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S.T.A.G.E. on 22 July 2014
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Jon-Erich said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Jon-Erich said:
A lot of 360 owners flocked to PlayStation 4. Microsoft pissed off a lot of Xbox loyalists last year just like how Sony pissed off a lot of PlayStation loyalists with PS3 causing them to flock to Xbox 360 and just like how Sega pissed off Sega loyalists with the Saturn causing them to flock to PlayStation.


The people who flocked back to Sony are apart of a market that Sony partially grew themselves and jumped ship to Microsoft during the 360 era. Look at the history and the numbers. Those were not loyalists, but rather third party fans that originally grew from the Nintendo era, jumped to Sony then Sony increased the marketsize again and MS shaved them off by being the first and only console in the first year of the 7th gen complete with an equivalent list of third party games (including third party exclusives and timed exclusives) to Sony. Sony launched a year later and had lacked some third party games due to Microsoft paying for timed excusivity and exclusivity of a lot of third party games.

Microsoft eyed key third party franchises that they knew Sony had power over third party games with during the previous gens..

1. MGS 

2. Tekken ( until last gen Tekken was exclusive to the Playstation brand)

3. Final Fantasy

4. Resident Evil

This was the first time MS ever truly posed a threat to Sony at E3. They basically cut major names from their exclusive third party franchise list.

In my opinion, loyalists aren't just fanboys. They are gamers who have a favorite console and are loyal to that brand as long as that console and brand serves them well. Unlike many industries with brand loalty, loyalty doesn't last long in the videogame industry. With computers, Apple loyalists will stick with Macs in good times and bad while Microsoft loyalists will stick with Windows. In the videogame industry, loyalty will last so long before the fans feel disalusioned and betrayed enough to move on to the competition. Some diehards will put up with the frustration, but not many. For example, going back to the 16-bit era, that was a prime example of brand loyalty. Fans had their idea of what Nintendo was and what Sega was. With Nintendo in particular, Nintendo wasn't what we see them as now. Nintendo was more than that. When people thought Nintendo, aside from Mario, Metroid, and Zelda; Street Fighter, Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior represented everything that Nintendo was about because you came to Nintendo consoles to find those games. When roughly two thirds of what Nintendo once represented was no longer there, neither were many of the loyalists.

Also, other than having hardware that could compete with the PS3 in terms of specs, Microsoft didn't simply take exclusives away from the PlayStion brand. Having more multiplatform releases was inevitable. The industry was at the point where development costs were getting too high and having a game remain exclusive to one console was risky business. This is why certain exclusives or timed exclusives had to be paid for by Sony or Microsoft.


In that case yeah...Microsoft doesn't have very many loyalists. Watch the numbers drop off the face of the earth this gen. Those gamers are only loyal to third party. Fanboys are blindly loyal to one brand.