Edge #256: Why PS4 is your next console (Shots fired, post-DRM 180)
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diffusionx
Gold Member
I really appreciate what Sony has done with the PS3 this year. I think GT6, TLOU, Beyond is great and a smart move. But, unfortunately, it doesn't help the PS4.
Does MS even need to match Sony's output? That's my point. List comparisons don't matter in the end, because you can't play a list. It's about the game quality. I'd rather pay to have access to Halo than pay to have access to Killzone+Infamous, just because I like Halo more than both. Even though on the list 2 Sony titles sound better than 1 MS title.
Superbot, Eat Sleep Play and LightBox aren't Sony studios. They are independent studios who didn't find a new contract after their contract with Sony was up.
not sure about EU, but it will be available on iPad and digital versions tomorrow.
I think the argument they are trying to make (which I agree with) is that these titles DO "help" PS4.. Outside of a few exceptions.. MS' strategy is "look who we've brought on board now!!!" There is very little from MS' presentation that makes me go "god damn it.. I wish they were developing for PS4". The closest two for me are Insomiac, with the game IMHO they should have released first instead of Fuse.. and Respawn, where TitanFall looks ok.. but in reality they are still an unproven studio (granted with a tremendous pedigree).
A big difference I think is that MS is saying "look at all of the exclusives we have coming!" and Sony is basically like "Yeah, we aren't going to talk about exclusives from these studios right now because they still have shit coming out this year we need to promote."
There's ups and downs to both. The one is that the MS titles can then be like "oh that looks interesting".. but really in most cases not a solid track record, or really one at all.. With sony it's like "lol they have no games" but we then have CURRENT examples of what their studios are capable of... just on the current generation.. and we have to wait for the next-gen announcements from them.
Neuromancer
Member
Nope. And yet here we are at 45 pages, haha.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Not sure how you reached that conclusion based on my post.
Right, but that's not what the post I was responding to was claiming. The post claimed MS doomed certain developers and IPs to oblivion because they chose not to fund or buy said studios when the reality of the situation was both studios were interested in other things and had no real inclination to continue what they were doing.
Thanks, but that doesn't sound like MS not being interested in making Crackdown 2 and as I said, APB was announced long before Crackdown was released. 2005 if I',m not mistaken.
SneakyStephan
Banned
There are more people who think uc2 had crap gameplay (me included)
Also ellie may not be sexualised but she bashes people's head in with a brick, so hey she's still focus tested to appeal to teenage boys.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Look, I'm all for bashing MS for closing FASA and Ensemble and relegating RARE to making Kinect titles for the foreseeable future, but I don't agree with attempting to shift blame for something they had no real hand onto them.
At least she goes through a character arc to get to that point and it's believable.
That's cool and all, but using that to justify that Sony has poor 1st party studios or games is kind of a weak arguement.
There is so much fud in this post it's not even funny. Don't think bothering to argue against it will be worth the time either
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
Drek is also guilty of this mistake, people are mixing up internal studios with contracts with independent developers, which are not the same thing.
PlanetSmasher
Banned
How does that mean "focus tested to appeal to teenage boys"? Would you rather have her spend the entire game screaming and cowering in a corner like Ashley from Resident Evil 4? Ellie is capable because to live in that society, she has to be. There's nothing focus tested about it.
I would say most feel UC2 is the best of the series.. had he said UC3 I would have left it alone.. but UC2? Pretty much the highlight of the series according to most.
As for Ellie... I'm 12 hours through and I guess I'm just not seeing this focus testing.. She's probably the most realistic kid I've ever seen in a game. and any violence she takes is portrayed with consequences and effect... I don't see how that is at all focus tested.. so far anytime I've handed her a gun has been a pretty damn poignant moment... have you played the game?
diffusionx
Gold Member
I hear this, but this stuff doesn't sell systems. Gran Turismo fans are not going to buy a PS4 to play DriveClub, which is an unknown quantity (I don't like Motorstorm but I am keeping my eye on it). You need games to sell systems. GT fans will buy a PS4 when GT6 is ported or GT7 come out.
Everyone knows Naughty Dog is great. I love their stuff. They'll have a PS4 game in 2014 or 2015. But nobody is going to buy a PS4 today to play a Naughty Dog game in 2014. Does that mean Sony should've pushed TLOU to PS4? Not necessarily... the PS3 fanbase still deserves support. But that's just a trade-off, a business decision.
Apparently so. This dudes way too high on the XBONE...
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
highlighting 2012 as one of sony's best years isn't opinion, it's just wrong.
Neuromancer
Member
Wait what? How else do you interpret this?
It sounds to me like they would have gladly worked on Crackdown 2 instead of APB.
RobotRocker
Member
Journey, Twisted Metal, DYAD, Starhawk, Sound Shapes and PS All-Stars were released in 2012 and while not as great as 2011, still was a very solid line up of exclusives at the time that really started pushing the boat out for Sony. Especially with indies and it's a shame sales performance wasn't great. 2013 just isn't as inspiring line-up wise and while Last Of Us and Beyond are two new IP's, they are in safe territory from a studio known for doing story based action/adventure games and a studio known for Cinematic games using adventure game elements and QTE. It's new IP but a known quantity on each title. It's not as confident as Sony has been or should be compared to previous years when they got more adventurous and unique and it's a shame they never took that further.
When you have talented 1st party studios that are really capable of more, Sony should have been pushing them to be more daring and more adventurous in their design. Not stalling them to go back to the same titles and concepts.
lastflowers
Banned
'what the fuck, joel'
'FUCKKKKK'
'FUCCCCCCKKKKKKKK'
'FUCKKK JOEL'
'SHIT'
(I'm liking the game, but finding ellie's repetition of the exact two or three phrases every minute extremely annoying)
Spooling13
Neo Member
I've never really liked Edge but I'm inclined to agree with their bold magazine cover, Microsoft have lost the plot with the Xbone
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
none of the games you listed was made by sony.
Welcome to my ignore list.
You do NOT need games to sell systems at launch.. I mean beyond a skeleton crew.. Killzone, Knack, Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, CoDG, Ryse, Dead Rising 3, etc will sell out every single unit at launch without a problem..
Where you need games to sell the systems are basically Q2 the next year (aka tax time). You can tell Sony knows this (as I'm sure MS does as well).. because their launch window games are possibly stronger than their launch titles (Second Son, The Order, Blacklight Retribution, The Witness, etc)
I would almost say that Sony, right now at this second, is better positioned for that launch window.. aka March or later.. With Second Son (and if The Order is any good) as new releases sucking up advertising airspace.. Of course MS has TitanFall... but I would imagine that when it comes to marketing TitanFall to the general public, they WON'T be allowed to use the Call of Duty name in the marketing... which let's face it.. HAS BEEN the marketing of the company, hints, announcement and eventually shown game since day one.
obviously there is a bunch of this... but there is no denying that there is incredible chemistry and very interesting dialogue between them as well
like when Ellie sees the movie poster for the Twilight-like movie
We all can have our own "best year".
The fact that you consider it a bad year doesn't mean others can like what they released in that same year.
Miles Quaritch
Member
That RTW were so focused on APB and decided to devote 100% of their resources to that title?
I followed RTW very closely at the time and after CD1, there was no waiting to see if MS would push ahead with a sequel, they were already hard at work on APB, which, as I said before, had been announced long before Crackdown even existed.
It's easy to shift blame onto them after the fact, but this isn't one you can really put on MS.
Not me. I'm not blind to support a company that once tries to screw consumers over, whatever the product is made in America or not.
cookie-monster
Member
we can blame MS for low-balling the Crackdown sequel. Cheap fucks.
LOL Wow..
Wow....
Just wow.
Edit: Just for shits and giggles, what's your opinion on Titanfall?
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
I'm not considering it a bad year because i didn't like it, it WAS a bad year in terms of 1st party output. You could make the argument they published some good games, but developed by 1st party studios? Sorry, but that's wrong.
Then again, it seems people can't tell the difference between developing and publishing, so i'm done with this.
I need to quote this to highlight how one can cram such a significant amount of failure into two paragraphs. Kudos.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Yes. Yes, we can.
Hopefully the third game they've been teasing will be given the time and resources the IP deserves and hopefully Ruffian are on developer duties. They had some fantastic ideas with CD2, would love to see what they'd deliver if they had a proper dev cycle with proper funding.
sometimes i game
Member
Has anyone said wow yet?
Wow.
Even if you find some of those titles overhyped, to slash them (particularly TLOU) down to nothing like that is comical.
SolidSnakex
Member
So let me get this straight. You're criticizing Sony's 2013 lineup for not being risky and playing it safe while praising their 2012 lineup which includes a sequel to the longest running Playstation franchise (Twisted Metal), a spiritual successor to one of the first Playstation franchises (Starhawk) and a game heavily inspired by Smash Bros.?
diffusionx
Gold Member
This is kind of my point. Who cares about Second Son, outside of Sony fans who were already getting a PS4? Has Infamous ever been a system seller? I got the first game when it came out, it was a good title with nice graphics but nothing that got me excited. The Witness... nobody (I say this figuratively) is buying a PS4 for The Witness. Meanwhile Titanfall is gearing up to be a massive game.
So, again, Sony may have the bigger list but it comes down to what people want to play. I remember being SUPER excited for Twisted Metal and Starhawk but both games turned out to be dried turds.
I mean really we are just playing the "what if?" game here.. I know that..
My opinion:
Second Son will be VERY marketable. I mean the game is just god damn gorgeous, bar none. I don't think the inFamous brand in itself is a system seller, but there is a heritage there... and have you seen Second Son!?
(lol sorry)TitanFall will likewise be very marketable.. my point in mentioning that though is arguably the SINGLE MOST marketable aspect of it... they likely won't be able to use (outside of feature articles and stuff.. but obviously not in direct non-editorial marketing)
In bringing up the Witness and stuff.. no it won't really be marketable as a system seller.. my point with that simply was that PS4 has a tremendous PSN lineup hitting right from the get go... With decent integration (sigh... in-UI marketing.. what are we really going to do?) and word of mouth, the highlights of that lineup could move some systems.. I honestly believe in this last point that we ARE entering new territory this coming gen.. where we see more and more sales generated from social media and word of mouth, as opposed to almost exclusively driven by best buy and amazon. Steam is a great example.. I don't think it is possible to call FTL a system seller by the definition of the term.. But I would certainly put a game like FTL (or minecraft pre-360) in the same category as any other game that befits that status.
AstroNut325
Member
I just want to say Thank You to Drek for that amazing post about MS not giving a rats a$$ about first/second party content. Perfectly summarizes my opinion in regards to the whole "but but they're opening soooooo many new studios" claim.
Miles Quaritch
Member
It's a good thing we're ignoring the fact that he makes a number of assumptions that aren't true.
.
She doesn't do that in the beginning, and is, in fact, horrified and bothered by what she has to do on the journey to reach her goal. For this game at least, you should stop talking about how a character acts since the characterization, stuff you can't gleam from trailers, is very important to the game.
For the record, I think Uncharted 2 is a terrible "game," and TLoU will probably be my game of the year.
Holy shit.
Neuromancer
Member
I can and I do.
I agree with what you are saying.
My point was that, at least for the start of the coming generation, it seems they have realized their mistake, but whether they will keep it up or not is anyone's guess.
I don't find that incompatible with what you are saying
The games need to back it up before I give them the benefit of the doubt because they walked away from first party development for most of last generation.
Sony took me away from Nintendo as a kid because the PS1's 3rd party exclusives were unbeatable. That is why I bought a PS2 at launch. By the end of that generation though I was putting more hours into my Xbox despite the smaller library and so I bought a 360 shortly after launch. Loved it for the first few years. Since then MS has spent last five years of this generation effectively telling me why I should use the PS3 as my primary console, and now they're trying to make good on the eve of the PS4 and XB1 coming out?
Yeah, good luck with that. I'll wait until the games back it up.
Sony has shuttered a few studios, sure, but most of your examples are independent studios. Incog doesn't exist because the key creative staff left to form Eat Sleep Play and the remaining people the formed Lightbox. The fact that Sony funded a major retail title from each of these even after they all left Incog speaks to how willing they are to support new content if you ask me. Neither title delivered at retail, that's just reality.
Same with Superbot. They're independent and the big retail title Sony funded for them didn't sell or review well. That's life in a competitive industry.
The closure of Liverpool irritates me personally as a big WipEout fan, but I understand that it's rather redundant to have Liverpool open basically just up the road from Evolution, when Evolution houses the regional management on top of a studio that turned out three popular games on the PS3.
Meanwhile Sony has expanded Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, Sony Santa Monica, and Polyphony Digital to two project studios over this past generation, so it's probably pretty safe to assume that they've hired more than they've pink slipped.
More importantly, they doubled down on the successful studios. Uncharted and Killzone were million sellers so Sony expanded those studios. They recognize that GT is 1. a huge part of their core library and 2. that the PS3 production rate was unacceptable, so they've expanded it and given KazYam all the rope in the world to do what he thinks is needed to improve on that. Sony Santa Monica spent much of last generation shouldering the burden for many smaller studios, but now Stig Ausmussen is being given a crack at a new IP while part of SSM is helping with The Order, and you can be sure another part is hard at work on a new iteration in the God of War IP. This generation also saw Sucker Punch go from a contracted independent studio to a Sony subsidiary.
Studios close when their games don't sell. How you replace them is the way you show a commitment to first party development. Sony has pushed a lot of resources into the proven studios within their company over the last several years and are still reaching out to new partner studios (like Tarsier, Sanzaru, and Ready at Dawn).
Picture a different reality where Microsoft had the same kind of mentality.
Would Bungie with Naughty Dog's level of creative freedom have left?
Would Bizarre Creations have been purchased like many thought they might, cementing PGR as a core franchise for MS?
How about Realtime Worlds and Crackdown? How would that IP look right now if Microsoft had employed the three game contract format Sony has used for many of their independent studio partners?
That is the difference in culture I'm talking about. You can't just flip a switch and suddenly start making good games and there aren't any Bungie level studios out there waiting to be bought.
SneakyStephan
Banned
You're seeing ghosts my friend, I never claimed anything other than what was in my post.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Fair enough. I guess an argument can be made for it, even if it's stretching the facts a little.
Anyway, their treatment of CD2 is more than enough of a reason to hate them with a passion. Let's see if they learnt anything when they unveil Crackdown 3. All I know is there had better be transforming vehicles or I'll pop a blood vessel.
Oppo
Member
My impression of the launch situation for both consoles right now, is that Microsoft is essentially betting on 80% "known quantities " with Ryse and Quantum Break being the standout risks, while Sony is doing about one third known quantity, one third Indy buzz, one third new IP (like The Order).
I was talking about that guy who keeps getting quoted over over again. And no, not Drek.
Miles Quaritch
Member
QB isn't launch, neither is The Order.
You're also forgetting about Crimson Dragon? D4? Pretty sure both will be at launch on the One, both are what I'd consider risky IP.
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