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jarrod on 06 December 2009
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Reasonable said:
jarrod said:
Reasonable said:
jarrod said:
I think there's issues of scale here. Frankly it doesn't make sense to me when someone says Halo Reach won't be a "system seller", then in the next breath say FFXIII will be a "sysetm seller" in Japan when the reality is FFXIII's JP hardware bump will probably be less than Reach's US hardware bump.

Microsoft has a lot of unknowns next year in Natal, and games like Alan Wake. 360's pretty well established so it's easy to assume people who want games like Halo, Crackdown, Mass Effect, Splinter Cell or Fable sequels already have the system, but then I'd counter that extremely rare you have one game that can singularly drive hardware significantly anyway. On 360, I'd say Halo 3 did it. On Wii there was Wii Sports, Wii Fit and now probably NSMBWii. I don't think PS3's ever really had one, though GT5 looks like it could come closest to that level (but still isn't a sure thing). DS had a few (Nintendogs, Brain-Age, NSMB, Pokemon), PSP didn't.

I think it's highly unlikely Reach will produce a larger spike in US than FF in Japan.  There has been no FF title at all on PS3 in Japan, therefore the spike is going to be large, whereas Halo 3 has already released on 360, so it is very likely the spike for Reach is going to be modest at best (based on historic performance).

That's why you're seeing the comments your are.  Unknowns are just that, unknowns.  You're guessing when trying to figure out what will happen.  Known titles you can look at the history.

In the end, only PS3 has major franchises still to make a major bow on the system, FF and GT5, all known major 360 franchises have already had a title released.

 

Japan already got the FFXIII demo with ACCFFVII BD, and that even got a PS3 hardware bundle last April (which already spiked sales).  No, it's not a full game, but then it's not like all the people who're buying FFXIII will be buying a PS3 alongside it, many already have one.  The scale of FFXIII's bump isn't going to be that huge either, the holidays and slim are pushing more units that FFXIII will be.  It'll maybe be a 80-100k bump on top of that.   

Likewise, we had already GT5 Prologue.  Again, not the same as a dedicated full release, but Sony's definitely been teasing the game so long with Prologue and updates that a good amount of series faithful likely already bought the platform.  I guess it's maybe semantics, in a way both series HAVE pushed hardware sales even if those sales won't come alongside the games.  Though then we can sort of apply that logic to the 360 sequels too, they're helping reinforce sales and awareness.

I sort of view GT5 and FFXIII the same way I view Other M or the new Zelda... technically the series was released on the platform earlier, but this is the first full "real" game in the series made for the console.

Historic performance indicates that the demo and prologue will only have drawn in a small fraction of the potential end audience, and it's only the full game that will drive big spike.

It is semantics, but for a site like this important ones.  In the end, at this point, only FF and GT have yet to have a full game release, they represent the only known major franchises on either PS3 and 360 still to do so, hence at this point only PS3 has any known potential system sellers.

New IP like Alan Wake is historically unlikely to drive systems (although of course it might, it's just statistically the odds are against it) while a second (arguably third) major franchise release on the same platform (Halo Reach) is also statistically unlikely to drive a spike.

I'm not being a fanboy here, just stating the facts in reference to the OP.  I don't think 360 owners should be offended by this or reach for unknowns or feel the need to point to lot's of great exclusives.  Sure, the PS3 is the only console with a couple of known system sellers to be released, but is that a good thing?  Should the PS3 not have already seen those titles and used them to secure big boosts earlier in it's lifecycle?  We'll never know, but I wouldn't feel that it's some sort of attack the 360 has already received at least 1 iteration of it's big franchises - in many ways that points to MS showing good sense and making sure the core titles/fans are appeased fairly early on while looking for new IP to become new franchises for the console.

 

Well, I think we fundamentally agree on all the basic points, I just think some (and not necessarily you) are overestimating the "system selling" power of the remaining big PS3 exclusives... if we really look at historic performance, we can also say that "big" franchises are generally pushing less on PS3 as a baseline as compared to PS2, and the vast majority of projected "system sellers" have done relatively little to actually push hardware.  In fact, PS3's recent turnaround seems to be driven almost entirely by price cuts and a new model, software hasn't even factored for the most part (hardware seems to be driving software on PS3 more than the reverse).  If we look at timelines, GT/FF also came far earlier in PS2's cycle, and neither really had the sort of prepromotion or "demos" the series have had to lead-in PS3 buyers earlier.  You can't really look at GT5P/ACC and make a solid historical projection because the truth is, they don't really have historical analogues that can apply completely (there was no retail FFX demo or GT3 Prologue).  Like I mentioned before, if you actually look at the context surrounding these "system sellers", you find plenty of reasons to expect a softened impact in regards to hardware... but people tend to dismiss the finer point and just fall on superficial trends, proclaiming "system seller"!

To be honest, I'd say the single biggest hardware driver left is probably a 3rd party Wii game that's relevant in chiefly just one region (DQX), and there's so many unknowns there even that's iffy to really try and predict.