Did PS4's focus on gaming prove to make a difference between it and Xbox One?

V

VanWinkle

Member
This is not a console war thread.


So, from February on, PS4 has strongly shown to be a "games-first" system. All of these gamer-central features made us excited, especially after Xbox One's announcement seemed to indicate that it was an all media device...with a little bit of gaming.

Flash forward to today. Almost every gaming feature the PS4 does is replicated on the Xbox One...even with some unique ones (the free dedicated servers for devs, system-wide challenges, doing something else while waiting for a match, etc). In addition to that, it ALSO has the broad media and entertainment functionality that PS4 is really lacking or barebones in. And the actual games? There are far more launch exclusives on the supposed "media-first" device than the "gaming-first" console. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I love my PS4. There are great features. The decidedly more powerful system, the seamless sharing and streaming experience, plugging any standard headphones into the controller and routing all TV audio to it, Remote Play, and more. But I can't help but feel like this "gaming-first" mentality was for nought, as the Xbox One has more launch exclusives, just as many gaming features, AND all of the media functionality. The Xbox One is more expensive, and not everybody wants a Kinect. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about sales. I'm just wondering why it seems that the gaming-first mentality didn't really prove to make a substantial difference between the PS4 and Xbox One.

Edit: Talking about whether Sony's focus on games since Feb. has led to a real difference between what PS4 and XB1 were seen as before and what they have ended up being at their launches.
 
Doesn't xbone have like 2 more launch games than PS4 not counting ryse because that's sucky?

Not to mention the extras are dinky XBL timed exclusives
 
the Xbox One isn't even out yet.
The PS4 has been out less than 72 hours.

Can we have this conversation 15 months from now?
 
To answer your question: yes, it means the Xbox One has the upper hand for people who want games and multimedia functionality.
 
Xbox One hasn't even gone on sale yet. As for focusing on games, I'd say the Xbox One did that infinitely better than the PS4 so far. And managed to excel in the UI/OS and multimedia aspects. Where it fails is price.
 
It's tough during launch but a console lasts a long time, and if it can do (gaming) things better then it'll be worth the initial wait.
 
Doubt it made as much of a difference as that price point and whatever fans that feigned disgust at the original XOne policy.

If we're talking exclusively games, Titanfall trumps any exclusive Sony has for the first 6 months (I love me some Infamous, but Titanfall is obviously getting way more coverage/buzz/hype which should translate into more sales.)

The focus on gaming is something that is going to come to fruition not at launch, but much further down the road.
 
The PS4 is a great gaming console, the Xbox One is set to be used by my whole family as much more though and in the end appears set up to provide much more value for my use case. If it can deliver on that is all that remains to be seen.
 
Focus on games is just marketing speak. Aside from tech specifications, one console does actually offer an equal focus on entertainment - but does the suggestion of Sony's PR branding of its console ("best place for gamers") somehow diminish the idea that there is no place for gamers on the Xbox?
 
Xbox One has better launch titles, but at this point XBL is the dealbreaker for me, I just got out of a 6 year relationship with that worthless broad. I would truly love to own both in the future. I need to experience Lococycle and D4 in this lifetime.
 
It's pretty undeniable. Killzone is pretty overall the Kinect and media features of Xbox One make it much more of a mass market device than PS4. Pre-orders and initial sales are insane though for PS4 so if word of mouth and the $400 price have anything to do with it I think Sony still have the upper hand. MS has pretty much no exclusives announced till at least next fall (as has been the case for the last few years) whereas Sony at least has exclusive content for Destiny, Infamous, Driveclub and Gaikai coming soon and potential for Yakuza and other Japanese stuff to be localized.

I have seen Titanfall.
 
sI really don't see xbone really have an upper hand on media. With everyone cutting the cord and using dvr most of the feature will not work. Really if ps4 had ESPN and hbogo they would be about even. Hbogo is rumor to be coming. Still either will replace an appletv....

The biggest thing xbone has is kinect but Ms still hasn't shown why its needed in the box.
 
Maybe this is strange to some people but being about games has little to do with launch titles.

A new console is about investment of entertainment over 5-10 years. It only matters a little what comes out at launch but more important what it gives you over it's life time.
 
VanWinkle said:
No, but the first impression is important, and, on first impression, XB1 doesn't look like it's any less for gamers than PS4, only it does more.
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The key differences are price and performance, which are both in favour of the PS4. It could be argued that Sony's focus on games as opposed to things like motion control (e.g. Kinect) and media centre stuff (no DLNA/MP3 at launch) were what allowed them to develop those price and performance advantages. I think the DRM situation left a bad taste in people's mouths as well.

In terms of lineup, we saw last gen that having the better version of 3rd party games is a big factor for consumers, so that also needs to be considered when looking at the launch lineups. Many of the biggest launch games like COD, BF and AC are significantly better on one of the next gen platforms.

I'm curious now to see what sort of numbers Microsoft do in NA. Obviously Sony got off to a great start, but we don't know how much of that is widespread enthusiasm for the platform vs simple console fatigue. It might be that the XBOne sets or comes close to setting records as well.
 
Vincent Alexander said:
I agree....but maybe not 15 months. I'm game for a discussion in the next 2 months.
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Firstly, both consoles have poor exclusives. Ryse is a dud and so is 10 fps deadrising 3. Forza is basically forza 4 with a higher resolution and less features. On the PlayStation side, we have knack which is nothing to write home about, Resogun(the best exclusive on either system) and a mediocre killzone. This notion that the xbox has a better launch lineup is laughable at best. It's not better at all.

Secondly, exclusives are not why a majority of people are buying the system at launch. It's the multiplats. Battlefield, COD and fifa will outsell every console exclusive.

Finally, you dont know what a bad launch lineup is because if you did, you wouldn't be complaining.
 
After using my PS4 this week, I have a feeling the XB1 experience will be much better, from a frontend perspective. That is to say, as good a job PS4 has done fixing the problems of the PS3 experience, 360 is still leagues ahead in my opinion. And from what I can tell, XB1 is everything that made the 360 great and more.

Also, after exhausting the PS4 launch lineup, te XB1 appears to have the better set of games.

Microsoft's problem is how they communicated the XB1. Or the lack of communication, really. I suspect XB1, despite costing more and being the weaker hardware of the two, is probably the better frontend experience.
 
I don't think the games really did anything.

When major news outlets (not the gaming sites the hardcores frequent) started posting articles about XBone's Reveal/E3 implosion, PS4 being the cheaper and more powerful system, and XBone continually changing their focus.....the casual crowd probably saw all that and said "Maybe MS isn't ready, but Sony sure seems to be getting a lot of positive press, maybe they are the company I should back".

I really don't think the games had much to do with it in terms of sales, however it was Sony's focus on making a gaming machine that kept the positive news flowing.
 
I've been telling people since the Xbox One was announced to not jump to any conclusions and that we wouldn't even begin to know what either system was about until right around launch time. We just got different pieces of the picture over the last 8 months and the picture looks way different now than it did then. It was silly to think one system was not going to have games or the other to not have media capabilities. Anyone who bought into that was setting themselves up to be disappointed.
 
TheCloser said:
Firstly, both consoles have poor exclusives. Ryse is a dud and so is 10 fps deadrising 3. Forza is basically forza 4 with a higher resolution and less features. On the PlayStation side, we have knack which is nothing to write home about, Resogun(the best exclusive on either system) and a mediocre killzone. This notion that the xbox has a better launch lineup is laughable at best. It's not better at all.

Secondly, exclusives are not why a majority of people are buying the system at launch. It's the multiplats. Battlefield, COD and fifa will outsell every console exclusive.

Finally, you dont know what a bad launch lineup is because if you did, you wouldn't be complaining.
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Pump the brakes, my good sir or madam! Did you quote the right person? I'm not complaining of anything. Simply agreeing with some others that it is too early to have a conversation about this, especially as the Xbox hasn't even launched yet.
 
Yeah, absolutely. You just have to look at the sale figures. 1 million gamers have bought the PS4, but none of them have bought an Xbone.
 
The entire "for the gamers" thing is basically a gift to them from Microsoft. In and of itself, it's a meaningless non-statement. Can you imagine if the PS2 had tried to sell itself on the basis of being "for the gamers"? That would have been absurd; it's a PlayStation, who in the world else would the bloody thing have been for?

The point of it was that it disrupted Microsoft's attempts to reverse their own brand messaging after the E3 debacle, preventing them from reaching the point where they could engage in "percussive" advertising themselves. They already had to spend millions of dollars - and more importantly, minutes of time that they had consumer's attention - letting potential buyers know that the things they had told them were no longer true. The only thing Sony had to do was use a tagline that held the veiled implication that all the bad things people heard about the X-Box One were still true, and Microsoft was essentially stuck in damage control the entire run-up to release.

The thing to hope for now is that they "live the lie", for lack of a better term. As soon as they decided that being "for the gamers" was their point of differentiation, they set out doing things to reinforce that image (the indie outreach, the fan port-request initiative, etc.) even if they were only token efforts. That sort of behavior can become ingrained: if, moving forward, they look at their decisions in the context of "which option reinforces the image we've created for ourselves?" it can, in a weird way, actually elevate itself from a matter of marketing message to corporate policy.

As for whether or not it was an effective marketing message? Of course. There was low (virtually no) risk behind it, a guaranteed payoff (in disrupting Microsoft's message), and they were at the point in their advertising where they were focusing on percussive marketing anyway - that is, simply reiterating over and over again that their product is on sale to maintain consumer interest. They would have had to just go with some other generic marketing message (see: "If it were any more real, it would be real" and "Playtested in the future") anyway.
 
I went with PS4 because Sony has better first-parties, IPs, and first-party support later in generation. But that doesn't mean I'm not a little disappointed that "games-first" hasn't really amounted to a substantial difference in the beginning.

outunderthestars said:
OP says this isn't a console war thread, then follows that sentence with a console war post
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Can you point that out to me? I'm not instigating a war. I'm discussing a real lack of differences despite a clear difference in initial marketing and mindset.
 
A little to early to make this call...
Infamous and Driveclub were intended to be launch
Xbone reversed their DRM stuff
Ps4 has remote play with the vita
Not sure if the kinect was at the cost of ram for xbox
 
outunderthestars said:
OP says this isn't a console war thread, then follows that sentence with a console war post
Click to expand...

Not at all, he's talking about how Sony presented themselves - the presentations at the time were quite distinct in terms of focus, although MS somewhat made up for that afterwards.

MrMephistoX said:
It's pretty undeniable. Killzone is pretty overall the Kinect and media features of Xbox One make it much more of a mass market device than PS4. Pre-orders and initial sales are insane though for PS4 so if word of mouth and the $400 price have anything to do with it I think Sony still have the upper hand. MS has pretty much no exclusives announced till at least next fall (as has been the case for the last few years) whereas Sony at least has exclusive content for Destiny, Infamous, Driveclub and Gaikai coming soon and potential for Yakuza and other Japanese stuff to be localized.

I have seen Titanfall.
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This is how I see it as well but I'm not sure if word of mouth carries over the same information to casuals, though price is a major issue.
 
SPE said:
Yeah, absolutely. You just have to look at the sale figures. 1 million gamers have bought the PS4, but none of them have bought an Xbone.
Click to expand...

KAzQTvR.png
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HA! HA!
 
Sony could have easily shut MS out by releasing Puppeteer, Beyond and GT6 on PS4. It's fair to say they have more momentum, but again, it would have been a resounding victory at launch with some decent games. Now, I think MS could slightly best them on this front where as before it didn't seem like there was anything that could be done.
 
breakfuss said:
Sony could have easily shut MS out by releasing Puppeteer, Beyond and GT6 on PS4. It's fair to say they have more momentum, but again, it would have been a resounding victory at launch with some decent games. Now, I think MS could slightly best them on this front where as before it didn't seem like there was anything that could be done.
Click to expand...

Oh ya, that would have been so easy to have those games out on the PS4. Why not throw in Uncharted 4, Final Fantasy, and God of War too while we're at it. Sooooo easy.
 
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