Why does Sony fail at making another mega franchise?

[NYANKS]

RolStoppable said:

NYANKS said:

So I'm assuming you agree with the hardcore vs. casual distinction, or something like it?  You say the quality of the game is not the problem, but simply the premise of the game, or should I say, the real or perceived complexity of them.  Basically, consumers can only stomach so many things or so much complexity.  I mean, Wii Sports.  Does what it does well.  The topic is sports, easy to get into.  A new way to play sports, the closest thing we have to playing real sports in the home I guess? Doesn't seem like to tough a sell. And very easy top play, very few buttons to memorize, mostly motion.  And some perception of a challenge, because the Wiimote is relatively accurate.  

Then we have Call of Duty, which I believe sells on par with some of those games.  A game about war, perhaps particularly resonant now.  Has a highly competitive structure, played by I assume a large majority of males.  I feel like the online perception of "all my friends have this, I should too!" helps this game alot. Then again, I guess that goes for the Wii series as well. 

Gran Turismo, a game about cars and racing them.  Again not a tough sell, cars are pretty big.  Quite similar to reality, graphics-wise and I believe physics-wise.  Allowing people to drive beautiful drive cars they may never even see in person in their lifetimes.  Has a legacy as being the BEST of all driving games.

It seems the most popular games ar the ones most easy to understand and relate to real life.  Either that, or they just do something innovative to some degree or simply raise the past bar a great, great deal.  Sports, War, Cars.  Easy sells, but still either amazing or innovative games or both. 

Wii SPORTS, Wii PLAY, Wii MUSIC, WII FIT.  You can't get much simpler than this.  Couple the simplicity of these games with the new "I'm really doing it!" play mechanic, and I guess it's not so mindblowing to understand.

Sony does innovate, but they are big into technology. They like pushing the envelope in this way, and it has paid dividends ever since they started.  They've made some of the greatest games in the history of games.  They do what they do well, but Sony hasn't really made things so simple and basic like Nintendo did.  Note that it's not Okami, Little King's Story, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, No More Heroes 1 and 2, Muramasa or Trauma Team doing so incredible.  It's games like Rock Band (about guitars), Just Dance (about *gasp* DANCING) that are simple that do incredible. 

And of course Nintendo has some old ips that can do it too, like Mario.  Link does pretty well.

Sony makes some beautiful games.  However, they don't always make themselves look simple, approachable or easy to understand.  Shadow of the Colossus.  Very simple game.  Doesn't appear incredibly simple at first look, but it's not  that hard.  Appealing colorwise? Not particularly. The concept is simple, kill 16 monters.  But it was more than that.  Gamers thought it was beautiful.  However, the bottom line is people don't want art, they want fun and they want it to be simple and easy to understand and make sense of.  Shadow is fun and relatively simple, but not easy to tell someone about.  Not as easy as Gran Turismo or Call of Duty or Wii Sports.

I don't agree with the hardcore vs. casual distinction at all, simply because it's something that doesn't make any sense at all. If we would be going by it, we would run into problems immediately. For example, Gran Turismo is easy to understand and play, so it must be a casual game. Now those who believe in hardcore vs. casual would object and say that GT is a hardcore game. So let's forget this stupid distinction entirely.

You are right when you say that the most popular games tend to be ones that are either easy to understand and immediately entertaining and/or easy to relate to. It's no coincidence that many publishers are eager to get the rights to make games based off of movies, TV series or major sports. People are interested in that content and buy it even if the game isn't really that great, that's why mediocre movie tie-ins routinely outsell good original games.

Basing a game off of things that people already like or are greatly interested in is the easy way to create a big selling title, but of course it's by no means a guarantee to sell a lot of copies only due a popular license.

The other way is to make a fun original game. But what is fun? It's a game that lets the user find success pretty much immediately while maintaining a certain level of challenge. If the player always wins it would get boring quickly. In Super Mario Bros. you can clear the first stage pretty quickly, but it won't stay so easy. You have to learn to time your jumps, if you want to get farther into the game. Tetris is incredibly simple, but there's a constant challenge with the increasing drop speed of the blocks.

Are such games easy to make? Not at all. In fact, they are much harder to make than something like Okami. It's a difficult task to catch the player's attention within a few minutes and get him/her hooked. During the timespan people get addicted to a game like Mario or Tetris, they don't even get to play anything of Okami. Likewise, Shadow of the Colossus isn't fun for most people, because the first 15 minutes are boring as hell too.

You mentioned Wii Music, even though it doesn't fit in with the rest of the games. You are right that it is easy to understand, but it's not fun. That's why it flopped. That's also why so many other games that are easy to understand flop all the time.

These games absolutely need to require skill in one form or another, they always have and always will. If you could master Wii Sports within a few hours, it would have never been such a big hit and sold so many Wiis. If it would be easy to make a game like Wii Sports, we would see dozens of new mega franchises each and every year. But since it's actually hard to do, we see most publishers assigning their top developers to games that cater to people who are willing to invest a couple of hours into a game without it being entertaining during that time period, because "eventually, it will get good".

It's also not like Nintendo only makes simple games. Metroid, Fire Emblem, F-Zero, to name a few. But they are usually overlooked, because for some people Nintendo is only Mario, Zelda and Pokémon.

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.   :(