I also grew on that era too (Atari era to be more precise, but close enough, and when I gained one the NES was already on the market in the rest of the world, so...). I did not forget how I dreamed games would get more visually impressive and varied even then, it was just a matter of time. Now that we got even farther than our wildest dreams back then, why would I waste time complaining that shooters sell well? I just don't buy them and get to spend my time enjoying the other 1,234,567 options we have in gaming right now, thanks! XD
@x_hunter00 True. I hate it when people take only the most popular two or three genres and try to sell us the idea they're the only thing available in the market. Worse yet when they try to say it's a "nowadays" trend. What, people had already forgotten the TONS of games trying to rip off Final Fantasy, Street Fighter II or LucasArts adventures back when JPRGs, fighting games and adventure games were very popular? There will always be genres more popular than others, they'll always spark a number of clones, and there will always be alternatives - and compared to the 8- and 16-bit eras, the number and variety of those alternatives is way, WAY higher today.
@robertcain @JediLegacy The funny thing is that EA has its own "Call of Duty" in that sense - known as Fifa/Madden depending on the region - and it still doesn't understand that what make these games sell like hotcakes every year can't be reproduced in franchises like Crysis and Dead Space.
What makes CoD, Fifa and Madden sell is that they're events, not just games. People don't buy CoD every year for the single-player campaign; they buy for the multiplayer, and buy it even if it doesn't change much because they see that multiplayer part as a sport with annual seasons. Some friends pick up the new one, everyone follows suit. New maps are enough for them.
Same for Fifa/Madden. Not only they're games about sports, but they ride on the changes and marketing each sport has outside of gaming. People buy the game (almost) each year to be able to play with updated rosters and feel like they're participating in the current sports season in an indirect way.
Now how do you make Crysis or Dead Space an "event" that people will want to come to every year, or how you tie it to something external people are used to follow in annual seasons? Answer: you don't.
@kcender08 I don't think it's that simple, but even taking what you say for granted, what baffles me is that even as a purely profit-driven company EA is being idiotic. Did they really expect sequels of sequels to sell *more* than the originals in *less* time (both games have been on the market for less than 3 months!) in an economic scenario where people have less money to spend on games, and a climate where overall software sales have been on the decline every month for at least a year now?
No amount of marketing can compensate for such an adversarial scenario, and quality alone needs more time than a couple of months to translate into sales.
@boeing100 @Wadeimus @thorn3000 That's beautiful to say but not the reality. Just go back and see how many copies everything that was "fresh" has sold in 2013. Unless you consider Tomb Raider "fresh" because it was a (very solid) reboot or Bioshock Infinite "fresh" because of its very provocative nature, nothing "fresh" has sold even close to what Crysis 3 did in the first month.
They are not missing the point. They are sticking to facts while you're bringing your subjective opinion on the games discussed. The facts are: people have less money. *Everything* is selling less than it used to, even indie games; which indie darling has sold as much as Super Meat Boy (+1 million) in the last two years? Minecraft, and that's it. So the executives do need to lower their expectations if they're expecting their new blockbusters to sell as much as previous entries, no matter how good or bad these games seem to be.
@thorn3000 And again, they said this about games that are barely two months in the market. What the heck these guys think, that everyone is swimming on money like Scrooge McDuck and can play all their releases as soon as they're out? I'm not even asking to think on the very long haul, just give everyone a solid six months at the very least. THEN you start thinking of judging sales.
@JayQproductions @daichanrox They already touched that on the conference, saying they intend to expand *Playstation Plus* with different plans. I very much doubt they'd need to shove online play on one of these plans to succeed; why would they do this if there are more people paying for PSN+ now than for LIVE Gold?
(Both consoles have an install base of roughly 75 million worldwide, but about 80% of all PS3s are connected to the Internet and more than 75% of all PS3 users are PSN+ subscribers, while only about 60% of the Xbox's install base is connected to the Internet and not all of these are Gold subscribers).
What I can see is having different plans for extra stuff such as live game streaming and separate PSN+ plans for the Vita and the PS3 (covering both consoles with only one US$ 60 annual subscriptio may get too expensive for them if the install base for the Vita grows). But charging for online? That'd be stupid and would make them lose loyal customers.
@wexorian @daichanrox Only 2? Actually that's 4 exclusives confirmed and named (Knack, new Killzone, new inFamous and Drive Club), a timed one (The Witness), two exclusives still in production and unnamed (one from Media Molecule and one from Quantic Dream), a multiplatform game with exclusive content (Destiny) and a PC game port still unconfirmed for the neXtbox (Diablo). That's all from that one Sony conference. The only pure multiplatform game shown was Watch Dogs.
Fact is, Sony has way more studios and internal teams than MS and Nintendo. It's just that not all of them make big mainstream games; most do middle-tier and small stuff.
And trends don't change all of a sudden. If you look at the past two years, it's clear that MS has relied more and more on 3-4 core franchises, Kinect games and TV apps, while Sony's exclusive portfolio is getting broader and more diverse. I will still wait for the neXtbox announcement out of principle - no reason to rush and champion any console before if even releases - but I will be very, very surprised if MS manages to get as much exclusives as Sony in the first 2 years after their new consoles hit the market. Heck, if MS shows two or three new IPs by then I'll be impressed already.
@m4a5 "even though they have that same audience that might not have 'robust Internet connections'."
That's only partially true. While technically both consoles do sell all over the world (well, I don't know if the Xbox 360 is still manufactured in Japan, but I digress), the reality is that most of the Xbox sales are concentrated on the US and the UK, while the PS3 tend to fare better in Japan, Latin America and a sizeable portion of Europe. If the US wasn't such a big slice of the world's gaming market pie, the Xbox would be lagging way behind the Wii and the PS3.
So the audience is not really the same, no. It's not a coincidence that Sony used the "we know worldwide markets are not prepared for this" argument while on MS's side we had a UK dev-monkey speculating and a memo to developers using more generic arguments ("tolerant of today's Internet" - where?). It reflects pretty clearly the markets and audiences both companies are used to shoot for.
RealFabioSooner's comments