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badgenome on 05 December 2008
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FilaBrasileiro said:
badgenome said:

I don't think either is clearly better. With first party IPs, they're safe exclusives that will never appear anywhere else (unless the console maker pulls a Sega), but Sony did quite well for two generations relying mostly on third parties. If you manage to secure a lot of third party support, that could equal a lot more exclusives than first party devs could generate, and with considerably less financial risk.

At this point, though, Microsoft isn't really getting all that many third party exclusives, so the first party route Sony is taking seems a better way to differentiate a console from the competition- a pretty important thing when so many people currently find the 360 and PS3 to be basically interchangeable.


I disagree, MS is getting A LOT of 3rd party exclusives (Gears series, NGII, IU, ME, SO4, etc), A LOT of DLC and download exclusives (GTAIV, Fallout 3, Castle Crashers, Braid, etc), A LOT of timed exclusives (Bioshock, Oblivion, TLR, Fallout 3 Japan) exclusive features (exclusive demos, exclusive NBC/Universal, exclusive Netflix, etc..), and that's not counting the games and features they kept from being exclusive to PS3 (DMC4, Tekken 6, FFXIII, etc..).


The problem with Sony's model is that


1) You have to buy a developer, they got Evolution Studios/BigBig pretty cheap for 30 million, so you know that's a lot of investment up front.

2) They have to now pay for employees and contractors salaries and benefits and that could add up to a lot.

3) If they don't have a good ROI they are pretty much fucked because of #2, basically they'll feel the bombas from 1st/2nd parties a lot more than MS will feel the bombas from 3rd parties.

The upside to the Sony model though is that if you can get a great lineup of exclusive IPs and constantly put out great games year in/year out, you can be pretty self sufficient (Nintendo survived the N64/NGC days because of their great 1st party)


I don't know which one is actually better, there's more upside to the Sony model, but MS model is definitely safer and better short term.

 

 

Well, I guess I think of games like Gears, Ninja Gaiden II, and Infinite Undiscovery as first/second party games, since they're all published or bankrolled by Microsoft. But however you figure it, I agree that it has been a good model for them so far to strike deals with third party developers to make so much of their "first party" line-up for just the reason you say.

The other upside to the Nintendo model is building a brand to which people develop an attachment. I think that's what I like most about Sony's shift toward first party games. They already have some brand loyalty, of course, but they've squandered no small bit of it, and with so many of their big third party exclusives going multiplatform, their cupboard was looking pretty bare.