In that first year of PS4 games. Remind me again what the REALLY good ones were? Knack and Killzone? Really? Come on. Most people were playing Resogun and third party cross platform games. Things didn't get much better until the Last of us remaster and Infamous came out... A year later.
Exactly this.
People seem to conveniently forget that current gen was the first gen to launch with a very significant amount of cross-gen games. PS4 flew off the shelves mainly because it was PlayStation and gamers wanted a new toy under their TVs. It’s very safe to say that Killzone, Resogun, and fucking Knack didn’t sell the PS4, LOL c’mon guys. FIFA and Assassin’s Creed was what kept most early PS4 adopters busy until the true exclusives came out. This is not a corporate shill’s revisionist fantasy, this is what happened in 2013.
Also, western markets were historically less impacted by this because of delayed launches, but do you remember what PS2 launched with in Japan? You think Fantavision sold the PS2? No, the dream of what PS2 would deliver is what sold the PS2 at launch, and this is true for most new hardware. People will play what’s available until the big names actually come out, which is almost never at launch.
There’s so much to play on XBox at the moment, between Game Pass and backwards compat with 19 years of games, I wouldn’t need a new exclusive for the new hardware for the good part of a year if I were to buy the Series X. Not that I ever cared for Halo or Gears, too.
Yeah, not having big exclusives may deter people from early adopting but the point here is, a lot of people overestimate how many people are willing to fork out the cash for a new shining console because of a totally esclusive game that can’t be played anywhere else - and this is especially true now, when multiplatform third party games are the bulk of the sales. When next gen hits, Ubi and EA will be the top launch sellers, as usual.