Yopaz said:
I used fluoric acid and glass bottles because they simply aren't compatible. Fluoric acid corrodes glass. Also most of my glasses are smaller than a bottle. I can still use them to hold my beverage. Analogy is really faulty stop trying to save it.
Then we go with a material that would hold flouric acid fine, I believe you said plastic which makes it even better for the economics argument. You understand the point of the analogy, you're arguing semantics for the hell of it at this point.
Oh, and same architecture means it will play automatically? That's why all hardware components is compatible with all Apple computers and all Linux distributions? Mac and PC have used the same architecture for years, compatibility between programs still separate two consumer markets based on software availability.
Not quite. There are levels on top of that with API and drivers and OS specific functions, but they pale in comparison to dealing with separate hardware architecture - something that devs were quite happy to do in the PS3/X360 era. The biggest reason programs aren't compatible on Mac AND Windows a lot of the time is to do with market size. Making a AAA game, or a lot of Windows apps, for a Mac isn't economical, as the majority of your users by far are using a Windows machine, and a relatively small number use Mac and Linux. Recently, more people have been adopting these platforms, and magically more programs have become compatible with those OSs. No, I don't think that'd be related at all, would it? Nope, its just near-impossible to port something from Windows to Mac or Linux, and that's why we don't see it happen.
And hell, you're the one that brought up hardware, don't try and backpedal and pretend that I'm the one focusing on it now. I simply pointed out that hardware isn't really an issue, and that software differences are far easier to deal with than hardware ones.
Have you ever tried porting software? I can tell you from personal experience that making things work on a different OS than the one it's made for leads to lots of half-working solutions. I used Gentoo and Ubuntu as two examples of operating systems running the same Linux Kernel. Compatibility between them is a ***** to manage.
Yes, yes I have. The hard part was getting the software itself to run and work. It also varies by platform, naturally, but in the case of consoles, you're making a bad business decision if you make yours hard to program for with compatibility, while the competition is easier. The AAA industry hates you for increasing its costs, developments from one platform that want to go multiplatform become exclusive, and games are more likely to just not work on your system. Funnily enough, its why they unified the architecture of consoles this generation.
Sure they do, but they have to gamble on the market for all platforms and many of them start with one system or get funding from the console manufacturers to do the porting. Minecraft started on the PC. Terrarria started on the PC. Don't Starve started on the PC. Once they made a profit and were convinced the market existed on console they went to console ports.
And you see, things like this I'm fine with. A developer only happening to have enough money to develop for one platform they have experience with - sure. That's not on the console manufacturer's, that's down to the dev's themselves.
And as you noted, once they know demand exists, they tend to port to other platforms because its more money for them.
What I'm against is console-mandated exclusives, where the game is brought to appear only on one console, because that console wants it as a reason to buy that console alone.
And, there are also small devs outside this that launch multi-platform. Fewer in terms of consoles, mostly because of Sony and MS's policies on their games that made it infeasible for many Indies to even want to develop for console, which they started lifting this generation for exactly that reason. If it were so expensive and impossible to do multiplatform, you wouldn't see these devs doing so. But they do.
Its also fine for Sony and MS to pay for compatibility for their platform... Just not exclusive compatibility. If part of the contract is "Thou shalt not develop for other platforms this game", then no. If its "You'll make it work well on our platform" - cool.
People complained on the internet, but still they sold enough for them to keep working. They fucked up, but they didn't ruin themselves and their excusives did sell.
Ryse, despite looking boring, sold more than 1 million.
Forza 5 sold more than 2.
Dead Rising 3 also sold more than a million.
While these sales aren't very impressive, they were all exclusives and they all gave people some reason to buy the Xbox One.
And this disproves anything I just said how?
This would all have been the case no matter whether Ryse was exclusive or not, or Forza. You yourself have even just admitted that these games sold poorly, and even if we assume every single one of these was a new console sold - where I'd wager at least 50% were sold to people who already had the system and wanted the game anyway, but didn't buy the system for that game - that's pittance in relation to the number of Xbones actually sold. I'll again re-iterate; it wasn't the exclusives that sold the Xbone. It sold largely on brand loyalty, and the other things MS offered at the time.
You need to stop trusting the reactions of people online for facts. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 trailers made people furious enough that a large boycot movement was formed against it in the gaming community. Still sold like hotcakes without Activision doing anything to appease the masses. It's because we react so strongly that it makes it seem everyone is against it.
Do I need to pull down your own quote of the exclusives selling poorly? Hell, if they were Ubisoft games, they'd be a massive failure that failed to recoup their dev costs with those sales. Hopefully the companies that did make them were more intelligent than that, but honestly I'm not too sure. Rise would likely have earned only about $27 million in revenue for its publisher, which while sounding highly impressive, really isn't that much compared to modern videogame budgets.
I'm not taking people's word at the fact that these exclusives are horrible and no-one will buy them. God knows I've got enough experience on the internet to not trust that. I'm taking the fact that people weren't enthused with them, combined with their mediocre performance, to say they weren't what made people buy the Xbox One. I think that's a fair enough analysis.
Losing one console generation is one thing, completely failing at is is another. Microsoft did poorly in their first generation, but they did get into the market which was already dominated by the three companies Sega, nintendo and Sony. Sega failed so badly they dropped out after the Dreamcast and focused on third party (see, another example from reality). The same could have happened to Microsoft. They have the resources to go on failing, but no company will retain a failing branch indefinitly. Sony recently sold off their laptop division, Samsung stopped selling laptops in Europe and Microsoft is apparently stopping their mobile phone production. Yes, both Sony and Microsoft are willing to give up markets when they fail.
Sega had been failing for years before the Dreamcast. The last 5 consoles they had released were completely discontinued in 3 years from launch, most of them within 2. For comparison, the Playstation 1, which the Dreamcast came a generation after, kept on selling for 10 generations, and a lot of consoles were pretty similar. So, after over a decade of failure, and over 5 attempts, Sega withdrew from the market. Same goes for Microsoft and their phone - it had failed years ago. They're only now stopping their phone production? Same goes for most other divisions in companies as well. There are barriers to exit in all industries, as well as the uncertainty of whether your next innovation will revitalise your division, or whether that division is gone for good. MS wouldn't withdraw after one failed generation, and it wouldn't have been a complete failure of a generation either.
We're hearby assuming that MS wouldn't even attempt to compete, and would continually try to implement the same consumer unfriendly practices, destroying their business for several generations. While MS is stupid, their behaviour has shown this isn't the case. Sure, if MS decides not to compete at all, Sony won't have any competition. That's a bit of a silly assumption to make, as we could make that assumption with exclusives too and the result wouldn't change. Basically, it proves nothing for you.
No, they are not. They have the same architecture and they use the same principles. Just because Boeing uses the knowledge from NASA's space program when they design planes that doesn't make their planes space shuttles.
Xbox also uses the same OS, but skipping that, again, you're talking semantics. They do things other than play games. You can program things for them like you could a computer, and easily update their firmware, software and OS. You're not locked to the initial hardware set for the only features your console has. You can add more through software afterwards.
Of course these can't be exclusives, because that's any-consumer.
Things that the console itself does, rather than third party programs you've paid to keep themselves on your console, are fine to be kept exclusive. I'm not asking MS to make a new controller, and then make sure it'll work on Playstation. I'm just asking for paid exclusives to not be a thing.
No, that's actually just some personal irritation on my side. The advantage of consoles have always been that "it just works" and "you don't need upgrades every few year". However it's not an argument strenghtening your case. Outside of 4K video and upscaled games (that require patches) neither of the hardware upgrade actually offers much in terms of new features. Also this is an argument against you. You can add features to a console by updates. PS4 is adding VR as a feature - so is Xbox One. Xbox One is adding mouse and keyboard support, so could PS4. Wii earned a great audience by motion controls at the end of the last generation both Sony and Microsoft had done the same. If a feature is added to a console and becomes successful other consoles will do the same.
They may not add much, but does that not match your "It just works" want? Its a slight upgrade, that some people will want, but that you don't need. Great!
As for the "It'll be copied" argument... Well, yeah. Lets look at the Wii though. It printed money. Playstation Move and Xbox Kinect? Not so much. Don't underestimate the first mover advantage. If you develop something reasonably unique, that will take time to copy, then you'll still sell those consoles. And by the time your competitors have that feature, the people who really want it will have your console already.
You have used two different Pepsi Cola analogies (you even built on it in this very post), I have tried to point out why that one can't be applied. You were the first one to use a food analogy and I countered that with a different food analogy (and I pointed out that all food analogies are faulty). You have used more food analogies, yet you accuse me of using them and tin-foil conspiracies (not sure how using Sony's patents and Microsoft's press release counts as "tin-foil"). I have given you several examples, several hypothetical situations and you have chosen to ignore them and insist that fluoric acid in glass containers make sense.
I started with a food analogy. You then went "This food analogy is better", trying to prove your point through a food analogy despite saying it can't be done. You could have ignored or dropped it, you felt it would better help your argument to try and make the analogy work in your favour.
Your tinfoil hat behaviour is the whole "The entire console industry would die if MS didn't have exclusives" stance you've taken, copied with the assumption that all companies would not at all try to compete with each other and keep acting in anti-consumer ways, despite the evidence to the contrary of MS backpedalling hard because it needed to compete. You're sitting here worried that everything will collapse, and things will be terrible, assuming that MS has this want to fail, and leave Sony to compete alone, and that the only thing holding this whole console conspiracy of failure at bay is exclusives. Exclusives don't make a difference. If MS had of truly fucked up their launch this gen, maybe the 4 million combined sales from those exclusives you mentioned, as a best case exclusive scenario, would have earned them enough to shut down their gaming division and pay their staff without too much loss. It wouldn't have kept the console alive though. Especially seeing as the PS4 is at 40 million sales around about, and that would have risen in response to MS failing so hard.
I'm not saying features aren't important, I'm just saying that in the long run they won't matter. You mentioend that they can be added and that's true. You can make two consoles identical in term of features by add-ons, software and up
And I'm not saying exclusives make no difference at all. I'm sure they sell some extra consoles. They're not necessary to sell those consoles though, and if a console was going to fail, exclusives wouldn't save it.
How about you give me an actual reason why I should get a PS4 (normal or pro) over XBox one (normal, s or Scorpio) which
only uses features available on one system. Show me how competetive each system is when subtracting the exclusives.
Funnily enough, I'm not versed on every feature of every console. That said, from what I've heard from those who do use them;
PS4 has streaming capabilities built in on its controller so they're easy to use, as well as quicker install times and running times than the Xbox One. Also a slightly cleaner interface, apparently, that's a bit easier to use. Its also slightly cheaper in some places than the Xbox One. Its also a smaller console, making it easier to fit in and store than the Xbox One.
Xbox One is more of a universal multimedia device, and comes with more ports for things to connect to it to allow this functionality, as well as with the One S an IR sensor to use the Xbox to control other devices, like your TV, that you'd use your remote to control. Its controller has some more tactile feedback with its trigger rumble pads, and anecdotally lasts longer both in battery life, and in wear and tear, than the PS4 controller. This is without talking about the customisable "Elite" controller. It also has better backwards compatibility options than the PS4.
There are likely many more things I could actually talk about if I used either console, but on the hardware and firmware side, they're both appealing to different markets, and taking different approaches. Perhaps the question I'd ask you in turn;
If there were no exclusives for the PS4, nor the Xbox One, which would you buy, and why? Or would you buy neither?
That will end up telling you more than I guess I ever could. Even if its brand loyalty, that is a differentiating factor that'll move consoles. If you'd change console with no exclusives, that tells you how at least one of the consoles competes in terms of hardware/firmware alone as well. And if you say neither, you'd just go PC - that's great, but for most people its more than exclusives keeping them on consoles. Friends having consoles, brand loyalty, and other factors present barriers to exit for choosing a console over a PC.
I'm not going to pretend exclusives are consumer friendly (they really, really are not), but it's the one thing that separates nearly identical systems from each other, thus it's the only viable competition between them.
You know, McDonalds and Hungry Jack's [Or Burger King if you're American] are basically the same company. They offer basically the same food. Its not McDonalds buying all Coke rights so that you have to go to McDonalds to get Coke that keeps them competitive against the other though. They are slightly different. Despite being near identical, they seem to compete just fine.
Same with Coke and Pepsi. I don't see them competing by paying Smith's Chips to only sell to those who have brought one or the other. They compete with bottle sizes, bottle designs, very slight differences in flavour, price, their own slight differences in new flavours they introduce.
Pretty much everything else manages to compete just fine with its near identical competitors, without resorting to exclusive deals. In fact, they came up with a more consumer friendly method of doing those anyway; discounts and cross promotion. I've no issue if MS pays EA $100 million to sell their games $10 cheaper on the Xbox One than on the PS4. That is $10 less some consumers have to pay to get that game. I DO take issue with MS paying EA to make their next game only available on the Xbox One, or available 6 months in advance on the Xbox One. GIVE consumers things, don't take them away. Exclusives aren't necessary. The console industry would survive just fine without them. Hell, they might need to actually start doing more things for their consumers without them. Monopolies are not a good thing, and all exclusives are is a Monopoly over that product. And that's not a good thing for consumers, and its not necessary.
