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Forums - Sony Discussion - Why do xbox exclusives sell more than ps3 exclusives ?

Runa216 on 23 July 2011
xS7SxSNIPER said:
Runa216 said:
xS7SxSNIPER said:

It sounds like you hate every xbox game i'm i right?


Think about what you type before typing it. No, criticising something doesn't mean you hate it; I criticise Call of Duty but love it at the same time.  I criticise Pokemon but love that, too.  

And I have a bigger Xbox 360 collection than any of my friends, and most of them are hardcore Xbots who hate the PS3 for a collection of entirely irrational reasons. No I do not hate Xbox Games, no I do not hate Xbox, but the facts are there, and there's a very logical set of reasons for why the 360 exclusives sell more.  


Saying gears isn't special  is nuts i'm a Gears head


and I adore 3D Dot Game Heroes, that doesn't make it special. 



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PS5, Switch, XSX

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Chroniczaaa on 23 July 2011

Microsoft actually knows how to market their games.



"Defeating a sandwich, only makes it tastier." - Virginia

S.T.A.G.E. on 23 July 2011
xS7SxSNIPER said:
Runa216 said:
It's logically a balance of things.

1 - Marketing - Seriously, the amount of money Microsoft puts into marketing is insane, and it shows. Everyone and their aunt knows about Halo in spite of it being a good but not great game, Gears of War is hailed as some sort of messiah where it, too, is a decent but not special game. Sony always said they aren't willing to match Microsoft's marketing budgets, and that they prefer to just make a quality title and allow people to make their own choices.

2 - dispersion - I was doing the math and Sony has a considerable amount more exclusives than Microsoft, and they are equal or higher quality, too. because of this, paired with Microsoft advertising the hell out of Gears and Halo, it ensures the sales are more concentrated. (though PS3 exclusives still sell really well: Uncharted, Resistance, LBP, Motorstorm, MGS 4, God of War, and Gran Turismo are all selling quite well)

3 -Microsoft caters to trends - Let's face it, when you think Xbox, do you think platformers or puzzle games? No, you think manly space marines shooting and cutting their way through alien hoardes. the FPS Genre is 'in' right now when it comes to more 'mature' gamers, and the Xbox excells at that, where the PS3 draws in fans of all genres with ease. It has Racing, FPS, platforming, action/adventure, and RPG fans all backing it, so no one game or genre gets a lot of attention.

4 - America=Xbox - Look at sales, the Xbox is a juggernaut compared to the PS3 in America...which happens to be the biggest gaming community in the world. couple that with america's gun fetish and the Xbox's FPS obsession, and voila! it's just a combo made in heaven.

though many others have said it, I agree: the Xbox doesn't sell more games by a wide margin, but games like Halo and Gears of War sell so damn many that it makes it look like that. the truth is that PS3's sales are more evenly dispersed and therefore appear less impressive. I like to see it as it's more balanced.

It sounds like you hate every xbox game i'm i right?


He's quite right actually. Microsoft relies on their top two titles for the year and markets the hell out of them. Sony gives exclusives year round, so in the end it's all even, yet Sony still has more titles. Do the research. I am talking exclusives. Microsoft no longer has the major edge they used to have with third party multiplats. It's getting close now. They are near even when you combine everything. If Sony marketed their top titles like Microsoft did in the US, they would have amazing sales, but are not willing to do that, since they pour so much into all of the games development for the sake of quality.



Jay520 on 23 July 2011

As I said in a previous post. PS3 and 360 exclusives sell roughly the same

X360 - Halo 
PS3 - Gran Turismo
X360 - Gears of War
PS3 - Metal Gear Solid
X360 - Forza Motorsport
PS3 - Uncharted
PS3 - LittleBigPlanet
PS3 - God of War
X360 - Fable
X360 - Lef4 4 Dead
PS3 - Killzone

Neither holds a tremendous advantage



S.T.A.G.E. on 23 July 2011
Chroniczaaa said:
Microsoft actually knows how to market their games.


It's not that they know how to market. Because of how few first party exclusives they have to sell yearly (aside from third party published), they pour heavily into Gears and Halo. I mean ungodly amounts of money. They stake everything on those two games.



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BenVTrigger on 23 July 2011
CGI-Quality said:
BenVTrigger said:
I've noticed a couple problems with things people are posting in here such as how Sony releases a lot of exclusives that only sell mid tier numbers and trying to act like that's a good strategy. Actually its farthest from the truth in terms of business strategy.

Its something I've been noticeing for a while now from the gaming community, even from the press. People are acting like Sony is so ahead in terms of excluive content and such and like how MS is making a poor choices with their 1st party. In all actuallity MS 1st party strategy is FAR superior than Sony's.

MS chooses to focus on games they know will sell. Currently Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable, and Kinect titles. All those will do a minimum of 3 million with Halo and Gears hitting closer to 10 million. Their revenue and profit margins are going to be MUCH higher due to publishing and developing a slimmer offering of guarnateed sales. Per game the profit margin is higher due to far less developing costs than Sony. Sony really only has one "Big" exclusive and that is GT. Uncharted is flirting with it but until it can post numbers well over 5 million it can't be considered a top tier in terms of sales, its still at mid tier.

Basically MS makes more money by pushing a few key franchises and minimizing the amount they spend in house in comparison with Sony who will push out Socom, Twisted Metal, Uncharted, Infamous, Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet, etc which will also see low to mid tier sales. Ever game Sony developes has a cost and these games are only seeing modest profits while MS has far lower developing costs and far higher profit margins.

MS realizes the 3rd parties and multiplats will fill in the rest of the lineup since multi-plats drive over 90% of the revenue for both 360 and PS3.

But back OT it mostly has to due with MS dominating North America which buys more games per capita than Europe, advertising, quality, and brand recognition.

Depends on what you mean by "far superior". If it's by sales, you'd need to tally up who's franchises have, overall, garnered the highest total amount. If it's by amount of franchises, Microsoft is behind by some way. In that higher amount of franchises, you'd also have to know who's is raking in more profit, indisputably, before claims of what's a better financial strategy can even be debated.

In the long run, whether Microsoft's strategy of less 1st party studios has paid off or not won't truly be felt until the next gen, where I believe we'll see even less 3rd party exclusive titles - and exclusive content will probably require even more signing of some checks. Both strategies have seemed to work, as well as having their negatives, at points, but I don't think either is vastly superior to the other. As a gamer however, Sony's strategy has been better to me, especially in the last 2.5 years.


I mean profits and it isn't really an opinion its a fact.  MS has been turning far bigger profits with the MS division than Sony is with the PS3 division.  At the end of the day these are business and its all about making money.  MS is doing a much better job of that this generation than Sony.



d21lewis on 23 July 2011
Jay520 said:

As I said in a previous post. PS3 and 360 exclusives sell roughly the same

X360 - Halo 
PS3 - Gran Turismo
X360 - Gears of War
PS3 - Metal Gear Solid
X360 - Forza Motorsport
PS3 - Uncharted
PS3 - LittleBigPlanet
PS3 - God of War
X360 - Fable
X360 - Lef4 4 Dead
PS3 - Killzone

Neither holds a tremendous advantage

But, hypothetically, what if there were multiple Halo games and only one Gran Turismo released this gen?  What if there were multiple Gears of War games and only one Metal Gear Solid?  What if there were three Forzas  and three Uncharteds?  What if there were two LBP's and one God of War compared to two full fledged Fables and two Left 4 Deads?  Would that list look more like: Halo, Halo, Halo, Gran Turismo, Gears, Gears, Gears, Metal Gear Solid.  I didn't look anything up so the order might be wrong (and Splinter Cell would probably fit in there, somewhere) but I have to wonder if the abundance of PS3 lower tier exclusives (ie: inFamous, Ratchet and Clank, Mag) make up the difference.

It would take a better, less lazy man than me but I wouldn't mind if someone were to look up exclusives sales (did osamanobama do that recently?) year by year so we can compare apples to apples.



Marks on 23 July 2011

There's less of them and 360 has higher install base.



Jay520 on 23 July 2011
d21lewis said:
Jay520 said:

As I said in a previous post. PS3 and 360 exclusives sell roughly the same

X360 - Halo 
PS3 - Gran Turismo
X360 - Gears of War
PS3 - Metal Gear Solid
X360 - Forza Motorsport
PS3 - Uncharted
PS3 - LittleBigPlanet
PS3 - God of War
X360 - Fable
X360 - Lef4 4 Dead
PS3 - Killzone

Neither holds a tremendous advantage

But, hypothetically, what if there were multiple Halo games and only one Gran Turismo released this gen?  What if there were multiple Gears of War games and only one Metal Gear Solid?  What if there were three Forzas  and three Uncharteds?  What if there were two LBP's and one God of War compared to two full fledged Fables and two Left 4 Deads?  Would that list look more like: Halo, Halo, Halo, Gran Turismo, Gears, Gears, Gears, Metal Gear Solid.  I didn't look anything up so the order might be wrong (and Splinter Cell would probably fit in there, somewhere) but I have to wonder if the abundance of PS3 lower tier exclusives (ie: inFamous, Ratchet and Clank, Mag) make up the difference.


Well, that would mean 360 software is much higher than PS3. I wasn't trying to say that PS3's total software rival that of the 360's. I wasn't trying to argue that. My post was simply meant to debunk a common mythe that PS3 exclusives are incapable of nearing the sales of X360 exclusives.

The list was just to prove that in terms of selling power, both systems are about equal. I believe the OP & others were referring to selling power of franchises, because many people here have implied that PS3 exclusives can't or don't near the sales of X360 exclusives due to install base, marketing, or whatever reason. That's simply not the case. PS3 exclusives have just as much selling power as the X360s'



BenVTrigger on 23 July 2011
CGI-Quality said:
BenVTrigger said:
CGI-Quality said:
BenVTrigger said:
I've noticed a couple problems with things people are posting in here such as how Sony releases a lot of exclusives that only sell mid tier numbers and trying to act like that's a good strategy. Actually its farthest from the truth in terms of business strategy.

Its something I've been noticeing for a while now from the gaming community, even from the press. People are acting like Sony is so ahead in terms of excluive content and such and like how MS is making a poor choices with their 1st party. In all actuallity MS 1st party strategy is FAR superior than Sony's.

MS chooses to focus on games they know will sell. Currently Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable, and Kinect titles. All those will do a minimum of 3 million with Halo and Gears hitting closer to 10 million. Their revenue and profit margins are going to be MUCH higher due to publishing and developing a slimmer offering of guarnateed sales. Per game the profit margin is higher due to far less developing costs than Sony. Sony really only has one "Big" exclusive and that is GT. Uncharted is flirting with it but until it can post numbers well over 5 million it can't be considered a top tier in terms of sales, its still at mid tier.

Basically MS makes more money by pushing a few key franchises and minimizing the amount they spend in house in comparison with Sony who will push out Socom, Twisted Metal, Uncharted, Infamous, Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet, etc which will also see low to mid tier sales. Ever game Sony developes has a cost and these games are only seeing modest profits while MS has far lower developing costs and far higher profit margins.

MS realizes the 3rd parties and multiplats will fill in the rest of the lineup since multi-plats drive over 90% of the revenue for both 360 and PS3.

But back OT it mostly has to due with MS dominating North America which buys more games per capita than Europe, advertising, quality, and brand recognition.

Depends on what you mean by "far superior". If it's by sales, you'd need to tally up who's franchises have, overall, garnered the highest total amount. If it's by amount of franchises, Microsoft is behind by some way. In that higher amount of franchises, you'd also have to know who's is raking in more profit, indisputably, before claims of what's a better financial strategy can even be debated.

In the long run, whether Microsoft's strategy of less 1st party studios has paid off or not won't truly be felt until the next gen, where I believe we'll see even less 3rd party exclusive titles - and exclusive content will probably require even more signing of some checks. Both strategies have seemed to work, as well as having their negatives, at points, but I don't think either is vastly superior to the other. As a gamer however, Sony's strategy has been better to me, especially in the last 2.5 years.


I mean profits and it isn't really an opinion its a fact.  MS has been turning far bigger profits with the MS division than Sony is with the PS3 division.  At the end of the day these are business and its all about making money.  MS is doing a much better job of that this generation than Sony.

Maybe, but I'm not asking about overall profits, I said the exclusive titles specifically. Really, how much profit does Microsoft make outside of Halo? Gears of War isn't theirs, Forza doesn't outsell too many PS3 exclusives, and Fable is in a similar position. Unless you're positive the exclusive titles are the reason Microsoft is turning that type of profit, it's useless to discuss.

If you said Kinect titles, I'd imagine the argument would be stronger.


Good thimg I DID say Kinect titles then huh?