there will be more to come. Now even God of War has changed its direction into this story driven area. As a result SONYs games lose diversification. People who want mainly multiplayer titles which they can play longer than a few weeks or first person games are hardly interested in those titles.

Some want an epic plot in the next The Division but that's not what makes players consume these games for years. There are also many people who don't get hyped about something like a story driven game.

I'm sorry but to say Sony's exclusive lineup lacks diversity is just flat out wrong. You're REALLY oversimplifying things when saying many of Sony's exclusives are story driven action games. Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted, Nioh, NieR, Bloodborne, God of War, Yakuza, Days Gone, Spider-Man, Infamous, Ghost of Tsushima, TLoU2, Gravity Rush etc., are all action games to an extent, but most of them play NOTHING alike and branch out into other sub-genres. And just because GoW is more story driven doesn't mean it's similar to game X... reviews state that the game is still combat heavy. A strong emphasis on story is just something that was added to the formula for GoW... it's now more complete/fleshed out it seems.

Plus you're ignoring several games in other genres:
MLB The Show: Sports game. THE only good baseball game. Has a strong MP component
GT Sport: Racing simulator with a big emphasis on online MP racing
Driveclub/Wipeout: Arcade racers with online MP racing
Everybody's Golf: Golf/sports game with MP
Uncharted 4: Has a strong MP component
Street Fighter V: Fighting game with a big emphasis on online fighting
Persona 5: JRPG
Detroit/Until Dawn: Similar gameplay, VERY different in subject matter
Dreams: Create?
Ratchet & Clank / Tearaway / Knack: Platformers. Knack has coop play

 

[DrJay24]

The multiplayer market is saturated and hyper competitive. Going up against COD, Battlefield, Battlefront, Fortnite, Warframe, Destiny, etc. seems like a bad idea. Making any game especially a new IP is risky, making it MP is no less risky or more likely to succeed, just ask the Lawbreaker devs or Rare.

 

[Jupiter]

Almost all people I know (even all of those who are over 40 years old) only play multiplayer titles and SONY has in my opinion almost nothing but GT Sports. Nobody of them will get a PlayStation 4 in the future if this stays so. If they had an ingenious exclusive multiplayer title it would be different. The last PlayStation game I played a very long time was Killzone 2 and that is an old game. Sony's last big multiplayer title wasn't so long ago with GT: Sports but that didn't go down as well as many may hoped, There is no dynamic weather or changing conditions at all. but it is a game focused on E-sport and online racing. I can't understand why many people want a campaign of old parts. Many hardly play GT League and thats just to farm credits. F1 has the much better career.

Now they changed "God of War" but many think the Hack & Slay gameplay is worn out after four parts and several PSP offsets. A new start of the series was maybe necessary.

What makes me wonder why the remake of Shadow of the Colossus is not that successful? This title even seems to have very poor sales figures in Japan. Were they all with Monster Hunter at the time of release? http://www.vgchartz.com/game/182722/shadow-of-the-colossus/?region=All

 

[djskribbles]

Almost all people I know only play multiplayer titles and SONY has in my opinion almost nothing but GT Sports. Nobody of them will get a PlayStation 4 in the future if this stays so. If they had an ingenious exclusive multiplayer title it would be different. The last PlayStation game I played a very long time was Killzone 2 and that is an old game. Sony's last big multiplayer title wasn't so long ago with GT: Sports but that didn't go down as well as many may hoped, There is no dynamic weather or changing conditions at all. but it is a game focused on E-sport and online racing. I can't understand why many people want a campaign of old parts. Many hardly play GT League and thats just to farm credits. F1 has the much better career.

Now they changed "God of War" but many think the Hack & Slay gameplay is worn out after four parts and several PSP offsets. A new start of the series was maybe necessary.

What makes me wonder why the remake of Shadow of the Colossus is not that successful? This title even seems to have very poor sales figures in Japan. Were they all with Monster Hunter at the time of release? http://www.vgchartz.com/game/182722/shadow-of-the-colossus/?region=All

Anecdotal.

You clearly missed my post. Sony has several exclusives with strong MP components. Plus what DrJay24 said above is very true.

GT Sport may not have the best reviews, but most agree that it has a very good online racing experience. It was also limited in content on release, but has been significantly fleshed out since. It has been said to have THE best online MP racing experience, from respectable sim racing reviewers such as Inside Sim Racing, who quite frankly actually know what they're talking about compared to most reviewers when it comes to sim racers.

And please don't use VGChartz as a source of sales. SoTC topped the UK charts on release and remained in the top 40 for nearly 2 months. It also charted 6th on NPD, which is revenue based and SoTC was a budget-priced title. It also just released a few months ago.

The large majority of the titles I listed sold or will sell multi-millions of copies.

To say Sony's exclusive lineup lacks diversity is just flat out wrong. It has by far the most diverse exclusive software lineup out of the 3 console makers.

 

[chris1515]

Anecdotal.

You clearly missed my post. Sony has several exclusives with strong MP components. Plus what DrJay24 said above is very true.

And please don't use VGChartz as a source of sales. SoTC topped the UK charts on release and remained in the top 40 for nearly 2 months. It also charted 6th on NPD, which is revenue based and SoTC was a budget-priced title. It also just released a few months ago.

The large majority of the titles I listed sold or will sell multi-millions of copies.

To say Sony's exclusive lineup lacks diversity is just flat out wrong. It has by far the most diverse exclusive software lineup out of the 3 console makers.

And you don't talk about 3rd party japanese exclusive games...

 

[Jupiter]

I have a different view of SONYs multiplayer offering. With the exception of GT Sports almost all of them are clearly focused on a single player. Mostly the multiplayer mode of a game looks more like a small extra. As far as the big games are concerned, they are mostly very similar for me. Most of the different titles are rather smaller games.

 

[iroboto]

The Xbox One is the best console if you don’t care about exclusive new games
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/18/17251030/xbox-one-backwards-compatibility-360-panzer-dragoon-orta

It almost feels like everyone is reading forum threads and writing about them. That or a lot of similar thinking is happening everywhere, and admittedly, this topic always blows up when the next Sony exclusive is released, I can't remember a time it hasn't. I expect this to happen again when TLOU2 is released.

The thread on resetera on this article sort of blew up, surprised we didn't post it here. Then again, perhaps not surprised we didn't post it here.

 

[djskribbles]

I have a different view of SONYs multiplayer offering. With the exception of GT Sports almost all of them are clearly focused on a single player. Mostly the multiplayer mode of a game looks more like a small extra. As far as the big games are concerned, they are mostly very similar for me. Most of the different titles are rather smaller games.

MLB The Show and Street Fighter V are very strong MP games.

I honestly can't see how you can look at the list I posted above and say that they're similar. They literally play nothing alike, except for the few that I grouped together.

And regardless of what you define as 'small', the large majority of those games were very successful sales wise.

 

[djskribbles]

The Xbox One is the best console if you don’t care about exclusive new games
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/18/17251030/xbox-one-backwards-compatibility-360-panzer-dragoon-orta

It almost feels like everyone is reading forum threads and writing about them. That or a lot of similar thinking is happening everywhere, and admittedly, this topic always blows up when the next Sony exclusive is released, I can't remember a time it hasn't. I expect this to happen again when TLOU2 is released.

The thread on resetera on this article sort of blew up, surprised we didn't post it here. Then again, perhaps not surprised we didn't post it here.

I mean it doesn't really tell us anything that we don't know.

And it's not surprising that it stirred a big debate at ERA. That's literally what we're debating right now.

But I find this quote from the article interesting:

It’s also something that Sony simply isn’t able to offer, given the complexity of the PlayStation 3 hardware and consequent difficulty of emulating its software. And to be clear, Sony doesn’t really need to do it — the PS4 library is more than strong enough to make the console worth buying. If I only owned an Xbox and had the choice of being able to play the likes of Nier Automata, Uncharted, and Horizon Zero Dawn instead of a bunch of games from the last decade, I’d take it. It’s the paucity of Xbox One-exclusive content that is forcing Microsoft to find other ways to get people to use the platform.

I think that sums it up for the majority of console buyers. And I fully agree with that quote.

Conversely, there's articles like this: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/04/g...of-the-difference-between-sony-and-microsoft/

And several tweets like this:

https://twitter.com/x/status/984843114450845696

 

[AlNom]

Xbox Live finds a way. ¯\_(シ)_/¯

 

[Cyan]

The multiplayer market is saturated and hyper competitive. Going up against COD, Battlefield, Battlefront, Fortnite, Warframe, Destiny, etc. seems like a bad idea. Making any game especially a new IP is risky, making it MP is no less risky or more likely to succeed, just ask the Lawbreaker devs or Rare.

Multiplayer is quite overrated. I don't like the idea of things being on the server's side rather than on the client's side. Plus some games that are totally playable offline -which is what they originally were-, don't even launch if you are offline nowadays. Age of Empires Definitive Edition is one of them, and the Xbox doesnt run a lot of games if you are offline.

 

[iroboto]

I mean it doesn't really tell us anything that we don't know.

And it's not surprising that it stirred a big debate at ERA. That's literally what we're debating right now.

lol yea. It's ground zero over there.

I agree with the idea of how long it takes to build up studios and talent. I've tried on many fronts explain that you can't just put up 1P exclusives over night, and every year people cry for them as if it can be done, but it takes years (2-3 releases per studio) to be ready to start churning out really solid stuff. And I'm not saying this from a point of defending the status of MS, but from a point of realism. For all the hate 343i gets, and Coalition, they are now only on their 3rd and 2nd title respectively, its hard to have a fresh studio come in and create something better than what their incumbents have accomplished. I think Forza and (to much debate Rare in name) are the only teams that has the level of maturity and history of any Sony first party studio.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Almost all people I know (even all of those who are over 40 years old) only play multiplayer titles and SONY has in my opinion almost nothing but GT Sports.

That's a really unscientific way to gauge what the market wants. HZD has sold 8 million. Uncharted series has sold over 40 million and includes multiplayer. Going from my own local experiences, no-one plays online multiplayer shooters and no-one plays PUBG or Fortnite...that's why I don't pay any attention to my own very limited sphere and instead look at the broader picture with multiple people's opinions (the number here saying the exclusives to matter to them) and the sales data and ad hoc polls where it's quite obvious that these games matter to plenty of people.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The Xbox One is the best console if you don’t care about exclusive new games
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/18/17251030/xbox-one-backwards-compatibility-360-panzer-dragoon-orta

The thread on resetera on this article sort of blew up, surprised we didn't post it here. Then again, perhaps not surprised we didn't post it here.

Well it's not terribly relevant. The question is whether exclusives matter or not, and not which console should you buy if you don't care for exclusives.

And indeed, that article at first glance seems to be saying, "XBox is the best place to play old games," as it's extolling the virtues of BC. So it belongs in the thread 'does BC matter?' where some will say yes and some will no, because different people like different things.

 

[iroboto]

Well it's not terribly relevant. The question is whether exclusives matter or not, and not which console should you buy if you don't care for exclusives.

And indeed, that article at first glance seems to be saying, "XBox is the best place to play old games," as it's extolling the virtues of BC. So it belongs in the thread 'does BC matter?' where some will say yes and some will no, because different people like different things.

I guess not terribly relevant, it touches on some related points though, the idea that the idea that exclusives are not the main impact for a population is at least not an argument in vain.