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Forums - Sales - Why does Sony fail at making another mega franchise?

Slimebeast on 04 September 2010
Crazymann said:
Slimebeast said:

But I'm only happy that Sony doesn't have any mega franchises.

I don't like mega franchises because they always tend to dominate everything else and overshadow other great games (at least in the eyes of casuals they do).

I always hated GTA for being so huge. In this generation that game is Call of Duty. All other shooters are compared to Call of Duty and they even have to adjust release dates in fear of CoD.

I love Assassin's Creed but I'm starting to feel it's getting too big (I mean AC II is on track to sell 10 million. 10 million!)

I hate Mario because everyone buys Mario instead of other platformers which I think are far more interesting.

I love Xbox but I don't like the extreme hype for Halo as if it's the only game on earth. Same with Gears of War.

And most of all I hate World of Warcraft and Starcraft because I don't like the style of Blizzard and it pisses me off that everyone is playing WoW and ignoring better MMOs. I will get Diablo but I think it's extremely overrated and it pisses me off.

And Age of Empires slays Starcraft.

Well,

I am glad that you have your opinion, and no issues with sharing it, but many of us DO like how Blizzard does things.  Blizzard has a committment to polish, and furthermore, it seems rather hypocritical to laude the virtues of Sony and then trash Blizzard in the same post.  Both companies are very good at taking pre-existing ideas to new levels of refinement.  Blizzard's style is fine, Sony's style is fine.

I don't like WoW either, but I don't like MMO's in general.  Still, the fact is that (while long in the tooth) WoW is still the most recognizible MMO and it was the best of its kind at release (unless you seriously believe that EQ and its ilk were good).  All pre-WoW MMO's sucked, and neither WoW or any MMO since has changed the formula enough for me to give it a second thought.  Note, I don't lump Guild Wars into that mess because of its use of instancing.

Finally, I own Age 1, Age 2 Conquerers and Age 3

Age 3 sucks, Age 2 was the pinnacle of the series.  Starcraft, while lagging behind Age 2 in some respects was the MOST fun I had in a single player campain EVER.  So, how exactly does Age "slay" starcraft???

Reviews:  NOPE

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  NOPE

Cultural Impact:  NOPE

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  NOPE

Production Values:  NOPE

AI/Pathing:  YEP

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS*

*  And that is only if you are still burned about LAN and other features removed from BNet2 (which I don't like, but still.)

Good post.

Dark Age of Camelot due to it's fantastic faction PvP (or rather, Realm vs Realm) was a better game than WoW and was released already in 2001. That's not the point though. Even if the standard game would be the best, WoW is the best, I don't like how people flock to it and ignore everything else. Excellent MMOs like Age of Conan and Warhommer Online are ignored. And so will Kotor be because WoW is so dominant.

My Age of Empires comment was mostly a joke but the spirit is the same. Everyone is saying Starcraft when they think best RTS, but Age of Empires is an amazing franchise and needs its well deserved attention too.

Starcraft is far more popular and has bigger sales etc but Age of Empires II had fantastic multiplayer and the best setting you can imagine - the history of mankind. You really had nothing to complain about as an RTS fan. And actually Age of Empires II has a 92% Meta while Starcraft only has 88%.

Starcraft while extremely polished like all other Blizzard games looks childish, has cutesy monsters and has an artificial setting, mythos and game world.*

* that last line is again meant as a joke because obviously it only reflects my personal tastes.



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Squilliam on 04 September 2010

Sony developers make core/hardcore games for themselves. That immediately limits their market potential. If Microsoft were in charge of Sony developers you could bet that games like Uncharted 2 would have local multiplayer even if it sacraficed somewhat the visual presentation.

Also the other big one is that they don't have Miyamoto. How many big franchises would Nintendo have without this man?



Tease.

Scoobes on 04 September 2010
geddesmond2 said:
RolStoppable said:

Sony doesn't do amazing things first, that's why. Their games usually consist of ideas borrowed from somewhere else and mixed together. It's not surprising that Uncharted was compared to Tomb Raider and Gears of War a lot. Why did Gears of War do so much better? Because it redefined its genre and ever since then other TPS try to mimic its gameplay. God of War followed Devil May Cry. Killzone followed Halo.

Why didn't LittleBigPlanet or Heavy Rain become mega blockbusters? Because they are not amazing to most gamers. The thing that's new in LBP is the extensive level editor, but most gamers rather play than create, so they don't care. Heavy Rain is more of an interactive movie and that's only amazing to a small subset of gamers.

Of course, this explanation works in reverse as well and that's why Gran Turismo is so big while it's imitators never come close in sales. Forza would be the most popular one and hardly anyone remembers Konami's Enthusia Professional Racing anymore.

If you want to hit it big then you either have to do something first or something that hasn't been done in a long time by anyone else.


Yeah I know because the COD series was never done before so thats why it sells so much on each consol. They were the first people to do a FPS and the Halo series was so original. Like there was never Sci fi FPS's before the Halo franchise either and thats why Halo is a hugh success. Its funny how theres 100 other FPS games out there yet some people only compare 360 vs PS3 and think the 360 games the original game ignoring all the other games with the same simularities.

Call of Duty didn't get huge straight away. The first 3 games were world war 2 based games which people enjoyed (and helped build a core fanbase) but were getting very tired of. They were the first of the world war 2 games to take the pacing of the CoD/Medal of Honor gameplay from the world war 2 setting and took it onto the "Modern" stage. The timing of this setting change was spot on for it to become hugely sucessful. 

And the original Halo introduced a lot of influential elements into the FPS genre. It just worked for consoles better than other consoles FPS'. It slowed the pace of the gameplay so it worked for the controller, introduced quick weapon switching and only carrying 2 weapons, had vehicles with large areas and had the recharging health thing that every FPS seems to have now. It introduced all these elements together, so just saying there were sci-fi FPS' before is doing it a disservice.




Get your Portable ID!

Scoobes on 04 September 2010
Crazymann said:

Well,

I am glad that you have your opinion, and no issues with sharing it, but many of us DO like how Blizzard does things.  Blizzard has a committment to polish, and furthermore, it seems rather hypocritical to laude the virtues of Sony and then trash Blizzard in the same post.  Both companies are very good at taking pre-existing ideas to new levels of refinement.  Blizzard's style is fine, Sony's style is fine.

I don't like WoW either, but I don't like MMO's in general.  Still, the fact is that (while long in the tooth) WoW is still the most recognizible MMO and it was the best of its kind at release (unless you seriously believe that EQ and its ilk were good).  All pre-WoW MMO's sucked, and neither WoW or any MMO since has changed the formula enough for me to give it a second thought.  Note, I don't lump Guild Wars into that mess because of its use of instancing.

Finally, I own Age 1, Age 2 Conquerers and Age 3

Age 3 sucks, Age 2 was the pinnacle of the series.  Starcraft, while lagging behind Age 2 in some respects was the MOST fun I had in a single player campain EVER.  So, how exactly does Age "slay" starcraft???

Reviews:  NOPE

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  NOPE

Cultural Impact:  NOPE

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  NOPE

Production Values:  NOPE

AI/Pathing:  YEP

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS*

*  And that is only if you are still burned about LAN and other features removed from BNet2 (which I don't like, but still.)

 

Taking your list:

Reviews:  About equal. Some Age games are rated higher than Starcraft 1.

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  Techinically, the Age of series has sold over 20 million copies. Starcraft has 'only' sold 13 million. Having 4 games in that time-frame will do that ;)

Cultural Impact: I dunno, AoE taught me more history than school ever did :P

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  Which games are you comparing? All the Age games (orginal included) are graphically superior to Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 has released 5 years after Age 3 which isn't really fair.

Production Values:  Arguable with the originals of each series.

AI/Pathing:  YEP (actually if you compare Age 1 with Starcraft 1 they were both pretty bad)

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS- Oddly I disagree with you in favor of Starcraft with this one. There's a reason the original is still played so heavily 10 yrs after release.






Get your Portable ID!

Slimebeast on 04 September 2010
Scoobes said:
Crazymann said:

Well,

I am glad that you have your opinion, and no issues with sharing it, but many of us DO like how Blizzard does things.  Blizzard has a committment to polish, and furthermore, it seems rather hypocritical to laude the virtues of Sony and then trash Blizzard in the same post.  Both companies are very good at taking pre-existing ideas to new levels of refinement.  Blizzard's style is fine, Sony's style is fine.

I don't like WoW either, but I don't like MMO's in general.  Still, the fact is that (while long in the tooth) WoW is still the most recognizible MMO and it was the best of its kind at release (unless you seriously believe that EQ and its ilk were good).  All pre-WoW MMO's sucked, and neither WoW or any MMO since has changed the formula enough for me to give it a second thought.  Note, I don't lump Guild Wars into that mess because of its use of instancing.

Finally, I own Age 1, Age 2 Conquerers and Age 3

Age 3 sucks, Age 2 was the pinnacle of the series.  Starcraft, while lagging behind Age 2 in some respects was the MOST fun I had in a single player campain EVER.  So, how exactly does Age "slay" starcraft???

Reviews:  NOPE

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  NOPE

Cultural Impact:  NOPE

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  NOPE

Production Values:  NOPE

AI/Pathing:  YEP

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS*

*  And that is only if you are still burned about LAN and other features removed from BNet2 (which I don't like, but still.)

 

Taking your list:

Reviews:  About equal. Some Age games are rated higher than Starcraft 1.

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  Techinically, the Age of series has sold over 20 million copies. Starcraft has 'only' sold 13 million. Having 4 games in that time-frame will do that ;)

Cultural Impact: I dunno, AoE taught me more history than school ever did :P

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  Which games are you comparing? All the Age games (orginal included) are graphically superior to Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 has released 5 years after Age 3 which isn't really fair.

Production Values:  Arguable with the originals of each series.

AI/Pathing:  YEP (actually if you compare Age 1 with Starcraft 1 they were both pretty bad)

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS- Oddly I disagree with you in favor of Starcraft with this one. There's a reason the original is still played so heavily 10 yrs after release.

When did you start playing Age of Empires II?

(same question to you Crazzyman)



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Scoobes on 04 September 2010
Slimebeast said:
Scoobes said:
Crazymann said:

Well,

I am glad that you have your opinion, and no issues with sharing it, but many of us DO like how Blizzard does things.  Blizzard has a committment to polish, and furthermore, it seems rather hypocritical to laude the virtues of Sony and then trash Blizzard in the same post.  Both companies are very good at taking pre-existing ideas to new levels of refinement.  Blizzard's style is fine, Sony's style is fine.

I don't like WoW either, but I don't like MMO's in general.  Still, the fact is that (while long in the tooth) WoW is still the most recognizible MMO and it was the best of its kind at release (unless you seriously believe that EQ and its ilk were good).  All pre-WoW MMO's sucked, and neither WoW or any MMO since has changed the formula enough for me to give it a second thought.  Note, I don't lump Guild Wars into that mess because of its use of instancing.

Finally, I own Age 1, Age 2 Conquerers and Age 3

Age 3 sucks, Age 2 was the pinnacle of the series.  Starcraft, while lagging behind Age 2 in some respects was the MOST fun I had in a single player campain EVER.  So, how exactly does Age "slay" starcraft???

Reviews:  NOPE

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  NOPE

Cultural Impact:  NOPE

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  NOPE

Production Values:  NOPE

AI/Pathing:  YEP

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS*

*  And that is only if you are still burned about LAN and other features removed from BNet2 (which I don't like, but still.)

 

Taking your list:

Reviews:  About equal. Some Age games are rated higher than Starcraft 1.

Popularity:  NOPE

Sales:  Techinically, the Age of series has sold over 20 million copies. Starcraft has 'only' sold 13 million. Having 4 games in that time-frame will do that ;)

Cultural Impact: I dunno, AoE taught me more history than school ever did :P

Single Player:  NOPE

Graphics:  Which games are you comparing? All the Age games (orginal included) are graphically superior to Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 has released 5 years after Age 3 which isn't really fair.

Production Values:  Arguable with the originals of each series.

AI/Pathing:  YEP (actually if you compare Age 1 with Starcraft 1 they were both pretty bad)

Multiplayer:  PERHAPS- Oddly I disagree with you in favor of Starcraft with this one. There's a reason the original is still played so heavily 10 yrs after release.

When did you start playing Age of Empires II?

(same question to you Crazzyman)

Pretty much since it was released. It's actually my favourite RTS franchise and I've been playing it since the original was first released. And I actually quite liked 3.

Used to play the second with my mates. I wasn't that good to be honest so I always chose Byzantines as most of my mates picked the British. The cheap skirmishers would always save me from those bloody longbowman. I still play Age of Mythology with my girlfriend from time to time as she likes the anchient mythology setting.




Get your Portable ID!

Slimebeast on 04 September 2010
Scoobes said:
Slimebeast said:

When did you start playing Age of Empires II?

(same question to you Crazzyman)

Pretty much since it was released. It's actually my favourite RTS franchise and I've been playing it since the original was first released. And I actually quite liked 3.

Used to play the second with my mates. I wasn't that good to be honest so I always chose Byzantines as most of my mates picked the British. The cheap skirmishers would always save me from those bloody longbowman. I still play Age of Mythology with my girlfriend from time to time as she likes the anchient mythology setting.

Cool. I tried out Age of Empires at release but never owned it (until much later).

I started Age 2 in Jan 2000, so only a couple months after release.

Longbowmen are a sweet unit. I think my favorite civ all time is the Chinese. I also love the Teuts because they're versatile when you play DM (lol) and similar modes.



Scoobes on 04 September 2010
Slimebeast said:
Scoobes said:
Slimebeast said:

When did you start playing Age of Empires II?

(same question to you Crazzyman)

Pretty much since it was released. It's actually my favourite RTS franchise and I've been playing it since the original was first released. And I actually quite liked 3.

Used to play the second with my mates. I wasn't that good to be honest so I always chose Byzantines as most of my mates picked the British. The cheap skirmishers would always save me from those bloody longbowman. I still play Age of Mythology with my girlfriend from time to time as she likes the anchient mythology setting.

Cool. I tried out Age of Empires at release but never owned it (until much later).

I started Age 2 in Jan 2000, so only a couple months after release.

Longbowmen are a sweet unit. I think my favorite civ all time is the Chinese. I also love the Teuts because they're versatile when you play DM (lol) and similar modes.

When I first started AoE II the Teutons and their Knights were my favourite. Used to quickly build a group of Knights and send them with a few trebuchets and the amount of damage that'd cause was suprising at times. Then I found out I could get to the final age faster with the Byzantines and they had a whole host of cheaper units to deal with the pesky longbowman!

I also really liked the Koreans in the Conq's too. Expensive and slow to build up, but a strategy mixing Onagers with War wagons used to decimate everyone.




Get your Portable ID!

leo-j on 04 September 2010
RolStoppable said:

Sony doesn't do amazing things first, that's why. Their games usually consist of ideas borrowed from somewhere else and mixed together. It's not surprising that Uncharted was compared to Tomb Raider and Gears of War a lot. Why did Gears of War do so much better? Because it redefined its genre and ever since then other TPS try to mimic its gameplay. God of War followed Devil May Cry. Killzone followed Halo.

Why didn't LittleBigPlanet or Heavy Rain become mega blockbusters? Because they are not amazing to most gamers. The thing that's new in LBP is the extensive level editor, but most gamers rather play than create, so they don't care. Heavy Rain is more of an interactive movie and that's only amazing to a small subset of gamers.

Of course, this explanation works in reverse as well and that's why Gran Turismo is so big while it's imitators never come close in sales. Forza would be the most popular one and hardly anyone remembers Konami's Enthusia Professional Racing anymore.

If you want to hit it big then you either have to do something first or something that hasn't been done in a long time by anyone else.

killzone is nothing like halo.. and what did infamous follow?



 

mM
evolution_1ne on 04 September 2010
RolStoppable said:

Sony doesn't do amazing things first, that's why. Their games usually consist of ideas borrowed from somewhere else and mixed together. It's not surprising that Uncharted was compared to Tomb Raider and Gears of War a lot. Why did Gears of War do so much better? Because it redefined its genre and ever since then other TPS try to mimic its gameplay. God of War followed Devil May Cry. Killzone followed Halo.

nothing about gears of war was original, it was successful for the same reason Halo was successful, at the time of their release they were the only worth while quality games for the platform, which is why Halo success was never repeated. Also gears didn't redefine anything, that "revolutionary" cover system was a carbon copy of the cover system in killswitch, and game released last gen. but you wouldn't know nothing of that considering the level of ignorance in you comment (not surprising coming from you). God of war is nothing like devil may cry, a game I know you never played, you couldn't have. bayonetta is like devil may cry. and Killzone followed Halo.... seriously, how about you play them first and come back to me.

Why didn't LittleBigPlanet or Heavy Rain become mega blockbusters? Because they are not amazing to most gamers. The thing that's new in LBP is the extensive level editor, but most gamers rather play than create, so they don't care. Heavy Rain is more of an interactive movie and that's only amazing to a small subset of gamers.

and nothing is wrong with appealing to smaller markets.

Of course, this explanation works in reverse as well and that's why Gran Turismo is so big while it's imitators never come close in sales. Forza would be the most popular one and hardly anyone remembers Konami's Enthusia Professional Racing anymore.

If you want to hit it big then you either have to do something first or something that hasn't been done in a long time by anyone else.

but then you mention lbp and heavy rain, both games have done something first and hasn't been done by anyone else...... fail logic is so very very very very very very FAIL!!!


So much fail it isn't even funny..........

Sony doesn't do anything amazing first *sigh* demon souls, shadow of the colossus, 256 player in a single match......

now to answer op, because no one else but Nintendo does, Nintendo is by far the best at finding the biggest markets making great games for those markets and sticking to them, they play it safe and only take risk when the have nothing to lose, which is what Sony doesn't do, they are always trying to reinvent themselves  and refresh their ip's and franchises no matter how successful they are, which is why Sony unlike Microsoft and Nintendo aren't a defined brand and playstation doesn't have a mascot, it appeals to everyone and every franchise isn't around long enough to become extremely popular, GT is the only one that is and it's been 4 years since the first one have hit the console. But op you have to realize this is why fans of Sony love the brand so much.