It would appear MS has had a change of heart about the value of exclusives!
Console Exclusives: Significance and Impact *spinoff*
- Thread starter Globalisateur
- Start date
I didn't say they changed it today - I said they changed it. For those arguing that exclusives don't matter and MS were going with a different play, not even MS supports that position. 
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I don't expect it to. While I haven't gone into the forum here, I haven't heard a single person (Streamers or real life) that have expressed anything but very very very mild curiosity about it. I've seen some mention that they're waiting to see the Sony conference to determine whether to be interested or to just write it off.
Facing the competition scheduled for Feb. 2019 doesn't make it look good for it's launch performance. But if the game is good, maybe it'll have a long tail in sales.
With that and TLOU 2 on the radar, Days Gone sits in a pretty bad place right now.
Regards,
SB
Silent_Buddha
Legend
OK, welp looks like I'm not getting a PS4 after all.
Sega just did what I did not really think they would do. They've announced Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami for PC!!! Dream come true! I can only assume that they'll eventually announce the remasters for PC as well.
And...just pre-ordered Yakuza 0 on Steam for 17.99 USD. Oh this feels soooo good.
Regards,
SB
Sega just did what I did not really think they would do. They've announced Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami for PC!!! Dream come true! I can only assume that they'll eventually announce the remasters for PC as well.
And...just pre-ordered Yakuza 0 on Steam for 17.99 USD. Oh this feels soooo good.
Regards,
SB
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you do know that MS has always had exclusives and at the start of this generation they had a lot of stuff launch in 2013/14. I understand a lot of people try and dismiss gears , forza and halo but they are big games for a lot of people and are exclusive.
MS is going to continue adding to its first party line up , your going to hear about more devs they bought and more from devs they spun from the ground up. Not only that but some of the teams they just bought will expand in size and release more games then they have been .
I don't actually think anyone actually took that position.
We'd have no proof that they thought 1P was a waste of time and wanted to roar ahead with 3P only. I don't recall anyone saying anything along the lines of that either.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yup most of us were debating the relative importance of exclusives when all differentiating features of consoles were taken into account. Most of us agreed that exclusives were probably still the most important. However, a combination of features could make one desire one console over another regardless of exclusives. As well not all consumers use exclusives as the deciding factor on which console to get, though many do.
That meant that while exclusives were still as important as ever to some maybe most buyers, that it wasn't the only thing unlike past generations as consoles introduce more and more features. IE - while interest in exclusives may not have declined, their relative importance is potentially lower than it was due to more things competing for the consumers attention.
I think what ended up happening is that some people interpreted that to mean exclusives didn't matter somehow. How they came to that conclusion, I have no idea.
And then we had the whole sidetrack with 1p, 2p, and 3p titles which ended up branching off into another thread.
Regards,
SB
Silent_Buddha
Legend
One thing this whole journey with Yakuza has shown me is that I really dread playing on console. Not because they are consoles, but because titles on console are so limited.
I was actually both looking forward to playing those games on console and at the same time dreading it.
I'm forced to use a controller. I do not like using console controllers, and as I get older, it gets more and more uncomfortable to game using a controller (stiffness in the joints and muscles). On my platform of choice, everyone can choose the controller and control scheme they are most comfortable with.
I'm usually forced to play at 30 fps. I find that visually uncomfortable. Likewise with being stuck with effects that give me a headache and eyestrain (notably DoF and to a lesser extent motion blur).
So, I was flooded with relief when Sega announced Yakuza for PC.
Now there's just one confirmed title on PS4 I'd still like to play (Persona 5) and one title I'm very interested in (Ghost of Tsushima). So I'm back to not enough titles to justify getting a PS4. That isn't a knock against PS4, if those titles were on XBO they wouldn't be enough to get me to buy an XBO.
The Switch is a special case as it allows me to easily play games away from my home. Or on the toilet. Or in bed (I try to avoid this as then it gets hard to go to sleep). You get the idea. Connecting to the TV is nice if I want to continue or as is more often the case, if I have some children over to watch. Don't like the hand cramps still, though. And the 30 FPS. And the inability to disable or enable graphics features.
Regards,
SB
I was actually both looking forward to playing those games on console and at the same time dreading it.
I'm forced to use a controller. I do not like using console controllers, and as I get older, it gets more and more uncomfortable to game using a controller (stiffness in the joints and muscles). On my platform of choice, everyone can choose the controller and control scheme they are most comfortable with.
I'm usually forced to play at 30 fps. I find that visually uncomfortable. Likewise with being stuck with effects that give me a headache and eyestrain (notably DoF and to a lesser extent motion blur).
So, I was flooded with relief when Sega announced Yakuza for PC.
Now there's just one confirmed title on PS4 I'd still like to play (Persona 5) and one title I'm very interested in (Ghost of Tsushima). So I'm back to not enough titles to justify getting a PS4. That isn't a knock against PS4, if those titles were on XBO they wouldn't be enough to get me to buy an XBO.
The Switch is a special case as it allows me to easily play games away from my home. Or on the toilet. Or in bed (I try to avoid this as then it gets hard to go to sleep
). You get the idea. Connecting to the TV is nice if I want to continue or as is more often the case, if I have some children over to watch. Don't like the hand cramps still, though. And the 30 FPS. And the inability to disable or enable graphics features.Regards,
SB
Do you not bring your tablet or smart-phone in the restroom for a relaxing number two symphony?
They had no first party development beyond recycling these titles, meaning they couldn't grow interest in their platform beyond these titles. They were closing first party studios just a couple of years ago and consolidating down on a much more focused internal structure which wasn't focussed on creating a diverse library. That's why people said, "where are the exclusives." Two years later, MS don't buy one or two studios, or haven't grown by five studios over that two years, but suddenly acquire five new studios. That's far more evidence of a significant change in direction than general continuation of an ever-evolving first-party line-up.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Those were signs of the dwindling budget that Xbox was getting, especially after XBO launch combined with the change in management with a more investor (who never really liked the Xbox division) preferred management team. Leading up to XBO you could already see investor influence in MS trying to streamline the Xbox division by paring down development studios as well as shifting focus to Xbox as a living room consumption device.
Xbox was on the brink of being cut from MS. If Phil hadn't been able to turn things around (from free fall to stability and revenue growth) we might have seen more internal studios let go by now.
Hence why I was noting before that Phil announcing work on the next Xbox console as well as the 5 studio acquisitions represents a rather significant sea change in the way investors and the board view Xbox as being a part of Microsoft. The initiative to tie Xbox more closely with Windows also is significant to that change and part of what got investors on board.
Regards,
SB
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2015 was really the turning point for Xbox when Satya took over. I do agree with Xbox being pushed out under Balmer. They just wanted to extract cash via subscriptions and cut first party studio costs to maximize revenue... at the result of almost killing the entire platform.
Xbox one had Ryze , Sunset Overdrive , Project Spark , Ori , Quantum break , Titan Fall , and dead rising 3 all in the first couple of years along with halos , gears , forzas and so on .
Its also not as if MS is the only company to recycle games. We've had how many uncharted now and it started after gears , people still get excited about that franchise. Some of the devs they bought were already making exclusive content for them. State of decay never graced a sony or Nintendo platform.
People asked where are the exclusives while ignoring the exclusives. That's on them and it sounds like people are trying to push an agenda
I have an older kindle that stays in the bathroom. My newer kindle doesn't go in the bathroom lolDo you not bring your tablet or smart-phone in the restroom for a relaxing number two symphony?
I also believe that the more recent closures of first-party studios were in big part to address some short-term balance-sheet issues. Freeing up the money that would have to be used to keep those studios operational allowed it to be used elsewhere. I find it hard to believe that the former head of Microsoft Games Studios is only just now coming around to the idea that first-party development is something worth investing in.
Edit: Also, a lot of money from the late 360 era through the Xbox One launch was dedicated to building up and re-structuring studios to create Kinect titles. The failure of the Xbox One's Kinect was a death sentence for a number of MS internal studios since it was probably cheaper to shut them down then to try to transition them away from this focus.
Edit: Also, a lot of money from the late 360 era through the Xbox One launch was dedicated to building up and re-structuring studios to create Kinect titles. The failure of the Xbox One's Kinect was a death sentence for a number of MS internal studios since it was probably cheaper to shut them down then to try to transition them away from this focus.
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I am sure a lot of the studios were culled due to poor performance. Why keep the fat when you can shave it off and keep the lean parts of the company and then invest that money into new studios that might do a better job ?
The five new studios were JUST acquired. Some of the sales have yet to even be finalized. So if Xbox had a change of heart years ago, it took a very long time for MICROSOFT to loosen the purse strings.