Are Sony *and* Microsoft redundant?

[FalloutJack]

Well, I can't really say until it happens. However, since Microsoft was basically chasing Sony's coat-tails for a quick buck, they're actually the redundant one.

 

[Yopaz]

That itself is a faulty analogy. I'm fine having to buy Microsoft games from Microsoft, I don't want to have their bottle to do it.

For a better analogy along those lines, Pepsi and Coke don't sell you bottles of drink. They sell you bottles, and they sell the drink separate. Sometimes they do a deal with both in one. If you want to buy a Pepsi drink though, you need a Pepsi-branded bottle. You cannot use any other bottle.

And yes, this gen we did see some competing on features. That's good. Now ditch the exclusives, and focus on competition on features, and we'll see where we go. Some will fail, some will succeed. Welcome to the market. Know your audience, know what they want, and deliver on it.

Food analogies never work in these kind of discussions because there's no programming involved in making food stay in a container. You can drink soda off the floor if you're desperate, but you can't make a program made for Ubuntu run in Gentoo just by saying that it should. It has to be made to work and that takes work. If Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony or any other publisher pays for the development of software they have to pay for it to be compatible with their hardware and the OS runing on that hardware. So if we are going to use your bottle argument we could say that we demand fluoric acid should be available in glass bottles because it's not consumer friendly to only offer it in plastic, giving us no choice of what material we want for our containers.

The fluoric acid analogy is perfect because it involves us asking for things that aren't done for a reason.

Now let's look at this hypotetical situation. There are no exclusives. Microsoft fucked up with the Xbox One reveal and lost a lot of potential customers. Why would anyone buy an Xbox One over a PS4? Well, no reason. Xbox One fails drastically, next generation is Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo's not competing for the same audience, Sony releases the PS5 with their patented system and there you have it, the anti-consumer policy preventing used games is introduced because we don't like exclusives.

Console features is the short term competition, what decides what you'll get early in the cycle of a new generation. Exclusives are the long term competition and it's not like they can just suddenly change the hardware of an existing console generation. Oh wait, they did. Competition is necessary. It's what keeps companies at bay.

I have used actual examples from both Sony and Microsoft to demonstrate my point. You have used two faulty food analogies to prove your point. Why not try a faulty car analogy next time?

 

[Casual Shinji]

New takes on old genres also isn't redundant, and many people still love the games. Just because they don't name it something new isn't a bad thing. Its like the FPS era we're coming out of; So many games that were brown, gritty, FPS titles set in the modern military or WWII period. They were all different IPs. Didn't make a lick of difference since they were essentially the same in gameplay and look anyway. Nintendo often takes the other route, mixing up the gameplay within their IPs, but keeping the same name, and I don't see anything wrong with that personally.

Nintendo doesn't do new takes on old genres though. They don't even do new takes on old IPs. They make the same game set in the same world with the same characters, but with a new gimmick. And it's fine if people like those games, I like some of those games, but it's hardly any diffent from the gameplay changes from sequel to sequel in franchises like Metal Gear Solid or other western games. And atleast in those games you get a progression of story and new characters.

There exists this notion that only Nintendo makes real games, and only Nintendo should be allowed to have a console, since the others just make "shitty PCs", and I'm getting a bit sick and tired of it.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Arguably so. As has been said many, many times before, the PS4 and XB1 are kinda dull. We're four years into the current gen and they still haven't shown a groundbreaking title that really justifies it from a gameplay perspective. And that's before getting into how Sony and MS have frankly pathetic 1st party outputs. MS basically gutted any attempts at 1st party studios over the years and never made a real effort to secure exclusives. Sony is slightly better, but it's still pretty minuscule with them using 3rd parties to do the bulk of the work which makes me wonder what the point of it is.

 

[bluegate]

What about Sony? Again, most "Playstation" brands are Second-Party, made by another company exclusively for the PlayStation.

Please do me a favor and list those brands then? You'd be surprised by how many IP's Sony actually owns and how many of their big IP's are made by companies owned by Sony.

Because you named 4 Nintendo franchises, I'll name 4 Sony franchises, made by first party studios; Killzone, Little Big Planet, God of War, Gran Turismo.

As for redundancy, well, Microsoft's releasing of exclusives on Pc could be interpreted as making themselves redundant, but overall, the industry as a whole has a lot to gain from having both companies in the console business, they are part of what keeps hundreds of people employed, so...

We're four years into the current gen...

PS4 release date; 29 November 2013
Current date: 27 Oktober 2016
That makes 2 years, 10 months and 28 days.

You're a few months short of 4 years there...

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

If Nintendo went under, we'd lose Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, Fire Emblem.... well, pretty much everybody on Smash Bros.

Who's "we"? Is that a royal "we"? I could've give a single flying frak about Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, or Fire Emblem, so 'I' wouldn't lose anything at all. There is no hive-mind to gamer culture (thankfully, else I'd probably have to set my self on fire for the good of the species... ), and there is no single received culture we all engage with.

Right now the market can clearly support Sony, MS, and the wayward kook/sometimes-maverick of the industry, Nintendo. Given I don't see a reason for why certain games would simply vanish - e.g. the dreaded triple-A's with their hype trains and marketing - nor any fundamental changes in hardware access/distribution (i.e. the kinds of experiences consoles and PC's provide cannot currently be replicated 1:1 by cloud services or any kind of unified soft platform), I see no immediate threat to Sony and/or MS's place in the market.

But if we lost Microsoft? Halo, a story that had mostly run it's course already, and who else?

Ah, the Royal We returns... Who decides whether Halo has "runs it's course"? You, just then? I am personally more or less done with the series with 5 (I'd just love to see a film of it at this point, so I don't have to waste time with the FPS gameplay), but if the IP still sells well enough it'll continue to be made regardless of what value judgements you or anyone else makes.

At the moment Elite Dangerous doesn't exist on PS4, neither does the Elite pad, or mods for Bethesda games (what's being 'allowed' on PS4 increasingly makes it feel disingenuous to even say mods are being supported. Sony need to sort their shit out with Bethesda, whatever it is). I'd also lose access to the occasional dip into the last gen's library via the ever expanding BC.

None of those things could be replaced by Sony, so for me it'd be the sad end of console gaming.

Do you have both systems, or just one(and maybe a Wii/U)?

Haven't bought a Sony system since the PS1, and I've never owned a Nintendo system. Xbox had Morrowind and Halo, and I dislike having more than one games platform at a time so after that console's success it made sense to go 360 and then XB1.

Many people seem to, bizarrely, pour scorn on the idea of brand loyalty. If a product has satisfied you in the past and the company has a new one on the way, why wouldn't you naturally be drawn to that? Brand loyalty can potentially be irrational, certainly, but it can also be incredibly and plainly logical.

What would you do if your system failed?

Probably grudgingly, painfully, convert to PC by buying a dedicated gaming rig that I did literally nothing else on or with, and make sure the Elite pad could still live on.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

If Nintendo went under, we'd lose Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, Fire Emblem.... well, pretty much everybody on Smash Bros.

Wonderful. Bring it on, I say.

Basically, if all consoles died in a fire tomorrow, I wouldn't notice a thing. I'd happily go on gaming and let the twitch gamers cry themselves to sleep.

 

[Yoshi178]

I've never owned a Nintendo system.

so in other words you never had a real childhood.


(joking, but not joking XD )

 

[SAMAS]

So only a world where PC and Nintendo consoles exist? Oh boy, sign me the fuck up, I can't wait!

Yeah, no thanks, I'd rather have choice. I'd also rather have a world where the big bad, AAA industry exists alongside the indie scene, since it gives me more games to choose from.

It's funny how Nintendo seems the most "redundant" of all, since one half of the large amount of IPs they possess all get rehashed over and over, and the other half gets utterly ignored. It's Nintendo's stuborn iron grip on the "virginity" of their IPs that's really redundant.

Not just PC+Nintendo. I meant PC+Nintendo+Sony or Microsoft. I'm only talking about getting rid of one of them, not both.

And not so much advocating as discussing the ramifications thereof and wether or not its a good thing. I agree that competition is good, but I'm saying that this generation (and arguably the previous one) has resulted in the main competitors becoming almost identical.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Not as long as people keep buying them.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

so in other words you never had a real childhood.


(joking, but not joking XD )

I played some NES and plenty of SNES on friends' machines growing up (Atari and then the Amiga were my own platforms), so Nintendo along with Sega were definitely a part of my childhood. But then I grew up... ergo had no need for children's toys. ;-)

(I don't deny they're fundamentally important to the history of the entire medium, but in terms of what they see as the most important aspects of this medium and what I prefer we're more or less completely opposed, so I have literally no use or need for them in my own gaming life)

 

[SAMAS]

If Nintendo went under, we'd lose Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, Fire Emblem.... well, pretty much everybody on Smash Bros.

Who's "we"? Is that a royal "we"? I could've give a single flying frak about Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, or Fire Emblem, so 'I' wouldn't lose anything at all. There is no hive-mind to gamer culture (thankfully, else I'd probably have to set my self on fire for the good of the species... ), and there is no single received culture we all engage with.

Whether you (or me, or anyone) specifically like it has no bearing. Those properties would still be lost to gamers as a collective, at least until somebody buys the rights and digs them up. And even then, they might not have the same creative minds behind it.

Right now the market can clearly support Sony, MS, and the wayward kook/sometimes-maverick of the industry, Nintendo. Given I don't see a reason for why certain games would simply vanish - e.g. the dreaded triple-A's with their hype trains and marketing - nor any fundamental changes in hardware access/distribution (i.e. the kinds of experiences consoles and PC's provide cannot currently be replicated 1:1 by cloud services or any kind of unified soft platform), I see no immediate threat to Sony and/or MS's place in the market.

Again, not talking about cost. I'm talking about redundancy. I'm going to guess you have an XBox One. If I'm wrong, a Playstation 4. How many games do you think you miss out on(by which I mean games you want to play) due to not having a PS4(again, or an XBone)? If you did have a PS4(XBone) instead, how many games would you have missed?

But if we lost Microsoft? Halo, a story that had mostly run it's course already, and who else?

Ah, the Royal We returns... Who decides whether Halo has "runs it's course"? You, just then?[/quote][/quote]

Well, mostly the people who complained about Microsoft making Halo 4. I'm not saying 343 did a bad job or anything, but let's be honest: The first three games(and Halo Wars/Reach/ODST, not to mention the EU) told a story with a Beginning, Middle, and End. 4(and 5) is a story that arguably didn't need to be told(though whether or not that really is the case is up to you).

At the moment Elite Dangerous doesn't exist on PS4, neither does the Elite pad, or mods for Bethesda games (what's being 'allowed' on PS4 increasingly makes it feel disingenuous to even say mods are being supported. Sony need to sort their shit out with Bethesda, whatever it is). I'd also lose access to the occasional dip into the last gen's library via the ever expanding BC.

None of those things could be replaced by Sony, so for me it'd be the sad end of console gaming.

Now this is what I'm looking for. The differences between the two.

Do you have both systems, or just one(and maybe a Wii/U)?

Haven't bought a Sony system since the PS1, and I've never owned a Nintendo system. Xbox had Morrowind and Halo, and I dislike having more than one games platform at a time so after that console's success it made sense to go 360 and then XB1.

Many people seem to, bizarrely, pour scorn on the idea of brand loyalty. If a product has satisfied you in the past and the company has a new one on the way, why wouldn't you naturally be drawn to that? Brand loyalty can potentially be irrational, certainly, but it can also be incredibly and plainly logical.

I don't see Brand Loyalty as bad, but with the homogenizing of their respective libraries, I'm left wondering how much of the two-system scenario is being held up by that.

I mean, compare to the PS2/Gamcube/XBox era. While there were plenty of games on two or even three systems, their individual libraries were also pretty diverse from each other. But this generation, I'm having trouble remembering any major series' or even individual games coming out on a non-Nintendo platform that's not also coming out on the PC and the competing system.

 

[Joccaren]

Food analogies never work in these kind of discussions because there's no programming involved in making food stay in a container. You can drink soda off the floor if you're desperate, but you can't make a program made for Ubuntu run in Gentoo just by saying that it should. It has to be made to work and that takes work. If Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony or any other publisher pays for the development of software they have to pay for it to be compatible with their hardware and the OS runing on that hardware. So if we are going to use your bottle argument we could say that we demand fluoric acid should be available in glass bottles because it's not consumer friendly to only offer it in plastic, giving us no choice of what material we want for our containers.

The fluoric acid analogy is perfect because it involves us asking for things that aren't done for a reason.

Except for in this case, all the bottles were recently changed to glass bottles for cheaper manufacturing costs, just Pepsi want you to use their slightly larger bottle instead of another company's bottle.

This ain't the PS3 era any more. The consoles and PC all use the same x86 hardware architecture these days. Hell, the Xbox and the PC share the same Operating System too. The whole idea of consoles, as well, is that they're cheaper and easier to develop for thanks to similar hardware and systems. If this isn't true and they're massively drastically different, we've lost yet another argument against PC.

Moreso than making a program compatible between consoles, making a program run at all is the hard work. Making it work for both consoles of course takes some work, but half the idea of them being similar is to not make it a chore to develop for your console, as that'd lose you third party games that wanted to go multiplatform.

If a company is very low on resources - sure, maybe I can see cross platform compatibility being an issue. That'd have to be very low though, especially considering other companies who are low on resources manage to pull it off just fine.

Now let's look at this hypotetical situation. There are no exclusives. Microsoft fucked up with the Xbox One reveal and lost a lot of potential customers. Why would anyone buy an Xbox One over a PS4? Well, no reason. Xbox One fails drastically, next generation is Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo's not competing for the same audience, Sony releases the PS5 with their patented system and there you have it, the anti-consumer policy preventing used games is introduced because we don't like exclusives.

This ignores the simple fact that MS DID fuck up with the Xbone reveal, and DID lose a ton of potential customers. From everything I hear, it wasn't exclusives that brought them back. Hell, at the time they were also criticised as all their launch titles looked like stuff we already had, with a graphical upgrade, rather than anything system selling. It ended up still being sold, and competing, because it did offer features that people wanted still. Namely, the dropping of Xbox Gold requirement for a number of services, allowing users a cheaper method of accessing them than going with Playstation.

But no, I'm sure that the Xbox managed to survive not because of brand loyalty, Microsofts backsteps, and a number of features on the console itself that people wanted. It was just the exclusives that people weren't impressed with at the time.

And hell, for fun, lets take it that MS did drop out of this round of consoles. Not likely, they would have still had a bunch of consoles built they wanted to sell, and would be selling, but they were a minor player. Sony Introduces a new consumer unfriendly system this generation, while Microsoft rescinded theirs thanks to backlash. Hey, look, Microsoft are getting a bunch of sales now and are a popular company again!
Doubly so if it happens at the start of next gen, and Sony state "We're going to be consumer unfriendly", while Microsoft are "We've learnt our lesson".
I don't see why you think this wouldn't mean competition for Sony just because MS lost one console generation. Hell, they arguably HAVE lost this console generation, with Sony way ahead in sales by all estimates. I guess that means Sony can implement any anti-consumer policy they want now right? I mean they've won, there's no competition as Microsoft wasn't as successful as they'd want to be this generation, right?

Console features is the short term competition, what decides what you'll get early in the cycle of a new generation. Exclusives are the long term competition and it's not like they can just suddenly change the hardware of an existing console generation. Oh wait, they did. Competition is necessary. It's what keeps companies at bay.

It doesn't require a change of hardware. These things are fucking computers now. Just add some new software, offer a new service, or come out with a new, worthwhile, addon. Yeah, offer new hardware versions. You seem to be saying that them updating the hardware is an argument against me, when its more an argument against you're whole "Short term, can't change it" thing.

I have used actual examples from both Sony and Microsoft to demonstrate my point. You have used two faulty food analogies to prove your point. Why not try a faulty car analogy next time?

You've used faulty food analogies, and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, to prove your point. Everything else you've said, has actually supported my position that competing on hardware is actually viable, seeing as both companies do it. I feel you don't actually understand what you're arguing against, and think I'm against any form of competition. Nope. Just exclusives. If they're managing to compete on Hardware and other services they offer, that's great, and you've pointed out many cases where they have. Exclusives aren't necessary though, and just encourage anti-consumer behaviour. Hell, they ARE anti-consumer behaviour. There isn't a good side to them.

Nintendo doesn't do new takes on old genres though. They don't even do new takes on old IPs. They make the same game set in the same world with the same characters, but with a new gimmick. And it's fine if people like those games, I like some of those games, but it's hardly any diffent from the gameplay changes from sequel to sequel in franchises like Metal Gear Solid or other western games. And atleast in those games you get a progression of story and new characters.

There exists this notion that only Nintendo makes real games, and only Nintendo should be allowed to have a console, since the others just make "shitty PCs", and I'm getting a bit sick and tired of it.

To be honest, almost no-one does new takes on old Genres. Recently Splatoon is actually the closest I've seen, ironically from Nintendo. Certainly not Microsoft and Sony doing that sort of thing from my experience.

As for no new takes on old IP... Zelda would like a word with you. Try playing Ocarina next to Wind Waker next to Phantom Hourglass, and there's a fair bit different between them. Not different enough? How about the jump to Link Between worlds, or the new game, with entirely different gameplay compared to predecessors. Sure, Majora's Mask and Ocarina are basically the same, but they're two direct sequels where that's to be expected.
Mario too. 3D Super Mario vs Mario Galaxy vs Mario Party vs Paper Mario vs... He's got so many different game series its not funny, each with different gameplay in it.
Metroid fans complain about getting shitty spinoff games rather than main sequence ones, and the last main sequence one was criticised heavily for not really being like a true metroid game, as well as poor characterisation through how they portrayed Samus being different to previously, in a way many didn't like.

I could do this for probably all of Nintendo's brands. A lot of the time the changes between them are like the changes between Mass Effect 1 and 2; some of the theme of the game is the same, but almost all the rest of it has changed. Sometimes they're not. Each franchise has some level of main sequence where the games are all largely similar, which is also to be expected because hot damn there are those that criticise the change from ME1 to ME2 as making it more Gears of War in space, and lo can one not try to cater to both those who want things the same and those who want things different?
The games are definitely more different in each iteration than, say, a CoD, or Battlefield game is. One potentially close equivalent may be The Elder Scrolls, though I have limited experience pre Skyrim. Yeah, they all share an open world, and freedom with your character. They each have vastly different locations, and the game systems that the game actually plays with are vastly different from game to game as well. Sometimes there are smaller changes, sometimes larger ones.

I also get the exact opposite vibe to you. Go into almost any thread where the WiiU is discussed, or Nintendo in general, and the prevailing attitude is that Nintendo doesn't produce real games, only kiddy sequels that are all the exact same game, and their consoles have no right to exist because they're not MS and Sony's AAA PC like experience. Threads like this pop up after that happens, in order to refute that; Nintendo do make true games, and their games do change significantly with each iteration - and part of that is a change to take advantage of the hardware differences of the platform that they're on, which honestly is why I'm ok with their exclusives a lot of the time; they actually are doing something that couldn't be done on another platform at times. Their consoles also innovate, and do things differently, which definitely justifies their existence.

Other companies produce real games too, and so long as the market for it exists MS and Sony's consoles have a right to exist. However, while people will criticise Nintendo for being different, those who like Nintendo's offerings will criticise MS and Sony for just being the same. That's sort of how online discussions work.

 

[Myria]

I don't think Sony would go all anti-consumer if they had a monopoly like Microsoft would.

The Sony Rootkit debacle says "Hi!".

...Just for starters, mind.

 

[gorfias]

Well, it would be awful if ANY of these guys went under as I'd lose choices. Course my wife would dance with joy as I'd arguably have less money I have to spend to keep up!

If I had to, with a gun to my head of the 3, I'd say... take my PS4. *sobs even thinking about it*. Of course I'd miss it!

Infamous? Uncharted 4? Haven't gotten into Bloodborne but I have it!

But Xbox? Halo, Forza, Sunset Overdrive, Gears of War, Quantum Break, Tomb Raider (though Sony is getting/has their version now) the Rare collection...

And it has a 5 Ghz wireless, better controllers with replaceable rechargeable batteries, keep your internal 500 gb and add an external 3 TB for what it cost to put a 2 tb internal to the PS4. DX 12 support. That feature when you can play on a windows 10 device if you are on the same AP as the Xbox 1 and now play anywhere (I have a gaming class PC on one side of the house as, sadly, my kids don't often let me near my Xbox). And the Scorpio next year will be the most powerful console out there? I don't know if MS can ever catch Sony, but I think they're making the right moves to make a go of it. (After the miserable launch and stupid name).

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

https://gamerant.com/sony-patent-block-used-games/ For those of us with long memories we remember when it wasn't certain the PS4 would allow used games to be played. Also if you look at the Vita they did decide to go with their own expensive memory cards for no good reason and also not released the biggest size outside of Japan. I also read somewhere that the quality is so poor that you should avoid deleting redownloading games as that risks ruining the memory card. Yes, they are selling something really expensive with terrible quality because they can. Sony isn't any better than Microsoft, in fact Microsoft has worked hard on reversing many of their unpopular choices with the Xbox One (daily check-in, Kinect requirement, media focus, BC).

The Sony Rootkit debacle says "Hi!".

...Just for starters, mind.

Which is why I ended with I wouldn't trust any company with a monopoly. I merely trust Sony more than Microsoft.

 

[Lightspeaker]

I don't see Brand Loyalty as bad, but with the homogenizing of their respective libraries, I'm left wondering how much of the two-system scenario is being held up by that.

Wait...you're saying here that the PS4 and XBOne libraries are so similar as to be indistinguishable?

Please point out comparable games to Akiba'Strip, Persona 5 or anything by Compile Heart on the XBOne. Or the Valkyria Chronicles Remaster? Because as far as I'm aware the console just...doesn't get JRPGs at all pretty much. That's a pretty massive difference right there for a start.

 

[BrawlMan]

Actually this is an interesting question at least to me. Personally, i chose Sony over microsoft for one specific reason. Jrpgs. Japanese role playing games are my genre of preference. And since out of the three Sony is the company that atteacts the most Jrpgs, it was the easiest choice for me.( i also have a 3ds for this reason).

Now say hypothetically, sony died off, i would assume japanese developpers would start making games for Nintendo. Which would then make that console, to me, the most worth while. Basically i would flock to whatever platform would have the most jrpgs.

That being said, say the genre died with sony, i would probably buy a xbone, however i probably wouldn't be as enthusiastic about gaming as i am now. Not that i don't enjoyothee genre, but the Jrpgs are the ones i have the biggest library off. Basically, my gaming habits would most likely change.

Exactly. That's why I got a PS4, Wii U, and 3DS. While I don't RPGs in general, Sony and Nintendo have niche titles that I enjoy. Most of those type of games you just don't get on a Microsoft console. Also, Japanese gaming is making a slow steady comeback on Sony at least, if we're not counting portable gaming. We're getting Last Guardian, Nier: Automata, Gravity Rush 2, and Grand Blue Fantasy, with much more on the way.

Microsoft always seemed to have this problem with their consoles. The exception is maybe the 360, but even by 2011 or so, Sony started getting more niche titles with the PS3 by comparison. The XBOX and XONE fault lied within just having shooter, shooters, shooters, some multiplatform games here and there, an oddball/niche game that doesn't do well on the console. I know Microsoft is now trying fixing their mistakes, but they have got do much more for me to buy the XONE; because so far, I don't see much of a point in my case.

Well, it would be awful if ANY of these guys went under as I'd lose choices. Course my wife would dance with joy as I'd arguably have less money I have to spend to keep up!

I have various problems with all of the big 3, but it would be bad to see any or all of them go under.