Why does Sony fail at making another mega franchise?

[mjk45]

Michael-5 said:

Miguel_Zorro said:

Gears of War isn't that big of a seller (around 6 million), at least compared to Halo.  It had a better sales trajectory than Uncharted 2 has, but it's not that extreme.

As for why Sony can't seem to produce a "Halo" franchise?  I think there are a lot of reasons.

1) Marketing.  Halo marketing is huge, and effective.  I haven't seen Sony go as big with a marketing campaign yet.

2) Bundles.  Sony could pick a flagship game and bundle it with their console.  They don't do that enough.

3) Investing in franchises across generations.  The first Halo on the original xbox sold 6 million.  The next one sold 8.  They carried that over to the 360, where now Halo 3 sold over 10 million.  Sony carried over Gran Turismo from the PSOne, but what about Crash Bandicoot?  It had three titles which sold around 7 million each.

4) Not owning their biggest game.  The biggest exclusive on the PSOne after Gran Turismo was Final Fantasy 7.  The biggest game on the PS2 was GTA: San Andreas.  Imagine if Sony had released FF13 or GTA4 as an exclusive on the PS3?  Sony could have purchase Squaresoft in the 90s before it merged with Enix.  I think they've learned from this by purchasing the first party studios behind their PS3 games (like Media Molecule).

5) The 360 audience is perfectly suited to make Halo big.  Most people who own 360s are American.  Most people who own 360s like shooting games.  It's the perfect audience to make games like Halo and Gears huge.  The PS3 has more owners in Europe vs. the Americans, with a bunch in Japan, where shooters don't sell as well.

6) Diverse gaming audience - as mentioned, a lot of PS3 owners like different types of games, it'd be easier to hit 10 million if they all liked one type of game.

7) People who buy the 360 buy it for the games.  That's pretty much it.  The console has an amazing attach rate.  A lot of PS3 owners bought it primarily for the Blu-Ray player.  They're not buying a lot of games.  A lot of people bought the PS2 because it wasn't that much more expensive than a DVD player.  Same story.

When you're looking at mega-franchises (8-10 million sold per title) that started this gen or last, the list is small: Halo, Wii Fit (I'm excluding Play and Sports for hopefulyl obvious reasons). Then multiplats like Call of Duty and GTA.  (I may have missed a few).  The real question is - what is it about those games that make them such blockbusters?

 

1) I 100% Agree

2) MGS4 was bundled with the last PS2 backward compatible model PS3. So if you wanted a backward compatible PS3, you had to buy MGS4 as stand alone PS3's were different models. Motorstorm did the same, why do you think MGS4 sold 5 million?

Also Halo did 11 million without any significant bundles. There was a Halo 3/Fable 2 bundle a year and a half later on Elite models, but that didn't boost sales much.

3) I think in past generations, Sony relied a lot on 3rd party exclusives. GTA, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, all went multiplatform, or simply switched consoles entirely. It should have brought over Crash Bandicoot, bu I think they ran out of money when everyone left them.

4) in 1987 Square was a company on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1990, they were cheap to buy, but largly loyal to Nintendo, and Sony didn't even have a console back then. By the time PS1 came out, Sony did buy about 40% of the square stock, and they still own a large portion now (thats why FFXIII was not released on the 360 in Japan), but by 1996 Square was a rich and expensive company, and then they merged with Enix. Sony tried, but I don't think the had enough $$$ to buy Rockstar or Square. Even MS could only buy a timed DLC exclusive from Rockstar for 50 million.

5) Gran Turismo 5 will sell well as it appeals to PS3 owners tastes better.

6) I 100% agree

7) I 100% agree, I even know people who bought the PS3 for Blu-Ray and end up buying a couple games for it, just because they can.

As for 10 million sellers, there were a bunch in the NES era, but N64 took a dive in sales, so for N64 and SNES era it was uncommon. During PS2 era, games jumped again, remember PS2 has 5 10 million sellers, 3 GTA titles, 2 GT titles.

Wii just tapped that casual audience, and so did Halo and CoD kind of.

i remember seeing heaps of halo bundles bought one myself and the used game shelf  was full of the bundled version .
as to crash bandicoot has i have stated before universal own the IP and the squaresoft bail out was 25% now down to less than half that it is a simple fact that with 3 major players  the 3rd partys are gonna spread ,where halo got it right was bringing a genre more at home on the pc and making it work on console with a star wars style universal appeal so as with lots of things there is a case of right product at the right time .