How to sell next-gen consoles, Marketing, Positioning, and Pricing [2020]

Big difference between sony and ms events was that a lot of the sony content was explicitly stated to be rendered in engine in ps5. For MS it was a lot of cgi and pc stuff and not much on console itself. Also MS event was month later which is month closer to release and one would expect more polish/in console footage because of that.

 

Yeah, being easy develop was a major focus from Cerny since he took the helm of hardware development in 2008 (they were obviously trying to avoid another PS3 by putting a dev in charge). And that is pretty much corroborated by the fact that their PS5 gameplay presentation was all directly out of the PS5 already, even the third parties. But also, the PS5 devkit was rumored to have their software side ready a long time before MS.

I'm curious if the way Worldwide Studios streamlined their operation together in the last decade, with the ICE team sharing all the tech they develop, and being so close to the hardware team, allowed all the different first party studios to have a better development pacing than MS who bought big and small studios left and right, and each developing their own stuff individually. It must take a while to integrate a new studio with the rest, otherwise each studio is individually reinventing the wheel or something.

 

Didn't know that, and it might explain a lot.

I believe that these two games are not comparable in any way, due to so many differences between them, and the notion that Sony players are not expecting "things" from 1P developers is kind of weird considering the aforementioned game.
No-one is exempt from the wrath of the internet these days.

Dynamic lighting is not a new thing... And backed lighting has its charms for the time being, TLOU and RE remakes being two examples where it really shines, (and one of the many reasons why TLOU and Halo are not comparable).
Real time TLOU environment graphics will be doable when real time ray traced global illumination will be relatively cheap computationally and the majority of the devices on the market can handle it in an acceptable manner (30fps?).
And that will solve the discrepancies in terms of lighting that we have today, between environment/static objects and dynamic objects and characters.

 

Absolutely. You put it more succinct for me. But yea, that’s not how fanboy wars will see
It though.

I don’t think Sony players expect the first party games to adhere to legacy play from nearly 20 years ago

 

Fanboys will be fanboys...
Me, I only care about ray tracing.

 

If usually reliable scuttlebutt is to be believed, Microsoft is far ahead of Sony when it comes to manufacturing, and because of the World situation, coupled with the later start, Sony was having a great deal of trouble acquiring additional line space. One thing people have to understand is that these spaces, and more importantly the components from other vendors are booked years in advance sometimes. If McDonald’s is doing an onion ring promotion, they buy those onions the previous year and reserve them from next year‘s harvest. The Same thing goes for electronics. So Sony likely has had to pay out the nose to get this additional manufacturing capacity, because they had to buy it from somebody and make it worth their trouble to delay running their product.

Then there’s the second half, once it’s manufactured how do you get it to market? Customs all over the world and especially the United States are jammed with weight times easily doubled for most products. They’re going to have to pay out the nose, whether that’s above or below board, to move their consoles to the head of the line, and that goes for everyone, not just Sony.

I’m sure they’ll do whatever it takes to have a ton of consuls for launch, I’m skeptical we’re not looking at another Xbox 360 situation, and that may apply to all three of them

 

Did you miss last week's news that Sony are aiming to manufacture 10m PS5s for the launch window (into early 2021?)

Also in terms of customs, many countries have trade agreements placing consumer electronics in their tier of goods only requiring simplified customs declarations, which means you ship through without delay and complete the paperwork later.

 

That's true but that makes it even worse. There's nothing exotic that needs time and effort to understand and unlock. If the power is there let's see it. Otherwise stop hyping it..

I'd love to judge it on its games but so far all they've shown is a rather unimpressive Halo and lots of CG/in-engine reveals. They should have been better prepared this close to a console launch. When you are in third place you need to do a lot better than just match the leader. I'll reserve judgement until I see something that makes the hardware sing. So far it's merely humming!

 

what games with game play were there ? I recall ratchet and clank. The spiderman stuff didn't show me any actual game play. Love to see a demo of it if it exists same with horizon

 

The issue microsoft has is not really was something playable or not. The issue is more in that they showed very little that actually ran on xbox. If you go through the digital foundry dissection videos you will get the gist. This made impression where it looks like sony has things running in target hw whereas microsoft doesn't. It's all about perception(marketing). Microsoft came out with bad press whereas sony managed to wow the audience. The one real thing MS did show didn't really make a good case for upgrading to next gen console(halo).

edit. One would have expected microsoft being able to take advantage of sony showing their hand but they didn't. It should have been easier to go second one month after sony as MS knew where the bar was set. This is especially bad for MS as they have been drumming the most powerful console beat and that came out very flat after their event.

 

Unbelievably, MS felt they had no responsibility to even attempt to demonstrate any hint of their next generation leading hardware. Not a hint. Not a trace.

Not even in one game. Not even in one upgrade patch. Not even in one feature for one game.

MS held out for full RDNA 2. And decided to demonstrate that with one high res Xbox One game, one 120 hz Xbox One game, And CGI.

Maybe seven years preparation wasn't enough.

 

One can understand their strategy/ideology, and criticize it at the same time.
I'm sure you can certainly understand, that getting it, doesn't mean being onboard with it.

Now my hot take on this is, is that if it was Nintendo, I wouldn't really have any problem, since they have their own ecosystem, and do not really affect the industry in the same way.
In this case though, I feel that the cross-gen period of this generation is going to last longer and be even more underwhelming than usual, because of the decisions made by Microsoft.
What defines the development of a game, is a list of technical, budgetary and artistic restrictions.
With every new generation, some of those restrictions are lifted, and the designers and artists have more freedom to create.
New game mechanics, less technically restricted art, at a higher fidelity are a few of the advantages next generation hardware can provide.
Granted, you can make a game as graphically intensive as Elite (the 1984 version) and innovate the shit out of it when it comes to gameplay.
But I'm pretty sure that won't go too well, as I'm pretty sure indie devs are doing it right now as we speak, and certainly have no need for 1.21 gigawatts (or 12 teraflops) of power to go that far into the past.
When you have to support slow CPUs and mechanical drives, you can only get this far. And all those gigawatts are going to waste.

But, there are pros in this approach as well.
A new generation is very, very hard on developers.
And easing into it is not a bad thing. As I'm sure, more studios than usual, will live through the great culling that always comes with new consoles.
Engines will be updated at a slower pace, workflows won't need to change overnight, etc.
Sales will be better for those that support the old hardware, since the player base is already there, and you can always say that your game runs faster and at higher resolutions on the new hardware.
Consumers as well will not feel the need to put their hand in their pocket and buy a new console for quite some time, since there is a good chance many cross-platform games will work on old systems as well.

Pros and cons.
If I wasn't primarily a PC gamer, I might even be ecstatic with all of these.
Now, it looks like I'll have to wait for Sony's first party studios to do what my PC can do some years now, for a system without mouse and keyboard that I'll have hooked on my TV.
Then again, playing new xbox games at 1440p@a lot more than 60hz without the need for a new GPU is not a bad deal at all.
Pros and cons.


Edit.
@BRiT, feel free to move this... I saw your post after I replied.

 

Man the anger. Or is that faux rage? Were you ever really interested in the XSX?

Tommy McClain

 

If that is directed at me, I can assure you I'm not angry at all.
And if you think the pros I listed are not important, then I have really no idea why you support Microsoft's decisions.
Because I certainly believe they are important.
Simply not what I was expecting, or what I personally want from a new generation of consoles.
But what I want or expect doesn't invalidate the actual advantages their strategy has.

 

We still get 3rd party dev games, which might show what a 2080Ti system can do, like doom series, rdr, wolfenstein etc, its not only sony ports we pc gamers get

 

Honestly, I wrote that specifically because I hate playing anything I can play with keyboard and mouse, on a console...

Sony will take advantage of their new hardware simply because they prefer distinct generations.
But third party studios can target old gen hardware for a longer period this time around, and have good incentives to do so.
Multi-platform titles that have to work on xbox one s, are kind of a nightmare come true!

 

Launch windows can be six months or more. Fiscal years end in March. I’m talking about Christmas, which is where everything is focused. They stil, have to acquire the line time to make and transport those ten million systems.

They still have to have all the logistics of shipping with reduced capacity to process it. Loading, unloading, warehouses etc. The entire supply chain is at molasses from top to bottom for a large number of consumer products.

I keep picturing Star Wars figures Situation from 1977 where parents have to give a big cardboard system to hold them over, which admittedly if done right would be neat

 

Not directed at you. It was for Function. I didn't even see your post till now. I will touch on one point only. They may have understood the strategy but they kept harping about the games Microsoft showcased should have dropped Xbox One support altogether & just launched the games on XBSX only. To me, that means they didn't really get it all. Mention once or twice, I can understand, but through the whole video, it was a bit much. To the rest of your points, too much to digest right now. Let's just say I said what I wanted & I'm moving on. Thanks.

Tommy McClain

 

Let people vent Tommy It helps with the healing process. Some people are just really upset about it. They need to have their moment to vent and rant and let MS know how they feel about how deep into a sink hole they've dropped their balls in.

The last time MS dropped their balls, they mobilized and righted the ship fairly well, considering under most circumstances they could have exited the business.

They'll just have to do it again.

People can vent all they want, mobilize on forums etc. But it's not going to change the way the game is going ot be played. How much it's going to cost you, and whether it's going to release on the platform of your choice.

People are still going to buy Xbox, they may lose some units because of this, but in the end it won't matter. Halo will not have a sequel. So this game, if you don't get it now or play it now, you'll just play it later and they're just going to keep bringing in more content and making graphical improvements to it.

 

If only Sony had some production and retail distribution experience, it may have helped in these difficult times! Coronavirus is impacting every single company, including Microsoft. Over the course of the PS4 generation we've watched Sony/Foxconn expand PS4 manufacturing from China to Japan to Brazil - we know Sony has its own automated manufacturing facility in Japan. If you read the report, you'll see that the reason for increasing of launch window capacity from 6m to 10m is exactly because of shipping lead times. Presumably Sony do not want a repeat of PS3 launch where they couldn't get stock to retail for launch by surface shipping and had to airfreight consoles.