So I have been thinking. I think the reason why PS4 has been doing so well is their focus. Microsoft was trying to sell an everything box to people. It was the One Box you needed under your TV, this did terrible and made their advertising look really unfocused. Nintendo was trying to target everyone, from the most casual player to the biggest hardcore out there. It made their advertisements look like they didn't know who they were targeting. Sony came out and said, we are a gaming box. We are here for people that want to play games. It kept their focus on games and that is what sold. Sony gave people exactly what we were looking for, games. (now the games may not appeal to you but that is a different subject) People wanted a dedicated gaming machine and that is what Sony delivered. We didn't want the iPod but for our TV, we wanted a gaming machine.
I agree that Sony has won big with people who are gamers so far, but there is a bigger audience out there who they aren't catching at all. I can see the PS4 getting to 30-50 million sales on 'us' (the gamer who knows the difference between Grand Turismo and Grand Theft Auto), but for it to top 100m the box needs to sell to families (basically the Wii's patch) where Mum wants to play the fitness game, sister wants to play the just dance game when her friends come round, and little Billy wants to play a game that takes his attention away from his iPad. They need to justify the £330 price tag to play these sorts of things with more must have universally appealing games.
Chances are that these people will just stick with the Wii. Casual gamers don't buy new hardware unless they absolutely need to, and there's no reason why they still couldn't play Let's Dance on their last gen machine.
They aren't playing it safe. If they were, The Last Gaurdian and probably FF XV probably would have been out by now, instead of Killzone 3 or the like, PS Move should also be mentiomed here. Safe would be supporting controllers that were supposed to be more useful.
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What on Earth has Final Fantasy XV got to do with Sony? And you think Sony playing it safe consists of carrying on with the PS Move controllers, something that nobody seems to be interested in anymore, just the same as the Wii remote?
The Last Guardian was once developed on the PlayStation 3 (with a small team) and the very same small team had to go through the process of recreating the game from ground up onto the PlayStation 4.
It was a case of a small team getting used to new hardware - as well as rebuilding said game for the new hardware - that held the game back for this lengthy period of time, not because Sony has been playing it safe.
So I have been thinking. I think the reason why PS4 has been doing so well is their focus. Microsoft was trying to sell an everything box to people. It was the One Box you needed under your TV, this did terrible and made their advertising look really unfocused. Nintendo was trying to target everyone, from the most casual player to the biggest hardcore out there. It made their advertisements look like they didn't know who they were targeting. Sony came out and said, we are a gaming box. We are here for people that want to play games. It kept their focus on games and that is what sold. Sony gave people exactly what we were looking for, games. (now the games may not appeal to you but that is a different subject) People wanted a dedicated gaming machine and that is what Sony delivered. We didn't want the iPod but for our TV, we wanted a gaming machine.
I agree that Sony has won big with people who are gamers so far, but there is a bigger audience out there who they aren't catching at all. I can see the PS4 getting to 30-50 million sales on 'us' (the gamer who knows the difference between Grand Turismo and Grand Theft Auto), but for it to top 100m the box needs to sell to families (basically the Wii's patch) where Mum wants to play the fitness game, sister wants to play the just dance game when her friends come round, and little Billy wants to play a game that takes his attention away from his iPad. They need to justify the £330 price tag to play these sorts of things with more must have universally appealing games.
Chances are that these people will just stick with the Wii. Casual gamers don't buy new hardware unless they absolutely need to, and there's no reason why they still couldn't play Let's Dance on their last gen machine.
Yes, so the only possible way would be if Ubisoft forced the next Just Dance to be current gen only.
PS4 is going to break 100+ million easily. If they've managed to sell at this rate with relatively few exlusives, just wait until Uncharted 4, Horizon, The Last Guardian and ilk start hitting the market. That may not kick in until mid-late 2016, but once that exclusive train starts rolling, it's going to get crazy. I don't know where the wild guessing of ONLY 50 million possible sales being "gamers," and the rest having to be made up in "casual" families and such comes from?? - are we in the presence of someone with intimate access to market insight? 360/PS3 combined sold WELL upwards of 150+ million units (probably close to 200 million by now), and I don't think anyone in here could really argue the main marketing message of either of those consoles was "casual." So.... the "gamer" market for 100+ million is out there, easily.
And Final Fantasy has "to do" with Sony because of the association most people make between PS and FF ever since FF VII. You can bet every pig in your barn that FF is going to sell gangbusters on PS4 - I'm willing to bet at least double what it sells on Xbox One. FF XIII sold double on PS3 than it did on 360. So yea, FF XV has the potential to help PS4 hardware sales almost as much as a Sony exclusive.
@CanisWolfred: I disagree, the focus of dance games is having the latest hits of which the old games won't be up to date. That's why the DLC sells so well.
Ubisoft would be stupid to make Just Dance a current gen franchise. There's a reason even JD2016 is coming to the original Wii: it knows casual gamers are, by and large, the bulk of the people who buy these games, and they know that casual gamers, by and large, tend to own older hardware.
the Xbox released in 2005, the PS3 released in 2006. They've both sold about 85m consoles so far. That's not 85m+85m owners, but you have to factor in the amount of replaced consoles (red ring of death etc...), plus a percentage (probably quite a large percentage owned both) so let's say there were 100m to 120m consumers for consoles out there. Not all of them were 18-30 year old males, some of them were different demographics.
By 2011 the Xb360 had sold about 50m consoles as had the PS3. But in the second halves of their lifetimes they released the Kinect (2010) and the PS move (2010) to try to claim some of the Wii's audience. Also late last generation Minecraft was released (2012), and Skylanders (2011) Which were big draws for kids. There was also things like the Harry Potter book thing on the PS3 and a lot of dancing, singing and plastic guitar games not primarily aimed a core gamers. The difference is now is that the kids market is now playing on phones and tablets, and on their old systems and both Skylanders and Minecraft are available on those things. What the industry will need to attract the family gamer is something new for kids (trust me, it won't be VR).
I'm not saying the PS4 or the XB1 WON'T sell 100m, I'm just saying they will need games from Sony, MS, and 3rd party that are new and exciting (and exclusive to consoles) to sell to kids to reach those targets.
Isn't it obvious that Falco Lombardi is actually a parrot?
@Peek-a-boo:
Sony and Square Enix were really close, but now they started going multiplatform in 7th generation. Final Fantasy XV wasn't ever even planned for Xbox One, but now they have to release it there, because Sony messed up PS3 and FFXV was in development hell for a long time, especially because of the hardware(PS3) that no one really ever mastered, except Sony.
Move is going to HAVE to be a thing, regardless. That's why it exists in the first place. With Morpheus around the corner and Microsoft deciding to make those motion controllers, they are still very much relevant.
It's not a secret that they put less effort to push those controllers than Nintendo did for the Wii remote, and it still matters, because of what I mentioned above(motion still being a thing).
THAT is how they weren't playing it safe. We could just as easily argue that Kinect and the new motion controllers are useless, but they are going to happen, because VR, period. They are going to be supported, because... obviousness. That is why Move still matters, and why they should have pushed it harder. Killzone: Shadowfall should have had Move support(w/ the gun attachment) and possibly 3D since launch. PS3 was already doing this stuff, and Sony never seems like they keep up with their own standards. Even Xbox One has more Kinect support than PS4 does for things like Move or PS Camera.
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Topic: Is Sony playing it too safe on the PS4?
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