Console Exclusives: Significance and Impact *spinoff*

Couple of examples - Everquest, Sony operated successfully for years, but eventually gave up on it. And Drawn to Death was an MP game only. A terrible one, and one we all knew was going to fail because it was ugly as sin, but they backed an MP game only and lost money.

You have the likes of Paragon and Lawbreakers competing in the arena shooter space, and of course anyone there is going to have a hell of a job beating Overwatch. Same with Minecraft - what Minecraft-like is going to win players away from Minecraft? And Fortnite? What would a game have to be to win players away from Fortnite?

Why even bother competing with those big fish who totally own their space, when there's a nicely untapped market that brings diversity to your platform portfolio? Where's the business sense in that?

Fotnite is a huge sucess but Paragon is not Overwatch... Very difficulty market where the 3rd party rules...

And COD BLOPs 4 and Battlefield 5 will have battle royale mode too...
 
How much actual money does Epic bring in on Fortnite? How much of that is profit?
 
Last posted here was $1.3 million a day from mobile thanks to cosmetics. Profit is probably hard to gauge because it can count as engine development. Dunno what it was doing before that on PC and PS4 where it's very free to play.
 
Because as it was already said, the MP scene is extremely competitive. Making a high budget SP experience is risky, but making a MP focused game is even more so. Why compete with the long list of 3P MP titles that are on your platform anyway? Why not make a unique story driven experience to separate yourself from the competition?

Multiplayer games tend to need a lower player base to be profitable through.

But i wonder if it's a good strategy for a constructor to put too much pressure on 3P developpers.

It's like there's a tacit agreement between Sony and other developpers : let us the single player market and we will let you the multiplayer one.
 
Multiplayer games tend to need a lower player base to be profitable through.

But i wonder if it's a good strategy for a constructor to put too much pressure on 3P developpers.

It's like there's a tacit agreement between Sony and other developpers : let us the single player market and we will let you the multiplayer one.

I think the gameindustry article is spot on. Sony complement really well 3rd party.
 
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2018-04-20-sonys-studios-continue-their-winning-streak

Sony, however, has largely avoided directly competing with third parties on PS4, despite launching some of the biggest games for its own platform; and it's done so simply by becoming effectively the only major player in a field that many of its third-party partners have, through preference or necessity, chosen to leave behind.

The consumer, of course, doesn't care that Sony can only make these games because it's playing a different commercial ball-game to other game creators. They only care that the PS4 has had arguably one of the finest streaks of high-profile exclusive titles of any console in history. It's worth considering the tough situation of other firms working on single-player titles, however; the success of Horizon, Uncharted 4 or God of War doesn't necessarily stand as proof, as some might claim, that pure single-player titles are just as commercially viable as ever. Rather, they're proof only that the appeal of these titles is still powerful; that as showcases and system-sellers, they are almost unrivalled, but that's not the same thing as being commercially attractive to a third-party who doesn't have a vested financial interest in system sales.

Edit: I the link was added to a post above, still a good eye opener for those who still don't get it.
 
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Last posted here was $1.3 million a day from mobile thanks to cosmetics. Profit is probably hard to gauge because it can count as engine development. Dunno what it was doing before that on PC and PS4 where it's very free to play.

They were basically printing cash even before the mobile version hit (cosmetics are popular even on PC and console). The mobile version just scaled that up massively.

Basically as soon as they included a Battle Royale mode that was far more casual friendly than PUBG, they started making money hand over fist. Their huge marketing push on Twitch (sponsored streamers) also gave it a massive push into the consciousness of very vocal players, and now it has a life of its own.

The good thing is that unlike For Honor which had a similar Twitch focused marketing push that sold a lot of copies of the game, they didn't just maintain momentum for the game but grew it for a variety of reasons (more casual friendly, less bugs, no player balance issues due to non-symmetrical classes, etc.).

Regards,
SB
 
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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.

So what you are saying is that anyone that likes Uncharted must like Gears of War, otherwise what they say is pure "bullshit" as you say?

And anyone that likes TLOU "must" like Gears of War?

Ummm, yeah, that's pure bullshit. All of those statements is as silly as when you said...

You can't claim you like TPS like Gears and then say you don't like Uncharted and TLoU.

While the gameplay in those are superficially similar, they aren't all THAT similar.

It's like saying that the original Doom and the original COD are both FPS games so anyone that likes one must by necessity like the other. And that's patently false as they are 2 completely different implementations of the FPS genre. While there's a great deal of overlap in people that like both, there's also a great deal of people that like one but dislike the other.

With the latest God of War, I'm finding the story interesting, but the gameplay uninteresting which is a complete 180 from the all the other God of War games. Granted, I've only gone through the first hour or so of the game (up to the first "god" fight, very cool), so my opinion could change, but there are so many things that just annoy me. The juggle mechanics are oddly disjointed. Hungry wolves that completely ignore the boy? Wolves by nature go after the weak, sickly, and young before going after prey that is more of a threat to them. The draug ignore the boy as well. At least the Troll fight had a pretense of the troll going after the boy which is much appreciated. I completely understand it's for gameplay reasons, but it's still annoying.

Gameplay is better than most open world games, but it still has a lot of open world tropes that pull me out of the game. For instance, Track this deer son! But, uh, hold on there's a chest here. Oh and I have to loot this burial casket here. Oh wait, there's a side path with stuff I don't want to miss. Again, I understand it's to support open world like gameplay. But then that's gameplay I don't find fun or attractive in the first place.

When will people understand that not everyone likes the same thing. The new GOW should end up being a huge success. There's a lot of good things in there (combat at higher difficulties is almost souls like, but without the weighty feel of a souls game) and while I found the story off putting at the start, it's growing on me. It's still not a game I would buy even if it was on a platform I own. That said, I expect this title to do significantly better than previous GOW games. TPS open world games (even though the first hour or so of GOW that I've played has been very linear) is the genre of choice right now if you want to sell a lot of games. Combine it with a good story and it's hard to fail.

Regards,
SB
 
Couple of examples - Everquest, Sony operated successfully for years, but eventually gave up on it. And Drawn to Death was an MP game only. A terrible one, and one we all knew was going to fail because it was ugly as sin, but they backed an MP game only and lost money.

You have the likes of Paragon* and Lawbreakers competing in the arena shooter space, and of course anyone there is going to have a hell of a job beating Overwatch. Same with Minecraft - what Minecraft-like is going to win players away from Minecraft? And Fortnite? What would a game have to be to win players away from Fortnite?

* probably meant Battleborn instead of Paragon.

Why even bother competing with those big fish who totally own their space, when there's a nicely untapped market that brings diversity to your platform portfolio? Where's the business sense in that?

I see a lot of potential. Currently, Battle Royal players have to deal with comic characters or an unfinished and flawed korean game. The crowd doesn't want a Battle Royal COD game with 20 players but a huge one with 100+ players.
 
You're moving the discussion. Whether Sony should or should not create a BR game is a rather specific request. This thread is about the value of exclusives and what Sony's doing and what they get from it, and why they aren't creating multiplayer shooters in general. for all we know, they have a BR game in the works as it's a new genre with room for new challengers.
 
So what you are saying is that anyone that likes Uncharted must like Gears of War, otherwise what they say is pure "bullshit" as you say?

And anyone that likes TLOU "must" like Gears of War?

Ummm, yeah, that's pure bullshit. All of those statements is as silly as when you said...

So magically all the gameplay on a Sony exclusives just don't "do it" it for you? I guess I don't have this issue. A good TPS is a good TPS, Gears or Uncharted. It's not really about the small differences, they are just both good games with similar mechanics. Sorry if I find it hard to believe that a metacritic 70-85 game is great while 90-95 is "uninteresting" or some other nebulous pejorative. Quantum Break and Gear 4, awesome. Uncharted 4 or THLoU, meh.

But this will go nowhere, you can fill pages with why you don't prefer them and there is no way to prove or disprove anything. You simply don't like very specific, very popular and well reviewed games.
 
But this will go nowhere, you can fill pages with why you don't prefer them and there is no way to prove or disprove anything. You simply don't like very specific, very popular and well reviewed games.

Oh come on, you know what you said is like saying "If you like Marvel movies you should like DC movies" and then getting all enraged when people don't like Batman vs Superman or Justice League.

Stop trying to force your views onto others.

Take your own advice and embrace "Different strokes for different folks."
 
So magically all the gameplay on a Sony exclusives just don't "do it" it for you? I guess I don't have this issue. A good TPS is a good TPS, Gears or Uncharted. It's not really about the small differences, they are just both good games with similar mechanics. Sorry if I find it hard to believe that a metacritic 70-85 game is great while 90-95 is "uninteresting" or some other nebulous pejorative. Quantum Break and Gear 4, awesome. Uncharted 4 or THLoU, meh.

But this will go nowhere, you can fill pages with why you don't prefer them and there is no way to prove or disprove anything. You simply don't like very specific, very popular and well reviewed games.

And yet I don't see you calling out other people on the forum for being BS fanboys if they like Uncharted but don't like Gears. Or if they liked TLOU but didn't like Uncharted. Or if they liked Uncharted but didn't like TLOU. Etc. Only if it's someone that likes Gears but doesn't like Uncharted or TLOU do you call them out or some other combination of liking X Non-Sony game but not liking Y Sony game.

Regards,
SB
 
I’m not sure what you are referring to here. But I would like to read if you have it available.
I was just thinking about a roundtable discussion with sony's big name directors last E3, they explained how the time frame from idea to launch takes them 7 years. (obviously I would assume a sequel takes much much less time). Not sure what that means for Death Stranding, I'm a bit worried.

So the moment to make a decision in order to have new IPs with competitive AAA quality this year... was 7 years ago! Maybe it's not that bad, because a lot of people work ideas in parallel, it's just a question of deciding which one goes to the next step of development and throw money at the most promising ideas.

When there is a hole in the line up it's not the people currently in charge who are responsible, they have to deal with a past decision from another executive. I'm speculating about Mattrick having caused the current lack of 1P, and if Spencer increased investment into story-driven projects when he took over, the fruits won't be ripe for a while.
 
I was just thinking about a roundtable discussion with sony's big name directors last E3, they explained how the time frame from idea to launch takes them 7 years. (obviously I would assume a sequel takes much much less time). Not sure what that means for Death Stranding, I'm a bit worried.

So the moment to make a decision in order to have new IPs with competitive AAA quality this year... was 7 years ago! Maybe it's not that bad, because a lot of people work ideas in parallel, it's just a question of deciding which one goes to the next step of development and throw money at the most promising ideas.

When there is a hole in the line up it's not the people currently in charge who are responsible, they have to deal with a past decision from another executive. I'm speculating about Mattrick having caused the current lack of 1P, and if Spencer increased investment into story-driven projects when he took over, the fruits won't be ripe for a while.
ah i see. Yes, definitely takes a _long_ real long time to make a good AAA. Not to mention the experience needed to launch a title as well.
I was thinking you were referring along the lines of MS having paid research that showed that:

a) marketing that 3P games were enough to move consoles (ie COD)
b) TV was more important than games
c) MP was more important than single player

and that they acted on it and it failed them.
 
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