FF13 Exclusivity still being discussed?

scooby_dooby said:
... This is the time when console are trying to build a critical mass, and this is the time when notable exclusives are the difference maker.
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That's absolutely true, and part of what I'd consider exceptions. It's better to judge franchise sales per platform rather than individual titles, to gauge interest in a game. Unfortunately I don't have that info. I can only cite DMC on PS2, though it's said that interest has dwindled over the years.

The problem with the critical mass argument is primarily one of console price. You're not going to sell 40 million consoles at $400, no matter what software you have. The exclusive titles aren't anywhere near as important as the console price. Key titles are essential to convincing pundits your console is worth the money, as GeOW successfully demonstrates. Such strong titles are few and far between though. They need a very strong following who don't care about price. FF may well attract a few million console buyers, willing to spend $hundreds just to play that one title. Most games don't have that though. VT5 hasn't had that. I don't know that DMC has that. That's where the franchise figures come in. Over time, less and less people have been interested in getting DMC, so is it likely to sell many people a $500-600 PS3? If not, it's exclusivity is diluted, even early on where titles have more importance.
 
crazygambit said:
I don't think a numbered FF will ever go to the Wii. Some side stuff a la Chronicles, most definetely. And after reading the DMC thread something ocurred to me: Blu-Ray. FF games are all about high production values and pretty movies, and I like my pretty movies. In fact it was one of the reasons I bought a PS1 over a N64 were the pretty movies, and one of the reasons FF7 appeared excllusively on PS1. It just couldn't be done on cartridge.

There's been a lot of talk on these very forums about how on developers are ever gonna bother creating 50 gigs of unique content other than Hi def video. Well guess what? That's what FF is all about. I can't imagine a FF game without excellent CG. And I'm well aware of the tendency to go with in-engine cut scenes lately to keep a consistent look. Well, guess what? I hate them. I think DM3 for example would have been a much better game with CG instead (and those were the most amazing cut scenes in a game, ever).

I know they could just make it multiple DVDs, but if they have say 10 gigs of video (number pull out of my behind) and say they were able to split the game logic into 4GB parts (pull out of my ass too) since you have to consider better textures, while having access to most of the world at any one time (I'm betting there's a lot of redundant data in multi DVD games like Blue Dragon). Now you would need to split this in at least 3 DVDs, which doesn't sound that bad. But then again having the space there (and since it's very likely they started production thinking it was gonna be exclusive) there could be a lot more video in there. So it's not exactly trivial to release multiple DVDs either. Then there's also the option of a downgrade in movie quality, but I'd rather play FFXIII in all its glory thank you very much.

So in short after all this rambling I'd say it's still a very good posibility that this game is indeed still exclusive, I would hate to think otherwise.
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Multidisc editions are nothing new to SE. That's just not a valid worry at all.

My sole reason for expecting something other than a Crytal Chronicles sequel on the Wii is SE's move to put DQ on the DS. They obviously opted for the more popular device over the more powerful device there. If the Wii continues to sell like it has, I think we definitely could be looking at FF remakes on the Wii at the least.

But I wouldn't expect the flagship FF games to migrate. The White engine may be good, but incorporating the Wii would likely require adding a whole new art pipeline.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I had no interest in DMC as an exclusive, and I wasn't saying it was a major victory or anything for Sony. But I have posted again and again how 'major titles' that people consider important only appeal to a small subset of the total userbase. Most major titles are sold to less than 10% of a platform. Normally much less than 10%. Thus the loss of any exclusive franchise can only account for a loss of a few % of sales. That goes for any title on any platform. Even FF! It's loss as exclusive would be a huge coup for the forumites that care, but only 5 million PS2 owners bought FFX. If FFXII sells 10 million, that's 10% of PS2s. If all those PS2 owners bought a PS2 just to play FF, it's loss as an exclusive would account for 10% lower hardware sales - if 100% of those bought a rival machine instead. If FF is still available in PS2 as a cross-platform titles, obviously the number of 'defectors' will be less, by an immeasurable margin based on other appeals of the machine.

Of course there's a couple of exceptions. For XB to lose Halo exclusivity, that'd open up a large market elsewhere. Even then, it'd make little odds to the platform I think. People aren't going to buy a PS3 just to play Halo when the XB360 is cheaper, and Wii isn't going to give the same experience. So Halo going cross-platform, which would cause a huge furore across the whole intarweb, would probably account for little sales difference of the XB360 platform.

The real difference is in number of exclusives, and not key titles. If 100 games are exclusive to one platform, it has extra appeal. If every game out there is cross-platform, it has no game advantage. If PS3 were to have the same level of exclusive support as older PS's, it'd be a big plus-point. Most sane people weren't expecting this though, and to see titles become cross-platform is neither shocking nor a huge blow to Sony. At least, it shouldn't be a blow because they shouldn't have been expecting it. I haven't bought a lottery ticket, so it won't be a huge blow to me when I don't win millions on the lottery tomorrow!

As a final repeat of my key point, whatever title people think 'huge' on a platform, they have to remember that in most cases 90% or more owners of that platform couldn't care less about that game. 90% of PS2 owners couldn't care less if MGS didn't come out for it. 90% have no interest in whether FF is released on PS2 or not. 90% won't cry over the absence of Ratchet and Clank. Every million-unit best-seller is still statistically niche.
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Perception is not strictly based on statistics nor is based strictly on personal experience. Just because FF series is only bought by 10% does not mean its loss of exclusivity effects or is limited to the perception of the gamers that made up that 10%.

Losing exlusives at the current rate is a huge blow to Sony. It only takes the loss of a few key titles to create the perception that Sony's iron grip on exclusion is lost. Its already happened and that perception is shared by lots of posters here. That perception is not based on taking the total number of PS2 exclusives and calculating the number of loss exclusivies for the current generation. It based on the loss of key games in the neighborhood of a dozen not hundreds or thousands.

If you won the lotto everytime you played it to the point your financial health (strictly related to Sony's gaming division) was dependent on it then you would be shocked if you lost.
 
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I agree with some of Shifty's reasoning but he is forgetting that in order to grow a platform that can attract 100 niche titles you have to sell consoles. By looking at attachment rates in the PS2's early couple of years you see that a large percentage of people who bought the console apparently purchased it to play a few key titles. These initial titles were MGS2, Gran Turismo and especially the timed release of GTA3. I am not go to pretend that I can analyse what happened after that but the good start combined with price drops worldwide 1.5 yrs after launch helped the PS2 being attractive to niche titles which in turn helped it grow further (along with the next round of price cuts) as the everyman's console.

Look at the below data (especially the first two years) and combine it with the release dates of the initial key games for the PS2 and you will see a correlation.

http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps2_e.html
 
NERO said:
I agree with some of Shifty's reasoning but he is forgetting that in order to grow a platform that can attract 100 niche titles you have to sell consoles. By looking at attachment rates in the PS2's early couple of years you see that a large percentage of people who bought the console apparently purchased it to play a few key titles.
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Yes and no. In the early period, there's some top selling titles that can be considerd key, but at the same time they're the only thing available. For some people, they'll buy a console to play particular launch games with anticipation of more to come. For others, they buy the console with anticipation of games to come, and buy some early titles just as something to play.

It's a very hazy area with no real research, but it's clear (at least it seems clear to me!) that key titles are something of a myth. There's more emphasis put on them than I think exists in the real market. Heck, Untold Legends isn't considered a key title by anyone, yet there are people who bought a PS3 in part because it had that game, and they're suckers for the genre. For them, it was a key title despite not appearing on anyone else's radar. You can look at the figures a dozen different ways and not know exactly what each buyer's reasons are, and large-scale titles don't shed much light. GeOW is a great example of a game that does, as does BD in Japan, when the release of the game is accompnaied by a sharp uptake of the console. For the rest, when the console is just selling and the games are just selling, you don't know if they're bought for those specific games, or those are just the few games that are bought while waiting for more desired content.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Yes and no. In the early period, there's some top selling titles that can be considerd key, but at the same......
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I will admit that the so called key games affects on console sales are hard to track, but the best time to attempt correlation is during the early life of a console. Looking at the numbers provided by SCEA, the number of PS2s in the market doubled in the first 3 quarters of 2001. Maybe Gran Turismo 3 had absolutely nothing to do with this but I wouldn't discount its power (Europe getting steady supply helped but it accounts for ~35 percent of this increase)

Overall I agree with you that tracking these things are hazy, but there does some to be some correlation with adopters post-launch (for the PS2 at least).
 
Inane_Dork said:
Multidisc editions are nothing new to SE. That's just not a valid worry at all.

My sole reason for expecting something other than a Crytal Chronicles sequel on the Wii is SE's move to put DQ on the DS. They obviously opted for the more popular device over the more powerful device there. If the Wii continues to sell like it has, I think we definitely could be looking at FF remakes on the Wii at the least.

But I wouldn't expect the flagship FF games to migrate. The White engine may be good, but incorporating the Wii would likely require adding a whole new art pipeline.
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There hasn't been a multidisc FF since the PS1 days though. There has to be a reason for that and I'm not buying the space DVD offers is enough. FFX and XII used all the space available, I'm sure the devs wouldn't have minded and extra GB or 2. And no Dual Layer DVDs had their own set of issues in PS2 (probably why very few game use them, and yes I know GoW2 is DVD9).

The thing is making a multidisc release isn't nearly as trivial as you might think. Not only do you have to design the game around multiple discs, but the QA increases considerably.

Take FF8 for example. You could fight Diablos (a GF or Summon for those that didn't play it) in disc 1, 2 or 3 (maybe 4 as well, can't remember for certain), so they had to duplicate that fight among all discs and test it accordingly. Plus they have to keep track of all the stuff you can do in any disc. If they want the game to have a healthy dose of sidequests, it can get complicated. But you can't have sidequests with movies or too much dialogue because that would defeat the purpose or using multiple discs (if you have to duplicate them among all discs).

I don't know, it certainly seems doable, but it does take at least some effort from the developer, effort they may not be willing to do.
 
GT is another of the titles I'd consider exceptions :p Seriously, I thought about GT's numbers and decided that regardless of total sales, it's ability to shift hardware is evident. GT as an early title is likely a box shifter. FF probably too. There's other titles that have sold lots but later on, and I wouldn't consider these as box shifters. RnC was well received on PS2, but will fans of the game pony up £425 for a PS3 just to play the next RnC game? We'll never know until the game releases and we see any jumps in hardware sales. If they aren't willing to buy the hardware for that game, it's not going to be a huge loss to Sony if the game becomes cross-platform (apart from overall platform image because it's a great looking title - though I don't know how the general public would react)
 
I don't think FFXIII is going to be multi-platform. Sony is going to keep a few exclusives out of vanity's sake if nothing else.
 
Maybe times are a'changin but SE, Square and Enix have never gone multiplatform. I don't know why but there seems to be an unwritten agreement between SE and the platforms chosen. SE' way of going multi-platform is now to split a franchise into a,b and c segments and put each in a totally different gameplay environment. Is this good for business? I don't know but apparently - from history - they think it works.
 
Deusp said:
I don't think FFXIII is going to be multi-platform. Sony is going to keep a few exclusives out of vanity's sake if nothing else.
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Well, they seem to be in negotiations right now to secure this exclusivity but I imagine this will cost a pretty penny at the rate things are going.

Wouldn't surprise me either way.

Likely outcome will be variations on the same title but still "exclusive" in name. This enables Sony to save face while not breaking the bank($) on exclusivity and allows SE to cover their dev costs by expanding their potential customer base.
 
scooby_dooby said:
Meh, you base this on stats from the end of the PS2's lifecycle, but if you take a time period closer to launch, with a smaller install base it's a much different story. This is the time when console are trying to build a critical mass, and this is the time when notable exclusives are the difference maker.

i.e. GOW sold 3.5mil+ copies, that's between 35-45% of the userbase right there. Signifigant!
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Sorry to come out of my cave, but how did you get 35-45% from 3.5M out of 100M? I'm missing something ain't i...


/back to the cave
 
Early adopter user-base. 3.5 M in a market that was 5-10 million when GeOW launched shows a high percentage interest for early adopters. Mainstream gamers might have no interest in the title longterm, and perhaps GeOW 2 and 3 will sell 6 million to an XB360 install base of 100 million. That's far more likely than 10s of millions of game sales, because of the diversity of tastes of the mainstream buyers.
 
Well one thing for sure is if it does come out for the 360 it will have to be aim at the Western market. It has no market in Japan since everybody is going to buy the PS3 version unless they make one for the Wii. And even if there is a Wii version I'm sure it will be different enough due to the control schemes and the huge graphic advantage the PS3 has. Japanese won't mind buying both even if the difference was the color of the box.

I always look at the main FF's as titles with very high production values since FFVII. More so then DQ and probably more then KH's. I would hate to see FF's come for the Wii because it looks like it's taking a step back going into lower budgets especially if the future of the series shift exclusively to Nintendo. It's a huge shift in direction. However at the same time it makes a lot of sense financially.

I'm going to take a safe bet and say FFXIII will remain PS3 exclusive. However I won't be so shock to see it go multiplatform. I'm pretty sure the outcome will favor the PS3 version over the 360 by sales of 2-2.5 to 1. Mainly due to Japanese given better support for the PS3 over the 360 and the fact that the series is stronger in Japan. So whatever happens FF's will be primarily developed for PS3 in mind as long as the PS3 can remain semi-successful.
 
Archgamer said:
Well one thing for sure is if it does come out for the 360 it will have to be aim at the Western market. It has no market in Japan since everybody is going to buy the PS3 version unless they make one for the Wii. And even if there is a Wii version I'm sure it will be different enough due to the control schemes and the huge graphic advantage the PS3 has. Japanese won't mind buying both even if the difference was the color of the box.

I always look at the main FF's as titles with very high production values since FFVII. More so then DQ and probably more then KH's. I would hate to see FF's come for the Wii because it looks like it's taking a step back going into lower budgets especially if the future of the series shift exclusively to Nintendo. It's a huge shift in direction. However at the same time it makes a lot of sense financially.

I'm going to take a safe bet and say FFXIII will remain PS3 exclusive. However I won't be so shock to see it go multiplatform. I'm pretty sure the outcome will favor the PS3 version over the 360 by sales of 2-2.5 to 1. Mainly due to Japanese given better support for the PS3 over the 360 and the fact that the series is stronger in Japan. So whatever happens FF's will be primarily developed for PS3 in mind as long as the PS3 can remain semi-successful.
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I think the only reason a FF would sell much better on the PS3 would be that use base is more familiar with the series. The people who own a 360 are not shy about buying games. I can't really think of any high profile games that have not sold well on the 360 so far. I also wonder if even FF is enough to get the people of japan to care about traditional console gaming. I think SE is really going to need the west this time around if they want to sell more traditional RPGs.
 
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