Why is PlayStation Dominating the Next-Gen Console War?

[Something Amyss]

Because Microsoft done goofed, the PS4 is/was cheaper and the WiiU doesn't have any games (yet).

I don't know if maybe it's different on Gallifrey (or Australia, forget which you're from), but the MSRP for the two consoles was originally the same in the US and Xbone is cheaper now that they're selling a Kinectless Xbone.

I mean, is any of this not common knowledge in gaming circles?

I'm curious as to what you expected coming in.

So yeah, I think Mircosoft decided that they wanted to start this race by cutting off their feet. They seem to be reattaching them now--I'm very interested in the backward compatibility and will pick one up if it truly works--but they have a lot of work to do before they can wash away that black eye.

The interesting thing about this is that Microsoft came at this all from the prospective position that they were #1, when they were #2 for most of the generation and by the end had slipped to #3. When you're on top and everyone has to have your products, you can set terms like that (Apple, Samsung). When you're in third place of a three horse race? Not so much.

Sony had basically been humbled by their last console. And with the showing Microsoft gave, yeah. Sony basically had to not trip over their own feet coming out the door.

Okay. I guess they'll be the last goldfish lying there gasping for air. Grats to them.

PS4 is on track to outsell the PS2. What's this "gasping for air" thing?

PLus there's PC gamning., THis was the generation where consoles lost a lot of their vaunted advantages over pC games... in fact they're almost identical now.

Where have I heard this before?

Right. Last gen. And the gen before.

- It doesn't matter how many times Microsoft, or anybody else, calls it backwards compatibility. It simply isn't, and people are already realizing this as well as just how underwhelming this feature is and eventually will be.

Despite what people on this site seem to think, I'm still not convinced people actually care about BC. Sony slipped out of last place only after they cut the BC from their consoles and cut the price. Seems to me, if BC was so important, this would have worked the other way.

In short: whether or not it's really BC is irrelevant. I doubt it'll be a signnificant system seller.

- Almost all the Xbox One exclusives are also available on PC, this is not true for PS4 so Sony almost automatically wins the exclusivity badge, except Nintendo exists and that badge goes to Nintendo

PC availability only matters if people are willing to buy a PC. And no matter how simple you make PCs, there will always be people who won't go that route.

The fact is, none of the consoles are doing bad, and part of that comes down to exactly this point. When we're talking about being "hammered," it's relative to the expectations of the companies and whatnot. Each of these companies wants an increase in sales and profits, but the Xbone is still making money. Maybe not the Wii U, I don't know, I remember both the U and the 3DS being quite costly for Nintendo, but they still might be pulling it out. But Xbone's at 13 million units according to VG Chartz, which is not a bad number to be at right now.

That's 13 million purchases that would be redundant with a gaming PC.

 

[Lightknight]

Great article!

I would say the biggest issues (as an owner of all three consoles of the previous generation who was deciding which to buy) were fairly simple when making the choice:

1. Machine power. While I'm still seeing most games playable on the XBO, a 50% power disparity is immense and will be even larger at the end of the generation.
2. Machine cost. Sure, now Microsoft is cheaper but it wasn't for quite a while (particularly when I was in the market) and even now a $50 price drop doesn't compensate for the extreme disparity in price. The WiiU is even more guilty of this thanks to the unnecessary $150 peripheral that is the gamepad.
3. Microsoft's E3 performance. No need to go more into that. Their subsequent attempts have been decent damage control I think but it's hard to come back from that.
4. Nintendo's utter lack of third party support.
5. Sony's top tier exclusives.
6. Microsoft's exclusives all being released on the PC (seriously, I wouldn't even be surprised to see the new Halos show up there now that everything else has).

I like there being competition in the market. I also generally like Microsoft even if they've made some questionable anti-consumer things across multiple products. So hopefully Sony's performance here will only encourage them to do better and be better.

This list is a pretty good analysis of what's going on this gen on consoles. I always maintain, even tough I mainly game on PC, the Playstation consoles have always had the advantage of having many, many more available Japanese Niche titles and cult series available internationally. Niche Japanese games don't sell on the Xbox, ever. And a lot of niche Japanese titles get region-lock fucked by Nintendo and as well as lack of localization. Of the 3 consoles the PS consoles cater to American/European fans of Japanese entertainment, which is a bigger market than a lot of people think.

Interesting, considering how small a market Japan really is (I don't think any console sells even 1 million units in Japan per year), I hadn't considered that catering to them is actually catering to a broader worldwide market that enjoys a sampling of Japanese entertainment but that does make sense. Thanks.

Ok hate to be that guy but did you even watch E3 this year?! better yet have you dealt with playstations customer support? if you've done ethier of those you would not say playstation is winning. If anything they managed to fuck up what should have been a homerun in the span of a year.

Have you worked with Microsoft or Nintendo support? Support in general seems to suck for most large companies. I have gone through Sony support before. I didn't like it but it wasn't worse than the others.

Microsoft has done this by the simple act of doing backwards compatibility(even if its limited).

Backwards compatibility isn't really as big of a draw as you think it is. Most of the people who scream the loudest about backwards compatibility actually never play old or previous generation games even when given the option. It's basically just the comfort of knowing that we could if we wanted to with the exception of some titles that we may have missed or always wanted to play. But as far as a main draw? Not really.

I'll be pissed if the next generation doesn't allow it though. Now that they're all x86 (except poor misguided Nintendo) there should never be another excuse for lack of it again. But, even though I'll be pissed I'll also know in my heart that I'll never really use it because the new games keep getting priority over anything I've already played or didn't care enough to play the first time around.

What is playstation releasing that's going to stem that? metal gear? konami pretty much screwed the pooch so I bet lower sells then previous and a lot of people buying used. uncharted will do well but after that what else do they have? meanwhile Microsoft does backwards compatibility, halo, a better online set up, and gears of war, that's pretty much the difference as they'll both get the same 3rd party games.

If you look at the list of titles Microsoft has added to the "preview" you'll see it doesn't really matter except for the handful of Microsoft exclusives. A major hurdle here is that most of those games are also available for PC including the newer games that are coming out. Microsoft now only waits about a year before releasing titles there so Microsoft has made itself one of the few consoles that self cannibalizes its sales by releasing there.

Other than that, I don't really feel like any console is releasing a large enough number of games. Sony is still releasing more than Microsoft this time around though. As far as first party games are concerned. But people above already pointed this out.

http://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/5-upcoming-exclusive-games-for-playstation-4.html/?a=viewall

So Sony is doing better than Microsoft, I just don't think either one is doing what they could be. Nintendo seems to be doing the best on that front but it's too little too late for them as long as they stick to that price and perhaps even if they pull a gamecube and drop it.

honestly if I have to pick a winner in the last few years it would be the WII U as it has performed better then any of the others without any of the controversies.

Zero 3rd party support and selling consoles slower than the Sega Dreamcast did looks like "winning" to you? Did you ever happen star in a sitcom about two and a half men?

 

[gorfias]

the WiiU doesn't have any games (yet).

First true HD Nintendo with Kart and Smash Brothers, Pikmin 3, Nintendo Land, Bayonetta.

I have all 3 and find reasons to adore all 3. The Wii U has a fighting chance this gen. PS4: I pray Sony gives it the ability to hook up a USB 3.0 external drive. I can do that now on the XB1. PS4 needs this.

And people need to know: PS4 is not really 4K ready. It is HDMI 1.4, not 2.0.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Persona 5 could be hit or miss going to need more details.

That criticism is tantamount to tossing up a coin and saying "it could be heads or tails". But you wanted to criticize every single game I put on that list, so you went for "maybe it won't be good".

Another thing: it's a little late to be skeptical of "launch numbers". It's been almost 2 years since those mattered. We're dealing with lifetime numbers at this point: 25.3 million consoles sold worldwide, doubling Xbone sales and surpassing the Wii U's meek 10 million (always good to remember: the Wii U was out for sale a full year before either the PS4 or the Xbone).

And I did see Sony's E3. It was glorious. Most people agree it "won", if there is such a thing as winning an expo.

 

[EternallyBored]

Because Microsoft done goofed, the PS4 is/was cheaper and the WiiU doesn't have any games (yet).

I don't know if maybe it's different on Gallifrey (or Australia, forget which you're from), but the MSRP for the two consoles was originally the same in the US and Xbone is cheaper now that they're selling a Kinectless Xbone.

Tsk, as an American, I don't know what alternate dimension you're posting from, but Zhukov had it right for the U.S. as well.

The Xbox One debuted at $499 and the Playstation 4 launched at $399, I know as I bought both at launch (also I wiki'd it to double-check). It was one of the major sticking points around the original announcement debacle, the Kinect is what drove the price above the PS4, with Microsoft touting that it was an essential part of the Xbone's experience and integrated in to every part of the system.

Then they announced the kinectless version after launch, which knocked the console down to the Ps4's price and then finally cut the base model price below the PS4 at a later date. And my Kinect sits gathering dust in a cabinet in my bedroom, so much for "integral" experiences.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

A couple notes regarding the history of the PlayStation platform: It started out with the biggest draw of a feature ever - a CD-ROM drive with the capacity to hold voice acting, fully rendered cutscenes, non-MIDI music, or even just way more levels - and got enough momentum from that to coast on ever since. I wouldn't even say their first two systems had "third-party exclusives" so much as they were just a natural choice for third parties to go. Virtually everyone made PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, and if they had time and resources left over, they might port them to other systems as well. Basically they were in the position that Nintendo was in during the NES era. The only time they failed to dominate the market was when they released a $600 console that was hard to develop for and wasn't even optimized for games in the first place.

Really, the whole market has been a matter of "Which one company actually made a competent system and marketed it decently?" ever since the mid '90s. Sega never managed to replicate the success of the Genesis; I literally didn't know what their next console was called until years after it had been discontinued, despite having friends who had owned Genesises and Dreamcasts and watching enough Saturday morning cartoons to see commercials if there had been any. Nintendo hasn't been competitive since the Super Nintendo themselves, always staying one step behind in some crucial way - storage capacity twice, and then raw processing power twice - but has kept going on their strong lineup of first-party games. And then we come to Microsoft...

Look, Microsoft has never had a truly original, revolutionary idea. Except, ironically, maybe the Kinect, which is still in the process of achieving what it set out to do. Their entire history is one of seeing a successful product and jumping in with a slightly different one. DOS was CP-M or UNIX. Office was Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Oracle. Windows was Macintosh System or Amiga Workbench. Windows CE was PalmOS. Xbox was PlayStation. Zune was iPod. Windows Phone is iOS. Bing is Google. Windows 8 was 50 Shades of Grey. Did I miss anything? They've always been the Pepsi to someone else's Coke - something to buy if you're interested in the other product but not enough to buy it specifically. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they were just laughed out of the industry. And in the context of the Xbox line's history, the 360 was a fluke; they played it safe in an era when Sony had no idea what they were doing and Nintendo decided they'd rather make a $250 fad toy that also happens to play video games in a pinch (and, make no mistake, would have failed hard if there hadn't been millions of people interested in a $250 fad toy).

Really, all people have ever wanted is a system that runs games that are more impressive than the ones we had last generation, runs them well, and won't treat them like shit. It's kind of hilarious how few systems in the history of the industry actually fit that qualification.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Great article!

I would say the biggest issues (as an owner of all three consoles of the previous generation who was deciding which to buy) were fairly simple when making the choice:

1. Machine power. While I'm still seeing most games playable on the XBO, a 50% power disparity is immense and will be even larger at the end of the generation.
2. Machine cost. Sure, now Microsoft is cheaper but it wasn't for quite a while (particularly when I was in the market) and even now a $50 price drop doesn't compensate for the extreme disparity in price. The WiiU is even more guilty of this thanks to the unnecessary $150 peripheral that is the gamepad.
3. Microsoft's E3 performance. No need to go more into that. Their subsequent attempts have been decent damage control I think but it's hard to come back from that.
4. Nintendo's utter lack of third party support.
5. Sony's top tier exclusives.
6. Microsoft's exclusives all being released on the PC (seriously, I wouldn't even be surprised to see the new Halos show up there now that everything else has).

I like there being competition in the market. I also generally like Microsoft even if they've made some questionable anti-consumer things across multiple products. So hopefully Sony's performance here will only encourage them to do better and be better.

This list is a pretty good analysis of what's going on this gen on consoles. I always maintain, even though I mainly game on PC, the Playstation consoles have always had the advantage of having many, many more available Japanese Niche titles and cult series available internationally. Niche Japanese games don't sell on the Xbox, ever. And a lot of niche Japanese titles get region-lock fucked by Nintendo and as well as lack of localization. Of the 3 consoles the PS consoles cater to American/European fans of Japanese entertainment, which is a bigger market than a lot of people think.

Interesting, considering how small a market Japan really is (I don't think any console sells even 1 million units in Japan per year), I hadn't considered that catering to them is actually catering to a broader worldwide market that enjoys a sampling of Japanese entertainment but that does make sense. Thanks.

Japan's console market is weird. It seems to favour console exclusives due to MS' lack of presence, meaning exclusives matter more there. With many franchises coming from Japanese Visual novels and Anime being internationally famous, Playstation's willingness to port niche titles only helps bolster than. Nintendo on the other hand has a lot more 1st party exclusives so they do well in Japan with a more internal focus. Nintendo's international audience is diminishing at a slow rate due to repetitive uses of IPs and Spinoffs based on said IPs (the kind of stuff Nintendo fans let pass, but criticize the American Music Industry for).

There's also always, a group of new sleeper hits on PS consoles every generation that sell way more than niche titles have any right to sell. Not to say the other consoles don't have niche titles, but they don't seem to sell as well on the Xbox/Nintendo consoles. I honestly wish they did. We'd have Megaman Legends 3 and a sequel to Gotcha Force by now.

 

[ecoho]

Ok hate to be that guy but did you even watch E3 this year?! better yet have you dealt with playstations customer support? if you've done ethier of those you would not say playstation is winning. If anything they managed to fuck up what should have been a homerun in the span of a year. Launch numbers are meaningless because the lifespan of a console is determined by what they have to keep people interested, Microsoft has done this by the simple act of doing backwards compatibility(even if its limited). What is playstation releasing that's going to stem that? metal gear? konami pretty much screwed the pooch so I bet lower sells then previous and a lot of people buying used. uncharted will do well but after that what else do they have? meanwhile Microsoft does backwards compatibility, halo, a better online set up, and gears of war, that's pretty much the difference as they'll both get the same 3rd party games.

honestly if I have to pick a winner in the last few years it would be the WII U as it has performed better then any of the others without any of the controversies.

to finish I can honestly say all this because I own all the consoles(save the Wii U due to not enough room yet) and a pc.

Just a few things, because I have a hard time understanding if we live on the same internetz:

- Most people consider Sony the winner of this year's E3.
- If 'launch numbers' are meaningless, is it enough proof that Sony is winning due to the fact the PS4 has consistently outsold the xbox one for 20 months from 21 months since launch?
- It doesn't matter how many times Microsoft, or anybody else, calls it backwards compatibility. It simply isn't, and people are already realizing this as well as just how underwhelming this feature is and eventually will be.
- Almost all the Xbox One exclusives are also available on PC, this is not true for PS4 so Sony almost automatically wins the exclusivity badge, except Nintendo exists and that badge goes to Nintendo
- A sub point for this one, there is a rather large niche market who like Japanese games; No Tales, Disgaea, DQ, Star ocean, digimon, last guardian, nier, arslan, SAO on Xbox, to name a few.


I try not to be on any console's 'side' because I actually own them all, and for the last year (at least) my most played console has been my Wii U, and my least played console the Xbox One, but being a big JRPG fan there is almost no contest between the PS4 and Xbone for me at least, disregarding that though it is hard to deny Sony have pretty much already won 'next-gen' with PS4 sales being more than double that of the Xbox One, we are talking over 11 million more PS4's in the world than there are Xbox Ones, it took Sony a full 5 years to narrow a gap of 'only' 7 million consoles last gen, and they never fully closed that gap despite the PS3 outselling the 360 for 3 years and all but tying for 2 of the other 3 years.

ok sorry for the late replies been at pax for the last week, so lets begin;

1) the 200 people I asked this question at pax disagree with you.(and yes I spent 2 hours asking this question)

2) ill concede this point to you.

3) was the biggest reason people were picking up xbox ones this years and considering what they have shown off it looks very good.

4) so if its available on pc as well that makes it bad? you need to realize a lot of people ether cant afford a top of the line PC or just prefer a console at which point you can only play such games on xbox one. I will admit those who have a PC will take the PC version over the xbox one version but that just makes since as the PC will always look better.

5) the niche market is of course large enough to make successful game I wasn't arguing that its just people usually don't buy consoles just for those games

the difference is the xbox one had a much steeper price cut earlier and had the 1TB hard drive first(though soney has of course released their own.) Its also good to note Microsoft hasn't released their real console seller yet which is halo 5.

Persona 5 could be hit or miss going to need more details.

That criticism is tantamount to tossing up a coin and saying "it could be heads or tails". But you wanted to criticize every single game I put on that list, so you went for "maybe it won't be good".

Another thing: it's a little late to be skeptical of "launch numbers". It's been almost 2 years since those mattered. We're dealing with lifetime numbers at this point: 25.3 million consoles sold worldwide, doubling Xbone sales and surpassing the Wii U's meek 10 million (always good to remember: the Wii U was out for sale a full year before either the PS4 or the Xbone).

And I did see Sony's E3. It was glorious. Most people agree it "won", if there is such a thing as winning an expo.

once again sorry for the late reply;

1) no was just saying that persona has a funny way of being the best game ever that everyone likes or the most niche of games. (I do like persona so please don't think im just putting the game down for the sake of doing so)

2. as I said before I will of course concede the point on this but will still wait at least another year before I call this unsurpassable.

3. once again asked 200 people at pax and the vast majority said MS "won" (actual tally was 155 MS, 30PS, 15 Nintendo, and all said pc at first till I limited them to the 3)

I want to reiterate to both of you I do in fact own all the consoles(save wii u do to space) and enjoy all of them.

 

[Rozalia1]

Because PS4 is over and popping those buy rates brother jack dude. Microsoft meanwhile is heel and heels naturally sell less merch, while Nintendo is in the midcard and again that has an effect on merch.

 

[FireAza]

The PS4 is the more successful console for the same reason that any other console in history was the most successful: it's the cheapest one. History shows it's not power or games exclusivity that sells consoles, it's price. And Microsoft certainly didn't help their cause by repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot from day one and also launching at a much higher price. The PS4 also being more powerful than the Xbone is a nice bonus that I'm sure played a small role.

 

[Jake Martinez]

I really feel like the new consoles are garbage.

I always contrast them with the last generation of consoles, which for all their faults, offered consumers a real buy-in to decent gaming hardware at a decent price. However, the technology that is packed into the Xbone and PS4 was instead obsolete before they even hit the shelves. They perform like rubbish and they have a price tag that almost makes you consider you can spring a little bit more and buy a decent gaming PC. I bought one of each at release for my office and I have to admit to not being impressed. This is why I never bothered to upgrade any of my consoles at home.

If you want non-pc gaming these days, buy a 3DS or a PS-Vita. The handhelds are a much superior investment than a new "next gen" console is at this point. Better library and more fun and the obvious bonus of being mobile.

People wonder how Nintendo can stay in business despite terrible Wii-U sales? They've moved over 50 million 3DS units and their popular games for the handhelds routinely sell over 10 million copies. I've never been unhappy about my 3DS or PS-Vita, but I'm going to pass on the PS4 and Xbone and just stick to my current games or PC releases.