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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - If MS fixes their lack of exclusives they would be in a really nice position

Farsala on 24 August 2017
Soundwave said:
Farsala said:

Like it or not but whether the game is exclusive or not, if its good it will create a lot of buzz. A huge part of early Xbox success was because of exclusives like Halo, Morrowind, Mech assault. A huge part of early 360 success was exclusives like Halo 3, Gears of War, and the JRPG deals made. IF crackdown was a XBX launch game and a huge hit, that would create a lot of buzz for it. But XB1 and XBX do not have that luxury.

Looks to me this is wrong because XBox One X is selling very well from pre-order reports. 

Third party multiplats are the main course for Playstation/XBox consoles. 1st party exclusives are just the "bonus". It's like a steak restaurant -- the third party big guns are the steak menu. The 1st party stuff is just the desert menu. 

Sony has Uncharted/GT/God of War, MS has Halo/Forza/Gears. That's basically a wash, and not that many "regular" people (as in people who don't spend time on video game message boards) give a crap about many of the other exclusives. People want GTA, not Crackdown. 

A new hot game can make all the difference in changing fortunes. The same old exclusives and Multiplats alike don't attract too many new buyers. We have already seen it with the Switch taking off quite well with BOTW, and the Wii U didn't sell well at all but Splatoon helped out quite a bit. I don't attribute everything to exclusives,  but as you say the free dessert will have people going to that restaurant instead.

Sony had it's biggest 1st half of the year in US and Japan, but it wasn't due to multiplats. Most of the multiplats this year were underwhelming and weaker then past years in the same period.



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S.T.A.G.E. on 24 August 2017
LudicrousSpeed said:
Hiku said:

If you happen to be a fan of all the games you mentioned, it may not be a bad year for XBO owners. But people have different taste, and from my perspective it looks a lot slower this year than previous years, yeah. Though perhaps most importantly XBO still gets most of the third party support.
And it does a lot of things right, such as BC. But I think ultimately they have a branding issue worldwide that is not overcome easily. Perhaps even impossible, unless Sony screw up and leave a spot vacant.

Don't forget the "niche crap" as well.

Didn't forget anything, you edited the part of my post out where I said first party and moneyhat games :) Guess I could have included Nioh, didn't know Sony published it.

Microsoft can "fix" their amount of exclusive games. They're not going to be fixing their Japan problem and the de facto standard Japanese PS games any time soon.

Microsoft broke Japan by breaking a million Xbox 360s in Japan (last gen) and that secured Japanese titles. It can be done. I think it particularly had something to do with sonys bad launch though. Microsoft needs to work on trying to replicate that. Scalebound could've helped too.



Lawlight on 24 August 2017
Turkish said:
All they need to do is to put a fresh new spin on their IPs like they did with Fohza:
-Halo RPG in the vein of Mass Effect (by Obsidian)
-Gears survival horror

And then:
-Conker 2
-Banjo 3
-Scalebound still hapnin
-Sunset Overdrive 2

And then partner with these 3rd party studios for an exclusive:
-Crytek
-Ready at Dawn
-Remedy

$500 million later and Xbox is suddenly very competitve.

You know what else will get all the hardcore people on forums like this and Gaf go crazy? Getting Sega to make Jet Set Radio 3 for the system.

MS did partner with Crytek and Remedy for Xbox One exclusives this gen - Ryse: Son of Rome and Quantum Break. Sony got The Order 1886 from Ready at Dawn. All 3 of which did poorly. And I think it will take more than 500M to make all the games you've listed.



LudicrousSpeed on 24 August 2017

Yes, they've had success in previous gens and could do it again. But not any time soon. Won't happen this gen. And I don't think a game that looked as terrible as Scalebound would have helped. Throwing bad games at a problem doesn't help.



Soundwave on 24 August 2017

I wish MS never entered the game business. It hurt Nintendo by basically splitting the market for no.2 behind PS2 and Nintendo never really recovered properly from that in the dedicated home console space. Wii-era was just a unsustainable fad run not a long term solution.

But the XBox One brand is a virtual lock to sell 40 million now, perhaps even 50+ million ... that's just too many systems for MS to not allow one more kick at the can at least.

Virtually any game hardware that sells 32+ million in this business is going to get a successive piece of hardware. If Dreamcast had sold 40 million units, there would've been a Dreamcast 2 for sure, if 3DO sold 30+ million there for sure would've been 3DO successors, etc. etc. 



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S.T.A.G.E. on 24 August 2017
LudicrousSpeed said:
Yes, they've had success in previous gens and could do it again. But not any time soon. Won't happen this gen. And I don't think a game that looked as terrible as Scalebound would have helped. Throwing bad games at a problem doesn't help.

Unfortunately we will never know what really happened with the game. i heard they were trying to get platinum to shoehorn multiplayer and or co op into the game. Again... we will never truly know what went wrong but I think that could've been the game breaking issue.



AngryLittleAlchemist on 24 August 2017
Hiku said:

If you happen to be a fan of all the games you mentioned, it may not be a bad year for XBO owners. But people have different taste, and from my perspective it looks a lot slower this year than previous years, yeah. Though perhaps most importantly XBO still gets most of the third party support.
And it does a lot of things right, such as BC. But I think ultimately they have a branding issue worldwide that is not overcome easily. Perhaps even impossible, unless Sony screw up and leave a spot vacant.

LudicrousSpeed said:
This has been a really bad year for MS exclusives made to look much worse because Sony started the year with Horizon, GR2, and The Show.

Don't forget the "niche crap" as well.

All those games did very well considering the kind of market they're in now. (I know you're being ironic obviously...just think it's cool to see some of the best games of the year do very well overseas)



smroadkill15 on 24 August 2017

MS can pull themselves out of the slump they're in. The Xbox one X is the right step in that direction. Having the most powerful console helps. Having the best 3rd party support is what sells consoles this day and age.



Aura7541 on 24 August 2017
Hiku said:

If you happen to be a fan of all the games you mentioned, it may not be a bad year for XBO owners. But people have different taste, and from my perspective it looks a lot slower this year than previous years, yeah. Though perhaps most importantly XBO still gets most of the third party support.
And it does a lot of things right, such as BC. But I think ultimately they have a branding issue worldwide that is not overcome easily. Perhaps even impossible, unless Sony screw up and leave a spot vacant.

LudicrousSpeed said:
This has been a really bad year for MS exclusives made to look much worse because Sony started the year with Horizon, GR2, and The Show.

Don't forget the "niche crap" as well.

Heck, even Dragon Quest Builders (a late 2016 game) managed to sell over a million.



smroadkill15 on 24 August 2017
CGI-Quality said:
smroadkill15 said:
MS can pull themselves out of the slump they're in. The Xbox one X is the right step in that direction. Having the most powerful console helps. Having the best 3rd party support is what sells consoles this day and age.

Yes and no. The issue they have will remain - the PS4 is the "go to" machine for the rest of the gen. With a much higher fanbase, the most powerful console can only do so much (as we saw with the original Xbox when it faced the PS2). Another position it will find itself in (if Microsoft sticks to the idea of a "generation-less" business) is the PlayStation 5. That will obviously be more powerful than the X1X, negating its current advantage. 

Despite my love for the most powerful devices (and the fact that I happily plopped down $ for a Scorpio Edition X1X), Microsoft faces an uphill battle. The X1X , at least, gets people talking about Xbox in a very positive way, again. We'll see if that's a start for much bigger things to come.

As far as this generations goes, it's too late for the Xbox One to turn it around completely. Going into the next generation, I think MS realizes power and ease development is one of the most important aspects of having a successful game console. I'm sure MS is aware their first party studio offering is weaker than the competition, but if they can do everything else right they can be successful.