Moment of clarity about Sony's first party exclusives

First off, yes i'm new.

It just hit me today- I was wondering why the PS4 is so dry first party wise- and how they are generally receiving lukewarm reviews. For example: Knack, Killzone Shadowfall, Infamous Second Son.

Now you might be saying, wait a minute, what about Bloodborne, Ratchet & Clank and the upcoming Persona 5? Games we core gamers are excited about, generally speaking. Then it hit me- these are all exclusives not made by Sony. Then I started to think:

Think about your favourite Playstation games of all time.

Crash Bandicoot -> Third-Party Exclusive

Spyro -> Third-Party Exclusive

Metal Gear Solid-> Third-Party Exclusive

Final Fantasy 7 -> Third-Party Exclusive

Persona 4 Golden -> Third-Party Exclusive

Sly Cooper -> Third-Party Exclusives

Resident Evil -> Third-Party Exclusive

Demon Souls -> Third-Party Exclusive

Do you get it? Sony has never been that great at making games themselves. They're very hit and miss with their own titles. Let's look at last gen.

Naughty Dog made one masterpiece: Uncharted 2 (1,3 are turds, TLOU is one of the most overrated games of all time 7-8/10 at best)

Guerilla Games: Killzone 2 is amazing (1,3 are meh)

Santa Monica: GoW 3 sucked compared to 1 and especially 2

too just name the most prestigous studios. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any means they suck as well making games for consoles. Age of Empires on PC was amazing though.

I hate to say it but from a masterpiece to generic trash ratio, Nintendo is by far the best publisher out there. And I never even owned a home console from them before, which will change with NX.

edit: Removed Chrono Trigger

When is Chrono Trigger a third party exclusive?

Anyway I agree and disagree with various points you've made but it's late here, another time.

Sony is definitely overrated.

Oh no OP now you've done it.

My mistake. I didn't know it was on the SNES aswell. Fixed.

Honestly, I agree. Sony's first party games don't excite me much. The only reason I bought a PS4 over the Xbox One was because a majority of my friends already had one. It's simply the box that allows me to connect with the most of my friends. Plus PSVR is going to be pretty awesome, so there's that.

ah ohhh... he dun said somethin bout Sony.

FF7 isn't an exclusive either, it got a PC version in 1998.

@i_p_daily said:

Oh no OP now you've done it.

Well the Xbox fanboys are already here, so....yeah.

Solid opinion. But one, I completely agree with. Cow's gonna cow.

Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil weren't exclusive. They were all on the PC back in the 90s.

I absolutely agree. I will not deny that Sony's studios have made some great games at times - Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, God of War II, the Ratchet and Clank games, and while I am not a fan of either of these, Gran Turismo 3 and Shadow of the Colossus - but on the whole, Sony's first party output is, at best, middling. They're not bad games, they're just not good ones either. They're average games that get gassed up because they are exclusive.

Most of my best PlayStation memories - Final Fantasy, GTA, Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, Castlevania, Persona, Spyro, Burnout - were all third party games. There are definitely some Sony games that I like, and I listed them above- but on the whole, Sony's own development talent is definitely lacking, no doubt. I do at least give Sony credit for being the ballsiest of the first parties- they fund exclusives and games that Nintendo and Microsoft usually do not, and they take multiple risks with new IP. I just wish I liked what they peddled more.

Sure you are NEW.

Yes, Sony has made some great games and some decent games, but they have fund games from many different genre over the years.

I didn't know Sly Cooper was third party. If it wasn't first party, then would have been second party, New Guy.

4 out 5 Lems agree with TC with the occasional Sheep thrown in.

Sure you are.

Cool alt bro.

@i_p_daily said:

Oh no OP now you've done it.

Lol...Yup, here it comes.....

:P

@shawty_beatz: They are?

Nintendo and sony are the best respectively regarding first party and sly cooper isnt third party, demons souls isnt third party. Learn what third party exclusive means

lol lems are funny with all these alts pretending to be "new" but PS4's 2016 line up makes this argument look really strained and silly.

If you agree with this and you "are" a known xbox fanboy and own a xbone this gen then you pretty much owning yourself and saying you are a sore loser since in terms of high quality exclusives. PS4's 2016 line up makes xbone's "line up" of 2 AAA games, one that is already a massive flop and the other looking like MS put it on an indie budget seem like a sick joke.

Lemmings have some backward thinking but no matter how hard you bitch and rant about PS4's games and what it is and what is isn't....it won't make the xbone's library, which are the games you guys try to rally behind, look any less anemic and pathetic in comparison to PS4s.

Xbone is a wasteland as far as exclusive games are so why are xbox fanboys so worried about PS4's? lol it's pure comedy to see you lems try to rip on PS4's library when xbone's is pathetically non-existent. Keep the tear coming lems, in another week Naughty Dog's UC4 is coming out :) have fun waiting til the end of the year to play another exclusive in Gears 4 made by a no name studio.

You bring up some great points but you know you have to brace yourself, the fanboys are gearing up for war now LOL.

@HalcyonScarlet said:

ah ohhh... he dun said somethin bout Sony.

LMAO

So you are saying that Sony has great first and third party support that neither Microsoft and Nintendo have.

Nice going showing off why playstation was always the superior choice.

Yeah that argument is pretty shit when you're an Xbox fanboy yourself.

What does Xbox have to do with this and who's an Xbox fanboy LOL.

@justtoday: To summarize you post.

1. Nintendo is glorious always is.

2. Sony's current first party studios are actually quite good. They developed some of you favourite playstation games. They developed 1 or 2 games on there new series that you think are amazing / masterpiece (according to your own words). So much potential then?

3. Not as good as Nintendo. Very good but overrated even if they made some of your favourite playstation games or amazing/masterpiece games.

4. Third party and Nintendo Rules, but Sony's first party studios very good too?

Conclusion - Sony studios need to pump out more games for ps4. Potential for UC4, Horizon, TLG, GT Sports and more

WOW man do you even read?

He/she was talking about Sony's "first" party games, secondly he/she said MS is as bad, and thirdly he/she sad Nintendo's has the better first party games.

Yet here you are on ANOTHER cashangry rant over the XB1, and talking about all of Sony's exclusives coming this year, which is what he/she is NOT talking about, but because he/she is not kissing Sony's arse he/she is an automatic lem.

Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII never been exclusive. RE came out on the Saturn and PC ... FFVII was also on PC

Okami was exclusive until Capcom rereleased it on the Wii a few years later.

God Of War is exclusive, Little Big Planet, Until Dawn, Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, the first few Tekken.

Exclusives are stupid, but apparently necessary evil to the gaming industry

Naughty dog made crash, uncharted and last of us. Sucker punch made sly cooper and infamous. Why do you say these studios games were only good when they were third party? Also insomniac games was technically second party dev to sony up until 2013s fuse on ps3 and xbox

Pathetic attempt to stir the pot.

Pretty easy to bash Sony's first party line ups when all you mention are 3rd party multiplatform games and zero of the actual first party games that took Sony to the top.

What does his post have anything to do with the xbox one?

The PS2 had a shit ton of exclusives, nobody said they were all 1st party games. It just so happened that Japanese game development peaked in the PS2 era, and the PS2 was the primary beneficiary as the dominant system. It's kind of naive to compare that era to what goes on now. Back then economics dictated that games were developed for PS2 - and even porting to PC was often an "unnecessary expense". Nowadays, even when a console might have a "natural" exclusive, the ease at which it can be ported to PC makes that a near inevitability (unless it is 1st party and they want to artificially hold it back from PC).

Unfortunately starting with 7th gen, the market was completely different. Economics makes having true exclusives a much more difficult thing financially, and we can see this with how both the XB1 and PS4 have scaled back their 1st party. Hell... even Nintendo seems to be suffering in the quality department (we already knew they couldn't keep up in the hardware, but it seems they have been very cautious about their software as well... they have taken very few risks, and aside from Xenoblade most of their games come off as very low budget).

That being said, Sony does need to step it up - because as far as 1st party the PS4 is lagging behind even the PS3. I wasn't thrilled they closed down Evolution studios (Motorstorm/Driveclub) this gen, or Zipper Interactive last gen (SOCOM/MAG) - but unfortunately, that's been the reality for 10 years in the games world for both MS and Sony... even "pretty good" studios get closed down if their game doesn't sell 10 Million copies.

@justtoday: what a obvious thread to any vertern gamer. Sony gets its cred not for its 1st party but for the studios that are associated with there party period. Sony is a more open with cultural diversity. Ms is war communication/social media heaven / american pride before any type of major foreign marketing. Sony has its fans for what there instrested in having on there console. To this day xbox is still learning how to do it as good.

I don't care whether the exclusives are 1st or 3rd party all I know is I've enjoyed a lot of them it's why I've stuck with PlayStation since it came on the market.

Yeah Sony's studios rarely make anything I enjoy. They generally focus on superficial aspects at the expense of aspects I feel are the most important to a game.

P.S. I think you got that comment about Naughty Dog backwards. The Last of Us was the one good thing they made last gen. Uncharted 2 is an amalgamation of what's gone wrong in modern game design.

When the alternative is Forza yearlies, a Halo franchise that is taking on water like no one's business, and exclusive droughts that span 8 months or so? It's hard to care. I mean, yeah, I wish there were more games but when you look at how Sony finished strong with the PS3 then it makes a lot more sense. MS ditched their 360 fanbase in more ways than one when it came to launching the Bone whereas Sony did not. Considering the massive gap between the ps4 game library and the Bone, the first party category is completely forgivable.

The only console with a leg to stand on in terms of consistent first party was the WiiU but 2016 is looking dead af.

Yeah it's sad that fanboys have to make up rules why certain high ranking PS exclusives don't count just so that their platform looks a bit better. It really says a lot about the Xbox.

Agreed on the sentiment that Sony's first party outside of maybe 2 or 3 studios, is basically garbage. However, Naughty Dog is a thing, and on their resume while I'm not fond of a lot of their games, Jak 1, Uncharted 2, and The Last of Us were good games, the last one being a great one. Uncharted 4 is shaping up to be legit too. When Ueda was doing his thing he gave us Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and those two games are superb. Polyphony wasn't a joke at one point, and Gran Turismo 3 was a blast to play through, and God of War is mostly lame, but even that series gave us God of War 2, which was quite good.

My favorite games on the playstation systems have never really been Sony's output, that I will agree with. PS2 it was stuff like Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Devil May Cry 3. PS1 it was stuff like Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, Castlevania, and in the case of PS3 my favorite exclusives were Demon's Souls and Valkyria Chronicles. But I'd say that about the Xbox too, favorite Xbox OG game? Halo was a blast, but Ninja Gaiden 1/Black is fucking amazing. Halo Reach, Gears of War 1-3 were fun, but I was more into Bayonetta (definitive version at the time), Dead Rising, and the indie stuff like Braid n Super Meat Boy.

Between the two consoles the best exclusive maybe something Sony published, but it's a From Software game in Bloodborne. Although yeah I quite dig Halo 5's multiplayer, BTB is legit.

Sony da best. GoW, Uncharted, Infamous, TLG, Horizon, Infamous and TLoU are enough to put the competitors to shame.

Is this because Uncharted 4 is about to melt lemmings and hermits faces off? Lems gonna Lem.

@justtoday: Considering how crazy Sony exclusives sell, it's hard to agree with anything you said. Sure YOU hated Uncharted 1 and 3 and Last of Us and God of War 3 but sales and critic reviews tell a completely different story.

@killered3: Do Sony exclusives really sell?

I mean, Gran Turismo is probably the best selling Sony franchise, and I suspect that none of the GT games' sales would compare to Nintendo's top 30 list of best sellers...

Sony's first party devs ain't all that outside of naughty dog ... maybe god of war dev team but that is about it ... infamous devs got stuck with a movie tie in spiderman game instead of sony letting them make another infamous says alot about the infamous franchise ... the rest of sony's devs are mainly miss then hit

I don't disagree. Sony has a pretty bad first party. They have their fans, but they've been trying to appeal to the more casual masses since the PS3, and many games are just straight-up duds.

Sony was at their peak when they dominated the third party realm on consoles. Losing that aspect it's made it all the more clear that their first party is just not all that great. The PS4 is the worst console Sony has put out game-wise, and it does not look to be getting better anytime soon.

Sucker Punch is not first party.

It was an independent company until August 2011, but has worked exclusively with Sony Computer Entertainment since 2000. Sony acquired Sucker Punch on August 2, 2011.[1]

Hmm, did not know that!