DFC Report: "Clear possibility that PS3 could end upthird in market share"

[Gradthrawn]

What should be scary to Sony is that they will have almost NO western 3rd party exclusives. I mean the number will be 5% or less. This is a huge difference from last generation.

I see the generation working out like Genesis versus SNES. Genesis vs SNES was pretty much a wash worldwide, the perception is that SNES won but that is mostly perpetuated by JRPG and Nintendo ******s. The fact is that games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat were the ones dictating the western market share, and this round it will not be any different.

Out of curiosity, what western 3rd party exclusives did they have last gen that you felt made a significant difference? From my perspective, the Box enjoyed the majority of the western exclusives via PC ports that were never carried over to the PS2. I might even include PC ports that were simply crap on the PS2, and executed well on the Box in that list, but for the sake of simplicity I leave those out.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Or, and I think significantly, it is no fun playing competitively if you are in the bottom tier of skill. Lets face it, fact is a small percentage of online gamers are really good and everyone else is fodder.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Come to think of it, I haven't played PC games online in years because of that. And what's disappointing about team-based games is that even if the designers are smart enough to put stuff in there that will allow a n00b to have fun, lots of people serving online games use hacks to disable it. I tried to play Enemy Territory online when I was at a friend's LAN party a while back, and I could find a server with more than 2 people on it that would actually let me play the game the way it was designed.

 

[Inane_Dork]

Your saying you dont like online gaming because you loose a lot?

I gladly confess to doing that. Maybe they'll change the way games are played online if more people say that.

 

[Powderkeg]

Out of curiosity, what western 3rd party exclusives did they have last gen that you felt made a significant difference?

A little franchise called Grand Theft Auto comes to mind...

 

[Acert93]

Your saying you dont like online gaming because you loose a lot?

Not me personally I quite love you guys and your self sacrificial cannon fodder offerings. By all means sign up online!

Obviously my real friends hate being a target. So we found that Coop games are a blast (Conkers on the N64 was pretty cool), but also games that are focused and chaotic enough to balance things out. e.g. The Aki wrestling games were great because it could be 3-on-1 if everyone decided to gang up on the current winner.

Team based MP is a step in the right direction, ditto more coop. But for online to really interest a lot of people it needs to give the same reward SP does: Where even the worst gamers can excellent "win" and conquer the game. If they are habitually relegated to barely even competing they won't play. Not everyone is as competitive minded as some of us.

Of course you have to offer these more friendly modes while keeping the core competitive types interested.

MP is still in its infancy. Of course other factors, like broadband availability, expense (routers, fees, broadband), "know how", exposure, etc impact this as well.

 

[Acert93]

A little franchise called Grand Theft Auto comes to mind...

Pfttt! That only sold over 30M copies on the PS2! Is that all you got

 

[fearsomepirate]

The most rewarding deathmatch experiences IMO have some sort of class-based system with at least one class that starts you out with a useful weapon and just about guarantees you'll be able to get a reasonable number of kills if you have halfway decent reflexes, along with things like vehicles (assuming the vehicles actually protect you from small arms fire) and/or mounted weapons (that are actually mounted in non-retarded locations).

Nothing is less fun than getting killed 35 times before you can find a weapon, being magically killed by a guy with a handgun when you're flying an armored air attack vehicle, or emptying a clip at point-blank range into someone who then proceeds to kill you with one shot.

Oh, and if any developers read this: don't put patches of tall grass in a deathmatch level if the LOD system makes them disappear when viewed from far away. That's just mean.

 

[scooby_dooby]

It's not just FPS games either. You go on live and you have guys playing FN3 with all these stupid little cheat moves over and over, or guys playing NHL2k6 and all they do is score cheese goals over and over and over.

XBLive just seems to be full of people who exploit weaknesses in games and then use that to dominate. When you go on just looking for a friendly game, this can be really freakin annoying, especially when you don't have time/desire to spend 10 hours learning all the online tricks.

It's not that I lose alot, I'm average, but that's not really fun for me. I don't want to be average, there's just no satisfaction there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Obviously my real friends hate being a target. So we found that Coop games are a blast (Conkers on the N64 was pretty cool), but also games that are focused and chaotic enough to balance things out. e.g. The Aki wrestling games were great because it could be 3-on-1 if everyone decided to gang up on the current winner.

Team based MP is a step in the right direction, ditto more coop.

I think coop is where it's at. I don't know of any game that's managed to make the most of it, but what few games there have been have had the most MP fun for me. BGDA and CON as well as Soccer are great titles, and multiplayer is a key purchasing decision for me and friends. Sometimes competitive can be good. Mario Kart on the N64 with it's baloon popping was a very level playfield. But I'ce had lots of games from lots of genres where it's really frustrating when you have no chance of winning and you're just tagging along to make up the numbers rather than participating in a useful capacity (on both ends of the game, whipping everyone and being whipped!). Coop does a good job of elliminating that. In principle. There's still times where in coop someone blames you for them dying or missing the goal or whatever. But to avoid that someone needs to patch Humanity to version 2.0!

 

[Acert93]

Oh, and if any developers read this: don't put patches of tall grass in a deathmatch level if the LOD system makes them disappear when viewed from far away. That's just mean.

Battlefield:Vietnam

 

[scooby_dooby]

I think coop is where it's at.

Agreed. Playing co-op Halo 1 on Legendary will always stand out as one of the coolest gaming experiences I've ever had, and that was split screen.

Co-op is definately the key to having more casual gamers embrace online play, since you still get all the reward/satisfaction of SP, and it's much funner because you're playing with a friend.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There's still a lot of problems with current implementations though. eg. in RPGs, often the XP isn't split even, so some people level faster. And when gold isn't shared, you have scallywags rush in and nick the gold instead of pool together to fight the enemy. This takes away from the rewards of other players. I'd like to see games develop the concept of roles, so different players are called upon at different times to contribute different skills. At the moment it tends to be a case of all sharing a goal to kill the baddies, but no generally design to work as a team rather than a collection of individuals. I think FPS's might be better in that regard than most genres (not that many do coop!). And football of course.

 

[scooby_dooby]

There's still a lot of problems with current implementations though. eg. in RPGs, often the XP isn't split even, so some people level faster. And when gold isn't shared, you have scallywags rush in and nick the gold instead of pool together to fight the enemy. This takes away from the rewards of other players. I'd like to see games develop the concept of roles, so different players are called upon at different times to contribute different skills. At the moment it tends to be a case of all sharing a goal to kill the baddies, but no generally design to work as a team rather than a collection of individuals. I think FPS's might be better in that regard than most genres (not that many do coop!). And football of course.

Chromehounds is doing this, too bad the gameplay seems soooooo slow

 

[cthellis42]

Oh, and if any developers read this: don't put patches of tall grass in a deathmatch level if the LOD system makes them disappear when viewed from far away. That's just mean.

Seriously. They need some kind of MSG3-like "cover" recognition system that will still hide (at least translucify or somesuch) your model if you're in cover that disappears.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I'm consistently in 3rd or 4th place in Live competitive play with 8-players. That is usally enough to put a smile on my face, but I generally don't have time for a lot of Live play. I still prefer great single-players experiences like Kameo and Oblivion. Co-op is the best when implemented properly. I hate split-screen, so the potential for online co-op over Live is huge in my mind. Phantasy Star Online is still my favorite Live experience. I can't wait for the sequel, even with the PS2 graphics.

 

[Farid]

You know...

The topic is the DFC Int. article, if you guys want to continue the discussion about Multiplayer experiences, just ask (in this thread or via PM) for a thread split and one of the Moderators would be please to comply, I'm sure.