Sony’s PlayStation 3 has finally caught up in terms of sales after a sluggish start this generation, but the PlayStation brand has certainly lost a lot of ground when compared to its previous domination. In light of this, Dan Jenko suggests how the Japanese giants can rectify the situation next time around.
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Whaaa...they got rid of them because after chance after chance they wern't making games good enough to sell.
We would be moaning if Sony was loosing more money and they DIDN'T close them down.
I mean they did make ND into two teams so they can produce more then one new IP franchise per gen.
What in the actual f***! Can he name any console game that surpassed the visuals of GOW, UC, KZ?
"Obviously Sony have fallen on hard times"
Just Sony? How about the whole freaking world that's been going through a recession. Yet no mention of MS and their almost total lack of exclusives for the past couple of years and the fact that they're ending of this generation with barely anything at all while Sony is pushing out GOW, The Last of US, Beyond.
The technical performance hasn't been so markedly superior and the manner in which the vast majority of multiplatform performed on the PS3 compared to 360, especially during the early to mid stages of this generation only serve to prove the that the negatives of dealing with the CELL outweighed the benefits.
Watch how Sony take a completely different approach next generation to the one they did this gen.
http://cramgaming.com/micro...
PS3 70.2 million(as of September 30, 2012)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
360 70 million (as of September 30, 2012)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
One could argue that GoW, UC and KZ ended up looking as good as they did because of the integrity and quality of the studios developing those games.
I don't know if you have looked lately, but recent MS games have been looking damn spiffy. Halo 4 looks great, Far Cry looks fantastic on Xbox 360, AND many of the current gen games STILL run better on a 360 than they do on a PS3. Plain and simple. The how and why are debatable, but the defacto nature of the beast is, what it is.
Except that Uncharted 2 holds more GOTY awards than any 3 Xbox 360 exclusives combined...
what about uncharted 3 in 2011 who won 70+GOTY award
what about MGS4 in 2008 who won all the GOTY awards
what about 2010 when god of war 3 along with RDR won all the GOTY awards
what about journey in 2012 who won as much or more GOTY awards than TWD
xbox exclusives are no where to be found in GOTY awards
Awesome first party IPs... not as milked as MS IPs
PSN and + in really good shape
Gaikai ready to be a competitive cloud service
Hardware expertise
Gran Turismo (yes... EU loves this baby)
if a website is gonna give points give valid points not total crap
1. The loss of strong first party developers. WTF is that sh*t? Strong? First of all Sony Liverpool merged with another studio. I forget the name, but I know it starts with an E. Secondly, besides MAG, name a great game that Zipper made this gen? That's right, none, so how we're they strong? Sony still has the best of the best lineup of first party devs cranking out great games, so they did NOT make a mistake in the first party developer department.
2. Failing to integrate Vita with PS3. You mean the still relatively new handheld that still has to get its own features off the ground? Oh I guess the gen is over now right and we have PS4's already? No? So who says this can't still happen? Oh that's right, no one! *sigh*
3. PSN. *facepalm* I'm not even going to justify this idiocy with a response. Clearly if you think PSN is a mistake you've been dead for years.
4. Price and inadequate line-up. That's every console in history's mistake, well one or the other. Many bought a PS3 at launch and they got the best version of the console. Many had no problem with the line-up.
What the hell is wrong with the writers of these stupid lists? It's as though they've been living in sensory deprivation tanks and still think it's November 2006. Dumbass list.
One thing that's VITAL for Sony to improve on is streamlining the social functionality of the next console. I know its been argued to death but the likes of cross game chat and other similar features have to be properly fleshed out and included day one. It's just simply not acceptable that, to this day, the PS3 won't even allow you to send proper voice messages, something that the original Xbox could do more than a decade ago.Had it been possible to reconcile the situation with the PS3 and social functionality I'm alluding to, MS would have been severely on the back foot.
Sony may have been arrogant (arguably) this generation but with financial woes and lessons made very clear regarding things like developer friendly systems and the online game space, I really do believe Sony will be a veritable force in the industry next gen, much closer to its previous reign a generation ago.
If anything, the competiton is going to be extremely fierce this generation and that only means good things for us gamers.
xchat is something found on the vita, so you know that is coming.
What they need is to streamline the whole thing like you said.
I honestly hate having to exit an app just to open another in order to message a friend. That seriously needs to be addressed.
Enough memory should ensure the system would be able to multitask properly without much of a hiccup.
Its like everything i do on the vita requires a grey loading screen and that just takes away from the experience.
Believe me if they can solve this and i believe they can. Then psn would be on par with live, then you add those exclusives and we are good my friend.
He argues that Microsoft kill off franchises and games that do not sell well whereas SONY keeps supporting underdog IP's. Here's my arguement however, after Perfect Dark Zero, Banjo Nuts & Bolts, Viva Pinata TiP, Kameo all not selling to expectations of Microsoft, they could have easily shut them down. They instead made them focus on more business sound projects and it paid off well. My problem is this, it seems its okay (judging by your agrees) for SONY to shut down studios that were not making games that sell (aforementioned underdog games) and ultimately leave hundreds of people out of a job but it is absolutely evil when Microsoft opts to make a studio develop commercially viable games instead of continuing to make niche games, and ultimately keep their jobs.
How is SONY excused for making business decisions that lead to redundancies but Microsoft is slated for making business decisions that lead to career safety for studios? Can somebody answer that for me? Please?
in some areas sony succeeded and in some it didn't
bluray
build in hard drive that's easy to change
built in wifi
free psn
psn:plus value
cons:
cell is hard to understand
a lot of devs struggled early on
not enough Ram to get cross game chat
yes sony lost a lot of money but its game division is a profitable division
sony entered with arrgance but realized quickly time to play catch up
$599 us dollars can not and will not be the price for ps4, $399-449 max and maybe 2 different sku's for $399 and $349
price matters look at Vits sony understands that
i believe going forward sony is in best position to gain ground than nintendo or ms, just because they have the Ip's to back up all their talks
imagine this for example
Killzone 4
GT6
Uncharted 4
at launch with PS4.
they own 12 studios
they work with 2nd party like insomniac, read at dawn and QD who are doing beyond 2 souls
also where PSN started day one to where it is today its been an amazing journey and if somehow they keep it free that's a huge advantage over MS
But it's weird. Three of the four examples the author gives of first party exclusives are from studios Sony have acquired this generation: Sucker Punch (inFamous), Media Molecule (LBP) and Evolution (Motorstorm). So it has gone both ways.
http://n4g.com/news/1145240...
But let's face it, PS3 was way too expensive and its sales suffered because of that. Sony needs to understand that now days (in this economy), $600 is too high. Core gamers won't mind paying it, but hey I would say 2/3 of the people that buy consoles are "non-core" gamers. Instead of looking at how many exclusives a console has, they look for better deals. And I know exactly where they're coming from.
I can guarantee that the PS4 is going to be the most powerful console next generation because well, the truth is Sony is way better at making hardware than Microsoft or Nintendo.
But even if you have 4k graphics and the most powerful processors, they won't help you if you don't price your console right. I think anything over $399 would be too expensive regardless of how amazing the hardware is.
I really wish Sony fixes some of the mistakes it made in the past. Oh and can’t wait for the next generation consoles. :)
The issue with this is Sony is trimming the fat. The have a lot of studios who make games that are more profitable than Zipper and Liverpool did. It is worth noting that some of the liverpool staff moved to another UK based studio. I think trimming that fat is what Son needed to do. Having loads of studios is great but why invest in software that isn't going to do well
PSV and PS3 integration my thoughts can be read here http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...
The only aspect of the network that really needs improving is the new store. It needs stabilising because it is really buggy at the moment. Other than cross game chat (which I never saw the need for but I know other want it) I can't see what is really wrong with PSN. It is a stable experience with a lot of players online. They have a good library of games on it but they could do more to entice the indie developers (but I put that down to the 360 being like a PC to develop for so it is just naturally easy)
Price wise I can easily see expensive hardware next generation (hopefully with the option of a subscription model). $600 in 2006 was a big ask but in 2013 it really isn't for a product. Things have changed a lot. Families do not mind shelling out £500 for an ipad for a 3 year old (recent article on it about more 3 years getting ipads now. Crazy if you ask me) for Christmas.
If we are taking about Sony getting BIG again they're going to have to outsource ALL its jobs to China its the reality of our world today.
@Logic
Related video
EDIT: Ummm..yeah. It was simply the government figuring out a new budget plan before the Bush Tax Cuts expired. No more, no less.
Don't forget about LightBox Interactive who had massive layoffs and are now an iOS developer.
Lightbox aren't a first-party developer though. Hence why they're doing some non-Sony iOS stuff now. It's like Insomniac or Ninja Theory. An exclusive here, a multiplat there.
A lot of people on N4G complain that MS should buy more 1st party studios. What some don't understand is that just because a studio is 1st party doesn't mean they automatically have a hit on their hands.
Sony is a prime example of this. 1st party studios bleed money for the publisher if the game doesn't sell well or meet expectations.
Which is pretty much why we see a lot of sequels coming in from Sony. It works, it's established and pretty much a guarantee sales.
There are hits, like Halo and UC
And then there are FLOPS - Too Human Anyone? (technically not a first party title, but an exclusive none the less)
I hope the talented guys there have found new jobs, but for whatever reason, Zipper just dropped off big time in between consoles.
The opposite holds true in the case of Zipper, which the article namedrops.
MAG was a new IP that not only sold more than Socom 4 (over a million) but also earned a significantly higher critical avg on metacritic. In this case the "guaranteed" sequel killed em, the new IP made bank.
Liverpool on the other hand simply hadn't made a PS3 game since 2008. That's like 4.5 years ago.
They turned away a loyal fan base trying to chase more mainstream series, but because of the lesser brand this gen it couldn't compete.
It failed on all fronts, and even turned its back on some of its most tactical game modes.
yet you forgot to say that they bought Sucker Punch , Media Molecule and Evolution
sony know what they are doing
and also sony bring sequels along with "new ips"
so every ps3 owner is happy because sony bring alot of new ips along with sequels
meanwhile MS bring sequels and alot of it with no new ips
just look at next year and see what sony have for ps3 and what ms have for xbox
The console cannot launch for 600 it just can't.
The vita has to be a big player
PlayStation plus needs better marketing
However launching all those games on day 1 is suicide
I'd say 2 big hits from Sony and 1 new ip the rest should be
3rd party titles
Also it can't release a year after Xbox that would be bad you do not want to do that as relevancy is everything now a days
No SOCOM on next-gen? LOL. You crazy fool!
http://twitter.com/wipEout2...
Looks like anyone can post anything on this site, N4G at its best.
there is a secure 1 million copy sales if is done good enough
a "Socom Confrontation 2" will do fine
but with no lag, no bugs and fluid smooth fast controls and gameplay.
if is a polish game with good support it could easily sale up to 4 millions copy's if is done right there is a market for it..
Confrontation did around 1m. because of the bad lag, bugs and lame buggy gameplay(changing from a gun to another or jumping where very outdated and buggy, but gunplay was okay)
Socom 4 was a middle finger to what mades Socom a Socom game.
no Ranked non respawn games been just a dlc option is the reason why it sold and it did so bad, the gameplay was better than Confrontation but Socom is all about non respawn ranked games and respawn should be there just for fun and practice just like in Confrontation and the old socom games.
agree if you want a Confrontation 2 with no lag, no bugs and smooth gameplay!!! ASAP... for PS4 (I will even take that as a PSN only game for PS3 and playable on the PS4, but the ideal will be if is made with next gen tech)
i just thought about a commercial! this http://www.youtube.com/watc...
been watch by few gamer kid's in 3015 or something like that and they say cool and blow up with the new gameplay and saying Socom is back! BOOM!!
Socom need to look cool again well any trailer should be like this, cool is what sales! but Sony seem to not understand this..
Its because they are my friends and i enjoy talking to them
if you mute everyone in the lobby whats the point of having a mic any way?
They also need to recoup the billions lost on the PS3. It may have caught up in shippments, but it's still billions in the red. (In before someone mistakenly confuses selling hardware for a profit with actual profitablitiy. Also in before someone lies and say "but dude they made up those loses!" Which they haven't.)
They also need a better online structure, better security, and fewer system updates.
The should also really capitalize on their incredible nostalgia factor. PASBR was a good start, despite it's lukewarm sales.
Wow, who wrote this lol? Sad that "game journalism" still knows so little about what *owning* an IP means. Someone tell Jenko that Bungie didn't make Halo 4, Zipper didn't make Socom: Confrontation, Naughty Dog didn't make Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Infinity Ward didn't make COD: BlackOps 2 and Media Molecule didn't make LittleBigPlanet Karting, etc. Konami has changed Silent Hill studios every game this gen. Heck, Platinum Games made a Metal Gear game for them.
[QUOTE] The problem is that it’s much more difficult to get your game onto the PlayStation Network than Xbox LIVE[/QUOTE]
Source? Quote? Of course not. Rob Dyer, Gabe Newell, Eurogamer etc disagree:
http://www.industrygamers.c...
http://www.computerandvideo...
http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...
New Year's resolution for game journalism: read as much if not more than you write.
Its an amazing piece of design but in a market that is being slowly taken over by smartphones with ever advancing games, dedicated handhelds are loosing relevance.
After using the PS3 since the launch of the 40gb version and also playing on a PC I would suggest that there are 3 main flaws with the PS3 1)VOIP/cross game chat 2)Users are required to act as the host with too many lag sensitive games 3)Stupidly overpriced PSN games and expansions compared to the 360 pricing.
All 3 issues could be fixed or at least made more user friendly even today: VOIP could be off by default and then allow the user to set parameters, other devs could follow a similar network format as DICE with BF3, and Sony could just make sure prices are no higher than the 360.