Hey, sorry for not responding earlier (your post came through at around 3am my time). I can definitely appreciate this post, even if there's obvious specifics we both disagree on. There's likely some disconnect as I was certainly never as large a Rare fan as you seem to be... but I definitely know how frustrating it can be when the studio that produced so much you loved changes beyond recognition. I'm a diehard Sega fan.
I definitely would consider Project Spark as risky... but that's the thing about risky ventures... they don't always work out. Project Spark was pushed quite heavily, being given substantial stage time at multiple gaming conference etc. If it seemed like it was "sent to die", this would be largely because it had already somewhat died in the extended beta period, which was a necessary step in order to build the community, and ensure the game launched with enough creations for non-creators to play. Project Spark's main issue is that unlike something like LittleBigPlanet or Mario Maker, it didn't contain a game that could stand alone even without any community involvement. They attempted to provide this with the whole Heroes Quest stuff, but it honestly wasn't very good. So the game ended up being filled with whole bunch of creators, but very little player to actually play their creations... which eventually lead to a collapse in the creators' motivations. It wasn't through lack of effort or investment. Some things simply don't work out, if they always did it wouldn't be a risk (see also PlayStation Home).
It's not they're not trying to compete.. it's that Sony are too. It's not like because things are easier for Sony in regards to Japanese deals, they've decided to sit back and do nothing.. they're still actively competing to attract them. If both make a similar amount of effort, then the results will still have a huge disparity. Sure, they could go the Sega route and basically provide the ports to games they'd otherwise miss themselves, but the Xbox division is still a business unit, and writing constant blank cheques isn't a realistic option. This is again something that they've already had experience with in the past (with Windows Phone/Store apps). It actually incentivized some developers that would otherwise have ported to the platform to hold out in the hope of extracting the additional resources that Microsoft has proven to provide if they feel they need you. You end up having to pay for pretty much everything, and the support will stop dead the moment you cease to. The games that have Western appeal typically
do come to the Xbox. It's the niche games that are skipping it, because the global sales won't justify the port. If MS were to pay for a port of a Yakuza game to the Xbox, it would sell worse than the already dismal global sales of the franchise... whilst also selling essentially zero copies in Japan itself.. the only market that really justifies its existence. We're talking the sorts of games where the costs of adding English subtitles may be deemed not to be worthwhile on PlayStation... so you can imagine what the balance for something like that looks like for a full port to a smaller global audience.
Two years into the new gen and we've had Ryse, Zoo Tycoon, Kinect Sports Rivals, Project Spark, Sunset Overdrive etc, with stuff like Crackdown, Quantum Break, Scalebound, and Sea of Thieves upcoming. Granted these aren't all developed internally.. but I'm not really sure why that distinction matters to someone simply looking to play games. Saying their biggest 3 or 4 IPs all we see in regards to AAA development from their first/second party studios isn't something I can really agree with... and even in the cases where its true, I think it loses a lot of meaning when something like Forza Horizon could just as easily been named Starling Horizon Racer, and Fable Legends and Halo Wars share basically nothing beyond their setting with previous games. Again though, I'm not saying that this represents a factually stellar amount of variety.. but I do think the same 3 or 4 franchise does count as factually incorrect. I also agree with PanicFreak in that whilst you can definitely differentiate between different types of games, when talking about was is (and isn't) being created, how much you like the products doesn't dictate whether or not they count. Those games were made, and in the case of something like Kinect Sports, was a larger project than basically anything else they'd ever worked on... they certainly count.
In general, I don't really disagree with your criticisms, even if I do disagree with how easily you think they can be fixed.. and there are areas (like the parity clause) that I do think they're simply just dropping the ball on. The reason I was somewhat taken aback by your first post was because it came across as less "ok performance, must try harder", and more "he got there and started fucking everything up", lol. But thanks for taking the time to respond in more detail, and for being respectful or my own disagreements. It's far more than I tend to expect. So thanks.
