Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@Ralizah Honestly MH5 being exclusive to the Switch will be very likely because this will be 3DS last year.

@BLP_Software Dragon Quest XI are literally two different games though. Anyway, I never said it was impossible...

@Peek-a-boo Honestly I think the GameCube had a better quality lineup that people ignore in favor of the PS2. The Wind Waker, Sunshine, and Paper Mario were some of the high quality GameCube games.

@Octane Sorry, should have clarified, those are the numbers for FY2016-17, not for the generation. It's not meaningful for WiiU since it was already EOL, but it's meaningful for PS4 vs. X1 as direct competitors of the same age, but it does exclude 3DS & Vita which obscures Switch's potential impact on those numbers moving into FY2017-18.

As I see it Capcom's Options are this for MH5: Switch-only (Nintendo paid to accelerate Switch adoption in Japan), 3DS-only (Milk the cash cow like it's 1-2-Switch), Switch+PS4 (focus on Switch, for Japan but try to grow the market in the West on PS4 with an easy port), or Switch + 3DS (like Koei is doing with Warriors), take the assets from 3DS, up-res them like M3HU and do a Switch port (acknowledging the future of the 3DS base), but sticking to the tried & true development and still milking the cash cow. I don't see 3DS + Switch + PS4 likely for the series. So among those options, the PS4 possibility would go with a Switch release, and I'm not sure how beneficial that would be. MH6, sure. MH5....I'm not sure it's there yet. Not while even the 3DS base is still growing with N2DSXL. There's still some milk in that cow. I think a 3DS version is more likely than you think even if the Switch version is emphasized as the "real" version.

@Ralizah "if you like indies and/or otaku-oriented games"

Yeah I think that's the key issue there. Niche is an overstatement for the latter part I might at times dip into that niche, but I still recognize it as pretty small.

The flavor might be "tough as nails action game" but that hardcore group represents a very tiny sliver of those 60M PS4 sales. I wonder if despite the install size if that sales would really be all that different from a Switch-only release in the West? I think more of that "tough as nails" Sony group is likely to also become a Switch owner than not. A lot of them will also be your XC, Fire Emblem, Smash, and SMT fans. Its not the bulk of Sony's market if they're chasing the big numbers.

It was a Playstation property in the past, BUT it actually sold better in the West on 3DS than it ever did on Playstation. MUCH better. That's what I meant by the audience for the game in the west being already largely the Nintendo audience since the Wii. It's a niche game that I don't think will ever have broad market appeal in the west. Even Aonuma commented no MH like elements in Zelda being omitted because Westerners don't really like it (IMO the armor upgrades especially with lynels is pretty MH-like anyway..) It comes down to if Capcom market research determines PS really has a market they can tap, or if all their target market aligns mostly with Nintendo.

50/50 if Nintendo's smart enough. IF it were a Western title, no way. For a Japan-crazed title, very possibly. Nintendo arrogance and belief in their own IPs to carry them says maybe not. But their recovery from WiiU says maybe.

Hard to say. Switch may surpass PS4 due to its portability.

Well, portable MH will always sell better, because Japan.

@NEStalgia I wasn't really thinking about the PlayStation 3 and its extraordinarily high launch price and their not-so-humble approach with things when you mentioned that 'nothing good happens' when one console has already 'won' before the race has even started.

I was thinking more in line with the respect that the PS2 was a great console with a seemingly infinite wave of a variety of brilliant games.

I understand where you are coming from though.

@Operative2-0 I guess you understood where NEStalgia was coming from better than I did! I was just thinking about the games rather than what followed the (immeasurable success of the) PlayStation 2.

@Octane Current estimates put the sales ratio (percentage) of the PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One at approximately 60:14:26 so, the PlayStation 4 has nearly two-thirds of the market to itself.

This is despite the Wii U having a whole years head start and knowing that almost 60% of the Xbox One market share is in the US alone.

@ZeldaFan50 Well, even if it's not releasing on the 3DS, it could still be a multi-plat with other current gen home consoles. Although it could still get a 3DS version: look at DQXI, for example.

@NEStalgia I don't think MH will ever be BIG in the West, but I could see it doing big numbers for a niche title, like Persona 5 recently did. P5 will never sell as much as a FF, CoD, Mario, etc., but it outperformed previous games in the series and came close to escaping the niche ghetto most of their games landed in. In the same way, with good advertising, I could see MH on PS4 doing pretty good numbers.

Re: MH games selling better on Nintendo platforms in the West, how much of that was down to the PSP not being a very popular platform in the West? Wii and 3DS ended up being fairly successful platforms in comparison. PS4 is the most popular gaming platform in the Western world at the moment. Even if only a tiny fraction of the player base purchases MH5 on PS4, it could still outperform previous games in the series... in the West, at least.

I don't even want to imagine another MH game appearing only on a stationary platform, personally. The franchise's focus on local multiplayer and grinding for monster parts makes it the perfect game for a portable platform.

@Peek-a-boo Yeah, And it wasn't just the launch price, remember their little fit with Immersion gave us the SixAxis instead of the DS3 until they got the deal they wanted and then sold us the DS3 properly at full price? Good times. But Lair was worth it. It was Last Guardian that really made it sing though.

Yeah success breeds hubris the next generation. PS2 gave us that disaster that was PS3 launch and the tearing of their partnerships, handing the generation to Microsoft. Having won, Microsoft repeated the exact same failure for the One. Nintendo having won with the Wii gave us the WiiUHaveNoIdeaIt'sNotAnAccessory.

Market share dominance never leads to good things for the consumer

@Ralizah While I haven't started P5 yet, I think its appeal is that it's relatable and understandable (going by past Persona entries and your own analysis of 5) It can hook people on story and characters and places. MH...is very different. It's bright and colorful, it's quirky, it has little character, and is really all about the grinding and slow methodical crafting. I can't think of a game more poorly suited to only a niche in the West, and primary a niche that buys Nintendo too. I'm not saying it could see NO success, but would it be worthwhile?

And we're still assuming Nintendo doesn't pay them. Considering the cross promotions with hardware launches in Japan and the creation of the Circle Pad Pro at all the relationship seems awfully cozy. They may already be paying (that was Iwata if they are.) That was a big win for them after Sony pretty much screwed over Capcom.

Well remember it's not just PSP, MH was on the oh so popular PS2. It honestly did terribly. Wii was the first big break in the West it had. The PS audience just wasn't interested back then in the West. You're right about even a sliver being a big number, but so much would go into considering it. How much of their prospective market is really on PS and not Nintendo (it's the same rationale in reverse other companies give about their AAA's. A game COULD work on Switch and COULD be successful, but it's just not worth it to port it, their core market is on PS. ) On PS4 they're competing against COD, FIFA, GTA, even FF15 on home turf. On Nintendo they have a much more captive audience that's prone to give things a try and a lot less noise to fight against for getting seen. If Switch is on a meteoric rise of success, all the better to be a star in that smaller sky. Particularly when in your (by far) #1 region there's really only one choice. You HAVE to support Nintendo, so the only question to expanding would be how helpful would it be in growing the brand and by how much?

I'm glad I'm not tasked with that decision

I think we can say with certainty it will be on Switch, 3DS, or both. There's really no chance of that not happening. That would be like Rockstar saying "GTA 6 will be only on Vita and Switch, because Japan might buy it!"

Heck we don't even know if DQ11 will be on PS4 in the west. I still haven't ruled out a tie-in with the silence on the west and silence on Switch if it's an announcement of exclusivity on Switch in the west. It makes no sense with PS4 dominance....but they've never been able to push DQ here and Nintendo is becoming the official ambassador of unappreciated Japanese games with a loyal following in the West. Sometimes going smaller is going bigger. What do they have to lose, it's not like the series has ever actually sold here outside 3DS anyway! A console making headlines and outperforming expectations with a limited selection of games and an audience that likes niches is kind of ideal for this stuff rather than trying to make a run at the throat of COD and GoW.

@TheLZdragon For explanations sake, let's just say that the PlayStation 4 is replaced by a certain something called a PlayStation 5 by 2020 whilst ending up at 100 million flat.

For the Switch to surpass the PlayStation 4, they would have to sell at least 30 million Switch(es) in 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively to reach 90 million, before including the rest of this year (about 10 million).

To put it in perspective; it's incredibly - almost impossibly - unlikely to surpass the PlayStation 4, given the rate they are currently making them and the inevitable slow month sales in the foreseeable future.

Just dropping in to say that Yakuza 0 is one of the greatest games I have ever played and I can't stop thinking about it...I'd kill to have the Yakuza series on the Switch!

It had about 8 brilliant games. You'll struggle after that though. The PS2 had the numbers.

Nintendo Switch won't outsell the PS4. I'm pretty confident about that. And it doesn't need to, either: the console industry isn't a winner-takes-all affair. Both the PS4 and the Nintendo Switch can be success stories.

@Dezzy Off the top of my head...
REmake
Resident Evil 4
Eternal Darkness
Pikmin 1 + 2
Metroid Prime
Super Mario Sunshine
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
Super Smash Bros. Melee
The Wind Waker
F-Zero GX
Skies of Arcadia
Luigi's Mansion
Animal Crossing
Soul Calibur II
Mario Kart: Double Dash

That's 16, and leaving off a ton of really well-received games.

@Ralizah You know, when Kimishima said it "could do Wii like numbers" I thought he was as as nuts as Iwata was with his WiiU estimates. But now that I've seen the reaction in the market, I'm starting to think he might be right after all.

As for if it can outsell PS4....I don't know. I don't honestly know how PS4 has sold the numbers it has. Analysts didn't see it, Sony didn't really see it. It's kind of a Wii phenomenon. The whole hybrid portable thing of Switch broadens its potential market beyond PS4's. And there's market interest. If it doesn't stall out, IMO, beating the PS4 is Nintendo's game to lose. I'm not saying they won't lose it, in fact I expect them to, but I think if they do its their own fault in shorting supply or dropping the ball on games. I think the form factor, public interest, early games, would set them up to hit numbers like that. I'm just not convinced they'll follow through on meeting production. Not that I think that's a bad thing....Nintendo at #1 tends to get just as obnoxious as Sony at #1.

@NEStalgia The trouble with Kimishima saying that the Switch 'could do Wii like numbers' is that it has to reach a shy over 100 million units to do so which means that Nintendo, as I said on the bottom of the page prior to this one, would have to sell at least 30 million Switch(es) in 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively to reach 90 million, before including the rest of this year (about 10 million).

The PlayStation 4 just about reached 18 million sold (to customers) in 2016 alone so, where is the extra 12 million (a year) going to come from? It's incredibly - almost impossibly - unlikely to happen.

:EDIT: Even stretching the date out until 2022 means that at least 20 million Switch(es) has to be sold every single year until then.

If Kimishima, however, is suggesting that the Switch is going to consistently sell reasonably well in the next few years, then that's something I would happily agree with, as opposed to 'could do Wii like numbers'.

I don't agree. The Wii's success was pretty out of the blue, a gigantic exception to the otherwise steady downward trend of sales for Nintendo's home consoles. Its success was almost entirely reliant on the appeal of a hardware gimmick, too.

Sony started last gen off really poorly, but they gained steam over the years, releasing critically acclaimed game after critically acclaimed game that made the PS3 the darling of the gaming scene and brought it back from the dead to the point where I believe it actually outsold the 360.

So, at the start of this gen, they already had a decent amount of good will to rely on (kind of the opposite of what the Wii U did for Nintendo and the Switch). They got a huge boost early on with the intelligent marketing and pricing decisions. Sony made the intelligent decision of harnessing public outrage about plans Microsoft had for the Xbox One to promote their own brand, and it worked very well. It was also a good deal more powerful and significantly cheaper than the Xbox One. From there, Sony, even with its lack of exclusives, did a good job of coasting on hype from big reveals, heavily promoting big third party franchises, and using remasters to pad out its library in the meantime.

So: good pricing + good PR and advertising + good hardware + general public good will from last gen = massive success.

The Switch is a fundamentally different kind of machine, so we don't even know what portion of the market it will appeal to long-term. Console gamers? Handheld gamers? Both? Neither? It's possible it might even end up appealing to people who aren't being considered in the demographics, much like the Wii did. What's exciting about the Switch is that it has the potential to fundamentally change the face of the gaming market if it's successful.

I know everyone is gabbing about VR right now, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the Switch's versatility become a more viable direction for future gaming hardware to evolve toward.

@Ralizah This is the most famous line up of them all:

Ten exceptional games in six months alone. The GameCube struggled to give me ten exceptional games in its all-too-brief life, let alone in a space of six months!

We'll never ever see anything quite like that in-a-six-months-window line up again.

@Ralizah

RE4, Metroid Prime and Soul Calibur 2 and Skies of Arcadia have all been on other consoles. I just meant exclusives.

Imagine being Ace Combat on that list.

@Dezzy It was the last Ace Combat game I played. I'm not one for (action) flight simulators, but it was a heck of a game. The story was actually really, really good too. Fifteen years on, fans of the series have always pinpointed that Shattered Skies continues to remain the best in the series.

My friend got his PlayStation 2 that Christmas with five of those games; DMC, FFX, GT3, J&D and MGS2. He didn't ask for (or personally bought) another game for months, seeing as they all gave him so much joy!

p.s. I was a rather grumpy N64 owner at the time, given that the GameCube wasn't available until May in 2002 here in the UK. I was too much of a Nintendo fanboy at the time to let the PS2 sway me away, foolishly so.

@Dezzy RE4 was originally developed for the GameCube, and Metroid Prime WAS an exclusive, and didn't get re-released until next gen on the Wii.

If we're using this logic, we might as well say that PS2 has no exclusives because almost all of its best games could be played on other consoles.