again, First Party exklusive gakes do Not and will NEVER sell a Console.
3rd party games, price etc sell a Console.
Just Look at Wii u 0 3rd party Support, best First party Support, still saleswise a failure.
This is an irrational argument.
1. Nintendo has sold many platforms based largely on their first party output. The Wii and N64 are two examples. The Gameboy line was originally built upon first party support, as was the NDS and 3DS since both faced lukewarm 3rd party reception due to competing platforms from the console market leader.
2. The Switch is currently selling as fast as Nintendo can make them without a single good retail game and only a handful of digital games not made by Nintendo.
3. Your argument ignores that the Wii U never met a mass market price, was hardware inferior very shortly after it's life, and had incredibly convoluted marketing that left many thinking it was a Wii add-on, not a new console.
While it is true that first party content is less important in driving new hardware sales when compared to major 3rd party IPs, they represent a strong secondary factor. Everyone can get CoD, Battlefield, etc. on either major console or PC. The factors that make people pick PS4 over Xbox One or vice versa are price and personal appeal exclusives.
Since price has been running effectively even between the two after MS handed Sony an early advantage the key differentiation for most people is ultimately that next level of exclusive content.
MS is still applying the old model of a handful of big IPs (Halo, Forza, Gears) released on a regular schedule into the middle of the holiday season.
Sony instead has moved to a more diversified model, aiming to hit a wider swath of genres and especially aiming at genres with less service by the major 3rd parties (narrative focused single player experiences for example). They've moved most of their IPs outside of the holiday season entirely, building a strong Q1/Q2 track record.
What Sony has done with this is provide a diversified exclusives library that fills not just the calendar gaps, which is important, but also fills the personal preference gaps in each gamer's selection process. They've expanded this to how they work with 3rd parties, with Nioh, Yakuza 0, and Nier all lined up as Q1 release games where the quality + exclusivity creates meaningful buzz. Sure, Ghost Recon: Wildlands probably outsold all three combined and Horizon: Zero Dawn is close to doing so if it hasn't, but the PR splash of "drowning in games" this spring not only helped sell those game, they also helped sell PS4s.
Someone said earlier that Phil was just going through his priorities, hardware done, services done, now software. That might be accurate, and if so it should be extremely troubling to Xbox One fans. Improving first party software production arguably takes every bit as long as developing new hardware and services and assuming they plan to support the original Xbox One for the near future it had as clear a target for performance as they could have asked for. His comment gives the impression that this is a new thing, which strikes me as very late in the cycle to finally get moving on expanding first party production.
Which brings me to the big problem with MS in the console space. With the original Xbox everyone thought we were seeing an 800 lb. gorilla enter the industry who would throw cash around to acquire what was needed to succeed. A few years into the X360 generation and it looked like that was very likely. But then they shifted into cruise control, followed by getting drunk on Kinect.
Sony built their first party through acquisition. ND, Sucker Punch, Guerrilla, all purchases. They identified partners, signed multi-game deals, honored those multi-game deals, then acquired the best studios from those series of partnership, when possible (Insomniac apparently refused acquisition).
Picture a world where MS had taken the same mindset:
- Purchasing Bizarre and keeping the PGR franchise alive, which likely could have proceeded Forza Horizon.
- Letting Bungie make their new IP instead of having them buy out when they didn't want to make Halo for all time.
- Purchasing Bioware and Pandemic instead of letting them go to EA, locking up Mass Effect and Dragon Age as first party tent poles, and now we see it would have made Anthem the likely flagship game for X1X. Not to mention that Pandemic would have been a great fit to take over Halo, removing the need to start a new studio with 343.
- Which could have let them move to acquire Gears that much sooner, instead of getting well into this generation before doing so.
- Acquiring Blue Castle Games before Capcom did would have been another good move, they pay to keep them open after all.
I could continue, but the opportunities to build a meaningful first party library have been readily available to MS. They continue to pay token support, not wanting to actually extend the long term commitment of first party studios. Instead it's short term second party moves that they fail to follow up on if the games don't sell like Halo or Forza.