Shadow1980 said:
DarkD said:
I'd call it an awful generation. They are losing third party games left and right (Titanfall for starters), their developers are rehashing old games rather than making new games (The Last Of Us). Their list of games is painfully small considering they are winning the generation. Their also slow on the console updates, there was another thread that showed PS4 is woefully behind in adding support for various features.
|
Titanfall was obviously set to be an Xbox exclusive well before either system was even announced. Prior to then nobody expected things to turn out like they have. I'm pretty sure a lot of people thought the XBO would handily win the U.S. & UK and be at a reasonably healthy second place in continental Europe. It's certainly a good explanation as to why the XBO got several third-party exclusives. But I think those will evaporate much more quickly than they did last generation. As for exclusives, neither the 360 nor PS3 were shining examples of awesome exclusive libraries. The only notable exclusives the 360 had in its first year were Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo, and PGR3 at launch and Dead or Alive 4, Saints Row, Dead Rising, and Gears of War later. The only notable exclusives the PS3 had in its first year were Resistance, Ridge Racer 7, Motorstorm, MLB 07, F1 Championship Edition, Heavenly Sword, and Ratchet & Clank Future (Uncharted came out just past the PS3's first birthday). Both systems probably had other exclusives as well, but they and even most of the listed games failed to light up the charts, and not many of them were games that were highly regarding with a lasting impact.
Looking at the XBO and PS4, neither one has anything to brag about in regards to exclusives. First-year PS4 "can't get them on another platform" exclusives include Killzone, Infamous, Knack, Driveclub, and possibly Guilty Gear Xrd, while for the XBO the list includes Forza 5, Ryse, Dead Rising 3, and Sunset Overdrive. I guess we could expand the list to include Titanfall, Forza Horizon 2, and the Master Chief Collection for the XBO, but we'd have to give FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, LBP3 (cross-gen, but preorders rankings are overwhelminingly in favor of the PS4 version), and The Last of Us Remastered to the PS4.
Of course, while exclusives are important I think you overestimate their impact. Few games give significant boosts to hardware sales, and those that do rarely provide boosts longer than a couple of weeks. The number of games that have had truly meaningful and lasting impacts on hardware sales can be counted on one hand: Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, FFVII, and Halo: CE are probably the only examples. Sunset Overdrive and the MCC aren't going to significantly change the XBO's fortunes, as the former isn't exactly tearing up the preorder charts and the latter is a compilation, which have historically never been system-sellers. No one game is going to change the XBO's fortune. It's already lost too much momentum, and the only thing that's going to rebuild it sufficiently to pass the XBO in the U.S. is for it to get below the PS4 in price, not merely getting it to parity by unbundling Kinect, and I doubt Sony will let that go without answering back with a price cut of their own.
|
Of course they would fail to garner third party support. Their console didn't sell so third parties pulled out. That much should have been implied in my previous post....
Nintendo started out with a lot of third party support this generation, but they lost it all when no one bought the console. Not just rehashes of old games either, original franchises that pushed the boundaries of their genre (ZombiU, Lego City, Wonderful 101), they also paid for sequels to games which were all but dead (Bayonetta 2)
|
The Wii U only had strong third-party support earlier on was because it was only marginally more powerful than the 360 & PS3. All that third-party support was for seventh-gen and cross-gen titles, and even in the case of the latter it's missing several notable and popular titles. Third parties released on the Wii U because "Hey, why not give 'em a cheap port and sell another 200,000 copies." But the reason third-party support for the Wii U is going away isn't because the Wii U has sold rather poorly. It simply lacked the power third parties wanted from an eighth-gen system. I could have told you back at the start of next year that third parties would be gradually reducing support to the system once the PS4 and XBO arrived. It's the same reason why the Wii did not have strong third-party support. That thing was the fastest-selling system in history and third parties still didn't want much of anything to do with it except maybe to dump party games and cheap shovelware on it. It's never been about hardware sales for third parties when it comes to Nintendo. For four generations straight it was the very nature of the hardware itself that resulted in Nintendo losing a lot of third-party support. First cartridges on the N64, then mini-DVDs on the GameCube, and then low specs on the Wii and Wii U. The Wii U could have sold over twice as many units to date as it has and third parties still wouldn't have bothered supporting it for longer than they felt was necessary. I guarantee you if Nintendo's next system is a standard console on par with the PS5 and Xbox 4 in specs, third parties will come flocking back.
|
