Yep.
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Titanfall's exclusivity based on EA's XB1/PS4 forecasts, still feel very comfortable
- Thread starter Canis lupus
- Start date
Yep.
Gears of War 1 only sold like, what ~6 million copies? But was immensely successful because of the extremely low budget of <$10 million.
I think Titanfall can easily hit 6 million. I don't know what the budget is, but it's probably not anything crazy.
Haha, yeah. In the end I can't blame EA, it's a new IP, and with previous information, they might have thought it was a good way to mitigate that risk. It still may be, in fact. But if the series does have real growth potential like many think (and I have still yet to be convinced it's going to be anywhere near as big as some people have been predicting), then it's bad for the future of the series as a competitive FPS entry to be stuck to one console platform. You can never compete with Call of Duty or Battlefield that way.
It's honest from them to state that basically they bet on wrong horse based on what they thought it would happen two years ago.
But I'm sure that Microsoft is willing to pay to keep them happy.
Still IMO if they want to make this a really big brand they need to make a single player campaign and a PS4 version in the future.
But I'm sure that Microsoft is willing to pay to keep them happy.
Still IMO if they want to make this a really big brand they need to make a single player campaign and a PS4 version in the future.
It doesn't have anything visually that makes people think: "I must buy a next-gen console in order to play this amazing looking game!" Not when it's on store shelves on 360 not looking significantly different.
Gears of War had a wow factor for people coming off the PS2/OGXbox/Gamecube era. Titanfall has nothing graphically to hang your hat on as a "next-gen only" experience for people still on the fence about upgrading. And it being crossgen hurts its ability to sell XBO's.
It will sell some XBO's and obviously the XBO version will be better than the 360 version (I fucking hope so for NeoGAF server safety reasons), but it's not going to be a run-away freight train of system seller satisfaction IMO.
Sword Of Doom
Member
Gears of War had a campaign. It was a completely different kind of game. Not everyone is into frenetic fast paced online MP. Not saying it won't be a huge success. I just don't think it's a fair comparison
I feel the same most of the time. Personally if I had a game I was looking to sell, I'd put it on as many platforms as possible. But I'm not EA. Nobody would be approaching me offering loot for exclusivity. As a gamer, exclusive games don't bother me. If I must have it, I'll get it. Though mostly I just end up skipping altogether. At least this one is pc too for those without an xbox.
Diablo Rosso
Member
Probably not. However, they could potentially do what Namco did. In 2005, Namco released this on the 360:
Then, a year later, they released an updated version of the game for PS3 but it was called...
Gears of War was also a 360 exclusive, early on in the console's life, before the install base grew to what it is now.
Titanfall is launching on 360, One, and PC. It will sell just fine.
Woo-Fu
Banned
The only lesson EA/Respawn needed to learn they've already learned. Namely that the bird in hand is worth two in a bush. You have to remember how risk-averse these publicly traded large publishers are, at least the ones still in business.
Guarantees are a lot better than maybes, particularly at the start of a new console generation.
Exactly. Gears of War made people get a x360 and really solidified the system as a viable system to get(killer app). There's no setpieces to awe over. No split screen co-op to have your friends over to show off the new system. When i got Gears and was bringign all the homies to check out the x360.
Unless the contract was something along the lines of: and pay us the absent royalties based on similar attachment rate to the PS4 userbase. So no matter which console sold better, they would make the same amount of money. That would be a genius move in hedging bets.
I H8 Memes
Member
I mentioned before that whoever made the decision to go exclusive should be fired. Everyone who was involved. Looks like some of the executives are already hitting CYA mode.
Majmun
Member
It's just a strange business decision made by EA. They're going to miss out on potential millions of sales by not releasing this game for Ps3 or Ps4 as well. Ps3 is huge in Europe and Ps4 is becoming the prefered nextgen console across the globe.
The franchise could even had a chance to make face in Japan with a Ps3 version, considering how popular mechs are there. But the franchise won't be making a dent in its current state. I personally think that Titanfall will only cater to NA gamers in its current form.
EA should've thought in the long term instead of a current big bag of cash.
The franchise could even had a chance to make face in Japan with a Ps3 version, considering how popular mechs are there. But the franchise won't be making a dent in its current state. I personally think that Titanfall will only cater to NA gamers in its current form.
EA should've thought in the long term instead of a current big bag of cash.
Titanfall doesn't NEED to be a system seller like Gears was, because it's launching on multiple platforms. Two of which have HUGE install bases. Sure, the game is dead to anyone on 360 that doesn't have Live Gold, but there's still a fuckton of people that have Live Gold (isn't it like 20+ million active Gold accounts?).
So is it safe to say that the cloud talk was just a guise then?
I understand if you can't answer that.
LordBaztion
Member
Asuming the original contract was made two years ago, considering Sony's difficult financial situation, wrong decision with PS3; it is not wild to asume that MS would perform better. It seems Sony not just took by surprise MS last year but EA too (PS4 was a good kept secret afterall). Then, last year MS paid a lot of money to keep the exclusivity.
schwabdizzle
Banned
It's actually a good business moving considering its also coming to 360 as well. As a PS4 owner and am a little disappointed but it is what it is.
SEGAvangelist
Member
I agree with most of this, but...
Even CoD: Ghosts on XB1 looks a lot better than the 360 version of the game. We also don't know if things like player count and AI soldier counts are lower on the 360 version (unless this has been announced already and I missed it?). Maybe it's 30 fps in a much lower resolution and is even missing a map or two that the console just cannot handle. It's too soon to make a statement like yours.
Unknown One
Member
Didn't they say something about cloud powering A.I? Laughable really. The A.I is trash and they don't have a good track record for A.I.
ShogunDarius
Member
ugh, suddenly feel like having a Xbox One is a poor idea
Triggerhappytel
Member
EA Partners games are always owned by the developer, such as Brutal Legend, Rock Band and Crysis. However, EA presumably own the publishing rights to Titanfall, and probably for two sequels as well. Clearly they have quite a lot of power over what happens with the game, hence Zampella's sad face tweet regarding full exclusivity.
Doubtful. That's such an easy get-out that it's probably covered in the contract that this game in any present shape or form may not release on Playstation platforms.
gundamkyoukai
Member
The question is how much of the 360 install base going to buy the game .
Before next gen started i expected sales on PS3\360 to be good but looking at UK and USA last gen sales dying much faster than people thought which could hurt the game .
PeskyToaster
Member
I assumed the whole exclusivity deal was made to sell XB1s. The game selling well means nothing to MS if it doesnt move consoles off the shelves. I think MS needs it to be a system seller and it is being marketed as one.
The Cloud powers the AI because it would be ridiculous to have something like that running client side. I think the AI is purposefully weak because that's how the want they game to be balanced, not because the Cloud isn't good enough to handle the AI.
Yeah, MS wants the game to move Ones to justify their moneyhatting, but EA/Respawn couldn't care less about which system people buy the game on, they get their money either way.
Neuromancer
Member
Whistling in the dark
If there was ever a deal to be made for the type of game Titanfall is, going to the system that solds the most fps copies was the smart choice.
Its pretty evident that people love talking about their exclusives. You think titanfall would be talked about as much if it was multiplatform? Look at destiny, its of the same ilk as titanfall, but it gets little to no mindshare in this forum in part because there's no reason to prop it up or shoot it down since its coming for both teh xbone and ps4.
This is like saying oh epic should of thought long term and had Gears of War on the ps3 too instead of a current big bag of cash if we were back in 2006. But we know how that turned out.
EA has a multi-game right of first refusal contract with Respawn, so they'll be handling it for quite a while unless Respawn's staff bails and heads over to Microsoft.
I H8 Memes
Member
It's about the future. It's about beating COD and capturing the casual pick up and play crowd. EA have been force feeding every game they can into a multi-player mode for years now trying to accomplish that. The only reason the MOH games existed was EA trying everything they could to capture that market. EA carried Crytek through 2 games of disappointing sales numbers because they hoped that somehow those games could break into that multi-player market. EA tacked on multi-player to every game they could (ME3, Dead Space, etc.) trying to capture that market.
And now that they finally have the game that can do it...they made it exclusive to the #2 selling console.
A Titanfall 2 will be at least, at least, 2 years away from the launch of Titanfall 1. They will probably want to get the game ship date shifted to later in the year so it will probably be 2 1/2 years before Titanfall will make an appearence on PS4. That is a gigantic opening for another company to capture that market on PS4.
There is no argument to be made for why everyone involved in this decision shouldn't be fired. It was a colossal mistake. After so many years of trying to capture this specific market and throwing billions of dollars in their attempt, they blew it on the #2 console.
KillerDark
Member
That's bs and everyone knows it. MS paid for it to be exclusive, so it's exclusive. Why bother even trying to rationalize it
SEGAvangelist
Member
Oh wow. I did not know this. So EA could keep getting money-hatted for sequels?
Sword Of Doom
Member
Of course it will sell I'm not arguing with that but if it was an Xbox One only game would it sell like GOW did?
Titanfall doesn't look like so significant of a graphics upgrade like going from Halo 2 to Halo 3 was. Yeah it will look better on XBO like CoD does. But is that amount of visual upgrade at the level of "I need to go buy a next gen console to have this experience?" No.
That would be pretty uncharacteristic of EA, especially since they phrased this in the frame of "We made this decision a few years ago." and have basically stated aggressively they're a multiplatform publisher when broached on the future.
They didn't seem to find leaving Mass Effect as an exclusive worthwhile either.
Goodacre0081
Member
im not sure about BF4, every time i check out BF4stats.com the PS4 is pushing around 15K more.
MS sure wasn't shy about it and throwing the deal in PS4 users faces.
Bottom line is that people are not going to subscribe to Live Gold just to get this game. And people aren't buying XBO's that didn't already own 360's. Therefore that 20-25 million total Gold subscribers that already exist across 360 and XBO is the entirely of the potential console audience for this game.
How many of those accounts will buy this game? How many of those accounts will upgrade to the XBO console just to buy this game if they haven't already upgraded?
How many of those accounts will buy this game? How many of those accounts will upgrade to the XBO console just to buy this game if they haven't already upgraded?
No, I don't think it would. If it was One exclusive I could see it selling like maybe 1-2 million copies at launch.
Whoops you went and dropped an IP. Note to other publishers, don't do exclusivity deals with MS this gen. You won't have the audience and you won't be able to publish fully realized versions of the game.
MS exclusives are now depressing because we know that PS4 versions of the same game could be so much better.
MS exclusives are now depressing because we know that PS4 versions of the same game could be so much better.
Maybe in the US. Worldwide I believe PS4 still had the edge for those titles (or possibly very closely behind), and that is after the fact that PS4 launched with one additional FPS (2 actually if you count blacklight retribution).
From all the various comments/tweets/press releases I think EA is sitting pretty with this at the moment (although there's no doubt the current situation is partly confounding their initial sales expectations).
I'm pretty sure that right now things look something like this:
The above is what I believe reading between the lines is where we are and I firmly believe this leaves EA in a pretty good place with likely stong sales of the new IP on PC/360/XB1 in total, I suspect a now really chunky deal with MS for full exclusivity on first game and the option to either:
If I'm right I can perfectly believe EA are "comfortable" with the situation and remain comfortable that despite PS4 almost certainly outperforming their expectations XB1 remains close enough to deliver enough sales combined with 360/PC sales with the prospect of a rosy future should TitanFall one prove a success.
I'm pretty sure that right now things look something like this:
- EA/Respawn agrees 12 month timed exclusivity with MS for XB1 on basis of expecting XB1 to outsell PS4 in US/UK and key console shooter markets
- EA/Respawn figure they'll use the 12 month period to then release on PS4 with sales projections expecting it to outsell XB1 much of Europe/Rest of World and the gap will allow the PS4 to build a bigger base than the faster selling XB1
- After launch XB1 sells within expectation (or close to it) in US and UK but sees far more limited worldwide penetration due to small launch geography and PS4 surprises EA (and MS) by selling way more worldwide, more in UK and a tad more in US. MS has had to endure a lot of negative press since reveal, watch PS4 surprise them in numerous ways and face criticism they have way too few true big exclusives vs Sony as well as see the initial big franchises launch better (technically) on PS4 (CoD, AC and BF)
- MS goes to EA and asks how much for guaranteed exclusivity of IP. EA negotiates this only for TitanFall 1 and I'm sure asks for a huge bump in recompense vs the initial timed exclusive deal. MS agrees based on hype for TitanFall and need for a big exclusive shooter to combat strong PS4 momentum (particularly in US/UK markets). EA no doubt finds itself in a position where it still expects TitanFall to sell well and establish the IP and has received even better deal from MS while retaining freedom to do what they want with the IP post first game
The above is what I believe reading between the lines is where we are and I firmly believe this leaves EA in a pretty good place with likely stong sales of the new IP on PC/360/XB1 in total, I suspect a now really chunky deal with MS for full exclusivity on first game and the option to either:
- release TitanFall 2 quickly on PS4 and XB1 with 12 to 14 month time window (online only, no need for campaign development, engine, etc. in place and reasonably easy port from XB1 or PC codebase to PS4 should make this possible) - while the IP has been established, PS4 owners haven't been made to wait too long, the install base will be much bigger for both PS4 and XB1 meaning if IP is popular they could see big jump in total sales and they know from Mass Effect they can bring across a franchise to Playstation after initially being Xbox exclusive
- they make another lucrative deal for TitanFall 2 to remain exclusive to Xbox but retain control of IP allowing them to demand a deal from MS for each release (assuming the IP does take off and we see multiple releases over the gen) - essentially they could rinse and repeat for as long as MS is willing to pay up (no way to I see EA ever selling the full IP to MS as Epic did with Gears for example).
If I'm right I can perfectly believe EA are "comfortable" with the situation and remain comfortable that despite PS4 almost certainly outperforming their expectations XB1 remains close enough to deliver enough sales combined with 360/PC sales with the prospect of a rosy future should TitanFall one prove a success.
SwiftDeath
Member
I'm curious if the marketing budget for Titanfall is going to dwarf the dev budget. It's just as important as you have to recoup that as well
lol whats up with this port begging. Sony exclusives are now depressing because we know the PC versions of the same game could be so much better!
Keep in mind that Sony implemented those online passes in all their published games for 2 years or so and also tried going digital only with the PSP Go. I think the failure of both of those attempted DRM controls helped convinced them to not pursue it for the PS4.
Sword Of Doom
Member
How about Titan Fall not coming to Playstation is a big FUck You from EA for the whole DRM thing. That's tinfoily right?
AstroNut325
Member
I wish I could find that GIF where Joel (TLoU) is arrogant Sony and the bandits are gamers. The picture two years ago was quite... different.
On GTTV at E3 Peter Moore was pretty clear that the reason they signed up for this deal in the first place was that Microsoft had a really good track record of launching a mega shooter brand at the start of the generation (Halo, Gears, and to an extent helping grow Call of Duty) and that they would like to be that brand this time.
Given EA is very good at growing IPs, but has had trouble launching them, this works out well for them to have Microsoft do the leg work for the first game and then take it to everywhere they can sell it afterwards.
You will notice Vince didn't at all sound upset about the idea of the game being a timed exclusive in the first place since I imagine they had the same idea in mind.
I bet EA recouped the marketing budget and then some, when MS paid them for exclusivity.
I hope we get all the juicy details of this later in the year, because it's fascinating.
MrCompletely
Member
Serious question - isn't it a bit early to call the winner of the generation based on the first two months of what can be an 8 - 10 year lifecycle?
I wouldn't go that far. The XBO is still selling well, likely within comfortable range of whatever their initial projections were and regardless of what place it may actually be in the market as a result. The Xbox brand has never secured majority share of console marketplace yet has still been a stable breeding ground for this kind of core-gamer friendly shooter franchise. I don't know that their projections had to have the XBO selling any better than the 360 for it to be a fairly safe bet, and they hedged that bet anyway by putting the game on multiple platforms.