Support NeoGAF

[turtlepowa]

Spider-man also made over $180,000,000 in just 3 days and that's only at 3 million sales. The game sold over 13 million. They made every dime back and a boatload more

I am not talking about revenues or if Sony makes money with it. I was talking about the reason why those games sold quite good. I would like to see the numbers with the marketing budget of most the other games.

 

[Shifty1897]

This is a generous bending of the truth. The fact of the matter is, early adopters determine the buying trend of the general consumer, and early adopters value console exclusives over just about any other reason to buy a console.

 

[DaMonsta]

Why does anyone need to make a thread about something that's pretty much an accepted fact? COD sells consoles. Fifa sells consoles. No one denies this, hence why no one actually talks about it.

Exclusives on the other hand. Their relevance to console sales is constantly debated. Hence why there are threads about it like this one.

So like I said, it’s just fanboy fights.

The overwhelming majority of people playing games don’t give a shit.

 

[Vawn]

You choose one console over the other based off the differences, not the similarities.

If I can play Assassin's Creed on both PlayStation and Xbox, but I also want to play God of War, I'll get the machine that can play both.

For people who only play Call of Duty and Madden - sure it doesn't matter much.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

No it’s not pointless. If people were buying PS4 for exclusives then it would show in the game sales.

We see it on switch, it’s the exact opposite of PS4/Xbox. The majority of games sold are exclusives. 3rd party sales are low.

God of War breaking hardware sales records doesn't show this? Software sales being in the tens of millions for exclusives don't show this?

3rd party sales on the Switch are low because they've always had shit 3rd party support. Nintendo have never been the go to console for the big multiple games.

 

[Hobbygaming]

I am not talking about revenues or if Sony makes money with it. I was talking about the reason why those games sold quite good. I would like to see the numbers with the marketing budget of most the other games.

Either way you cut it, the game made hundreds of millions

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

So like I said, it’s just fanboy fights.

The overwhelming majority of people playing game’s don’t give a shit.

The overwhelming majority of people aren't on this forum having this debate so they're irrelevant. Either stick to the topic or leave

 

[turtlepowa]

Either way you cut it, the game made hundreds of millions

I never doubted that.

 

[DaMonsta]

God of War breaking hardware sales records doesn't show this? Software sales being in the tens of millions for exclusives don't show this?

God of War didn’t break a “hardware” record it’s software.

Exclusive games sales are a very small portion of games sales. Those are the facts

3rd party sales on the Switch are low because they've always had shit 3rd party support. Nintendo have never been the go to console for the big multiple games.

So exclusives matter on Nintendo in a way they don’t elsewhere? Isn’t that what I said?

 

[LittleBigGamer]

Not true.

Nintendo systems typically have the best exclusives with almost every game getting 80s and 90s scores. Yet their consoles sales are hit and miss pending which generation it is.

They had them until SNES. Then PS consoles had better exclusives.

 

[Moogle11]

Never seen a thread/post talking about how Activision sells consoles.

We see what they beat selling games are, why don’t we have countless threads and posts about them like we do “exclusives”??

Partly fanboys wanting to console war as exclusives are prime ammunition in those battles.

But if you did a poll here, or pretty much on any gaming forum, I guarantee you that a strong majority would say they mostly play single player games. Exclusives are the bulk of great AAA single players focused games, with some exceptions like Witcher 3, RDR2 etc. The big AAA third parties are all focused mostly on online multiplayer with many games having no SP or a very short campaign that's not worth $60 for people who don't play PVP. Forums just cater more to hardcore gamers and hardcore gamers tend to be more focused on single player stuff. The serious MP gamers are often mostly just playing

I don't care a lick about any of these companies, but spend a big chunk of my time playing Sony and Nintendo first party games as those are just the cream of the crop (along with things like Witcher, RDR etc.) of the type of single player games I like to play and discuss. If MS starts having more single player stuff that appeals to me with all their recent acquistions I'll spend more of my time and money on their games (on PC most likely).

That said, CoD etc. do sell consoles--but in the general sense. Casuals/mainstream gamers want to play CoD, GTA, Madden, Fifa etc.--but they can play those on either Xbox or Playstation (and most also on PC) so they don't necessarily sell specific brands of consoles. The real casuals that only play those games probably just buy whatever console their more serious gamer friends are already gaming on so they can play together. Some are just brand loyal and just stick with whatever they're used to even if they don't care about exclusives. And then you have a chunk of gamers that mostly play the multiplat stuff, but also want to branch out and those folk will likely look and see whether they want God of War/Uncharted/Spider-man et al. or Halo/Forza/Gears et al. as side dishes to their CoD and GTA and Fifa.

 

[DaMonsta]

The overwhelming majority of people aren't on this forum having this debate so they're irrelevant. Either stick to the topic or leave

The debate is about how much the exclusives matter to console sales overall.

Obviously they matter here. Lots of fanboys here

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

But not many high budget AAAs that most people buy, so it would be very interesting since many Sony games are also high budget AAAs.

Unless you can somehow filter out all the AA games and indies too then good luck getting anywhere with those numbers

 

[DForce]

The person that I quoted originally was talking about the month.

You replied to me and told me it was only for the month. I said it was for the life time of the console.

 

[Dragon_Rocks]

I am one of the gamers who buys consoles based on the exclusives it has and also buy other 3rd party games that come on it. I got Xbox for Ninja Giaden, X360 for Ninja Gaiden 2, Bioshock and Gears of War. I didn't buy XBone because none of its exclusives appealed to me. I always buy PS and Nintendo systems for their exclusives. The choice of buying 3rd party games goes by which console has more content and/or better performance.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

The debate is about how much the exclusives matter to console sales overall.

Obviously they matter here. Lots of fanboys here

They also matter in reality. The numbers are there. You just keep ignoring them for whatever reason.

And of course you have to use to the go to "they only matter to fanboys" argument when proven wrong

 

[Moogle11]

Why does anyone need to make a thread about something that's pretty much an accepted fact? COD sells consoles. Fifa sells consoles. No one denies this, hence why no one actually talks about it.

CoD, Fifa etc. sell gaming hardware. They don't necessarily sell specific consoles. For instance, almost all of the people I played CoD with on 360 last generation jumped to PS4 this time and play CoD their now. So there are clearly are other things that factor in to deciding which console to buy. For some of those guys, including me, it was exclusives as they got PS3s late last gen when releases were drying up on 360 and MS focused so much on Kinect and things like Halo 4 and Gears Judgement were disappointing to us. We got hooked on Uncharted, TLOU, MGS4 etc. Add in the botched Xbox One reveal, being $100 more with less power and a Kinect we didn't want and it was a no brainer. For others, that stuff was all that mattered--along with us early adopter friends already being on PS4 by the time they were ready to buy a next gen console--and exclusives didn't matter at all to them. But it was still more than just CoD as they could have stuck with Xbox and still played it.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

God of War didn’t break a “hardware” record it’s software.

Exclusive games sales are a very small portion of games sales. Those are the facts


So exclusives matter on Nintendo in a way they don’t elsewhere? Isn’t that what I said?

God of War is the reason they broke hardware record sales in April. That's a fact.

 

[DaMonsta]

They also matter in reality. The numbers are there. You just keep ignoring them for whatever reason.

And of course you have to use to the go to "they only matter to fanboys" argument when proven wrong

The numbers say only a very small fraction of game sales are exclusives and even those sales are exaggerated by bundles.

I’m not the one in denial here.

 

[Patterson]

It’s really simple why exclusives are important - since both systems carry much of the same games, they each need to differentiate and attract customers to their systems, hence, console exclusives, or VR, or controller form factor, services, etc.

 

[turtlepowa]

Unless you can somehow filter out all the AA games and indies too then good luck getting anywhere with those numbers

Unfortunately only Sony knows, but it would still be interesting to see how many from the 11 games are actually PS4 exclusive games.

 

[DESTROYA]

What happened to the OP and his “brilliant” analysis of the fallacy of exclusives?
Post BS sales numbers and then run away, great analysis /:

 

[Paasei]

It is the most important for me personally. The exclusives are the sole reason for me to get a console.

So, yes, I do care a lot about exclusives. And considering my wallet isn't infinite, I go with PlayStation and Nintendo, although I skipped the Wii, 3DS and Wii U. But I do have a Switch and the older consoles are being used often enough.

Everything that is multi-platform, is being played on my PC

 

[Aidah]

There is no fallacy, and your source is bad with verifiably way off numbers.
You also can't call it a fallacy then say "except for Nintendo".

Sony and Nintendo are among the very top of publishers in terms of revenue despite only publishing on their platforms.

Every game released out there is only bought by the minority over a console's life cycle, even an anomaly like GTAV. Knowing that, putting too much emphasis on the very top like it's the only relevant thing becomes much less meaningful.

Saying that exclusive content doesn't matter is probably even more ridiculous than saying it's the only thing that matters.

Content is probably only going to become even more important of a platform differentiator.

Generally, the only thing that's irrelevant when picking between two things is the similarities.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

The numbers say only a very small fraction of game sales are exclusives and even those sales are exaggerated by bundles.

I’m not the one in denial here.

You're already proven wrong about bundles with Spiderman and God of War. Both of which ranked without the need for bundles

All of these arguments against the important of exclusives can be used with multiplats

Low install base? Same with multiplats

Exaggerated by bundles? Same with multiplats

 

[Hendrick's]

It's definitely hard to measure with sales alone, but I think that the importance of exclusives is certainly overblown in enthusiast crowds.

They are certainly important, just look at what Microsoft is doing with all the studio acquisitions, but I am not convinced they are the most important thing.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Unfortunately only Sony knows, but it would still be interesting to see how many from the 11 games are actually PS4 exclusive games.

What 11 games?

 

[OneShotThrill]

Who was talinkg about 2009? Sony already cut the price mid 2007 and that was the time i was talking about. Even for the same price or lets say 50 bucks more of course you choose the PS3, because it brings much more value than just a player. You can say whatever you want, but millions of PS3s were sold mainly because of its Blu Ray drive.

Yeah, because after Sony's massive price drops it was the cheapest Blu Ray player on the market and people bought it like crazy just for this. It was the insider tip for every movie fan worldwide.

No YOU said MASSIVE price drop. That was not in 2007. It was in 2009. The first price cut was an act of desperation to sell the console. Most people didn't even have HD TVs in 2007. Where were all these millions of movie fan PS3 Blu-ray buyers in 2007? X360 had a price cut and was absolutely killing it with Halo 3 and CODMW. The PS3 sales were still very humble.

 

[DaMonsta]

You're already proven wrong about bundles with Spiderman and God of War. Both of which ranked without the need for bundles

Being ranked in NPD has very little to do with overall worldwide game sales.

I’m not sure why you guys keep being that up

All of these arguments against the important of exclusives can be used with multiplats

Low install base? Same with multiplats

Exaggerated by bundles? Same with multiplats

Sure but no one is over exaggerating the importance of those games to console sales so those arguments don’t need to be made.

 

[Fbh]

One thing is why people are buying consoles.
Another is what is making them decide between and and the other in a scenario where you have different devices from different manufacturers that share like 99% of their library.

Historically power has also not won "gens" and price has always been important. So according to OP the way to instantly win a gen is to release a cheap console with no exclusives but all the big third party games. I wonder why no one has done that so far

 

[DaMonsta]

One thing is why people are buying consoles.
Another is what is making them decide between and and the other in a scenario where you have different devices from different manufacturers that share like 99% of their library.

Historically power has also not won "gens" and price has always been important. So according to OP the way to instantly win a gen is to release a cheap console with no exclusives but all the big third party games. I wonder why no one has done that so far[\b]

That’s pretty much what PS4 did this gen.

 

[Moogle11]

It's definitely hard to measure with sales alone, but I think that the importance of exclusives is certainly overblown in enthusiast crowds.

They are certainly important, just look at what Microsoft is doing with all the studio acquisitions, but I am not convinced they are the most important thing.

They definitely aren't the most important thing in determining who wins the sales race, but they do play a role.

They matter a lot for hardcore gamers like myself and many here who mostly play single player games. With the AAA multiplatform publishers so focused on MP, you really have to lean on exclusives to have enough AAA single player stuff to play. Especially for those of us gaming 100+ hours a month.

But that doesn't matter directly to most casual/mainstream gamers who mostly just play a handful of huge AAA multiplats a year. It can matter indirectly though. Many of my friend/family group's more casual gamers end up buying whatever me and my fellow hardcore gamers are playing on as are early adopters and they want to play Destiny, Borderlands etc. with us. And our decision was driven pretty strongly by exclusives (both games and hardware/service features).

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Being ranked in NPD has very little to do with overall worldwide game sales.

I’m not sure why you guys keep being that up


Sure but no one is over exaggerating the importance of those games to console sales so those arguments don’t need to be made.

Because it's the biggest video game market for consoles. That's why.

People shouldn't be over-exaggerating their importance. Just like people shouldn't be dismissing their importance either like the OP and yourself have done.

 

[Moogle11]

That’s pretty much what PS4 did this gen.

Yep. But to be fair, the Xbox One had shit for exclusives too. The first 18 months or so of this generation was pretty worthless as someone who doesn't play many AAA multiplats. It would have been interesting to see what had happened if PS4 had it's same first year or so library while MS was able to get Halo 5 at launch and Gears 4 say six months later.

I'm really hoping we have better exclusives this go around. I'm definitely not early adopting if not--including if what I want to play is cross gen as I'm not that fussed about graphics and performance anymore and more fussed about retirement savings.

 

[DaMonsta]

Because it's the biggest video game market for consoles. That's why.

People shouldn't be over-exaggerating their importance. Just like people shouldn't be dismissing their importance either like the OP and yourself have done.

No one is dismissing it by being truthful with the numbers.

The overwhelming majority of people who buy consoles do not buy exclusives.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

No one is dismissing it by being truthful with the numbers.

The overwhelming majority of people who buy consoles do not buy exclusives.

The overwhelming majority of people also don't buy one single go to game. They have a plethora of options to choose from. Exclusives being some of those

You didn't even check your own numbers before you spouted them, so hard for you to be truthful there.

You dismissed the 10s of millions of sales from recent exclusives.

You dismissed the impact on hardware God of War made.

 

[OneShotThrill]

Because it's the biggest video game market for consoles. That's why.

People shouldn't be over-exaggerating their importance. Just like people shouldn't be dismissing their importance either like the OP and yourself have done.

If they didn't mean jack shit Microsoft wouldn't be scrambling around trying to put together and aquire studios the last few years. They'd just ride that 3rd party and Indie wave.

 

[ShadowWolf712]

1. You're using VGChartz and their numbers are inaccurate.




2. Members from the XBox community use attach rate to discredit the impact of PS exclusives.

Here is BETTER data for PlayStation 4's top exclusive.


Killzone: Shadow Fall

This game sold 2.1 million units from November 2013-January 2014. This is very good considering how many PlayStation units were on the market at the time

Sony sells 5.3 million PlayStation 4 consoles, exceeds full-year target

The console will go on sale in Japan on February 22, the last country currently scheduled to handle the device.

gadgets.ndtv.com

Infamous: Second Son


It sold 1 million in 9 days.

Infamous: Second Son sales topped 1M units in nine days

Your source for the latest in video games, sci-fi, fantasy, tabletop games, anime, horror, books, and comics.

www.polygon.com

During this time, about 7-10 million units have been sold.

Sony Says 7 Million PlayStation 4s Have Been Sold Worldwide

And Sony adds that it's sold more than 20.5 million PS4 games worldwide across retail and digital content.

time.com

Now we can look at the biggest games this generation in terms of units sold.

Uncharted 4 sold 16 million units

Niko Partners: Uncharted 4 sold 16 million copies, The Last of Us – 20 million | Game World Observer

Naughty Dog celebrates 10th anniversary of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Daniel Ahmad, an analyst at Niko Partners, used this opportunity to discuss the sales of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.

gameworldobserver.com

Spider-Man 13.2 milion.

Spider-Man PS4 Sells 13.2 Million Units Worldwide

gamingbolt.com

God of War 10 million, Last of Us 2 million (mostly on PS3), Horizon Zero Dawn 10+ million.

What you're doing is saying, "look at the top 10 games on the list, it's mostly multiplatform titles!"


Most of the games on that top 10 list are mostly the same games. There's Call of Duty and FIFA. Not too many games outside of those games, which means there's only a very small amount of games that sell better than the top PlayStation exclusives.


PlayStation games are selling really well according to actual sales data. Only a few games like Call of Duty, Grant Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption are hitting 20+ on multiple platforms (Yes, there's a few other games, but not many. )

It's also funny because only mega-franchises, for the most part, sell more. PS Exclusives sell at numbers that most games are lucky to hit when they release on multiple platforms.

 

[DaMonsta]

The overwhelming majority of people also don't buy a single game.

Not a “single game” exclusives overall.
Activison sells more PS4 games than Sony.

You didn't even check your own numbers before you spouted them, so hard for you to be truthful there.

I didn’t post any numbers. What are you talking about?

You dismissed the 10s of millions of sales from recent exclusives.

You dismissed the impact on hardware God of War made.

You pulled both of these points out of your ass. You don’t know how many units were sold due to GOW. We do know during that time millions of units were sold without the purchase of an exclusive game.

 

[DaMonsta]

If they didn't mean jack shit Microsoft wouldn't be scrambling around trying to put together and aquire studios the last few years. They'd just ride that 3rd party and Indie wave.

Microsoft is buying all those studios and not making any of the games “exclusive” to any particular console.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Not a “single game” exclusives overall.
Activison sells more PS4 games than Sony.


I didn’t post any numbers. What are you talking about?


You pulled both of these points out of your ass. You don’t know how many units were sold due to GOW. We do know during that time millions of units were sold without the purchase of an exclusive game.

And how does each annual COD game sell compared to Sony' biggest exclusives?

You claimed no exclusive would rank in the top 10 without bundles. You were wrong. Accept it.

Please, by all means, if it wasn't God of War that helped the PS4 breaks hardware records, indulge us on how it did so.

 

[OneShotThrill]

Microsoft is buying all those studios and not making any of the games “exclusive” to any particular console.

Do You seriously believe Microsoft plans to not have any console exclusive titles?

 

[Klayzer]

They also matter in reality. The numbers are there. You just keep ignoring them for whatever reason.

And of course you have to use to the go to "they only matter to fanboys" argument when proven wrong

Gaf gets a "exclusives doesn't really matter" topic a least once a month. Usually done by the pro green and pc only crowd. Another anti exclusive topic is probably in the pre-production stages as I type this.

Also, shocked he didn't use any updated numbers. sarcasm

 

[DaMonsta]

Do You seriously believe Microsoft plans to not have any console exclusive titles?

None of them will be exclusive to Xbox consoles, some of them will make their way to other consoles.

They didn’t buy all those studios to sell consoles, they bought them to sell their ecosystem.

 

[turtlepowa]

Yeah, because after Sony's massive price drops it was the cheapest Blu Ray player on the market and people bought it like crazy just for this. It was the insider tip for every movie fan worldwide.

No YOU said MASSIVE price drop. That was not in 2007. It was in 2009. The first price cut was an act of desperation to sell the console. Most people didn't even have HD TVs in 2007. Where were all these millions of movie fan PS3 Blu-ray buyers in 2007? X360 had a price cut and was absolutely killing it with Halo 3 and CODMW. The PS3 sales were still very humble.

100 bucks after that short amount of time is massive for me and look at all those next gen polls. Only few people would buy it for 599, but many for 499. I'm a huge movie fan myself and can remember very good how popular the PS3 was for that reason. But at the end of the day of course i can't give you an exact number, neither can you.

 

[turtlepowa]

What 11 games?

1.2 billion sold PS4 games, 109 million sold PS4. Do the math.

 

[Klayzer]

None of them will be exclusive to Xbox consoles, some of them will make their way to other consoles.

They didn’t buy all those studios to sell consoles, they bought them to sell their ecosystem.

No shit Sherlock. Exclusives bring new users to your ecosystem and almost locks them to it for a number of years. Games are the reason for the adoption to your ecosystem.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

1.2 billion sold PS4 games, 109 million sold PS4. Do the math.

Where are you getting 11 games from?

 

[turtlepowa]

Where are you getting 11 games from?

Sold games divided by sold consoles results in sold games per console. So more or less every PS4 owner bought 11 games, What interests me is how many of those games are actually exclusive games. According to boards like this you could think it must be at least half of it. i think it's more like 1,5 or less without that PS3 remake/remaster stuff.

 

[Fbh]

That’s pretty much what PS4 did this gen.

Then why did the XBox 1 not turn things around considering it has been the cheaper consoles for the vast majority of the gen and exclusives are irrelevant?. Or for that matter why have both Sony and MS invested in expanding their first party studios this gen if, according to you, they are irrelevant