Why Sony is Winning: The Value of Image

[Zanten]

kinisking said:

pokoko said:

I've been saying for years that software diversity is an important part of Sony's philosophy with home consoles.  NOT painting yourself into a corner in terms of niche appeal is the secret to long-term success.  Once you develop an image that leans too much in any one direction you're going to have an awfully hard time escaping it.

It's simply too widespread to not be intentional on their part.  Not just World Wide Studios, either, but also the kinds of games they support, like Journey or Rime.  They try to tap into every genre out there.  This presents the Playstation brand as a platform with something for everyone, which is not the same as Nintendo's everything is accessible to everyone message.

Microsoft went heavy into Dude Bro with the 360, and made a killing doing so, but that also established the image that their audience is mainly made up of that type of player--and considering pre-orders for the new CoD, that might be truer than ever with the XO.  The funny thing is, I give them a lot of credit, as they are clearly trying WAY harder with the XO than with the 360 in terms of first-party diversity.  I think they're attempting to emulate World Wide Studios somewhat but it's going to be hard to convince people.  You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression.

With Nintendo, it all falls on their own heads.  With the success of the PS1, it was clear that people were expanding what they liked and that the wide variety of third-party titles was becoming more and more important.  They could easily have diversified their line-up.  They had the money to build or acquire new studios, to jump on all these new genres that were finding fans all over the globe.  Instead, they just said, "we're Nintendo, people will buy what we make and like it."  They're trying now, kind of, but as with Microsoft, it's going to be a real up-hill battle.

Sony isnt that diverse. Sony is most single player games, Nintendo is local, and Ms is online. 

You're focusing on an entirely different aspect; when diversity is discussed, it refers to genre, style, basically different 'flavors' of setting and content, and in that field, Sony really did have more breadth than Microsoft, especially during the last half of last gen. (I skipped the Wii generation as a gamer, so I'll let Nintendo gamers make the judgement for that console's variety. xD )

Look at the Xbox 360 during the last four years of its lifespan, or more specifically, look at its exclusives. The Xbox 360 USED to have some pretty diverse exclusive stuff, from superpowered police brutality in Crackdown, to Kameo, to a Banjo-Kazooie sequel (that was apparently admittedly met with mixed feelings,) mass zombie slaughters in Dead Rising, etc, etc. But the later half, around the time the Kinect came out, they lost most of that diversity. The only breath of fresh air came from a few games that were brought over from PC- such as Minecraft, Witcher 2, and a couple of other games whose names escape me (I think one was a Toy Soldiers game.) In the case of Microsoft's own exclusives, (the games you could buy solely buy on an Xbox 360, and no other platform,) there was first-person shooters, third-person shooters, racing games, and a remake of the original Fable. Only four of Microsoft's IPs were used during those four years, (three for actual sequels, the fourth being the Fable remake,) and no new IPs were produced.

Well, and a Sesame Street game.

Now, you might argue that the Kinect 1.0 had tons of games, and you'd be right, there were dozens of Kinect games in those four years... but as a consumer, especially if you own a 360, that only really registers if you own a Kinect, and if you get substantial enjoyment out of Kinect games. From what I've heard, the 1.0 was a bit... buggy at times, and was never really welcomed with massively open arms, which is why the improvements to the Kinect 2.0 were stressed so greatly. So anyone not excited about the concept of Kinect-only games were kind of out of luck, as after the Kinect launched, there were only a handful of exclusive titles that didn't cater to Kinect owners.

Meanwhile, Sony exclusives ranged from first person shooters in Killzone and Resistance, to third-person shooter/adventure games like The Last of Us, Ratchet and Clank, and Uncharted, to hack-and-slashems like God of War, to games that kind of define conventional gaming wisdom like Journey in that you wandered around with a magical scarf in the desert on a pilgramage, to games with simple, distinctive styles like The Puppeteer, to branching-story-centric games like Heavy Rain, to racing games like Gran Turismo, to craft-meets-platformer games like Little Big Planet, even took a crack at a Super Smash Bros-esque brawler with Playstation All-Stars. They even have an exclusive baseball series, for God's sake. xP

I'm not even counting the Japanese exclusives, because that would just make things plain unfair. =P