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Forums - Sales Discussion - Why does Sony fail at making another mega franchise?

irtz on 05 September 2010

well in my opinion the biggest mistake sony made to let go crash bandicoot plus they some times make bad decisions like we have seen in ps3 era and marketing  is also a factor



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NYANKS on 05 September 2010
RolStoppable said:
NYANKS said:

It seems an unfortunate thing that games that can't hook you instantaneously have no chance of keeping people's attention.  In a way I feel like this is just the failure of the consumer to expand their horizons.  And I know, the consumer is never wrong.  It's the games fault.  However, it seems the masses are unwilling to try anything that requires a bit of thought, so games that have stories that try to be coherent or any more complex than that of a Mario game are immediately at a disadvantge.  It seems that most people don't deem the medium to be worth the time  or effort.  There ARE somewhat more complex games that do a very good job of keeping a player's attention, but no dice.  And about Metroid, Fire Emblem, F-Zero....this saddens me.  Just like Uncharted.  And it's not for "some" people.  It's for most people.  Only people like ones on this site are playing Fire Emblem.  It's not that everything Nintendo does is insta-gold, they just have that devious old man behind the scenes....lol.  He has been the source of a good deal of their win, hasn't he?  Hell Zelda barely qualifies as a mega hit.  That's still mostly people on sites like this.  It's sad, the majority of people I've shown games like Uncharted or Zelda to can't believe how cool or fun they look.  Adults, kids, peers, you name it.   :(

Oh cool, my reply from yesterday got actually posted. VGC passed out for me, so I thought that everything I wrote got lost.

I don't think it's fair to say that the masses are ignorant. Let's apply all this to another entertainment medium: movies. Would you call people stupid because they stop watching a movie after 30 minutes, because they find it boring? "But the movie gets better afterwards and as a whole is actually pretty good." May not be worth it, if it means to endure boredom. Especially because there are movies that are entertaining from start to finish.

Or are people ignorant because they don't want to watch "cultivated" foreign movies that come with subtitles? They probably say: "If I wanted to read, I would take a book." Are they wrong? I don't think so, because the widely perceived purpose of movies is to watch them. If people have to read for about 90 minutes to understand a movie, then the medium is used wrongly.

Likewise, video games that use story as their main draw never find a huge audience, because these games interpret the medium incorrectly. Video games are about interaction and cutscenes put the player in the same position as a movie. The question then becomes: "Why should I play such a game if I could just watch a movie instead?" And movies are better at telling a story than video games by a long shot. If a developer strives to make a game like a movie, then he is the ignorant one, not the consumer. Because he is misinterpreting the medium.

Of course there's a niche for such games, just like there are people who watch movies with subtitles. Also, it doesn't mean that these games can't be good, but nobody should expect mega hits, because these titles don't stand a chance against those which interpret the medium (almost) perfectly. That's nothing to be sad about, unless sales have an influence on your enjoyment of a game.

Although couldn't it be that sales indicate something other than how good a game is?  They've resonated because they use the medium in a way most peole like, keeping it very simple.  I don't feel like sales denote excellence while small sales mean the game is a failure.  Commercially it is.  But not in any other way.  

I guess sorting out games other than those big successes are best left to "hardcore", or people on sites like this.  Just like no one watches Best Picture nominees lol.  It's just annoying to hear that every game Nintendo makes is better than all of Sony efforts because of sales.  But I guess people who only play casually and not like us necessarily don't even know about this lol. 



NYANKS on 05 September 2010
irtz said:

well in my opinion the biggest mistake sony made to let go crash bandicoot plus they some times make bad decisions like we have seen in ps3 era and marketing  is also a factor

Indeed Crash may have been a bad move.  But I applaud them for making so many ip's.  They could go the financial saefty route, doing some franchises continually.  Sony does what they do very well.



Doobie_wop on 05 September 2010
mhsillen said:
Doobie_wop said:
RolStoppable said:
evolution_1ne said:
RolStoppable said:

Sony doesn't do amazing things first, that's why. Their games usually consist of ideas borrowed from somewhere else and mixed together. It's not surprising that Uncharted was compared to Tomb Raider and Gears of War a lot. Why did Gears of War do so much better? Because it redefined its genre and ever since then other TPS try to mimic its gameplay. God of War followed Devil May Cry. Killzone followed Halo.

nothing about gears of war was original, it was successful for the same reason Halo was successful, at the time of their release they were the only worth while quality games for the platform, which is why Halo success was never repeated. Also gears didn't redefine anything, that "revolutionary" cover system was a carbon copy of the cover system in killswitch, and game released last gen. but you wouldn't know nothing of that considering the level of ignorance in you comment (not surprising coming from you). God of war is nothing like devil may cry, a game I know you never played, you couldn't have. bayonetta is like devil may cry. and Killzone followed Halo.... seriously, how about you play them first and come back to me.

Why didn't LittleBigPlanet or Heavy Rain become mega blockbusters? Because they are not amazing to most gamers. The thing that's new in LBP is the extensive level editor, but most gamers rather play than create, so they don't care. Heavy Rain is more of an interactive movie and that's only amazing to a small subset of gamers.

and nothing is wrong with appealing to smaller markets.

Of course, this explanation works in reverse as well and that's why Gran Turismo is so big while it's imitators never come close in sales. Forza would be the most popular one and hardly anyone remembers Konami's Enthusia Professional Racing anymore.

If you want to hit it big then you either have to do something first or something that hasn't been done in a long time by anyone else.

but then you mention lbp and heavy rain, both games have done something first and hasn't been done by anyone else...... fail logic is so very very very very very very FAIL!!!


So much fail it isn't even funny..........

Sony doesn't do anything amazing first *sigh* demon souls, shadow of the colossus, 256 player in a single match......

now to answer op, because no one else but Nintendo does, Nintendo is by far the best at finding the biggest markets making great games for those markets and sticking to them, they play it safe and only take risk when the have nothing to lose, which is what Sony doesn't do, they are always trying to reinvent themselves  and refresh their ip's and franchises no matter how successful they are, which is why Sony unlike Microsoft and Nintendo aren't a defined brand and playstation doesn't have a mascot, it appeals to everyone and every franchise isn't around long enough to become extremely popular, GT is the only one that is and it's been 4 years since the first one have hit the console. But op you have to realize this is why fans of Sony love the brand so much. 

Doing something first or doing so in an amazing way are two different things. It doesn't matter that kill.switch used a cover mechanic before Gears of War. Or Operation Winback which predates kill.switch. And it was GeoW that redefined the genre, because it was only after that game that TPS developers started to regularly implement similar cover mechanics.

God of War is as much like Devil May Cry as Super Mario Bros. is like Sonic the Hedgehog. Do they have differences? Of course. But more importantly, are their similarities in the core gameplay? Absolutely. Killzone was a selfproclaimed Halo-killer. If the developers of Killzone say that they are going after Halo, then this is a clear case.

Regarding LBP and Heavy Rain, I already explained why the things they did first were not amazing in the bigger picture... and you have read that paragraph. What is amazing is not defined by me nor you. In any entertainment medium the market at large decides what it amazing and that is what gives birth to a mega franchise. Likewise, the market also decides when a mega franchise has to die. For example, Guitar Hero is not what it used to be.

You may think that Demon's Souls and whatever else is amazing and you are entitled to it, just like I am free to believe that Fire Emblem is super awesome. But your and my personal opinion doesn't overrule the market as a whole.

@leo-j

inFamous is more or less just another sandbox game with a couple of new ideas. Did the game do anything that would have an impact on the genre as a whole? I guess no. So the market sees another GTA wannabe game, even if that perception isn't fair.

Marketing is far more a factor in how a game sell's than the actual quality of the game. The market is ignorant and misinformed, most of the general public don't know they want something until they are told what to want. Nintendo would never have been the success that it was if they didn't start grabbing celebrities for ad's, putting the Wii on talk shows and advertising the system non-stop for the first three years of it's release. The same applies to their games. 

You've seen the marketing push that's followed games like Halo 3, MW2, Gears of War, Wii Something Something, Mario and Gran Turismo. If little Timmy had never heard about Halo from his TV box or never read the back of a Mountain Dew can, he most likely would never have heard of Halo. People could say that word of mouth is the cause of their success, but that only works after the ad's kick in because they have to develop a large enough userbase to spread the word to a significant amount of people.

Your opinion on what games are innovative and important is skewed because I'm willing to bet that you don't play most of the PS3 games you've mentioned or you already have some sort of weird affiliation with another console that hinders your enjoyment of PS3 games. 


Or the general public does not like how video games are being developed now.  The market decides how good a game is not you.  


How can a market decide if all the options aren't laid out before them? Their scope is limited and that mean's their judgement is also limited. The market can't think for itself, because it relies far to much on the manufacturer. Bob the 10 year old isn't going to go on Google and look up the upcoming game line up or go on Youtube and starting sifting through gameplay videos. Bob the 10 year old is going to buy what the funny man on TV tell's him to buy. Obviously the situation isn't as mild as that, but that's what the markets like.

I've worked in retail before and the general public are stupid when it comes to anything relating to any form of technology, from fridges to game consoles. I hate having to bring these comparisons up, but by your definition, McDonald's is the best restaurant in the world, the Honda Civic is the best car, the IPad is the best netbook and Avatar is the greatest movie of all time.



Bet with Conegamer and AussieGecko that the PS3 will have more exclusives in 2011 than the Wii or 360... or something.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3879752

NYANKS on 05 September 2010
RolStoppable said:
NYANKS said:

Although couldn't it be that sales indicate something other than how good a game is?  They've resonated because they use the medium in a way most peole like, keeping it very simple.  I don't feel like sales denote excellence while small sales mean the game is a failure.  Commercially it is.  But not in any other way.  

I guess sorting out games other than those big successes are best left to "hardcore", or people on sites like this.  Just like no one watches Best Picture nominees lol.  It's just annoying to hear that every game Nintendo makes is better than all of Sony efforts because of sales.  But I guess people who only play casually and not like us necessarily don't even know about this lol. 

I think you are mixing my posts up with the ones of someone else, because it wasn't me who said that sales are an absolute metric for quality.

No I know, but that kind of seemd to be where the thread was heading lol.  What is your favorite Wii game, aside from any possible Kim Possible game? lol



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goddog on 05 September 2010
Michael-5 said:
NYANKS said:
Michael-5 said:

Microsoft has more money to market their games. I mean I saw more adds for Crackdown 2 then I did for God of War 3.

Sony and Microsoft are at battle at making "the" home theatre station. They both want their console to be the centerpeice of your livingroom. Except Sony went all out, making a PS3 Blu-Ray before Blu-Ray was cheap and practical to produce. They put too much in, and it's hurting them. Only recently have they seen a profit. Microsoft simply wanted to control games, and influence movies. I think a 360 successor will try to be "the" home theatre system, but with the 360 Microsoft simply wanted to make a name for themselves.

To put it simply, thats what they are doing, convincing people that they are "the" gaming platform for gamers. Yes Wii sells better, but 360 is the gamers system.

Microsoft still puts out as many great products as Sony does, this year I see 7 big exclusives on both consoles. For 360 there are Halo, Fable, Mass Effect, Alan Wake, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Crackdown 2, and Metro 2033 (I know there are more). For PS3 there are GT5, LBP2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, MAG, ModNation Racers, White Knight Chronicles (Again I know there are more).

However Microsoft has Call of Duty limited bundles, early map packs for 3 more years, and they do stuff like this with all big titles. They have enough money, 360 generates cash, and Microsoft spends it making a name for themselves.

So that is why 360 titles are always soo successful saleswise. Sony on the other hand, I blaime a lack of a solid fanbase. Hear me out, an FPS on the 360 will sell extremly well because the 360 is full of FPS nuts, and has established itself (through a few great early titles, and marketing) as the Shooter console. However Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, and Tales of Vesperia didn't sell that well. Thats because the 360 lacks a significant RPG fanbase. Don't get me wrong, I love my RPG's, especially the 360 installments, however I can see why a lot of die hard RPG nuts don't relate Microsoft to RPG console.

So for the PS3 FPS don't sell well. No matter how good Uncharted, Killzone, and Resistance are, there is a lack of a PS3 favoring FPS fanbase. That shows in it's regional sales (Most PS3 fans are from EMEAA, a place where ALL FPS just don't do that well).

However Racing games sell well on the PS3, so do RPG's. Take a look at GT5 Prologue, and Final Fantasy XIII.

In conclusion, 360 games are successful due to marketing and a strong FPS fanbase, PS3 games generally aren't as successful because established fanbases are for smaller genres like racing and RPG. Many of PS3's past exclusive titles have gone multiplatform as well (See P.S. below)

P.S. for Sony established mega franchises, Final Fantasy was exclusive to Sony during the PS1 and PS2 era, MGS still kind of is, Gran Turismo is also a big Sony branded game, and until GTA IV came out, GTA was largly associated with Sony. God of War is pretty epic still, and so are Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest. Resident Evil was mega on the PS1.

Funnily enough, most of those games are not made by Microsoft, while Sony makes just about all of theirs on the list. 

Technically Sony only owns the studios that make their first party titles. Nintendo is the only company to really develop their own games, where only a handful are handled by other studios (Pokemon by Game Freak, and Metroid: Other M by Team Ninja). You may think some other Nintendo franchises are developed by third party companies (Advance Wars and Fire Emblem by Intelligent systems, Metroid Prime, and DKCR by Retro Studios, and Smash Bros/Kirby by HAL Laboritories), but if you do a history lesson, these companies originally branched off from Nintendo R&D 1&2, Nintendo EAD 1-5, or were simply bought out in early life. I beleive Camalot, Game Freak, Team Ninja, and Creatures Inc were the only developers that ever got to work on a big Nintendo project (Golden Sun/Mario Sports, Pokemon, Metroid: Other M, and Earthbound).

This is similar to Bungie, which was conceived by Microsoft.

To my knowledge, the only first party studio that originated withing Sony would have been Polyphony digital, everything else was bought out. Even Square-Enix, Sony bought large shares for that company back during the N64 days, and thats why Final Fantasy games largly remain exclusive.

Edit, I looked it up. Polyphony Digital, SCE, Zipper Interactive, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, Evolution Studios, and Media Module are the big ones. So Sony develops Gran Turismo, God of War, Ape Escape, Ico, SOCOM, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper, Jak & Dexter, Killzone, Motorstorm and LBP

Microsoft has 343 Studios, Lionhead, Rare, Turn 10, and Wingnut Studios. So they develop Halo, Fable, Conker, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, Forza, and flight simulator.

Most of these companies have been bought out, the difference from Nintendo to Sony and MS, is that most of their studios separated from Nintendo development studios to work on different games. I think Nintendo only bought Retro Studios.

If your refering to games released in 2010, all 360 titles are published by Microsoft, and PS3 titles are published by Sony.

"This is similar to Bungie, which was conceived by Microsoft."

 

not true, bungie, had years of being an independent studio making awsome games such as marathon, also before they were bought formed a second studio that pushed out a PS2 game oni



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irtz on 05 September 2010
NYANKS said:
irtz said:

well in my opinion the biggest mistake sony made to let go crash bandicoot plus they some times make bad decisions like we have seen in ps3 era and marketing  is also a factor

Indeed Crash may have been a bad move.  But I applaud them for making so many ip's.  They could go the financial saefty route, doing some franchises continually.  Sony does what they do very well.


i dont agree with may i think to let go crash bandicoot it biggest mistake as it was becoming a famous game and each new part had better sales than previous one



Zkuq on 05 September 2010
irtz said:

i dont agree with may i think to let go crash bandicoot it biggest mistake as it was becoming a famous game and each new part had better sales than previous one

It seems Naughty Dog wanted to do something else... Which would probably have led to the same outcome as we got. Maybe Sony would have found another studio that could have made the series even better and more popular but I doubt it. Haven't done much research about it though, so...

Which reminds me, I wonder what Halo will become after Bungie. And what will Call of Duty become after Infinity Ward.



Squilliam on 05 September 2010

Mega Franchises:

Sony 3 generations:

  • Gran Turismo

Microsoft 2 generations:

  • Halo
  • Gears of War

Nintendo 5 generations plus Arcade titles.

  • Mario
  • Donkey Kong
  • Duck Hunt
  • Zelda
  • Mario Kart
  • Mario Party
  • Wii Sports franchises
  • Wii Fit
  • Probably another one or two that I missed.

Anyway Nintendos rate of massive franchise generation is simply higher. Probably this is due to the one man Miyamoto who had a significant hand in many of these games. Its not that Sony sucks, its just that one person is probably worth as much as all their studios combined. Luckily for Sony Miyamoto will retire eventually.



Tease.

TheBlackNaruto on 05 September 2010

Again the MARKET only determines how good a game SELLS not how good a game IS. We are getting those confused...Just because game A does not sell as nig as game B does not mean it is ANY form a bad game....



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