The article is actually pretty OK. For example, I was going to criticize this as I first got to it:
IGN said:
Crazier yet -- and perhaps even confusingly -- is the fact that PlayStation 4 has sold so well with very few must-have games. Infamous: Second Son was the very first post-release PS4 exclusive with real weight and consequence behind it, and while it sold a million copies right off the bat, PlayStation 4, at that point, was already soundly beating its competition. It only took a few months for it to outsell Wii U and put itself comfortably in front of Xbox One, and it did so with Killzone, Resogun, and Knack, not God of War, Uncharted, and Gran Turismo. This illustrates that the winning equation Sony has stumbled upon with PlayStation 4 goes far, far deeper than meets the eye.
Because it's true, a trend of game journalists and many game fans is to focus on some big MEGATON game to them. They understand the value of those products since it's easily definable - you sell a few millions units perhaps, boost systems sales a bit perhaps, and then move to the next showdown title that does the same. What is less easily definable is the fact that systems can make a similarly good case to consumers with a mix of small titles and large, even if there may be overall less "megaton" type products.
In other words, people need to understand that even though an individual indie game may not change the game, when you offer a wide variety of titles big and small, you by definition make yourself a more inclusive system that caters to even the most idiosyncratic of tastes. And THAT becomes the "system seller", the fact that you're selling to distinct tastes because your selection of games is catering to many individuals with different tastes instead of one group with a very specific taste that just happens to big a single type of game in droves. These individual games may not sell a million units each, but if you have 50,000 units here, 150,000 there, 80,000 here, 30,000 there, it begins to add up. And you begin to win customers who otherwise would not find anything appealing because their tastes are too obscure.
And the reason this strategy is working so well is that it is being done
in conjunction with the big titles. And thankfully, as I continued to read the article, IGN basically emphasized this same point, which honestly impressed me a bit since I haven't seen many game journalists accurately reflect this reality:
IGN said:
The final aspect of PlayStation 4's success is perhaps the hardest to grasp, but I think it's potentially salient: Sony understands where console gaming is going, and they understood it way before their competitors. We already covered their greater focus on hardcore gaming, but not the fact that they've infiltrated the indie scene in ways Nintendo and Microsoft could only dream. Big releases may be scarce -- and those big releases are indeed essential to selling a console over the long run -- but PS4 has new games virtually every week to fill in these gaps. And frankly, it's not hard to find an indie game far, far better than a vast majority of what's being released at retail, whether on PS4 or elsewhere. (This is ironic considering that it was Microsoft, not Sony, which first identified the intrinsic value of smaller indie games to a console's viability.)
Other than his idea that 'big releases are scarce' (this weird idea of excluding big releases because they happen to be multiplatform or something), this is mostly right. That's the whole ballgame. Sony is providing a strategy that in conjunction with the best version of all multiplatform games - big hitters like AssCreed, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny, Watch Dogs, etc - they also have an incredibly diverse (relative to the amount of time on the market) and appealing selection of smaller and mid-range titles. They're basically making sure they serve all corners of the market adequately, whereas it's arguable whether Microsoft or Nintendo are matching that.
. I think it's the indie focus honestly. If there isn't a major title that month, you get a great indie game on PSN, sometimes for free. Just keep good content constant and it's gold.
