Is Sony done with Video Games?

[BrotherRool]

They'll make it to a PS4, whatsmore since Nintendo have kindly taken initiative and hardware speced themselves out of the next console generation before it started, then it's hard to see why the PS4 won't succeed unless they just don't screw up. I can't see MS pulling something so gamechanging it takes the PS4 out of business (I mean they managed to eventually make the PS3 work even). I don't think people will randomly abandon consoles, and since this gen has been as big as ever, probably moreso because 360/PS3 gaming has become utterly mainstream, next gen might have less numbers, but not low enough to take Sony out of business.

There's so much wrong with this statement...

Firstly, you cannot spec yourself out of a console generation. Generation as a term is not defined by power, but by the period a console was released in. That's why the PS1 and N64 were both fifth generation consoles, despite the former having about half the power of the latter. That's why the PS2 and Xbox were both sixth generation consoles, despite the latter being a quantum leap in technology above the former. And that's why the Wii and the PS3 are both seventh generation consoles.

Secondly, something you will have hopefully noticed with those examples is that hardware power never counts towards financial success. In fact, the trend for the last three generations of consoles and two generations of handhelds has been the opposite. The consoles with the least amount of power have been the ones to achieve runaway sales success (PS1, PS2, Wii), whereas the consoles with the most amount of power have been the ones to sell far, far less (N64, Xbox, PS3).

Also, it may interest you to note that 'core' gaming (ie, PS360) has not become significantly more mainstream than previous generations. Not a single PS3 exclusive has managed to outsell the top selling exclusives for the PS2. Gran Turismo 5 managed to sell less than its predecessors. GTA: San Andreas sold 17 million copies on the PS2, a figure no PS3 or 360 exclusive can match. And the only games to sell drastically higher numbers on the 360 than previous generations were Call Of Duty, Gears and Halo. Every other top-seller was around the 3-4 million mark, the same comparitively as last gen. Only Call Of Duty can really claim to have had the kind of 'mainstream' effect you're talking about. Everything else is either selling the same or less than last generation.

Okay mabe it's just a British colloquialism but 'spec yourself out of the generation' means 'unable to compete due to hardware specifications they chose' rather than redefining the generation you're in because of hardware. I have to admit I didn't expect that to be something that would have a changed meaning but it just goes to show you.

Secondly, we're talking about Sony's viability. The Wii was successful but almost entirely amongst new gamers and had almost none non-Nintendo games that did will well with the demographic of people who were playing games like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy in the previous generation. Most of the studies showed that the Wiis success was in converting new gamers rather than stealing sales from the others. So I'm not saying the Wii wasn't by far the most financially successful console, nor that the Wii U won't be either. However due to it's hardware specs it's likely to be going for the Wii crowd again, the number one best selling Wii U game is the jointly packed party game Adventureland. As such Nintendos success will be largely irrelevant to Sony's it's unlike that the Wii even stole 1% of sales of say Black Ops from the PS3 and due to the predicted large hardware gap, the Wii U isn't going to be chasing the same games that the other two will. So they're out of Sony's race-

Now we've got the misunderstandings out of the way hopefully, I'm really intrigued by your point that the mainstream generation has shrunk. I was just assuming it because it's so more common to hear people talking about games than it was back then, and all sorts of people too. The PS3 exclusive thing would be put down to reduced market share. There are 150 millions PS2 compared to 70 million PS3's. So if we did straight proportions (although I guess that isn't too reliable because the PS2 had a strong casual market) then GT 5 outsold GT 3 and 4 per head (also though, GT 3 outsold GT 4). Also per console, the top PS3 game outsold the top PS2 game. 8th best outsold 8th best. But then it also went the other way for some of the rankings.

So lets check the table out (I guess you've already done a lot of this. I'm catching up with you still and tend to sort of think aloud in my posts, which is an awful writing habit)
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/
If we get the combined sales for the PS2 top 25 (even all the PS2 top 25 weren't casual)+ Xbox top 25, that's 187.29m+59.44m=246.73 vs 157.80+198.81=356.61 (360 top 25 outsells the PS2?? We must have become a more a lot more focused of a market? Or the high casual sales not breaking the 25 give the PS2 a long tail? )

So I guess that seems to corroborate that I'm right? I'm not really convinced to be honest, the 360 outselling the PS2 is further in my direction than I can believe, the method is just too flawed. A top 25 is a better indicator than a top 1 or even top 10 so at the moment I think we've got slightly more evidence for the mainstream increasing. I mean that's over 100 million sales difference (we're definitely making more money at least, even relative to the other entertainment mediums, than before).

Hmm. When looking at a top 50, the PS2 and 360 have sold pretty much equal numbers. I only counted 2 casual PS2 games in that list so it can't be the PS2's casual crowd decreasing it's drop off. By the top 100 the PS2 has a 30 million advantage over the 360 (although even here, the combined total of this generation MS and Sony is actually now 170 million greater than the last generation).

At the 500 mark we've still sold more this generation than last, although by now shovelware is in full affect so we#ve what we were trying to compare.

Okay lets check top 1000. The PS2 now has a 415 million advantage over the 360, but the PS3 has only got a 360million advantage over it's competition, so it's finally swung into favour of the previous generation.


Okay well I've got no answers at all now. The 25-500 thing makes me thing that games have become more mainstream but the evidence is really shaky. Thanks I've learnt a lot and you removed a misconception that I would never have found out about otherwise

 

[KiKiweaky]

After recently releasing planetside 2 I somehow doubt it

 

[Baron_Rouge]

I know some of their games could have seen better marketing; LittleBigPlanet Karting, for example, but I hardly think they threw All-Stars under a bus. There were some awesome ads for that, all the teasers, the Robot Chicken sketch...I mean, I know it didn't sell too well, but I don't think it was for lack of trying. Personally, I love it.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I loved my ps2 but it seems that since they've been going downhill since the PSP.
The PSP & PS3 (in my personal experience) were decent pieces of hardware that got really poor support. So poor in fact that I didn't get a Vita and don't see myself getting a PS4 when that time comes.
They need to spend more time helping the consumer get more out of the hardware and coaxing third parties (and even themselves) to expand on features and quality.
I hope they break their downward momentum but they seem intent on driving the playstation brand into the ground.

 

[BrotherRool]

- The Wii U may not be as underpowered as everyone makes out. While people have torn the thing apart to look inside, a lot of the actual workings of the specs are still a complete mystery. The CPU is certainly clocked at a lower speed than expected, but it also is apparently quite a bit more modern in design than the CPUs in either the PS360. More importantly, it has far more eDRAM than either console (32mb) and a GP-GPU (a GPU which can also pull double duty and do CPU tasks, such as physics) several generations ahead of the current gen. We've not seen any real visual upgrade yet, for the same reason most 360 launch games didn't look that much better than Xbox ones (or sometimes even worse). Developers need time to get to grips with the architecture. We're already starting to see games like Nano Assault Neo and Trine 2: Director's Cut, which are visually astounding. Give it a year or two, and developers will be able to start showing some of the Wii U's muscle.

- Conversely, don't be surprised if Sony starts reigning in the hardware specs for the next gen. For the last 8 years or so, they've consistently tried to win over gamers by cramming as much tech into their consoles as possible, and it hasn't worked. The PS3 is about level with the 360, but the PSP and the Vita flopped compared to the competition. Even worse, they cost Sony a bunch of money in hardware losses. I would be very surprised if Sony didn't start try to cut back on the cutting edge hardware next time round, and go back to a business approach more reminiscent of the PS2 and PS1. The latest rumour is that they're basing the design off an AMD A10 APU, an all in one design that combines CPU and GPU, not too dissimilar from the Wii U's multi-chip module. Tellingly, the A10 APU is technology that's several years old now, and pretty affordable. If Sony does go with the A10 architecture, the PS4 will be a step up, but it won't be the cutting edge machine everyone thinks it will.

This is also new information for me, I thought the general opinion was that it was a half step. I didn't imagine Sony would try and go for a powerhouse this time (I really hope they don't) and it's a strange situation where I imagine Sony and Microsoft are both basically going to just try and copy the other one, but I'd thought that even an Xbox to 360 sort of advancement would leave the Wii U behind. But if that's not true and I've got your opinion which seems to have some specifics to throw doubt versus a baseless general assumption, then it would leave the market in an interesting place. I can't believe devs would really get behind the Wii U controller (unless the Wii U manages to curbstomp both other consoles). You can't design a game for one control scheme on two consoles and add a design for second and have that design really utilise the strengths. And I'm not convinced it brings enough strengths to make the Wii U a much more favourable purchase than equal power MSony consoles. In fact I imagine most people would be a bit put off leaving the control schemes they know (and however it actually is, the Wii U controllers, doesn't look as comfortable to hold. And the 360 Halo fanbase is dedicated. Their are plenty of people who will buy the next console for that one game. In that situation I guess people would just tend to buy and use classic controllers as default.

Still I would be surprised, even with the revelation that the Wii U is more powerful than people think, if it were on equal footing with the others. The controller looks expensive to manufacture and providing Sony/MS don't try to force a Kinect/Wand thing down our throats they're going to use that to either make much cheaper consoles than the Wii U or more advanced consoles. Isn't there quite a lot of work just getting the tech power in the system to get the controller to run? But maybe they won't be advanced enough to leave the Wii U in the dust and people just won't bother using that extra power. I mean consoles are way behind PCs at the moment, but people aren't bothered and potentially the same thing could happen with the Wii U. It's good they released early though, if all three came out at the same time I think the strangeness of the controller would be enough to place it in other markets (and it will still probably absolutely corner the casual market, if not as strongly as the Wii) but with an established base it would be attractive to take the time porting

You could make the argument for Call Of Duty, but I would argue that Call Of Duty is a casual game hiding in hardcore clothing. A large part of COD's audience is people who simply play Call Of Duty for the multiplayer, and don't really play anything else. I know several people like this myself- surprisingly older people who enjoy playing a few deathmatches online, but otherwise tend to avoid gaming. The fact that COD's sales numbers are so astronomically huge, while numbers for other 'core' games are more or less the same as 8 years ago, suggests to me that COD is the exception, rather than the norm. If you remove COD from the equation, you're left with an industry that is seeing about the same level of interest as last generation. Each generation, the pie gets cut up into different slices, but I don't think the pie is really getting any bigger.

And of course, it's worth bearing in mind that development costs for games have gone up exponentially since the last generation. While games aren't selling much more, they're costing more to produce. Hence why we're seeing such a focus on bland, homgenous sequels...

I'm still not completely convinced by this, because the number of games sold this generation compared to last actually went up when comparing the top 50 to the top 100, which suggests there's other factors than one franchise. But considering it switches places later on, I'm wondering if whats happened is that we've lost genres and studios. The mediocre and niche ones couldn't cut it in the economic downturn and rising development expenses, so we like games the same amount, but we have less games to choose on and focus on the top 100/200 more compared to the last generation which was really diverse, which I guess agrees with your last paragraph

The CoD casual thing I've never thought of before, but you are right. But I think it's got more of an entry point than with actual casuals. The game is complex enough that some try out Borderlands or Mass Effect or Twisted Metal and that can open up everything. Whereas it's hard to go from Wii Sports to Planescape:Torment because there#s a much greater divide of complexity between true casuals and every other game on the ladder,

All in all, to bring this rambly post back to some kind of coherence... the gaming industry is in a really weird place right now. And I'm not sure Sony, as they are currently, are all that well equipped to deal with it. If they start scaling back hardware costs, and trying to focus on what made the PS1 and PS2 such astronomically successful consoles, then the company as a whole could still soldier on. If they simply make a moderately succesful, rather expensive console, however, that'll just be one more problem to add to their list of financial woes, and right now, they can't take much more of that sort of thing.

I was reading up on the PS2's launch and it sounds like it's success was partly down to the xbox and gamecube sucking =D It was over expensive, buggy, kept breaking and was hard to develop for.

I actually think moderately successful is what they should be aiming for. I think if they tried to gain dominance they would fail, MS and Nintendo are too smart to make the slip ups of before (I mean even the 360's final success is probably a lot down to the PS3 getting a bad start, rather than inherent strengths, because it ended up balancing out). As long as you have enough of an install base that it is always worth developing cross platform games, then you can make money. Sony make something like 30% off every game sold for a PS3 right? If they were taking pounds 60 losses on each console they still make that back in 5 game purchases. And even the CoD casuals buy 3 CoDs and 2 Fifas over a console life span. Providing they don't lose, there's still enough money for them. They don't even have to watch out for rising dev costs in the same way because they have a steady source of income even if they don't produce games themselves or make profit on the hardware

 

[pat34us]

While many folks are waiting for a PS4 it's not hard to believe that there are some people who think a PS4 won't even happen

You don't have a link do you? I have been following the next gen consoles pretty closely and I have not read anything of the sort.

 

[Atary77]

While many folks are waiting for a PS4 it's not hard to believe that there are some people who think a PS4 won't even happen

You don't have a link do you? I have been following the next gen consoles pretty closely and I have not read anything of the sort.

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2012/12/thumb-wars-episode-20-the-disappointments-of-2012/

Here ya go.

 

[Mr. Omega]

This is a topic I've discussed with friends many times. I'll keep my point of view on it simplified:

None of the "Big 3" are close to the position that Sega was in when they dropped out of the console market. But Sony is the closest one to that position, by a longshot compared to the other two.

 

[Ethan Bewley]

Frankly, I am one of those people who wants Killzone on the Xbox. I know that this is a little off topic but I just wanted to put that out there.

 

[Epona]

To be honest, I have stopped playing console games for the most part. I would rather play on a handheld any day. I have no intention of buying any next gen consoles and the Vita doesn't really have me excited either. Don't want to play games on a touch screen phone either. Most of what I play these days is on the PSP or the 3DS. Right now I am playing the new Harvest Moon game on the 3DS.

I do use the PS3 for Netflix/Blu-Ray/DVD though.

 

[Abomination]

They also publish some behemoth IPs like the Total War series... and I guess Sonic?

Rome 2: Total War will be a good measure as to how successful Sega can be in the PC market at least.

 

[Epona]

You should be asking if Microsoft is done with games in favor of making an ad/subscription supported cable box.

Considering they just released Halo 4 and created Black Tusk studio and two other game-related studios in Vancouver & Victoria I think that would be a silly question to ask.

They also have 43 more non gaming apps coming. Nice of you to ignore that.


http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20121212/microsoft-goes-all-out-promote-non-gaming-content-xbox-id-1701712560.html

 

[Nieroshai]

Poor sales haven't killed Nintendo or Square yet, so why should it kill Sony?

 

[Karfroogle]

I think the gaming industry is the last thing Sony would pull out of. It's kind of their biggest thing right now, or am I the only one who's noticed their amazing selection of games that came out of nowhere this yearend?