twintail said:
Care to explain how they are more efficient, diverse and intricate in their designs? |
Efficiency: Their output is not only consistently higher due to what their first party put out but they're able to deliver comparable high quality with much lower budgets.
Diversity: This speaks for itself their consistent output has more variety which includes 3D Adventure, TPS, Tactical RPG, JRPG, party games, fitness game, game builder, 2d platformer, 2d platform builder, Metroidvania, Racing, Fighting game, 3D platformer, RTS, Turn based strategy, Life Sim, 2d adventure, various sports titles, Puzzle titles, Minigame collections, Horror, Peripheral AR etc...
Even with in some of the genres and franchises the are experiences that vastly differ from each other, for example Arms is very different to Smash, BOTW is a different adventure experience from the likes of PM: Origami King or Luigi's Mansion let alone its 2D counterparts like Links's Awakening, Switch Sports will be nothing like the Mario Sports titles, Xenoblade is nothing like the Pokemon titles which themselves vary amongst each other let alone other RPGs like Ring Fit and Miitopia, 1 2 Switch is nothing like Warioware, Tomodachi is nothing like Animal crossing etc...
In comparison PS' first party output as mentioned in the op has a lower yearly output and has more focus and priority on a particular section of experiences as the variety on their platforms is provided by the third parties this is a major reason the MS Acquisitions have implications for PS going forward hence all the concern and arguments of games still coming to the platform.
Design: This of the three is the one with no contest tbh after all the is a reason they've always been know to create gameplay first and build the game around it, we already have the perfect example in BOTW and its design of absolute freedom allowing a multitude of feats that no other game released can do in a single package and this is further compounded when you read the developer diary in how they factored in so many aspects in the game's design highlighted from the director detailing how if the player wants they can push a random boulder all the way to the final boss as the game is to visual and audio ques to signal to the player use of mechanics and physics are possible.
Even when looking at other games Smash is another series where aspects of design are very intricate which is one reason several attempts at making such a game by other companies, Sony included, have fallen flat as the mechanical and character design as mechanical aspects from D.I to the angling of a moves knock back all have to be individually assessed which when you often have 40 plus characters is a huge undertaking. 3D Mario are another obvious example of how intricate their designs from 64 full 3D worlds spearheading the benefits of analogue sticks to Galaxy's gravity manipulation platforming to Odyssey's emergent sandbox they've always had a core mechanic that the rest of the game is built around. This is why with a lot of Nintendo games even in popular franchises you don't really know what you're going to get due to a concept influencing the whole design which is why we can go from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild in one step despite the former having some influence on the latter.
PS' first parties in comparison aren't as intricate in their games they're more into pushing a particular type of experience as high as they can only exception among them was Japan Studio who operated like Nintendo but they've been dissolved. The post someone has with the MCU is a good analogy that sums it up because you know the type of experience you're going to get for better or worse, it's not going to be anything new for most part but it'll be a solid execution that either hits the spot or not.
