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sundin13 said: Wow...that is a hell of a lot of work. |
Believe me, you don't know the half of it! But here's something that should help put it into perspective...
I individually researched every game on that list. Yes, seriously...
Every.
Single.
One.
And when I say "researched", that doesn't mean I typed it into Google, looked at the first link, and said, "Oh, it's on the PS4!" *adds it to the list*
No, it was a far more laborious process than that.
First and foremost, I always opted for official statements. If I couldn't find an announcement for a game by Sony/Microsoft or confirmation of platforms on the developer's/publisher's own website, then I'd look for other reports.
For some games - especially the more obscure or non-English ones - this could take hours of searching. I had to track down literally every platform for each individual title, which often required a lot of crosschecking sources like Metacritic, IGN, Wikipedia, GameFAQs, etc, to verify the data.
And, even then, I always tried to trace these reports back to their source. Sometimes it would turn out to be an announcement made at a press event, sometimes a post on Twitter or Facebook, sometimes a one-off comment in an interview, or the platform would be listed in the developer's press kit, or the credits of an official trailer, etc, etc, etc.
Sometimes the only information I could find for a game would be a forum post asking if it was coming to [insert platform here], and the developer responding to either confirm or deny it. There are a hundred different ways this kind of information can be "hidden" (for want of a better word), and it isn't always obvious where to look for it. Occasionally, the developer/publisher would be good enough to actually have the platforms for a game listed on their site, but more often than not, I'd have to search each platform for the game individually. And even that tends to snowball.
If I found confirmation of a PC version, for example, then I would look to see if it had a Steam page I could check for other computer platforms (Mac/Linux). If it didn't then I'd have to look elsewhere. And games with mobile versions were even worse. Some of them are on platforms I've never even heard of. Seriously, what the hell is Bada?
And this is before even thinking about future platforms. I also wanted to include anything that is confirmed to be upcoming. Things get even murkier here because you start to get into the grey area of what constitutes an "announcement". You probably noticed that there are several games on the list where I've remarked that the developers have "expressed interest" in a platform but I could find "no explicit confirmation". Again, this is because I want to be as complete as possible. So, as long as it's not official that it's coming to both consoles, it belongs on this list.
Actually, more so than confirming what it's coming to, one of the tougher things to confirm can often be what a game is not coming to. Everybody knows what the big AAA exclusives are, but when it comes to the lesser known games on a particular console, it's often hard to find any mention of the other console at all. I'm sure that small/indie developers want to remain open to the possibility of expanding to other platforms over time, and this is why they'll often neither confirm nor deny full exclusivity.
In fact, this is another slightly grey area because platform owners will often use this ambiguity to their advantage with carefully phrased announcements. Statements like "Launching exclusively on [our platform]!" often translate to "Coming to [our platform] before the others."
Of course, it's always possible that the reason there's no information on the other platform is because the game is not coming to it. This is why I use the specific language that I do ("Could find no explicit confirmation") - because it's the most honest way I can represent the data as I know it.
This is one of those "absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence" things. It may be that the game is staying exclusive. But it may also be that the developer just has a timed contract and can't say anything yet. Or maybe they've just focused all their attention on one platform and haven't had time to think about anything else.
The point is, "Could find no explicit confirmation" means just that. It doesn't mean it's not coming to the platform. It doesn't mean it is. In fact, it doesn't even mean that explicit confirmation one way or the other doesn't exist somewhere out there. It just means that I was unable to find any. Nothing more, nothing less.
I encountered a similar problem with games that are ports from other (often older) systems. In keeping with my intention to provide all the data and let people make up their own minds what counts as exclusive, I decided to include these games along with an account of what the different versions are, how they differ, how the current-gen version compares, and whether the current-gen version contains any new content not found in the previous versions.
You probably noticed a phrase that appears quite a bit - "Could not confirm whether the [PS4 or XB1] version includes any new content." Well, that's the reason why. Like with the timed exclusivity thing, it's hard to prove a negative. At least with exclusivity, you sometimes get definitive statements. But a lack of new content isn't really something they're going to advertise. If it does have new content, it tends to be easy to confirm because they want you to know that. But if it doesn't, they're hardly going to say, "Coming to PS4! It has nothing the old versions don't!" 
I should also state for the record, that these are all systems I don't own, so I can't actually check any of this for myself. At the end of the day, all I can really do is report on whether I could find confirmation or not.
...
Ahem!
And now for my closing remarks...
*cough*
Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's just dawned on me how long this is getting.
The point is that yes, it was an excruciating amount of work. And, as you casually scroll through it, just bear in mind that the rambling narrative I've written above... Not only did I do that for every blessed game on that list, but I also did it for a hell of a lot more that never made the list (because they turned out to be on both systems). So, don't you guys say I never did anything for you!
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sundin13 said: Suggestions: -Make a note next to the platform if the game is digital only. You don't have to change any of the formatting (except maybe the order) but I'd say it is an important detail. |
Firstly, I was hoping to get feedback so thank you for the suggestions.
Regarding digital-only games, I suppose I could take a look at it. The only thing is, beyond taking an educated guess as to which are most likely to be digital-only, I'm not sure I want to go through the whole confirmation process for every game again. Although, if people are willing, I suppose I could outsource it to the forum itself and add the information as it comes in. Heh!
I actually agree that it's a good piece of information to have. I just wish I'd done it the first time around. :-/
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sundin13 said: -Leave out some of the lesser games that no one really cares about. |
I don't know if you read my whole post (understandable if you didn't), but I explained the idea behind the list and why I explicitly avoided excluding anything that fits the basic criteria. If you missed it, here's the relevant part...
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said: ... my goal here is not to argue for what does or doesn't count as an exclusive; my goal is just to present all the data I could find. The idea is to be as comprehensive as possible so that people can make up their own minds. For a reminder of what qualifies a game for the list, see this post. Now, obviously, when making such a list, it's almost impossible to avoid making a judgement call here and there. But, to the greatest extent possible, I've endeavoured to keep my opinion out of it and opt for an all-inclusive approach. So, instead of excluding things from the list (or second-guessing whether or not I think that others would want them excluded from the list), I've added any comments that I think are relevant to their status as "exclusives". In short, I've included every qualifying game I could find (with a few notable exceptions), and I leave the final judgement of their status to the readers. |
While I agree that this approach leads to the inclusion of some pretty derpy games (seriously... Soda Drinker Pro?), that's the tradeoff for leaving the judgement to the reader. Early on in the process, I did consider excluding the "less important" games but I quickly came to the realization that there's a fine line there, and leaving that stuff out would kind of defeat the purpose of the list in any case. Ultimately, I decided that the fairest way to present the data was to include it all. That way, my own biases could have no effect on it.
Though, as I stated previously, this is not absolute. And if you're wondering what those "few notable exceptions" are, there was one set of games that I made the call to exclude. Apparently, the PS4 has a feature called "Arcade Archives" - a collection of arcade and retro-platform classics.
A typical example is Crazy Climber - an arcade game from 1980 which, according to the Wiki entry, was also released on Arcadia 2001, Atari 2600, Famicom (NES), WonderSwan (WTF?... I've never even heard of that), and Virtual Console.
Now, the Arcade Archives games that I'm aware of do not appear to be available on the Xbox One (yes, I even checked these), so, strictly speaking, they fit the basic criteria for the list. But given the extenuating circumstances, I took the liberty and excluded the PS4's Arcade Archive games from the list.
And, initially, I even agonized over that. It actually took me quite a while to make up my mind whether to include them or not. That's how anal I've been about presenting all the data. But yes... for better or for worse, I did make the call to exclude those games from the list. If anyone has a sincere objection to this, please fill out a grievance form and go stand in line at the complaint desk.
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sundin13 said: -Make a note on games that are region specific |
Hmm... Like the digital-only thing, this would also require a bit of backtracking, but I suspect there are far fewer of these so it should be considerably easier. I'll probably look into this one first.
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sundin13 said: -Make an overall statistics chart with the number of retail and digital games in each category |
That's an interesting one. I'd definitely be curious to see those results. Of course, that one is contingent on me working out all the digital-only games in the first place. Hmm... we'll see.
One idea that I've been toying with is to create a Venn diagram from the list. Part of the reason I did this was to see how much overlap there is between different systems, and I think that would be the ideal way to show it.
My idea was to make a four-way chart using the PS4, PS3, XB1, and 360. I really wanted to include PC as well, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get all the necessary permutations in one diagram. It can probably be done if you make one of the regions a weird shape, but I don't think it's possible with five regular circles.
Anyway, is that something you guys would be interested in seeing? And if you have any other ideas, please throw them at me!
ColdFire - The man with no name.
