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Ballas on 25 May 2016
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Johnw1104 said:
naruball said:

It's really not that simple. I see people making such claims all the time when they want to downplay the success of a company but it's incredibly naive to act as if Sony won this generation simply because it had a console with no gimmicks and the other two companies screwed up. Sony screwed up majorly last generation and still managed to do well in terms of sales and relevancy. The ps4 has been such a huge success for a number of reasons, including what you just said.

Perhaps I should refine my statement. Sony would have done well even against good competition, but with the dual faceplants Nintendo and Microsoft had right out of the gates they were given the opportunity to dominate the generation.

Truly, there's not an innovative thing about the PS4 (and I don't mean that as an insult); quite the opposite, it's the least "innovative" of the three, if innovative is said to mean bringing something new to the table. Instead, it focused on getting back to the basics, which is to say decent hardware, conventional controller, reasonable price, and a good list of games. While Nintendo and Microsoft were out there trying to redefine what gaming consoles should be, Sony just reverted to their older strategy of a simple, straightforward approach to gaming.

There's a reason the guys at Sony said they were jumping and cheering when Microsoft revealed their console would be $500... I was among the many that was leaning Xbox before that presentation, and Sony really needed a runaway success given the state of the conglomerate as a whole. They earned the victory with a quality product that whittled down those extra bits to what most gamers really wanted. Despite that, it can also be said that the console is doing immeasurably better as a result of the only two other options having some of the worst launches in recent memory. It just seems like companies can rarely avoid screwing themselves over in the console market by getting overly ambitious at times, be it a $600 console, a required gamepad, or a required constant-internet-connection + camera among other silly things. 

As a side note, that's why I'm so surprised that Sony is pursuing Sony VR, as it sounds out of character and more like something Nintendo would try instead (though the development costs and strength of their hardware were likely prohibitive). I hope it works out, as it'd be fun to see Sony's again hugely successful gaming division thinking outside of the box. 

They didn't innovate for the sake of innovating where it is not needed, aka the gamepad which is not as good as a controller. Also the constant internet connection required originally by XB1 is not an innovation at all, it was just a choice that any company can take with their console or game.

The improved Kinect may have been innovative but not substantially.

Sony did improve on the controller amd PSN which is what is required rather than innovation for the sake of it. PS VR I think is much more innovative though not unique, but definitely looks like something that could improve gaming especially genres like survival horror.