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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Phil Spencer: Sony buying third party games, all to do with money, not market share

Wasn't Sony just going bankrupt according to fanboys and media?



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Burek said:
GribbleGrunger said:

Oh, well, looking around the internet I have to say 'Spencer well played'. Your PR worked a treat. Every time Sony get an exclusive now XB1 fans are going to pull the moneyhat argument far more confidently and it will be Sony that appear to be the 'bad guys'. It's unbelievable how easily people are drawn in by a classic case of misdirection.

He's telling everyone that the only reason Sony have third party support is because they buy that support. You are all too busy calling him stupid to realise. You should be discussing what he's implying, not the seemingly stupid statement it's concealed in.

Why is he doing this? Because Sony has some third party exclusive we don't know about yet and MS are struggling to get any third party exclusives because they're now too expensive. Take this statement along with 'we are going to concentrate on 1st party' and put them together. Let's see if Sony announce a big 3rd party exclusive at one of the three shows they've got coming up.

Of course he played it well. His comments are aimed at one dempgraphic, the one that is ready to drink whatever Koolade he mixes them. Fortunatelly, that demographic is not large, and exists mainly on a few internet forums where they stand in circle and pat each other on the back.

Had that demographic been larger, they would now be drinking a physical disc DRM, region locked always online mandatory always on Kinect Koolade, and be happy that they are getting screwed every which way.

 

It is obvious that 3rd party exclusives cost so much more for XOne, with them being obliterated in almost every market, and that any sensible developer knows that. And theybcannot offset that with 1st party offering because they are very limited by both talent and imagination (they themselves admitted that they tried and miserably failed to create an Uncharted competitor, hence the whole TR moneyhat debacle).

 

Sure, they'll throw some cash to mercenary 3rd parties like Platinum, Comcept or Insomniac, but gone are the days of cheaply procuring that support.

I am sure that EA is enjoying that situation, they are probably raking in huge money from the FIFA deal on a console that is comatose in Europe. They took their money on Titanfall, and certainly asked for a huge sum to keep TF2 away from PS4 again, but Nadella is not an idiot to give Spencer blank checks. 

That is why Spencer now wants to focus on 1st party, but if they failed to create anything meaningful in the past 15 years (only Forza actually) should people really expect their fortunes to turn around. I think the next few years will be a steady diet of Halo, Gears, Forza, Fable, with one off cheap mercenary moneyhats and a heavy gocus on PC gaming.

Of course, they will still serve Koolade to the thirsty any chance they get.

Scalebound, ReCore, and Sunset Overdrive are not moneyhats. *facepalm*



He is right to a certain extent. Marketshare is one factor, but it's not the factor. Let's not pretend that publishers plaster PS4 logos all over games for free because that isn't the case. Bigger marketshare can certainly grease the wheels in some cases, but it doesn't actually guarantee anything. If marketshare had such a big influence then you wouldn't see the XB1 getting any exclusive marketing deals or exclusive indie games. Same with the PS3 last gen, and Xbox/GCN before that. An indie game like No Man's Sky going exclusive would proably be influenced by marketshare, but a major western AAA game like Mass Effect suddenly becoming exclusive to PS4 would obviosly not be influenced by marketshare. Titanfall, ROTTR, SF5, and DR3 are all unique situations. The jury is stil out on the FF7 remake..

Marketshare influences some games, but not all. 

Call of Duty's marketing deal changing platforms was likely not influenced by marketshare because the game is big enough for people to know that it will be on every console no matter who markets the game, i.e, you won't fool people with ads like this.

OTOH a game like the Kingdom Hearts HD Remix being exclusive to PS3 was definitely influenced by marketshare because the PS3 is bigger in Japan. The same thing applies to Disgaea, and all of those niche Japanese PS4 exlcusives. 

And then you have Assassin's Creed which was marketed on PS3 last gen, on Xbox One last year, and will be marketed on PS4 this year...



IamAwsome said:

He is right to a certain extent. Marketshare is one factor, but it's not the factor. Let's not pretend that publishers plaster PS4 logos all over games for free because that isn't the case. Bigger marketshare can certainly grease the wheels in some cases, but it doesn't actually guarantee anything. If marketshare had such a big influence then you wouldn't see the XB1 getting any exclusive marketing deals or exclusive indie games. Same with the PS3 last gen, and Xbox/GCN before that. An indie game like No Man's Sky going exclusive would proably be influenced by marketshare, but a major western AAA game like Mass Effect suddenly becoming exclusive to PS4 would obviosly not be influenced by marketshare. Titanfall, ROTTR, SF5, and DR3 are all unique situations. The jury is stil out on the FF7 remake..

Marketshare influences some games, but not all.

Call of Duty's marketing deal changing platforms was likely not influenced by marketshare because the game is big enough for people to know that it will be on every console no matter who markets the game, i.e, you won't fool people with ads like this.

OTOH a game like the Kingdom Hearts HD Remix being exclusive to PS3 was definitely influenced by marketshare because the PS3 is bigger in Japan. The same thing applies to Disgaea, and all of those niche Japanese PS4 exlcusives.

And then you have Assassin's Creed which was marketed on PS3 last gen, on Xbox One last year, and will be marketed on PS4 this year...

CoD deal was definitely affected by marketshare.

There is no doubt about that.

Activision will go always to the bigger userbase... that is why it was easy to Sony finally have the CoD deals.



Tachikoma said:
Samus Aran said:

A historian deals with future tense as well (though some really shouldn't ;).

Except, they don't.
And 5 - 10 years is still a vast amount of time, even to a historian.

Except they do. I think I know. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana.

5 years is nothing if we're talking about a potential multi-billion dollar market share.

And you think 10 years is a vast amount of time for a historian who, for example, specializes in the Greek dark ages? Everything is relative.



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Another (rare) PR trip up by Phil.
Off the top of my head he also dropped clangers over talking about Tomb raider and the parity clause.

I disagree with him, and I'm sure he doesn't know how much his competitors paid for each deal, that's top secret stuff.

But generally he's great and great for xbox.



PS, PS2, Gameboy Advance, PS3, PSP, PS4, Xbox One

Samus Aran said:

Except they do. I think I know. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana.

5 years is nothing if we're talking about a potential multi-billion dollar market share.

And you think 10 years is a vast amount of time for a historian who, for example, specializes in the Greek dark ages? Everything is relative.

Pedal around the houses all you want, it won't make you right.



Tachikoma said:
Samus Aran said:

Except they do. I think I know. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana.

5 years is nothing if we're talking about a potential multi-billion dollar market share.

And you think 10 years is a vast amount of time for a historian who, for example, specializes in the Greek dark ages? Everything is relative.

Pedal around the houses all you want, it won't make you right.

you better warn the Roman and Medieval historians then, their entire historiography was based on predicting the future. I suggest looking under rocks.



Samus Aran said:

you better warn the Roman and Medieval historians then, their entire historiography was based on predicting the future. I suggest looking under rocks.

Neither Tacitus, Livy, Caesar, Suetonius nor Sallust wrote of future events, just various intepretations of past roman history.

Some historians may choose to make predictions based off of what they learn through analysis of historical records, but that prediction is not encapsulated by the term historian nor is it the norm for such predictions to be made, the large majority of predictions that ARE made are massively off base, too.

So lets be clear here, being a historian does not mean you deal with the future, it means you deal with the past, if you make a prediction BASED off of the past, it is simple that, a prediction, and has no bearing at all on being a historian beyond the ill perceived notion that a future event will result based from past events alone.

The correct term for someone who explicitly deals with the future BASED off of the past is "futurist"

Try harder.



ethomaz said:
IamAwsome said:

He is right to a certain extent. Marketshare is one factor, but it's not the factor. Let's not pretend that publishers plaster PS4 logos all over games for free because that isn't the case. Bigger marketshare can certainly grease the wheels in some cases, but it doesn't actually guarantee anything. If marketshare had such a big influence then you wouldn't see the XB1 getting any exclusive marketing deals or exclusive indie games. Same with the PS3 last gen, and Xbox/GCN before that. An indie game like No Man's Sky going exclusive would proably be influenced by marketshare, but a major western AAA game like Mass Effect suddenly becoming exclusive to PS4 would obviosly not be influenced by marketshare. Titanfall, ROTTR, SF5, and DR3 are all unique situations. The jury is stil out on the FF7 remake..

Marketshare influences some games, but not all.

Call of Duty's marketing deal changing platforms was likely not influenced by marketshare because the game is big enough for people to know that it will be on every console no matter who markets the game, i.e, you won't fool people with ads like this.

OTOH a game like the Kingdom Hearts HD Remix being exclusive to PS3 was definitely influenced by marketshare because the PS3 is bigger in Japan. The same thing applies to Disgaea, and all of those niche Japanese PS4 exlcusives.

And then you have Assassin's Creed which was marketed on PS3 last gen, on Xbox One last year, and will be marketed on PS4 this year...

CoD deal was definitely affected by marketshare.

There is no doubt about that.

Activision will go always to the bigger userbase... that is why it was easy to Sony finally have the CoD deals.

I honestly don't think so because like I said, CoD has gotten so big that the game will sell a lot on both consoles either way. I highly doubt they care at all which stage the game gets shown on, just as long as someone else pays for the marketing. I also doubt it was any easier for Sony to get the deals. Signs point to MS having a 5 year CoD deal that they didn't renew.