Sony: 2M PS3s shipped

Seriously, the game is like 59% on gamerankings.com, you might just as well say that Ninety Nine Nights is a vital exclusive to Xbox 360, which will push the X360 userbase even higher.
Yes, you could do. Software diversity is more important than software rankings. Again, if you have platform A with 50 games across all genres and styles, with everything at 75% or less, and Platform B with 200 FPSes all ranked at 95%+, which is going to sell more? You need a mix in order to reach the diversity of buyers out there, and it's that mix of library that's important. It's that mix of exclusives which differentiates the platform, rather than the rankings of it's exclusives. Just because a game is ranked lowly, doesn't mean it's not reaching some people and giving them a fun experience that's enough to get them to buy a system (along with other experiences that platform offers).

I'm not saying PS3 has more excluisves or better exclusives or anything of the sort. I'm nowhere near clued up enough on what's coming out to pass such comments. What I am saying is that the comment Laa-Yosh offered isn't valid, because he's selecting exclusives on his own criteria as to what is notable. There're people in the world who can look at his notable games lists and see nothing that particularly interests them, whereas some exclusives left off his list would get their attention.
 
There're people in the world who can look at his notable games lists and see nothing that particularly interests them, whereas some exclusives left off his list would get their attention.

You know, the same goes for the X360 games as well... And I think it's useless to try to deny that the Xbox will have a massive list of titles this year, including the strongest franchises in the US, whereas we probably won't get to see more than one of the traditional big names on the PS3.
 
You know, the same goes for the X360 games as well... And I think it's useless to try to deny that the Xbox will have a massive list of titles this year, including the strongest franchises in the US, whereas we probably won't get to see more than one of the traditional big names on the PS3.

:rolleyes:

Not many consoles have a launch window filled with the big name exclusives. The reason: it takes time to develop/understand a system well enough to produce one.

360 has big name titles in its 2nd year, PS3 has exactly the same if you look at the dates quoted.
 
Yes, you could do. Software diversity is more important than software rankings. Again, if you have platform A with 50 games across all genres and styles, with everything at 75% or less, and Platform B with 200 FPSes all ranked at 95%+, which is going to sell more? You need a mix in order to reach the diversity of buyers out there, and it's that mix of library that's important. It's that mix of exclusives which differentiates the platform, rather than the rankings of it's exclusives. Just because a game is ranked lowly, doesn't mean it's not reaching some people and giving them a fun experience that's enough to get them to buy a system (along with other experiences that platform offers).
Why do you deliberately ignore genres that 360 offers? You make it sound like there are only FPSes for 360, but in reality 360 will offer more RPGs than PS3, more racers, possibly one of two quality platformers released this year (the second one - Mario Galaxy - is not for PS3 either) and so on.
 
Why do you deliberately ignore genres that 360 offers? You make it sound like there are only FPSes for 360, but in reality 360 will offer more RPGs than PS3, more racers, possibly one of two quality platformers released this year (the second one - Mario Galaxy - is not for PS3 either) and so on.
I was pointing out PS3 isn't weak in diversity and giving hypothetical examples. I never said XB360 is FPS only. I never mentioned anything about XB360's diversity. As I said, I can't comment on XB360's library diversity because I don't know what games it has coming out short of the commonly named ones which Laa-Yosh listed.

Laa-Yosh said:
You know, the same goes for the X360 games as well...
Of course it does. Which is why it's stupid to select a subsection of available of exclusives when arguing appeal based on exclusives. All I'm saying is if you're going to argue about exclusives attracting buyers, use all the exclusives rather than just the ones that appeal to you. For any platform.
 
All I'm saying is if you're going to argue about exclusives attracting buyers, use all the exclusives rather than just the ones that appeal to you. For any platform.

I don't think I can find all the exclusive titles for both platforms; also, many games don't have a release date yet, or may be pushed back to 2008.

So let me re-phrase, just for you: looking at what we know at this point in time, the software library for the X360 for this year is a lot more impressive to me then what the PS3 has to offer. Satisfied?
 
Not many consoles have a launch window filled with the big name exclusives. The reason: it takes time to develop/understand a system well enough to produce one.

The PS3 had better devkits delivered to developers than the X360 at the same time. As far as I know there's been final devkits out there for about a year. Time should not be a problem...

The true explanation is that the market for big exclusive titles is just too small and publishers will rather delay them a bit to reach a larger installed base. Just look at Resistance, it has sold what, 400-500K copies so far? It may get past the break even point before it ends up in the bargain bin, even though it certainly had a lot more potential in it. It's the slow sales of the PS3 that keeps the software library small...
 
The PS3 had better devkits delivered to developers than the X360 at the same time. As far as I know there's been final devkits out there for about a year. Time should not be a problem...

Nope, they were released last summer, and not everyone got them right at that time either. Furthermore, the sixaxis libraries were only available just after that. The online libraries have been released later still. Combine this with many developers drawing their conclusions from this that the PS3 was going to be late already at a much earlier stage, and you will see why they have chosen the 360 as lead platform, and will have given that platform resource priority as well. Many developers schedule their titles at about 1 year after launch, regardless of when they get any kind of devkit.

The true explanation is that the market for big exclusive titles is just too small and publishers will rather delay them a bit to reach a larger installed base. Just look at Resistance, it has sold what, 400-500K copies so far? It may get past the break even point before it ends up in the bargain bin, even though it certainly had a lot more potential in it. It's the slow sales of the PS3 that keeps the software library small...

It's a matter of risk versus reward. Insomniac, for instance, has taken a good look at how game sales develop. Throughout the next year, their title is going to be one of the best online FPS games out there, and one which has had a lot of limelight. 400-500k copies is already very decent, but one year after the PS3's release the title is likely to have picked up a cool million (just watch what will happen during the European launch alone). And I don't know many publishers that complain about a title that does a million sales.

There is a big advantage getting a decent title out at launch, because the ratio between good titles out there and potential buyers is often much better than it is in later years.

Additionally, it's not like the development costs of Resistance have to be earned back in Resistance alone. Ratchett is going to highly benefit from Resistance both in terms of development sharing and market awareness of Insomniac as a capable developer, and Resistance 2 is going to benefit from the high profile that Resistance got, both in the press and among gamers.

Which brings me to another point. I'm fairly convinced that Ratchett is going to be released holiday 2007. I think Insomniac will be able to do at least 1 title a year. They have (at least) two teams working, one on the Resistance series, and one on the Ratchett series. Ratchett should therefore be added to the PS3 exclusives list for 2007, in my opinion.

Right now, we are not sure which exclusive titles are going to be out for the PS3 in 2007.
 
Y Software diversity is more important than software rankings. Again, if you have platform A with 50 games across all genres and styles, with everything at 75% or less, and Platform B with 200 FPSes all ranked at 95%+, which is going to sell more?

Okay lets take a look at the annouced\released games for each plattform then.

Xbox 360: Totalt Annouced\released games - 375 | Percentage of total : 100%

By Genre:
FPS: 37 | 9,86%
Action Adventure: 42* | 11.2%
Action: 38 | 10,13%
Tactical Shooters: 7 | 1,87%
Other Shooter: 30 (20 of are arcade titles) | 8%
RPG: 26 | 6,93%
MMO: 6 | 1,6%
RTS: 4 | 1,06%
Turnbased Strategy: 2 | 0,53 %
Other strategy: 3 | 0,8%
Racing: 21 | 5,6%
Car Combat: 7 | 1,86%
Other driving: 5 | 1,33%
Party Games: 3 | 0,8%
Fighting: 12 | 3,2%
Plattformers: 14 | 3,733%
Combat sims (flight) : 13 | 3,46%
Adventure: 26 | 6,93%
Puzzle: 10 | 2,6%
All kinds of Sports: 69 | 18,4%
----------------------------

PS3: Totalt Annouced\released games - 221 | Percentage of total : 100%
Action Adventure: 27* | 12,2%
Action: 25 | 11,3%
FPS: 28 | 12,7%
Tactical shooter: 4 | 1,8%
Other shooter: 7 | 3,2%
RPG: 20 | 9,0%
MMO:4 | 1,8%
RTS: 1 | 0,45%
Turned based Strategy: 3 | 1,36%
Other strategy: 1 | 0,45
Racing: 11 | 5,0%
Car combat: 3 | 1,36%
Other Driving: 5 | 2,26%
Plattformers: 6 | 2,72%
Adventure: 11 | 4,98%
Fighting: 7 | 3,16%
Combat Sim (flight): 3 | 1,36%
Party games: 1 | 0,45%
Puzzle: 5 | 2,26%
All kinds of sports:49 | 22,2%
-----

*(note this includes free roaming)
 
PS3 notable exclusives for the first half of 2007:
Motorstorm, Heavenly Sword, F1, and maybe Lair
Later through the year, we may see these:
Metal Gear Solid 4, Devil May Cry 4, maybe even Final Fantasy (but I doubt this)

X360 notable exclusives:
Mass Effect, Bioshock, Lost Planet, Blue Dragon, Forza 2, Crackdown, Shadowrun
Later through the year, we may see these:
Halo 3, Too Human, Lost Odyssey, Castle Wolfenstein, Banjo-Kazooie.

Naughty Dog, Insomniac, SCEJ, SCEE, Namco and Tecmo PS3-games just disappeared like that. :LOL:
 

Still, Insomniac has been able to complete Resistance, Heavenly Sword has been in development for what, 4 years, and so on. The possibility was there, it's the developers who chose not to make the most of it.

It's a matter of risk versus reward. Insomniac, for instance, has taken a good look at how game sales develop. Throughout the next year, their title is going to be one of the best online FPS games out there, and one which has had a lot of limelight.

It will be overshadowed by new releases, but the more important point is that it will fail to realize its full sales potential. Had it been released with an install base of 5-10 million, it would sell a lot better.
I actually doubt that it will do a million this year. Seems like the hardcore Playstation users - who buy the console at this time - aren't big FPS fans.

There is a big advantage getting a decent title out at launch, because the ratio between good titles out there and potential buyers is often much better than it is in later years.

Launch titles have very varied sales. Halo and Mario64 made a killing, but look at the PS2 lineup, or the GC and so on. All those games have been forgotten, very quickly, because the shelf life is still quite short. Few people want to buy year-old games.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of sense in what you say - it's jsut that life defies logic many times.
 
Naughty Dog, Insomniac, SCEJ, SCEE, Namco and Tecmo PS3-games just disappeared like that. :LOL:

Are you sure their games will ship in 2007? NGS will definitely be realeased this year, but what about the others?

Laa-Yosh - CoD2 managed to sell nearly 2M units despite being a launch title and being a full-price title in 2006 (PDZ hit a million eventually, too), so maybe Resistance will manage to sell in 2007 as well?
 
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Naughty Dog, Insomniac, SCEJ, SCEE, Namco and Tecmo PS3-games just disappeared like that. :LOL:

None of them have 2007 release dates...

Honestly, for any reasonable publisher, it makes a lot of sense to delay exclusive titles for at least october or november. PS3 sales won't pick up significantly through the summer, there's no chance for a quick price cut either...
Someone might take the risk as Capcom did with Dead Rising though, we'll see.
 
Still, Insomniac has been able to complete Resistance, Heavenly Sword has been in development for what, 4 years, and so on. The possibility was there, it's the developers who chose not to make the most of it.

Truth is, the further away you are from a console's release, the more expensive and difficult development becomes. Only developers who are very confident of their technical prowess when it comes to working with early devkits, beta-drivers, new technologies and changing specs take such risks, and then there is still the matter of the release dates. The only way to do this without running too high risks is by making some kind of deal with Sony, I think.

It will be overshadowed by new releases, but the more important point is that it will fail to realize its full sales potential. Had it been released with an install base of 5-10 million, it would sell a lot better.

While that is true, if at the time of Resistance's release the PS3 market had been estimated at 5-10 million, it is likely that there would have been more competitors as well.

I actually doubt that it will do a million this year. Seems like the hardcore Playstation users - who buy the console at this time - aren't big FPS fans.

It is still the best-selling PS3 title, so you don't really know that. I'm going to respectfully not mention anything about which console attracts the most FPS gamers, but I think there is a fair market for Resistance on the Playstation platform coming from both Ratchett fans and Socom (c.s.) fans.

Launch titles have very varied sales. Halo and Mario64 made a killing, but look at the PS2 lineup, or the GC and so on. All those games have been forgotten, very quickly, because the shelf life is still quite short. Few people want to buy year-old games.

See, this is what I thought too. But then I saw the top 50 best selling titles recently, and to my surprise there were titles in that list that I wouldn't have expected. Launch titles become the best-known titles, and have a surprisingly long shelf-life, I suspect not in the least because they make platinum first also. If by next Christmas people buy their PS3 and Resistance is out on Platinum and is one of the best-played online games out there, with additional downloadable content out there, then people buy it. Motorstorm could be the next SSX, which, like Tekken Tag, were games that I was surprised to see in that top 50.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of sense in what you say - it's jsut that life defies logic many times.

Not that many. ;) It's just that we often don't see the logic. But it is often there, and it makes sense if you're willing to look hard enough - that at least is my view on life. ;)
 
Nope, they were released last summer, and not everyone got them right at that time either.
Final devkits - but there were kits that were far more represenative of the hardware (i.e. Cell plus similar GPU) for a far longer period of time.
 
Final devkits - but there were kits that were far more represenative of the hardware (i.e. Cell plus similar GPU) for a far longer period of time.

Laa-Yosh was referring to the final devkits. That's what my correction came from.

The earlier devkits - were they PCs with a Cell instead of a regular processor and an Nvidia GPU in a PCI slot, or did they have the full CBA in place with the pipelines to the RSX, texturing from XDR, etc.? Because these things make a big difference and mean you can't do all that much with the PS3's strengths, other than learn to program the Cell.

Also, Microsoft I'm sure had better tools to go along with the devkits, and we know from following IBM that even just plain Cell programming hasn't matured all that much until recently. The 360 'only' had PPE cores that were relatively well known.

I think all in all, if you look at the tech of the Cell, the CBE / Flexio pipeline, the way the RSX is connected to it, the difference of the SPEs, the relative youth of the toolset available to Cell programmers early on, the far too late appearance of Sixaxis drivers, and the extremely late appearance of online support put PS3 developers at a big disadvantage.

Of course, I'm not actually a developer so I could definitely be wrong.
 
Laa-Yosh was referring to the final devkits. That's what my correction came from.
He was also talking about "better" devkits - i.e. the Cell + G7x. Those configurations were far closer to the final system than the G5 + X800 kits for 360.

The earlier devkits - were they PCs with a Cell instead of a regular processor and an Nvidia GPU in a PCI slot, or did they have the full CBA in place with the pipelines to the RSX, texturing from XDR, etc.? Because these things make a big difference and mean you can't do all that much with the PS3's strengths, other than learn to program the Cell.
For the most part the main difference would be doing all the texturing from the 256-bit bus of the graphics board in the early dev kits, but then moving some of that to main RAM on the final kits if need be.
 
He was also talking about "better" devkits - i.e. the Cell + G7x. Those configurations were far closer to the final system than the G5 + X800 kits for 360.

In other words they had underclocked CELL's and underclocked G70's for a lonnng time.

Comparing that to MS's early devkits which were dual core apple G5, with a PC GPU, is silly.

From what I've gathered from various comments and interviews from Dev's, it was the software that was the prblem for PS3 developers, especially 3rd party. They had suffiecient time with near-final hardware, but the development tools, the latest libraries, debug tools etc seemed to be really lacking early on.
 
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