Sony and Microsoft first party strategy

You don't but there will be some people who don't want to enter a franchise, whether it's movies, books or video games, halfway through the story.

This appears you to be making up garbage. If this were the case Disney never would have risked making new Star Wars movies.
 
As I've posted many times on these forums, I've yet to see a jot of evidence that - all things being equal - specifications are important except for a minority of gamers. The fact that Xbox One sold well despite being less powerful and more expensive should be sufficient measurable evidence that the reasons for people choosing one console over another are not primarily about price or power. If it was, Xbox would be dead by now. They are definitely factors for some, but for tens of millions of people who bought Xbox Ones? Obviously not.

This is precisely my point. People still bought a Xbox One because they liked its unique features, and this likely includes its exclusive games too.

However, i don't agree that price and performances aren't an important factor. Otherwise, Sony would not outsell the XB1 by a 2:1 ratio. Don't forget that last gen, the PS3/360 had about the same amount of total sales.
 
This appears you to be making up garbage. If this were the case Disney never would have risked making new Star Wars movies.

No, its a thing for games and it's on all sides. It was a driving reason why MS was so overcomitted on making Halo Master Chief Collection for Xbox One so they could have all Halo stories in 1 game so new gamers could jump in and catch up. Its also why all original games in the Halo and Gears franchise are playable on Xbox One via Backwards Compatiblity.

For movies its a lot easier because any VHS or DVD or BluRay player can catch the viewer up. Its easier to catch up on movies since they're passive experience and have wider hardware support.

Just because you dont think its a thing doesn't make it garbage.
 
No, its a thing for games and it's on all sides. It was a driving reason why MS was so overcomitted on making Halo Master Chief Collection for Xbox One so they could have all Halo stories in 1 game so new gamers could jump in and catch up. Its also why all original games in the Halo and Gears franchise are playable on Xbox One via Backwards Compatiblity.

For movies its a lot easier because any VHS or DVD or BluRay player can catch the viewer up. Its easier to catch up on movies since they're passive experience and have wider hardware support.

Just because you dont think its a thing doesn't make it garbage.

But there’s an Uncharted Collection. The argument was being made in the context of Uncharted even though there’s a way to catch up.

It’s a garbage argument.
 
But there’s an Uncharted Collection. The argument was being made in the context of Uncharted even though there’s a way to catch up.

I see your counter-point is specific to The Uncharted situation, but the argument still stands in situations of other games which do not have collections or previous titles available to play on current gen consoles.
 
However, i don't agree that price and performances aren't an important factor. Otherwise, Sony would not outsell the XB1 by a 2:1 ratio. Don't forget that last gen, the PS3/360 had about the same amount of total sales.
Let's end this bit of discussion right here before total derailment! There are many factors all of which contribute, the priorities of which will depend on the individual consumer. For some, power. For others, exclusives. For others, features.That needs no debating.

This thread should be looking at the importance of (first party) exclusives and what a company should be doing to maximise ROI in where they target their investments. Lots of studios churning out lots of titles? A few landmark titles with longevity? Not even bother and accept the losses from those interested in exclusives because investing elsewhere (price, performance, features, etc.) has better returns?

I see your counter-point is specific to The Uncharted situation, but the argument still stands in situations of other games which do not have collections or previous titles available to play on current gen consoles.
This one's pretty easy to check by seeing if sequels are selling more or less. If they sell more, people aren't being turned off jumping into a franchise partway through.

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Data totally uncorroborated, but I think it's enough to show you don't have to commit to a game series. I think gamers know there's nothing in Part 2 dependent on Part 1, unlike a TV boxset. I expect TLOU2 to sell better than TLOU because of the reputation of the original.
 
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But there’s an Uncharted Collection. The argument was being made in the context of Uncharted even though there’s a way to catch up.

You don't even need a collection. People want to play to the most famous games, the ones people keep talking about.

Most of the time, they don't care about previous iterations.

Most new gamers will probably buy the next GTA game, even though they never played to the previous games. Why ? Simply because there is a ton of buzz around this game.

The same goes for Uncharted.
 
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@Shifty Geezer point taken with some of the post but some you posted helps my statement more so than yours.

The Assassin's Creed series has many reset points where the main characters were end of life and replaced with different heroes. Now why do you suppose they did that? Maybe a small part to alleviate concerns of gamers having to jump in mid-series? Also from the Fallout series, you're not playing the same character and continuing the storyline. You're an entirely different hero in each series. So those 2 data points provide more evidence of not carrying forward the same story-line and don't require investments by gamers into the previous game title.
 
I think some of those statistics are only for hard sales and excludes digital download (as an example AC Black Flag data is well out looking at current statistics for Steamspy and VGChartz), I appreciate that applies more to PCs these days but may influence a little bit some of the larger games that can also be purchased as digital downloads even on consoles, which may be influenced by how good the console service is.
Just something to bear in mind with such statistics.
 
Game success is strongly related to its positive reception in the media + IP popularity + developer renown + good marketing.

Anything else is secondary.
 
Sure, I wasn't really disputing anything. Just saying we've data that'll support one argument or t'other. Certainly the sales seem to go against DSoup's original posit that some gamers won't want to jump into a narrative partway through. Because, ultimately, games don't have continuing narratives from one iteration to the next and gamers are happy to jump in. Few more obvious story-focussed ones:

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At the end of the day, good games sell, and good series can grow. A new exclusive iteration can have just as much interest as a new IP - possibly more if the previous game was well received.

I think some of those statistics are only for hard sales and excludes digital download (as an example AC Black Flag data is well out looking at current statistics for Steamspy and VGChartz), I appreciate that applies more to PCs these days but may influence a little bit some of the larger games that can also be purchased as digital downloads even on consoles, which may be influenced by how good the console service is.
Just something to bear in mind with such statistics.
Which'll mean greater sales for later titles (sequels) where downloads are more prevalent!
 
At the end of the day, good games sell, and good series can grow. A new exclusive iteration can have just as much interest as a new IP - possibly more if the previous game was well received.

Which'll mean greater sales for later titles (sequels) where downloads are more prevalent!
Yeah totally agree, just unfortunately the trend will be difficult to see as digital sales are usually hidden depending upon source utilised, also makes the case for Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to really up their online services as I am sure they would prefer to do digital sales over hard copy from their own service and especially so for their own IP/in-house products.
 
@Shifty Geezer point taken with some of the post but some you posted helps my statement more so than yours.

The Assassin's Creed series has many reset points where the main characters were end of life and replaced with different heroes. Now why do you suppose they did that? Maybe a small part to alleviate concerns of gamers having to jump in mid-series? Also from the Fallout series, you're not playing the same character and continuing the storyline. You're an entirely different hero in each series. So those 2 data points provide more evidence of not carrying forward the same story-line and don't require investments by gamers into the previous game title.

I don’t think anyone who isn’t playing these games would even know these things.
 
But there’s an Uncharted Collection. The argument was being made in the context of Uncharted even though there’s a way to catch up. It’s a garbage argument.

Is everything you don't agree with garbage? You can't be that dense, surely. Catching up on three games is both more expensive and time consuming than catching up on a bunch of movies.

Sure, I wasn't really disputing anything. Just saying we've data that'll support one argument or t'other. Certainly the sales seem to go against DSoup's original posit that some gamers won't want to jump into a narrative partway through.

That's quite a leap in logic there. When good games in a franchise are released over the course of a generation, there is a greater chance latter games will sell more because of the install base is more. What you can't discern from sales figures is how many people played latter games that didn't play earlier ones, or actually did but didn't buy it. Or the the number of people who had their fill after 1 or 2 and didn't buy the sequels(s). As for the data not supporting my view that some people don't jumping in mid-franchise then I guess I don't exist. :???:

I distinctly remember playing Mass Effect 1 and 2 in 2016 before Mass Effect 3 but there are exceptions, like Witcher 3. I looked into replaying 1 and 2 but many friends suggested I give them a miss and pointed me to some catchup videos on YouTube. The fact those earlier games were quite janky was also a factor.
 
That's quite a leap in logic there. When good games in a franchise are released over the course of a generation, there is a greater chance latter games will sell more because of the install base is more. What you can't discern from sales figures is how many people played latter games that didn't play earlier ones, or actually did but didn't buy it. Or the the number of people who had their fill after 1 or 2 and didn't buy the sequels(s). As for the data not supporting my view that some people don't jumping in mid-franchise then I guess I don't exist. :???:

But you don't go from 1,7 millions to 6 millions without new players (Witcher 3)...

And if you speak about the casual gamer, he probably doesn't even know that Uncharted 4 has a story based on previous games.

It's a really weak argument to me.
 
Perhaps we should change the context of the discussion to the Halo collection?

It is a bit much for someone to jump in mid-series. It's why I already said MS made sure the entire Halo and Gears series is playable on Xbox One if it's in 1 massive Collection remake game or even via Backwards Compatibility. Maybe you missed those points between Shifty's wall of charts attack. :p

Also on related note from others ...
I would think that most reasonable people assume that Game 2 is a sequel to Game 1, likewise Game 3 is a sequel to Game 2 and Game 1. It's more of a stretch to think that reasonable people would assume Game 4 is not a sequel to Game 3, Game 2, and Game 1. Yes, it is rare for people to know the Fallouts are not direct hero storyline sequels nor is AssCreed series.
 
Everyone seems to have pretty good statements, not all of them are capable of being factually backed up.

It’s entirely and likely possible all these factors are at play in harmony, but we are allotting too much or too little to each point.

It’s clear exclusives matter the degree is how much ultimately. Platform matters too as per DSoups points. And I’m sure that the sequel side topic also has some merit, but there are too many factors to isolate there.

It may be best to re-vector arguments on things with less variables. In particular ignoring the trees and going straight for the continents: if the common mind set is that MS has no exclusive games and this is a combination of franchise fatigue mixed with Luke warm scores for said games, they shouldve died out after 4 years.

We don’t really see that happening. And so I think there is enough success and positive marketing with Xbox to successfully debate the idea that people choose consoles heavily skewed towards exclusives.

I’m not sure if it’s worth mentioning. But a discussion of first party strategy for any of the theee can be a lot more diverse of a topic other than haves and have nots.

It doesn’t need to be necessarily that what works for Nin will work for Sony and MS. Or what works for Sony will work for MS.

The audience for each platform appears to have some differences, so it would make sense to cater the strategy around their population instead of what their competitors are doing for their customers and applying it to their own base.
 
That's quite a leap in logic there. When good games in a franchise are released over the course of a generation, there is a greater chance latter games will sell more because of the install base is more. What you can't discern from sales figures is how many people played latter games that didn't play earlier ones, or actually did but didn't buy it. Or the the number of people who had their fill after 1 or 2 and didn't buy the sequels(s). As for the data not supporting my view that some people don't jumping in mid-franchise then I guess I don't exist. :???:
The context was old IPs not being attractive to new platform customers because new customers aren't going to buy into them...

If someone never played Uncharted or Killzone the new games wont be a draw, the same way if they didn't play Gears or Halo then it likely wont be a draw.
The evidence, what we have, shows a good franchise can attract new buyers, no? That a new Uncharted or Halo can attract gamers to buy your console over the rival even if you haven't played the previous iterations.
 
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