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[nib95]

Wished Andrew would have re-written this year's E3 script as well.

The funny thing is, the worst part of Sony's conference didn't even properly follow script. According to EviLore himself.

I saw the teleprompter. Bendis was completely off-script for almost his entire segment and spent way more time on-stage than he was supposed to.

 

[Neuromancer]

I think we did pretty well at E3 this year.

As for the competition, well ...

Around mid 2007, WE rose from depths many predicted would be impossible to emerge from.

Its certainly possible for a company to turn its fortunes around in a relatively short time span.

The key to success IMHO is to deliver what consumers want. Sometimes consumers have to punish corporations that forget that, ourselves included circa 2006.

Wait do you work for Sony now?

 

[HiddenForbiddenHolyGround]

The funny thing is, the worst part of Sony's conference didn't even properly follow script. According to EviLore himself.

That's interesting. Poor guy was probably excited but I got very bored and ran out of enthusiasm and nothing they showed after could bring me back.

 

[Final Verdict]

This years was fine honestly. Could have been better sure but at least it wasn't as bad as microsoft's presentation.

How was Microsoft's Conference this year bad??
Sure there were a fair bit of CG trailers towards the end, but their messaging was excellent, and they showed a ton of games....

Sony's Conference was amazing at the start and finish, just had too much TV&Media crap in the middle....

 

[Liberty4all]

Wait do you work for Sony now?

I communicate with several folks at SCEA ensuring that important PlayStation related topics on GAF and community feedback are seen.

I'm still a PlayStation MVP though ... One of the benefits of which I'm a little more free to state my opinions than a regular employee would be.

 

[Neuromancer]

I communicate with several folks at SCEA ensuring that important PlayStation related topics on GAF and community feedback are seen.

I'm still a PlayStation MVP though ... One of the benefits of which I'm a little more free to state my opinions than a regular employee would be.

Oh ok, I thought maybe you'd been promoted or something, haha.

 

[Game Guru]

Well I wouldn't necessarily say it's over but they are definitely not going to stage a miraculous comeback and take first place. It's not happening.

You're forgetting a couple things when you are comparing the current gen to the last gen.

1. Last gen the PS3 actually had a fairly compelling secondary function: BluRay player. Something that many people were willing to shell out for when the console was released because it was by far the cheapest BluRay player out there. There is no current value add for MS on a hardware perspective.
   
   
2. Last gen both consoles had unique architectures lending specific advantages in certain types of computation. The 360s unified ram with EDRam buffer and (comparatively) robust GPU meant developers were able to easily utilize the system and maximize after effects and post processing effects like Anti Aliasing and complex shader systems. The Cell Processor was somewhat handicapped by a weaker GPU and split ram but it had an extreme advantage when it came to simultaneous computation and general bandwidth because of the SPUs on the cell. These were, however, relatively difficult to utilize at first but as the generation went on the first party studios were able to blow people away with their graphical prowess (Naughty Dog, Quantic Dream) and, by the estimation of many, completely trounced anything available on the competing platform. Whereas in this generation there is literally no possibility for the XB1 to have any sort of performance advantage. It is literally weaker on every single hardware aspect by a considerable margin. This is exacerbated even further by the fact that both companies adopted a similar architecture this time except that MS decided to play it safe with DDR3 and use a small esram buffer which cost them a considerable amount of performance via loss of space on their GPU and a bandwidth bottleneck to and from the CPU/GPU. This decision ensured that the PS4 (despite the XB1s very modestly higher clocked GPU) will outperform the XB1 literally 100% (assuming appropriately optimized coding of course) of the time. So there is no recovery performance wise this gen for the weaker console.
   
   
3. Sony heavily invested in first party and "second party" studios last generation. By all accounts they already had a considerably large offering going into the gen. Strong first party has been a consistent focus for Sony. This is not true of MS. Their first party studios are few and those that do exist are seemingly farmed for sequels (see 343i or Black Tusk being forced to abandon their new IP for Gears of War) or slowly lose any and all pedigree they once had (Rare). Instead MS historically relied on exploiting their market share advantage to gain preferential treatment for multiplatform releases. A strategy that is consistent across all branches of their company and, despite being incredibly anti consumer, is relatively effective. It's the business equivalent of being a big stack bully in poker. The problem is, it doesn't really work well unless you're the big stack. So far this gen they aren't and as a result they are struggling to buy and lock even more content to their console as an impetus for people to purchase. The problem with this is that this is still very short sighted compared to investing in first party studios/content especially considering the undoubtedly higher cost now that they are the underperforming platform. They had a chance to turn things around and start investing in those first parties but instead they've decided to double down on their anti consumer strategy instead. This is exacerbated even further by lower performance on multiplatform releases. Due to the power performance many are opting to disregard additional or timed content in favor of higher graphical fidelity or superior performance. So , in short it's not having the effect they want. Unfortunately it has come to the point that even if MS were to start investing in first party content today we wouldn't see any fruits from that investment for at least another three years. The lack of first party content really stung MS gamers at the end of last generation especially since it seemed to coincide with Sony truly hitting it's stride with it's first party teams (Last of Us, Beyond, Uncharted, etc etc). That's not something 360 gamers have forgotten when deciding on their next console platform.
   
   
4. Unlike the previous generation consoles MS designed it's entire console and dare I say their entire long term strategy around the appeal of a motion controlled interface device that very few had any compelling desire for. They were hoping to capitalize on the casual gaming market boom that we saw last gen via their new Kinect but failed to realize that (as booms tend to do) it has largely ceased to exist in the console market. They believed the Kinect would resurrect the market somehow and were banking on the appeal of the device. This was also made even worse by their decision to seemingly emphasize and focus on multimedia capabilities (TV OneGuide, Skype, etc) that appear to only appeal to small and by all accounts shrinking portion of the market due to the multitude of other devices that also fulfill those needs often times even better than MS's attempt. So, when Sony offered the market what it actually wanted (a more powerful gaming focused console) we saw a mass migration of what was once the Xbox core audience. So to sum up, in an attempt to appeal to and corner a new audience they compelled a significant number of their existing audience to leave and in so doing failed to establish themselves in the new market they were after. That is not something you recover from in a few years and at the current sales trajectory a few years will be plenty of time for the hardware sales gap to become impossible to recover from for MS.
   

So I hope this explanation was sufficiently "enlightened" for you. At the very least I'm confident it is well informed.

Good post, and you didn't even have to go into detail regarding the strength of the PlayStation brand in Europe. You couldn't count out the PS3 based on those territories' collective support alone. Microsoft has no such territory to fall back on. It's the USA and the UK. This generation? Sony is leading well out in front in what were previously Xbox bulwarks. Add Europe and Japan into the mix and yes, Xbox One is guaranteed to be chasing Sony for this gen barring a miracle/cock-up of epic proportions.

Great posts explaining why the situation with the XB1 is different than the situation that the PS3 had. Sony made its bed and lied in it last generation, but Sony also made strides last generation to actually fix their relationship among consumers in regards to their consoles. In a single console generation, Sony went from being an also ran with the launch of the PS3 to being the premiere console with the launch of the PS4.

The only company between the other two who even seems to be even be approaching the same sort of turn around which Sony had last generation is Nintendo by continuing to be different from the other two. Nintendo will likely end up with third place this generation, but at least they are trying to win over their core in a similar way that Sony tried to win over their core last generation. I am more hopeful about Nintendo's future in the console market than MS's future in the console market.

Now this isn't to say that MS can't turn things around for the XB1, but they will need to turn XB1 around in terms of mindshare rather than marketshare like Sony had to do with the PS3 and like Nintendo is trying to do with the Wii U. PS4 is guaranteed first place because of MS and Nintendo's screw ups. At this point, I've been convinced to buy a PS4 and a Wii U in terms of consoles, but not an XB1 yet.

 

[Final Verdict]

I'm always wary when someone mentions a multibillion dollar corporation needing to earn back trust. When a friend screws you over, your friend needs to earn back trust.

But, as cheesy and cliché as this may sound, corporations are not people. Sony and Microsoft aren't our friends. They exist to make money off of us. "For the gamers" is a PR point to make it seem like they're there for us and have our best interests in mind, pure and simple.

Therefore, it's perfectly okay for someone to vote with their wallet and support one side over another for any reason if they choose to, but we shouldn't be pretending that either of them want to take us out for ice cream, or provide us a product or service out of the goodness of their hearts.

The Xbox brand was tarnished due to the greediness of people involved in the business decisions, I realize this. But personally, I'm not going to deny myself an experience on the console just because of some missteps from people who aren't involved in the product anymore.

I like to think they're in the middle of learning their lesson, that they can't just do what they want when they want without repercussion. They've made a lot of changes recently, both policy-wise and organization-wise. That's why I feel okay with owning their new console right now and supporting them in the same capacity that I support Sony and Nintendo. If I detect them slipping back into their old ways, then maybe I'll reconsidering supporting them further. But I feel like I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll repeat their same mistakes again.

I agree.
And they probably will eventually repeat their mistakes again eventually, but not for a long time again.

It is not until you are in a position of power that you forget the lessons that got you there to start with, and it is not until you have fallen that you can see the mistakes that your arrogance brought about.
Pride always comes before fall, and humility before glory.

I think you could see these tale tale signs at the PS4 reveal where some of the Sony execs were admitting to some of the mistakes they had made with the PS3, and at the X1 reveal where Microsoft's Xbox marketing guy was talking about how he thought the X1 could possibly sell like a billion units.

 

[RexNovis]

At least it explains their lacklustre display this E3.

I don't see how anyone can just dismiss that the Sony conference as "lacklustre"(sic). It undisputedly had it's lulls but there were also a ton of games shown.

I nearly shit my pants at that No Man's Sky gameplay. "Your own unique journey into infinity" still gives me chills.

We had reveals for Bloodborne (which was unfortunately spoiled ahead of time) and a reveal for the remaster of one of the most critically and consumer acclaimed games ever, Grim Fandango.

We had what everyone thought was a CG title reveal trailer for Uncharted 4: A Theif's End and was later to be revealed as an excerpt running in game.

There were loads of indie games shown including a new title from the composer and art director behind Journey, Abzu. Also a load of exclusive games from Devolver Digital.

That really bizarre ultra violent looking Suda 51 exclusive Let It Die.

An Order:1886 reveal finally showing off a werewolf. I get that not everyone is excited for the Order but the setting and the emphasis on story make this game seem like it was built for me.

There were gameplay reveals for Mortal Kombat X and Batman: Arkham Knight .

Let's also not forget the White PS4 Destiny bundle that set GAF on fire followed shortly by the open registration for the Destiny alpha that blew pretty much everyone away.

The best part of the conference was the fact that the vast majority of games they showed are coming out within a year's time. This is in stark contrast to the MS conference that except for a few titles that were already known (Forza Horizon and Halo:MCC) all the games were either third parties with exclusive content or trailers for games that showed no gameplay, are years away from release and likely completely unrepresentative of the actual game (Crackdown, Scalebound, Halo 5.) surprisingly the one area I thought MS excelled at this year were Indie titles. I am soooo jelly about Ori and Cuphead. :'( but I digress.

So like I said, both Ms and Sony conferences had their faults but I wouldn't really consider either "lacklustre."

They're clearly still far too happy with themselves making the obvious choices, and having their competition falter around them. You didn't screw up, we get it. Message to Sony: Get over it.

What?!? Where did this even come from? Please show me exactly what made you come to this conclusion because I did not see that on display at all. But maybe I was just to blinded by the thoughts of my own unique journey into infinity