Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

DB FighterZ, Monster Hunter World and now Shadow of the Colossus remake. Don't get me wrong here I'm really happy I've got my switch but the new year has been very, very, good to PS4 Owners, and with God of War, the Last of 2 and Detroit still to come what has Nintendo coming up to top these releases? Mario Tennis? Kirby? Am I being short-sighted or do they not quite stand up?

"Your defenses are weak"

Not for me. I almost sold my PS4 before Christmas to pay for gifts because it got barely any use last year (except the amazing HZD and Night in the Woods) and I don't see anything coming up to light my eyes on fire. The only thing I'm looking forward to is Days Gone, and god only knows when that will come out.

@HauntingNostrils pretty sure e3 is a thing and that Nintendo has a direct every other month. I’m also pretty sure fire emblem was announced for this year as well as no more heroes.

Switch will have a decent first half, but PS4 definitely has way more of my attention this year. Also, the VR game about disarming a bomb truly is great fun.

@noobish_hat This year, they've confirmed it several times. Probably late summer or autumn, just before the yearly holiday games come out.

Yeah, the PS4 has had a deluge of highly-rated games this month, last I checked. Granted, I personally feel like all of the interesting games I was looking forward to are coming out between December and March. I would've preferred a better spread, especially since most of the Fall releases just seemed to be disappointments...

@HauntingNostrils
I've always been more of a PlayStation fan anyway, but yeah where as Nintendo dominated I'd say pretty much all of last year after the Switch launched, the early part of this year definitely has more PS4 games I'm interested in. Not to say Switch is lacking though. Never played Bayonetta 1 and 2 or DKC Tropical Freeze so I'm really looking forward to those.

@Gamer83 In fairness, Sony had an even more amazing Q1 in 2017.

But there are a lot of big releases on PS4 this year, and Nintendo won't have the force of Mario Kart, Mario, and Zelda to propel themselves into the spotlight now. They could still announce some great looking first-party games and continue their momentum, but they won't dominate the headlines like they did in 2017.

@Ralizah
I feel like all Nintendo needs is to announce the inevitable Super Smash Bros. (port or new game) and they'll have the headlines back.

I'd be incredibly surprised if Nintendo dominate 2018 as well. This looks like Sony's year for sure. Red Dead Redemption alone will put Nintendo on the back foot.

Or we could all stop cheering for a respective brand to "win" and put the others "On the back foot" as it were, and just enjoy games that suit our individual needs and wants?

The more we say "Oh this X company's year" the more we are saying we as gamers don't win for having lots of high quality titles to play across all ecosystems, but rather "Man, those nameless shareholders are surely making bank off of us right now".

@YummyHappyPills

It's not entirely superficial though. Consumers do benefit in general from heavy competition and do suffer in general from monopolies.
So it's definitely worthwhile noting how all the main companies are doing.

@Dezzy Yes.

But to point at one and say "This is their year" is just encouraging a monopoly I am afraid. My stance on Nintendo in Japan, and Sony in the EU, is one of highly uncompetitive scenarios.

As it stands, rather than sit and say "This is X's year", especially when it's someone with an already documented monopoly, I will continue to say "I want X to do something of note", because THAT is the competition we need, not one clear victor.

@YummyHappyPills

It's not encouraging a monopoly. It's just a fact that some companies are gonna do better than others in different years.
I'd very much like to be surprised and have Microsoft make a big comeback and "win" 2018. I just don't expect they will.

Battlefront II shipped 9 million copies, and it under-performed, lol. Also, micro-transactions are coming back, because they ''provide a very important element of choice that can extend and enhance the experience in our games''.

@Dezzy No because micro-transactions will kill 90% of the other games that will be available on the PS4.

@Razer What do you mean by that?

@Octane PS4 will not dominate 2018 because micro-transactions will dominate the majority of 3rd party games that come on the PS4 and this will only get worse, EA recently announced they are fully committed to micro-transactions. This will only keep rubbing fans up the wrong way, if EA doesn't like Battlefronts II sales without micro-transactions, i wonder how they'd feel if they included it from the start. prob would have deaded the series.

@Razer Micro-transactions are nothing new though. Whilst they're getting worse every year, last year's big AAA games were riddled with them as well. And that didn't stop people from buying them either. At least Battlefront II saw a decline in sales compared to Battlefront I, but that was after a huge uproar on the internet, and it still sold 9 million copies...

The casual gamers who only buy one or two games a year probably don't mind spending another 20 or 40 quid on their new game, and that's the issue I think.

FIFA has been doing it for years, but nobody online cares about FIFA. Even though it sells more than a dozen million copies annually, nobody complained about the micro-transactions. I didn't even know they were in the game for the longest time, because I don't care about FIFA at all. Most of the people that do, aren't online, and probably don't mind the micro-transactions.

Even Capcom charges for stupid gestures and poses in MHW. I find it hard to complain about that, not because I don't think it should be in the game, but because it's stuff I don't care about at all. Lucky me I guess.

As long as publishers don't release another Battlefront II, I think everything will be ''fine''. Fine as in, the micro-transactions will riddle most of this year's big games, but not intrusive enough that warrants a second Battlefront II uproar. And I don't see EA pulling the same shenanigans again. Not with Battlefield at least. Anthem will probably be their next loot crate machine on disc.

How much does "shipped" mean with a game like that though? The massive controversy happened around release didn't it?
So it seems entirely possible that the "shipped" number represents how well they thought it would sell. But that the controversy means that it didn't actually sell anywhere near that.