Disclaimer: This generation I got a New 3DS, Wii U, PS4, Xbox One X and Switch.
First of all, exclusives are relatively important. They have always been very important for Nintendo's business and they have always been relatively important for Sony and Microsoft's business and history has proven that.
The problem of this endless circle is that some people here are living in their Sony bubble and they only see reasons to buy PS4/PS5. It's not just bias but pure ignorance. Most people don't really care about Sony's exclusives or Microsoft's exclusives when buying a PS4/PS5 or an Xbox One/Series X. Sales prove that.
Although Nintendo systems are since Wii purchased because of their lower price and/or because of the first-party games since the power difference makes it hard to justify getting a Wii, Wii U (Wii U was barely the most powerful console for one year) and Switch for the worse versions of third-party games, the battle between Sony and Microsoft is completely different. Most people buy an Xbox or PlayStation not for the exclusive games but for the third-party games because the best-selling games on PS4 and Xbox One are third-party games and only one top-selling exclusive get close on either system and that's around 10% of userbase. Yes, 10% of PS4 owners might have got the console for Uncharted 4, what about the rest? PS4 also benefitted from Nintendo and Microsoft messing up big time in 2013. Remember that Microsoft sold more consoles than Sony last generation until when the generation was ending and Sony started releasing cheap console revisions.
No matter how many times people point it out, another repeated mistake is that Halo Infinite is not the game to show the power of Series X. The fact that a single cross-gen game that is also a launch game is not a Series X exclusive doesn't mean that the other games won't make the best of the new hardware but the opposite. Yes, Microsoft could have done a next-gen Halo spin-off like Sony did but that would be superficial and short-lived like Spiderman Miles Morales will be. Digital Foundry will prove that third-party games will run and look better on Series X because of its more advanced and balanced hardware. Microsoft and Sony's first-party games will look great on Series X and PS5 but we can't compare a huge cross-gen game bigger than Halo 4 and 5 with Spider-Man standalone DLC. That's stupid. Let's wait for the next games before we assume that Xbox One will hold Series X back. In this regard, Microsoft apparently backtracked and the other first-party games don't show "Xbox One" on their cards anymore. So yes, they probably realised that it's better to focus on the next generation and xCloud but you can't rule their system out because of one game because if we did that, PS5 would be a $560 DLC console. The beginning of the next generation is going to be quiet and, really, Xbox Game Studios and Sony's studios don't have a fully next-gen game ready for launch but at least there's a big Halo game on Series X.
Another common mistake is, "Why would people buy Series X if they can buy a gaming PC?" Because a gaming PC that can obtain the same FPS and resolution in games as a Series X console costs $2,000. Most people don't have gaming PCs and consoles are still popular. They are cheaper, more efficient not just technically because they are exclusively designed for gaming but also because they are smaller and drain less power which also saves money. PC games used to be much cheaper but now both Microsoft and Sony have as good digital sales as Steam and Game Pass is the best value in gaming right now.
Most people will buy Series X because it's more powerful, for third-party games and for Game Pass. Most people will buy PS5 because of its exclusives because it's not more powerful, third-party games will run better on Series X and PlayStation Now is currently losing x10 times against Game Pass. Other reasons include price, in case the price is different and controller, because some people prefer the PS4 controller, although the PS5 controller looks a lot like an Xbox controller except for the sticks layout. The die-hard fans with huge game libraries are only a small percentage of buyers. PS5 is now the weaker twin without Game Pass and with Sony's exclusives and PlayStation Now and that's it. PS5 will be successful but not as successful as PS4 because of the facts explained above and because Microsoft and Nintendo are not messing up like in 2013. Next generation will be quite different and also Microsoft will focus on consoles as much as on PC and xCloud while Nintendo is focused on the handheld/hybrid market exclusively for the very first time.
@Dezzy Cyberpunk has so much hype going for it, it can only disappoint. The early stuff they've showed looked great. But the recent trailer with the point-and-click seeking mini-game to find clues looked quite boring. I wonder how much of that is in the game. I rather just ignore that and execute everyone on site. Easier way of solving a crime I think. Collateral damage is something have to live with in the year 2077 anyway.
@Ralizah I think I'll wait for the next gen patch in 2021. And it's a CDPR game, they usually need another couple of months of patching and bug fixing before it's playable.
@Anti-Matter Astro's Playroom is a free game by the way. No need to put in on your shopping list. It comes pre-installed on the console itself.
@NEStalgia Yes, that beta didn't look like a 360 or an Xbox One game, Xbox One X perhaps. I noticed the lighting was awful and Digital Foundry explained why textures look bad because of it. The developers said that they're going to improve graphics and lighting.
How PS and Japan has changed during this generation, with Japanese buying different kind of things and Switch almost killing PS4 over there. Seriously, how things have changed between the beginning and the end of this generation for the three of them.
I would normally suspect the same thing I did with No Man's Sky (i.e there's no way this is going to deliver what it's claiming). But Cyberpunk has had a massive team of people working on it for 7 years at least. It seems possible that it'll meet people's expectations.
Technically "10% bought for Uncharted" is a bit misleading....what percent bought for that, what percent for Spiderman (I'm sure that's a sizable number just due to the popularity of Spiderman franchise in general, including Japan), what percentage for Bloodborne (though I will never, ever understand why.....) GoW, HzD, etc. If you add it all up you'd probably get to 50-60% buying that console over an XBox due to some particular exclusive or combination of several.
Though I think the majority buys it "because that's what their friends bought and tell them is the cool one." And once you hear "look at all these great exclusives and Xbox has none, lol" it's a self-confirming bias. It worked to X360's advantage last gen, and PS4's advantage this gen.
It also plays into it generationally because, despite the marketing that they sell stuff for adults, lets be honest, the majority of "M rated" gaming is the middle school to high school age group. The group that is both the most subject to peer pressure of doing what "all their friends are doing", as well as basically always starting with a fresh slate. For the dominant X1/PS4 age group, the 360/PS3 never even existed. Gaming started with PS4 (or started with Pokemon on a 3DS when they were playing "baby games they've outgrown" )
BUT That applies also to the "broad" market. The non-gamers that buy a console based on that outside information. The people that buy a few games and that's good enough. It doesn't really work bisecting a generation and saying "Platform A has the most players, and most bought for these reasons, therefore that's what drives the generation." You really have to pull it into sub-groups.
There's the "core gamer" or "hobby gamer" that represnets us....we're one of the smallest groups that make the most noise and demand the most focused attention. As a group we're not necessarily the largest revenue stream they have, however we're the highest spending per capita, represent the most reliable revenue stream, if not the largest, and are the early adopters that set the tone for the broader market. We buy the most games per person and set the high attach rates, offsetting the low attach rates by the mass market.
There's the broad market. Not quite going as far as Nintendo's "blue ocean" (heh heh.) They represent those big sales numbers we see for hardware sales. These are people that may buy in for the exclusives, the latest COD or FIFA, and maybe a handful of other games. They are the largest market by number, and collectively represent the largest revenue stream overall. However they are a more fickle market, require a lot more effort to grow, and revenue growth as a percentage of market penetration is much narrower than with the core group. Collectively a large mass market buys more games than the collective of core gamers, but attaining them and retaining them requires more overall spend. They don't come eagerly with their wallets out looking for something to buy as the core does.
There's the "blue ocean" that might buy the machines as a disc player, TV box, or side novelty. Many of these people are the Wii people and now the mobile people.
There's the "ultra nerdcore".....the PC Master Race players that buys all the consoles just for the exclusives and nothing else. These are such a tiny market they don't even really matter by revenue or marketing value despite being the ultra-core player. They skew the numbers more than anything, even if by a trivial amount.
Broken down: The broad market is what X360 owned last gen and PS4 owns this gen. The moderate gamers that need big numbers for great spending, but collectively make up the majority of sales figures and overall revenue. But they're also not necessarily the most important figure in revenue.
Nintendo owns the "blue ocean" market. The non-gamer and casual gamers that might buy a console for something here and there. They are mostly mobile players, but when they buy consoles, it's rarely PS or XB. XB tried to tap into that market starting with 360 Kinekt and ending with the XBone disaster.....that attempt was pure disaster. And with the size of market, Nintendo stands to steamroll the overall install base of both XB and PS, probably combined, even if the pull in less overall revenue from that base.
The ultra nerdcore makes tons of internet noise, but in the numbers doesn't matter, really at all. Sorry, @Ralizah.
The "core gamer" is the wildcard. We don't know the split. Certainly tons of core gamers are PS4 gamers this gen. But it's also fairly clear that the core gamers only make a percentage of PS4's overall base do to the console's popularity in the broad market contributing to huge numbers, while they seem to make a significant percentage of X1's base. That matters because as the biggest spenders contributing, individually, the most to attach rates, X1 may have a significant portion of the same attach rate and spend that PS4 does with only a fraction of the total install base. Certainly it puts Sony ahead in both numbers and revenue, having that broad market on board, but the differential may not be as significant as those numbers make it seem due to what population makes up what percentage of those numbers.
Between those demographics, the mass market might be 50/50 buying a console for the exclusives, versus "because it's what their friends bought" for other games. The core gamers probably buy nearly all the excusives, but also buy 5 other games for every exclusive they buy, drastically cutting the importance of those exclusives in the numbers.
It's clear, in strategy, then, that Sony is aiming to continue their dominance with the broad market. Big, accessible, popular brands with accessible action adventure games that appeal to a movie-going market and game fans alike, using exclusives to drive sales. It's also clear that MS isn't trying to go head to head with Sony in that market where coming from behind isn't likely to be too successful, but is instead doubling down on the core market, appealing to the demands of that audience, games that are very video-gamey, and offering value, in exchange for that loyalty and presumably drawing ever more unit sales and subscription money out of a very loyal and high per-capita spending population. That doesn't mean that success there doesn't mean setting their sights on then going after Sony's mass market, but that's where they're putting their chips at the current time.
If both companies are successful in strategy that means Sony will continue showing the biggest numbers, both in install base (mass market) and in revenue (due to mass market install base), and internet fans will keep flogging those numbers. But MS may not be so far behind in revenue despite lower install base, and secretly, might be more profitable, perhaps significantly so, due to much less spend on attaining and retaining the core market compared to the mass market, and can continue using that profit to offer value to grow that market (while Sony players are, ironically, subsidizing XB's value via the network services contract....)
As for PC....I do see that as a different thing. I see the appeal (just upgrade the PC, no new console, no generations required! But the video card costs as much as the console.) Initial cost sucks. The availability of so much is great, and the ability to scale older games upward is something XB taps into but PC does much better. Store competition is great. But I do think the cost advantages are overstated too much. I have yet to find how Steam would save me significant, if any money. Everyone insists it would. Yet any time I spot check prices, I'd pay the same, sometimes more, sometimes less.....I don't really see a cost difference. If the savings are there, great, but it doesn't appear it would be there for me, based on what I buy and when I check to buy it. Cost-wise, since I generally buy for two players in the house, 2x PS5, + 2X X1X + 2x 4k displays is (presumed) $2800 or so. Doing that for PCs would similarly cost $4800 or so up front......that would take a lot of steam sales to financially work out to save money. I keep considering making that work.....but ultimately, it just doesn't. There's the cool factor of it, of course, but mostly, I want to turn it on and play my game. I have other demands on time than playing with setting up games, finding patches, mods, etc. Going to the car analogy (because it's an XBox forum ), spending all that time tarting up the Civic is probably a lot more fun and more rewarding than just going to the dealership and buying a Maserati if building the thing out and tuning it is a big part of your fun. But if you really just wanted to get to the track to race, that's a long and expensive way of getting there versus just buying the purpose built machine from the start, even if it doesn't come with some specific options you wanted if you did it yourself.
Nintendo's always killed PS in Japan except for the unusual and exceptional PS2. PSP was a big success there, but Nintendo still crushed them in raw numbers. But they appealed to different markets. Japan buying lots of Western games though is stunning. Although, that's kind of skewed...not many japanese are buying consoles at all...so it stands to reason the ones buying them would be the "jeebs" that want to be westerners and play western things (inverse weebs) If it's not handheld Japan really doesn't care much at all.....and Sony bailed out of handheld so there's really only one option. Nintendo's a pseudo monopoly there like NES was in the US in the 80s, because they're the only ones making hardware the market actually desires. Sony knew they were abandoning Japan back in 2013. They treated Japan as a PS4 launch afterthhought, they basically dropped Vita cold during the PS4 reveal in Feb....they almost certainly were secretly planning the SIE/Playstation move to CA by then.....
Ironically I could see XBox's concentrated push to pull in Japan and focus on cloud services (popular in Japan) leading to XB becoming Japan's most popular home console among the "jeebs" that actually buy one
@Octane I agree, I think Cyberpunk will be a let-down. Not because I don't have faith CDPR is capable of making it a great game....but because the hype that has been built for it would require a VR game inhabited by millions of actual AIs in an living alternate reality to actually meet expectations within a few miles.... Also good to know about patching....I hadn't realized CDPR is still Bethesda-like....the way everyone talks about them, they put out Nintendo polish on 10x the scale as routine.
“[Xbox players who want to play as Spider-Man] have the option to do so on PlayStation.”
He's gonna make a statement like that and then wonder why Avengers didn't sell particularly well. This is a bad PR move for a game that already doesn't have the best things going for it reception wise in light of the beta impressions. This exact comment sounds like something a redditor trying to start a console war in a comment thread would say.
It also doesn't help that when questioned as to why he's PlayStation exclusive he takes like 8 sentences to say something that basically amounts to "It's because Sony is in control of the character's game appearances."
@Grumblevolcano Ok, if there's Knack 3 I might need to preorder a PS5. Eff Miles.
@TheFrenchiestFry My interpretation of that is "So, Square-Enix bought this, like, Marvel license, from, like, Disney and stuff? And so we thought, like we would make this really cool game with all the, you know, like, Marvel characters? And then, like Sony's lawyers came to us and were all like, "nuh-uh, dawg!" And we're, like "whaa?" And they're like "Only Sony can use Spider Man in games". "And we're like "whaa?" And they're all "look at page 3832.3 S C." And we're like "whaa?" So then we didn't put Spider Man in our game even though Disney took our money for Marvel characters. And then Sony's all like "if you give us launch and marketing exclusivity, you can put Spider Man in your game only on our box". And at first we were like "whaaa?" But then we were like "well at least they didn't tell us to add ray tracing so that it can only run on PS5" and we're like "k, bruh."
@Octane Ooooffff........that's one of those jokes that gets funnier when you reread it a few times though
@BlueOcean@ralizah. One other thing the Pikmin thread made me consider, on the idea of choosing hardware for exclusives. Nintendo proves how untrue that is... It applies to xb and ps no less than Nintendo. Basically nobody bought a WiiU to play great exclusives.... If nobody bought a WiiU to play DKCTF, Pikmin 3, 3D World, BotW (announced before NX), smash 4, mk8, W101, SMM, NSMBU, TMS#FE, Bayo2, Splatoon, Captain Toad, Lego City......... Nobody bought A switch to play them either. It's not that the games werent desired... They sell great.... On switch.
That tells us that people in fact don't buy hardware for the exclusives... Even with a roster of highly desirable exclusives, nobody buys a console if the platform, interface, services, third party isn't what they desire. GoW, HzD Spiderperson 1.6..... would all be abandoned if the platform itself seemed like a worse place to play. Similarly, xbone could have launched with half life 3 and nobody would still have touched the mess of a machine at launch.
@NEStalgia I think you're getting ahead of yourself there. It's well-documented that exclusive software can drive hardware adoption. Sometimes it's not needed (PS4 sold basically on empty hype alone), but there are plenty of examples, especially in Nintendo's case, of console purchases surging with the release of big exclusives. I wager this was also true in the past with a cultural phenomenon like Halo as well.
What exclusives aren't going to do is save a console that is a conceptual and marketing trainwreck, which is exactly what the Wii U was. Most people don't even know what the hell a Wii U is to this day.
Anyway, nobody has said that exclusives are the only factor that matter. Obviously, brand dominance ("what are my friends playing on?"), marketing, price, hardware performance, etc. all matter as well.
@Anti-Matter Do you have a favorite Ratchet & Clank?
From Best to Worst i have:
1. A Crack in Time (PS3)
2. Tools of Destruction (PS3)
3. R&C (PS4)
4. R&C 3 (PS3)
5. Into the Nexus (PS3)
6. R&C 2 (PS3)
7. Deadlock (PS2)
8. Size Matters (PS2, still on the way from Ebay to my country)
9. Secret Agent Clank (PSP but i will get the PS2 in the future)
10. Quest for Booty (PS3)
11. All 4 One (PS3)
12. R&C 1 (PS3)
13. Q-Force (PS3)
@Ralizah All true, but the drum of "exclusives sell consoles" is still demonstrated false by WiiU. It highlights the point. If the same exclusives sell on one console but not another, people aren't buying console B because of the exclusives. They would have bought console A for them. They buy the exclusives because they're top games on the console they otherwise wanted and they make the already inviting machine more inviting.
Now don't interpret all this as "i want team green to win". In fact I don't. I want Xbox to "fail". To be #2, even #3..... But to make enough market share to be financially successful. It's a much better platform when it's the non dominant one
@NEStalgia Wii U took too long to get the massive system sellers, look at it:
NSMBU (November 2012) - NSMB2 was released 3 months earlier for 3DS so impact is lessened
Wind Waker HD (September 2013)
Super Mario 3D World (November 2013)
Mario Kart 8 (May 2014)
Smash Wii U (November 2014)
Mario Party 10 (March 2015)
Splatoon (May 2015)
Super Mario Maker (September 2015)
Twilight Princess HD (March 2016)
Note: In March 2015, NX was announced.
The smaller titles like Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Tropical Freeze, Bayonetta 2, Yoshi's Woolly World, XCX, etc. would've benefited more if the system sellers came earlier.
This is what Sony is doing, getting their big system sellers IPs in early on the PS5. In year 1 you'll have Spider-Man, Horizon, Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank, with more probably announced soon. Meanwhile Series X year 1 so far is Halo Infinite and nothing else, even the previously PC exclusive Gears Tactics and Flight Simulator could be before Series X launch..
@NEStalgia Again, not really. By that logic, nothing sells consoles, because it's always more than one factor that goes into making them a success. You're way exaggerating the importance of one important factor to try and argue that it's not an important factor at all. It's disingenuous.
It'd be like this conversation happening
Person A: The cheaper console in a generation almost always ends up selling better than the more expensive one.
Person B: REAAAAALLY? Wasn't the Ouya cheaper than the Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U?
Person A: Well, yes, but it also lacked in so many oth--
Person B: That dusts it. The Ouya was cheaper, and nobody bought it. People don't go for the cheaper console!
That's true. But I do still think it highlights the importance of the platform above the games. Switch had great games....those great games lined up post PSXBone launches.....but people didn't choose the hardware. Even though those same games arriving years into Switch sell like crazy. People wanted the games, but they refused to buy the hardware to play those games because the platform wasn't as appealing as PS4 (XB was down for the count at that point.)
I still strongly suspect either console will be available in 2020 if you're not one of the "lucky few" preorders, and inventory will be playing out of stock catch up for probably another 8 months after, or more. Yet looking at the two, I'm still finding PS5 to be the less intriguing one. It's only real selling point as a positive differentiator is those exclusives. I mean I have to be in on XB anyway, I have a 300+ game library that all comes over with me and gets some enhancements. And I bought nearly all of them years after I bought the PS4 first......the platform itself is just nicer, even if I've on average spent more hours on the PS4 just because of some specific Japanese games (ironically, PS or PS/PC exclusives, that are not Sony's own games.)
Finished Gears 3. Really brilliant game. What a great example of how to make a trilogy. Each game feels standalone whilst still feeding into a larger story.
I realize Gears 4 and 5 are kinda a separate story. I might go and do the Halo collection before I start on Gears 4.
I'd say it's 3 or 4 factors that decide this stuff. Not necessarily all equally weighted though:
1) Big exclusives, and the timeline in which they appear.
2) Inherent appeal of console and its features (includes things like backcompat, portability)
3) Price
4) Momentum of past name recognition. (if the PS4 was really good, a lot of people will assume the PS5 will be too, even if it's not)
In year 1 you'll have Spider-Man, Horizon, Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank, with more probably announced soon. Meanwhile Series X year 1 so far is Halo Infinite and nothing else.
How do you know that all those PS5 exclusives will be released within one year and how do you know that Microsoft will only release one game during the same period of time?
@NEStalgia Thanks and same to you! I agree about your remark about exclusives interest fragmentation as well and that happens on all consoles.
Wii U has proven that there are only 13 million of unconditional Nintendo fans in the world but Switch is attractive to a broader market as a handheld/hybrid even or because of having Wii U ports, not just as a Nintendo product, which kind of proves that it's not all about exclusives or brand but it's also about the hardware, pricing, popularity, friends, etc. Switch didn't improve things much compared to Wii U and it's, actually, a more restrictive system with more expensive software, no applications and no free online but its portability makes it a winner although it still hasn't surpassed DS, GB, GBA, PSP and 3DS. The Animal Crossing New Horizons numbers are Wii-like, though, I still can't believe them.
The most important part of your writing is that, as usually, it contains a lot of facts that most die-hard fans and "ultra nerdcore" users tend to ignore because they see everything from the same perspective, e.g., how Xbox One has been more successful in subscription and software sales, that is, revenue, than what they think just looking at the total number of PS4 and Xbox One units sold.
The next generation is something that we've never experienced before. Nintendo will be two generations behind in power terms with a hybrid console slightly more powerful than 360 and PS3, two generations before Series X and PS5. I'm not saying that it's a bad commercial strategy because it has worked well for three years and it's not a home console but it's going to be unusual, at the very least. It's like Nintendo going the Android/iOS way with their own devices and storefront.
Microsoft is going Phil's way with the most powerful console, xCloud, Game Pass, Play Anywhere and even Steam, focusing on software and subscriptions revenue while spoiling console gamers once again with free remasters and free backwards compatibility. More importantly, investing a huge amount of resources on studios and games to get those relatively important exclusive games that also nurture Game Pass which is the best video games deal.
Also a new thing is Sony leaving portables behind, the opposite of Nintendo, while becoming part of what Microsoft is, a console and software seller and hoping for people to jump from PS4 to PS5 with a PS4 DLC standalone game and, of course, the cinematic and visually pleasing exclusives that they will release over the years but not at launch and taking baby steps in the streaming business under Microsoft's umbrella.
All three companies are going a different way next generation. Obviously, Nintendo and Microsoft but also Sony. I foresee a more balanced generation, regardless. Basically, because Nintendo and Microsoft are not messing around at all like they were in 2012-13.
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