Darth Tigris said:
When I look at the huge success of the PS and PS2, though, I don't see SCE IP's being the reason. I think Resident Evil, FF, Tekken and MGS for the PS. I think GTA, MGS and FF for the PS2. SCE had great games for sure (some even selling really good numbers), but 3rd party exclusives pretty much made the PS and PS2 as far as sales. MS approached this gen that same way, but it was 3rd parties that came to see that its better business FOR THEM to go multi or maybe timed. SCE has maybe more exclusive IP's this gen than ever before, but ironically that hasn't propelled them to the top either. Nintendo? Well they're Nintendo. They have a list of legacy IP's that SCE and MGS won't be able to compete with ... maybe ever. With this gen, the rules are being rewritten and MGS and SCE will have to look at this and see where things are trending and try to steer the ship. Not saying I'm a huge fan of MGS's approach, but I can say that I'm sure not hurting for games to play on my 360. |
The thing is the PS1/PS2 really did dominate - they got exclusives by default and once the console was really dominant Sony could put a lot of pressure on developers.
This gen the rules are indeed different and I think that will continue. One aspect this gen is the lack of a clear winner. Sure the Wii sells the best and sells a lot of software, but it doesn't cover all demographics the way the PS1/PS2 did. This leaves the gap which the PS3/360 are fighting over.
Going forward, I think having your own exclusives - vs third party exclusives - is going to become more important.
Looking at the effort / expense by MS just to get to 50 million, I feel that with their current model domination of the sort PS1/PS2 enjoyed is out of their reach. I think Xbox brand will continue to grow but I believe a lack of extensive exclusives will hold the brand back.
Of course you have games to play - most games are multi-platform now and will be - which is also why I'm saying what I'm saying.
It's great as a gamer you don't care whether a game is on another platform - I don't either - but I was just speaking more thinking about MS and noting while their model is fine for a certain size of install base I don't think it will allow them to dominate.
Of course, with the way the market has gone this gen domination for any single console may well be off the cards now and decent marketshare is all that's left. That would be interesting to see.
EDIT - to shorten the trail.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
