PS3 Strategy/Confidence Retrospective

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Anyone expecting the exclusives ratio for the PS3 to be as lopsided as it was for the PS2 is dreaming, pure and simple. Nearly every large Western producer is multiplatform for easy to understand cost reasons (with a couple titles being moneyhatted), and the situation is even worse on the Japanese side, with both HD platforms tanking very badly there. Which means that (apart from some projects that were started long ago), Japanese producers have the choice to :
- produce games with some western appeal and go multiplatform (Capcom is doing this pretty well)
- develop for the two really successful systems in Japan right now (DS and Wii)
- be moneyhatted for a PS3 exclusive and recoup dev costs thanks to the moneyhat
- tank on the PS3, with the severe financial risks involved in a failed high profile development (remember that not a single PS3 game sold more than 400 000 units in Japan, which is pretty atrocious on its own)

Regarding exclusives, I don't want to go into list warz BS, but the 360 has many upcoming exceptional titles, both exclusive and multiplatform. We know more about the PS3's 2008 lineup for a single reason : its 2007 lineup was so poor they had to communicate on 2008+ titles in order to attract customers to the platform. After that, it all boils down to personal preferences, but refering to the old stable of PS2 exclusives as being de facto PS3 exclusives doesn't make any sense (unless we are talking 1st party stuff).

I think the console with the highest amount of exclusive titles this gen will be the Wii (which is not to say many of those titles will be good, of course). It will probably also be the console with the least returns from previous gen franchises (if we except the usual Nintendo stuff, whose Wii versions have been quite stellar up until now). The Wii may generate a good amount of spin-offs, and may catch a couple high-profile exclusives : remember how Monster Hunter 3 was canned as a PS3 project, and moved to the Wii instead ? Unless it's also on DS (which I doubt), DQ10 will certainly end as a Wii title too.
First of all your assumption is wrong because no one is expecting the PS3 to have the huge amount of exclusives the PS2 had. But it doesnt need to have that many either. And the are lots of "buts" with your arguments.

The problem with your original post was that based some few exclusives going multiplatform you assumed the PS3 was in big trouble regarding exclusives. Which is proven untrue simply by watching the growing list of PS3 exclusives.

Secondly you concentrated on Japan and ignore the great amount of developers outside Japan supporting the PS3 platform with exclusives.

Third you forget that some developers including even Japanese are not bound to shift some specific big titles towards Wii despite Wii's huge success. Wii is a platform for exclusive spin offs, very specific genres, small international franchises, Japanese oriented titles, multiplatform games and Nintendo IPs.

in Japan if there is one console that has more chances not to get a version in case it doesnt get Wii exclusive is the 360.

Japanese sales are also irrelevant when it comes to international appealing Japanese developed titles.

Just to get even more specific with your previous post, the list of games you mentioned of lost "exclusives" are a result of timing only with one title not being an exclusive since the PS2. The PS2 lost even greater numbers of exclusives that were even bigger franchises back in the day. Capcom even made Resident Evil games on DC and 2 exclusives Resident Evil games on GameCube.Capcom isnt much different today than it was back then. And that includes Namco as well.

Actually I am surprised by the fact that only three came to your mind. There are less than they should have been.
 
what is the LTD for all 3?

From a Neogaf MC thread (for 4/14-4/20). This is LTD for Japan. DS still has a far larger installed base. At the current rate PSP would reach parity wrt installed base in 325 weeks. :)
Also, I believe (but I'm not sure) that PSP sales are inflated by the release of Monster Hunter.

Code:
Hardware - This Week | Last Week |       YTD |        LTD
1. PSP   -    85,421 |    85,721 | 1,400,922 |  9,065,999
2. NDS   -    44,551 |    47,158 | 1,197,047 | 22,370,097
3. WII   -    44,241 |    46,296 | 1,190,598 |  5,806,757
4. PS3   -     7,438 |     8,232 |   373,563 |  2,015,234
5. PS2   -     6,545 |     6,834 |   190,898 | 21,117,938
6. 360   -     1,076 |     1,147 |    50,721 |    558,061
 
LTD isn't particularly important. It's active users that matter, rather than units sold. Otherwise PS2 would be the only platform worth considering!

Of course LTD is of little use when you talking about a product that was initally released in 1999 in a market where a generation last typically 5-7 years.

However, when talkin about competitive products within the same generation, LTD becomes very important.

LTD has a strong influence on the number of active users who in turn have an influence on software sales, which is ultimately the most pertinent figure for devs. If any number has the most inrelevance in terms of potential profits, its the hardware monthly sales of the last six months.

The DS has the biggest userbase in japan and sells the most software. In turn the Wii has the smallest userbase in japan of the three and yet still outsells the PSP in terms of software.

Why as a dev would I care about the PSP monthly sales of the last few months, its small but significant userbase isn't particularly hungry for gaming software? If the perception of the PSP is too change its has to grow its LTD to a size to where even with a low attachment rate it sells enough software to warrant targetting or the current userbase becomes untraditionally game hungry and can sustain a high level of software sales even with a limited userbase.
 
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Important Notice : There are too many Carmack discussions spread around the board at the moment. Can all cross-platform discussion be focussed in the Multiplatform Development thread here :

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=45041

I won't move any existing discussion posts into that thread as they'll get all mixed up and be impossible to follow, but future Carmack posts will either get moved or axed. Thanks.
 
I wonder if this is true. Will have to keep an eye on it in the future!

IGNBioshockPS3HandsOn said:
Although it was still an early build of the game, the title looks fantastic. The water effects look much slicker, as do many of the environments as they are slowly submerged in water. It's quite obvious that 2K is taking full advantage of the PS3's Blu-ray discs to pack in cleaner high resolution textures for every facet of the game;
 
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What they claim about the PS3 version is one thing, and I'm going as far as saying the reviewers have an untrained eye.

I'm waiting for texture comparisons, pixelcount, AA & AF specification until I judge if they could tickle more performance out of the PS3 than the 360. After a year more development time you would be underwhelmed by anything else to be honest.
 
I'm waiting for texture comparisons, pixelcount, AA & AF specification until I judge if they could tickle more performance out of the PS3 than the 360. After a year more development time you would be underwhelmed by anything else to be honest.
Yet at the same time you're saying the reviewers are seeing things not their with their untrained eye? ;)

I agree, spot comments aren't to be taken at face value, and we would hope for improvements. I'm doubtful that more BRD space = better texture res though.

[modhat]I'm closing this thread as it isn't really about anything any more. Specific title differences can be discussed per title, or added to existing optical drive discussion[/modhat]
 
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