How (ir)relevant/replaceable is Sony/MS/Nintendo? *spawn

[Deleted member 11852]

Sony is investing in software makers ? Insominac might tell it differently. Sony will only help developers when sony can own the ip.

When somebody else is taking the financial risk for your project, you have to give something up.

Nobody ever claimed Sony was a interest-free-loan charity bank.

 

[eastmen]

maybe , but of course this isn't a great thing in the industry and we have others that will finance 3rd party games

 

[Nesh]

I agree that Sony has invested in a more risk and reward style to gaming in the console market.I also believe Microsoft has as well,though many deny it.Microsoft invented Kinect,no matter if you like it or not.Microsoft has pushed games like Kameo,Lost Odyssey,And Viva Pineta.Microsoft has also helped other studios get THIER visions of games out there with funding the projects.Titanfall,Mass Effect,and Sunset Overdrive.

The down side is who ever Microsoft helps and funds it's just the evil MegaCorp Microsoft buying titles.I ask what is the difference in buying and owning studios or helping fund studios to produce their dream project?Sony gets credit for buying studios,but Microsoft gets the stick for funding a studio project and allowing the studio to be their own asset.What is the better way?Buying the soul or buying a dream and keeping your soul?

The thing about MS is that most people are not convinced that MS truly cares about gaming for gaming. MS is perceived as a company that invaded in with a corporate mindset to take over and expand its Windows business. It is perceived as a purely corporate strategic decision which was made worse with XB1's initial vision and communication. I mean...you have these MS representatives on stage and you wonder if they are in touch with what they are talking about beyond the typical PR.

Sony was perceived in a similar way by Sega and Nintendo old timers when they first joined with the original Playstation.

At the time many people were seeing Sony's buy outs and deals with developers as an effort to steal content from the legendary Sega and Nintendo. Exclusive games raised suspicion. Rewind 2 decades ago and you will see such comments in gaming forums.

The reality was that Sega and Nintendo lost support due to their own faults. Sony did fund though and buy some developers. But they werent as many as people thought.
Sony did the following major 4 steps that helped them gain ground. They formed their own studios, they made a deal with Namco which was a hardware/software collaboration, and they already owned Psygnosis (which continued to some games for other systems). But most importantly they offered good developer support and the console was priced correctly which expanded the userbase. Exclusives were coming automatically without having to make deals with devs after that.

The Playstation brought some very delightful gaming moments, its hardware helped gaming advance due to its hardware design (games like FF7 and MGS were examples of gaming pinnacle that benefited from 3D and the CD medium), and Sony studios themselves brought games that have set unique standards because they had a pure gaming vision in mind. An example of that was Gran Turismo. It was conceived purely from someone's vision and dream to create a real driving simulator. Kazunori Yamauchi became Sony's Yu Suzuki.

At the end the power of hundreds of millions of people who had some good gaming memories with its products cannot be understated. This has helped change the image of Sony.


In addition Sony's studios dared risk with new gaming and creative ideas which improves the image that SCE is comprised of people that care about gaming. Parapa the Rapper, Vib Ribbon, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, Mark of Kri, Pupeteer, Eye Toy etc these are games that rely on creativity and game expression not for mainstream appeal.


The fact that Mark Cerny is also part of the group farther improves this image. Before there was also Phill Harisson. The PS4 has a gamer focus marketing communication, Sony unlike MS did not impose DRM restrictions and features that are more in tune with a corporate vision of an ecosystem of unrelated products where MS controls customer content. Sony succeeded at communicating a respect to the customer's independence regardless if they mean it or not. Of course Sony continues to be a business with people who want profit.

But even if we go back, the Playstation itself was someone's vision to create a gaming console, not a strategic decision for Sony as a whole. Sony's president turned down many times Kutaragi's idea for Sony to enter the console industry. The best they accepted was a collaboration with Nintendo which kind of back stabbed them. And this is how the Playstation was conceived as a stand alone console.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But at the same time you guys spout stuff from a console centric point of view, ignoring a billion other devices out there of all shapes and sizes. Goodness, do you guys really feel that the gaming world revolves around Sony? There's a metric fuck ton of people out there that have never played a Sony game ever on whatever devices they play games on.

This is the console forum.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

maybe , but of course this isn't a great thing in the industry and we have others that will finance 3rd party games

Not a great thing?

Lots of third party games would never get made if it wasn't for the publisher (Sony, Microsoft) bankrolling the cost of development. The develop needs to give something up to cover these, sometimes massive, costs. They have IP and they have profits. Which would you pick?

 

[eastmen]

Not a great thing?

Lot's of third party games would never get made if it wasn't for the publisher (Sony, Microsoft) bankrolling the cost of development. The develop needs to give something up to cover these, sometimes massive, costs. They have IP and they have profits. Which would you pick?

I guess it depends. I kept hearing for a generation that it was a bad thing that games like gears of war and mass effect were eclusive to a single platform and tons of cheering when mass effect came to the playstation platform.

So I would think its a bad thing no ?

 

[joker454]

I said Sony is investing in software makers which arguably defined the PS3/360 era and I listed a few recent titles to prove my point that Sony is relevant based on the software alone.

Yes that post, which isn't in this thread anymore. That's what I replied to, and I don't agree at all that their software defined the ps3/360 era. That's what spawned this thread and all it's tangents.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I guess it depends. I kept hearing for a generation that it was a bad thing that games like gears of war and mass effect were eclusive to a single platform and tons of cheering when mass effect came to the playstation platform.

I think it's a fact of life and for some developers having a publisher take most, if not all, of the financial risk is the only way some games would ever get made. I don't know if this was the case with Gears or War and Mass Effect or if these were bought exclusives - this could be the case as Microsoft does appear to have far less internal studios than both Nintendo and Microsoft so buying exclusives (to people buy into your console ecosystem) is often the only option. Bungie were developing Halo for quite a while before Microsoft scooped up the studio, Halo was revealed at Macworld 1999 and commercially, Bungie were doing fine.

I don't begrudge Microsoft doing this, it's still a competitive business after all. But the fact Sony don't just throw money at developers no strings attached doesn't diminish the other things they've done for gaming - chronicled by many others above.

 

[eastmen]

The thing about MS is that most people are not convinced that MS truly cares about gaming for gaming. MS is perceived as a company that invaded in with a corporate mindset to take over and expand its Windows business. It is perceived as a purely corporate strategic decision which was made worse with XB1's initial vision and communication. I mean...you have these MS representatives on stage and you wonder if they are in touch with what they are talking about beyond the typical PR.

Sony was perceived in a similar way by Sega and Nintendo old timers when they first joined with the original Playstation.

At the time many people were seeing Sony's buy outs and deals with developers as an effort to steal content from the legendary Sega and Nintendo. Exclusive games raised suspicion. Rewind 2 decades ago and you will see such comments in gaming forums.

The reality was that Sega and Nintendo lost support due to their own faults. Sony did fund though and buy some developers. But they werent as many as people thought.
Sony did the following major 4 steps that helped them gain ground. They formed their own studios, they made a deal with Namco which was a hardware/software collaboration, and they already owned Psygnosis (which continued to some games for other systems). But most importantly they offered good developer support and the console was priced correctly which expanded the userbase. Exclusives were coming automatically without having to make deals with devs after that.

The Playstation brought some very delightful gaming moments, its hardware helped gaming advance due to its hardware design (games like FF7 and MGS were examples of gaming pinnacle that benefited from 3D and the CD medium), and Sony studios themselves brought games that have set unique standards because they had a pure gaming vision in mind. An example of that was Gran Turismo. It was conceived purely from someone's vision and dream to create a real driving simulator. Kazunori Yamauchi became Sony's Yu Suzuki.

At the end the power of hundreds of millions of people who had some good gaming memories with its products cannot be understated. This has helped change the image of Sony.


In addition Sony's studios dared risk with new gaming and creative ideas which improves the image that SCE is comprised of people that care about gaming. Parapa the Rapper, Vib Ribbon, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, Mark of Kri, Pupeteer, Eye Toy etc these are games that rely on creativity and game expression not for mainstream appeal.


The fact that Mark Cerny is also part of the group farther improves this image. Before there was also Phill Harisson. The PS4 has a gamer focus marketing communication, Sony unlike MS did not impose DRM restrictions and features that are more in tune with a corporate vision of an ecosystem of unrelated products where MS controls customer content. Sony succeeded at communicating a respect to the customer's independence regardless if they mean it or not. Of course Sony continues to be a business with people who want profit.

But even if we go back, the Playstation itself was someone's vision to create a gaming console, not a strategic decision for Sony as a whole. Sony's president turned down many times Kutaragi's idea for Sony to enter the console industry. The best they accepted was a collaboration with Nintendo which kind of back stabbed them. And this is how the Playstation was conceived as a stand alone console.

This is an interesting post. If you go to other forums you will hear M$ money hatted exclusives and how evil of a company they are. But some of us who were around for awhile ( I am an 1981 baby) saw sony gain market share with the same tatics with the playstation.

Some of us also remember all the bs sony pulled for a year before the ps2 launch that helped kill the dreamcast.

I'm sure there are many people who loved sony's games and grew up with them , like I did during the nes , super and genesis time frames. However I've played those same sony games and know the truth behind them.

Even now in the e3 threads we are hearing how MS only had cgi ! but many forget games like final fantasy 7 were sold on the back of cgi comercials . Some of us forget that the promise of the ps2's power was sold on the back of final fantasy and cgi and maybe even some are to young to remember killzone 2 cgi and the fall out there.

These companies are just that companies and if anything your post shows how little any of these companies really mean to anyone.

There is a generation of gamers who grew up on Atari and they failed and a generation grew up on Nintendo and another with a Nintendo under siege by sega. That all changed when sony entered the market and then it was the first generation really split by 3 consoles and then we saw the end of sega and the entrance of MS in the next generation.

2 companies in all this Atari and sega both huge names in the business gone just like that and both times a new company came in and carried the torch .

So really it wont be any different if sony or ms or Nintendo leaves. Someone else will pick up the torch

 

[Nesh]

This is an interesting post. If you go to other forums you will hear M$ money hatted exclusives and how evil of a company they are. But some of us who were around for awhile ( I am an 1981 baby) saw sony gain market share with the same tatics with the playstation.

Some of us also remember all the bs sony pulled for a year before the ps2 launch that helped kill the dreamcast.

I'm sure there are many people who loved sony's games and grew up with them , like I did during the nes , super and genesis time frames. However I've played those same sony games and know the truth behind them.

Even now in the e3 threads we are hearing how MS only had cgi ! but many forget games like final fantasy 7 were sold on the back of cgi comercials . Some of us forget that the promise of the ps2's power was sold on the back of final fantasy and cgi and maybe even some are to young to remember killzone 2 cgi and the fall out there.

These companies are just that companies and if anything your post shows how little any of these companies really mean to anyone.

There is a generation of gamers who grew up on Atari and they failed and a generation grew up on Nintendo and another with a Nintendo under siege by sega. That all changed when sony entered the market and then it was the first generation really split by 3 consoles and then we saw the end of sega and the entrance of MS in the next generation.

2 companies in all this Atari and sega both huge names in the business gone just like that and both times a new company came in and carried the torch .

So really it wont be any different if sony or ms or Nintendo leaves. Someone else will pick up the torch

Well, yeah. If Sony disappears someone else will get the market share and continue, but its impossible to evaluate the future relevance of someone who left unless you can predict how they would have contributed to the industry if they remained.
Its easier to go back and review their past work and make an approximate evaluation of their possible future contribution based on that. Judging by Sega's past work I believe that we did lose by their exclusion and their shrunk business. They were some of the best developers ever that were thinking far ahead than what the times allowed
The demise of Sega was a combination of many things. Some of Sony's BS came from the media's willfulness to take things out of context. The "Toy Story" claim wasnt even Sony's claim and the "its like jacking into the matrix" was about the GSCUBE demo and the future vision of digital entertainment.
Ironically Sega's demise also came from Sega's desire to offer more to the consumer. They wanted people to have the freedom to make their own homebrew on the console. This gave the birth of the boot disk which made piracy super easy. I have also heard that EA abandoned the Dreamcast because they want to have more exclusivity on sport content but SEGA rejected the idea because they had their own studio that made amazingly good sports games.
This is taken directly from Wikipedia

Electronic Arts was one of the notable developers that did not publish games for the Dreamcast. Although EA had long supported Sega's earlier consoles, and this partnership has been attributed to EA's emergence as one of the dominant players, it had suffered losses from the Sega Saturn and its premature discontinuation.

During negotiations, EA was irked by Sega's indecision over hardware, including which graphics chipset and whether to include a modem. One EA executive said "there was a push from Sega, which was having cash flow problems, and they couldn't afford to give us [EA] the same kind of license that EA has had over the last five years. So EA basically said, 'You can't succeed without us.' And Sega said, 'Sure we can. We're Sega.'[2]

There was disagreement between Sega and EA over sports games. EA knew that hardware manufacturers were at risk when launching a new console, and would use such situations to EA's advantage. EA's then-president Larry Probst (a close friend of Sega's Stolar) noted wide competition to EA's sports franchises and wanted five year exclusive rights for EA to be the only sports brand on Dreamcast. However Sega America's president Bernie Stolar had a strategic plan that included Visual Concepts (a company that Sega purchased for $10 million) as a key element for the Dreamcast,[1] and Stolar believed that Visual Concept's upcoming NFL title would be superior to EA's Madden NFL series. Sega offered to lower the royalty rates that EA would pay for publishing its titles on the Dreamcast but Probst would not budge on the exclusivity deal.[2]

 

[Pixel]

Well, yeah. If Sony disappears someone else will get the market share and continue, but its impossible to evaluate the future relevance of someone who left unless you can predict how they would have contributed to the industry if they remained.
Its easier to go back and review their past work and make an approximate evaluation of their possible future contribution based on that. Judging by Sega's past work I believe that we did lose by their exclusion and their shrunk business. They were some of the best developers ever that were thinking far ahead than what the times allowed
The demise of Sega was a combination of many things. Some of Sony's BS came from the media's willfulness to take things out of context. The "Toy Story" claim wasnt even Sony's claim and the "its like jacking into the matrix" was about the GSCUBE demo and the future vision of digital entertainment.
Ironically Sega's demise also came from Sega's desire to offer more to the consumer. They wanted people to have the freedom to make their own homebrew on the console. This gave the birth of the boot disk which made piracy super easy. I have also heard that EA abandoned the Dreamcast because they want to have more exclusivity on sport content but SEGA rejected the idea because they had their own studio that made amazingly good sports games.
This is taken directly from Wikipedia

Entry costs for entering the console market are bigger than ever. So is pulling people away from their network of friends. I don't see anyone seeing it financially viable to move in on MS this generation for numerous reasons. Then consumers will experience the impact of no competition in this sphere.

 

[temesgen]

Yes that post, which isn't in this thread anymore. That's what I replied to, and I don't agree at all that their software defined the ps3/360 era. That's what spawned this thread and all it's tangents.

Its post #11 in this thread and its still here......

If you bothered to read what I wrote you would understand that my point was that Sony's software releases in the past 3 years alone proves they are relevant.

after that was pointed out you moved to list then sales then bc and now your saying the post you are arguing against is deleted when its not....

I guess when moving the goal post doesn't work you get to pretend it isn't there to begin with?

This ridiculous debate started and still is about Sony's relevance to gaming and you have yet to come up any sort of coherent argument to suggest they aren't...

 

[eastmen]

Entry costs for entering the console market are bigger than ever. So is pulling people away from their network of friends. I don't see anyone seeing it financially viable to move in on MS this generation for numerous reasons. Then consumers will experience the impact of no competition in this sphere.

Why ?

Got android ? Bring over your friends to your Google console just log in with gmail and use the power of google plus !


Got IOS , just buy your new apple console and play with all your iPhone contacts !

 

[Pixel]

Why ?

Got android ? Bring over your friends to your Google console just log in with gmail and use the power of google plus !


Got IOS , just buy your new apple console and play with all your iPhone contacts !

Multiplayer games are not cross corporation and rarely cross platform from the same corp. Think of all those people already invested in Xbox One. Think of the huge exclusive library of games that will only be available on Xbox One, Google/Apple console exclusives library will only be in embrionic state. Thats only the tip of the iceberg.

How long will it take to flesh out the services, infrastructure, business end and features in their console business to equal Xbox One? A long time.

At minimum they somehow have to finance an exclusive list of top quality exclusives in quality and quantity that at least equal Xbox One offer. 3-4 AAA games a year and constantly be willing to take a loss.

Thats the tip of the iceberg.

 

[zupallinere]

Multiplayer games are not cross corporation and rarely cross platform from the same corp. Think of all those people already invested in Xbox One. Think of the huge exclusive library of games that will only be available on Xbox One, Google/Apple console exclusives library will only be in embrionic state. Thats only the tip of the iceberg.

How long will it take to flesh out the services, infrastructure, business end and features in their console business to equal Xbox One? A long time.

At minimum they somehow have to finance an exclusive list of top quality exclusives in quality and quantity that at least equal Xbox One offer. 3-4 AAA games a year and constantly be willing to take a loss.

Thats the tip of the iceberg.

I'll add that ARM based games running say Battlefield level code will not be coming out anytime soon or if at all if say MS and Sony left the scene. The PC will pump out some great graphics but there won't be all that much of a push at that point as I assume profits from console sales help to defray the cost of the PC titles.

Towerfall is great fun but that isn't what console fans are looking for when it comes to games that will drop a jaw or 3. Steam box maybe help out here but we already have 2 consoles using memory configurations and CPU/GPU interconnections that aren't being used anywhere else and if Sony/MS left no one would bother spending the time or energy on anything like that. I have no idea whether HSA or some subset of it, becomes as big a thing as both companies and AMD hope it will but I don't see anyone else looking to innovate. PC games will just get more cycles thrown at them for the remaining time folks are willing to upgrade GPUs and ARM based tv/gaming boxes will get last gen types of titles in a couple of years with the benefit of an extra gig or so of RAM.

 

[specwarGP2]

The original Playstation controller was a SuperNES controller with an extra set of shoulder buttons and a horrible Dpad. The Dual Shock was that with a pair of analog sticks shoehorned in, in response to N64 having analog.

DualShock was the evolution of the Dual Analog controller, which in turn was an evolution of the Dual Analog Joystick which came out before the N64.

All newer PS controllers are just tweaks to the same design really. When you really think about it, the modern controller layout is still the old SNES pad with some additions.

And those "additions" were all introduced by Sony and are standard across all modern controllers on all platforms.

 

[eastmen]

DualShock was the evolution of the Dual Analog controller, which in turn was an evolution of the Dual Analog Joystick which came out before the N64.



And those "additions" were all introduced by Sony and are standard across all modern controllers on all platforms.

what ? Sony hasn't actually added anything new to a controller perhaps a second analog. But everything in the dual shock were in controlers before it.

The super nes controller was the first to add bumpers from what I remember. Also the n64 and nights pad introduced triggers

 

[Reznor007]

DualShock was the evolution of the Dual Analog controller, which in turn was an evolution of the Dual Analog Joystick which came out before the N64.



And those "additions" were all introduced by Sony and are standard across all modern controllers on all platforms.

As an optional specialty controller supported by a few dozen games out of hundreds on PS1 yeah, but the standard controller form wasn't out until 1997, well after Nintendo announced analog would be standard on N64.

Around the same time, rumble support came for N64 and the Japanese version of the dual analog controller, but Sony decided the US/Euro market didn't want it. Once rumble support became common on N64, the dual shock controller added it back for US/Euro markets.

So the unique things that Sony added were mostly just doubles of things Nintendo added as standard. I will give them the analog face buttons as a truly new thing, but even they dropped that. There's also the touchpad and the light bar thing, but IDK if those will catch on.

Dual Shock 4 even adds the mono speaker made standard on the Wii

 

[Rodéric]

I did remember that : http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/zhsx31.jpg

Looks like Nintendo innovated, not Sony.
(At the same time Sony having "got" all its tech from Nintendo on the never produced SNES CD extension, it's no surprise...)

 

[(((interference)))]

I think the dual analog sticks on PS was an important introduction...
Might seem obvious but Nintendo didn't think of it for the N64 controller