So basically, MS completely disregarded indies, forgot about them and now they are spinning that into somehow being positive because they are "focusing" on retail games, and you are buying it... despite Sony actually investing more money into retail by owning all these studios that are making games.
What? What am I "buying"? I'm not spinning no indies is better than indies. Indies are a benefit. The only thing I've suggested is how much weight they pull relative to other games.
Message from Sony is that they will have a ton of indies to compliment ton of first party games.
In reality, Sony is focusing more on indies and more on exclusives than Microsoft.
How can that be spun into something bad?
I wasn't saying it was bad to have, I was saying how they present their messaging and focus to the consumer is what I disagreed with.
I mean if Sony now comes out and says - we are developing Gran Turismo 7, Uncharted 4, Beyond, God of War, LBP, The Last of Us 2, MLB, etc, then you will somehow feel that Sony obliterates whatever MS has coming for XB1 in next 3 years, right?
Besides, right now PS4 has Killzone and Infamous coming from their big titles, as well as Knack and Driveclub as their new IPs... thats pretty nice set of first party titles for first 3 months of console life, two of which will likely sell over anything that MS has for XB1 at that time.
I'm not saying Sony should blow their load; I'm saying they should be flexing that large investment they've made and the claim that they had 20 exclusives in the first year. They should be showing that there will be a constant pace of games on both front for the first 365 days. If something is due out in May, I would think we'd know about it by now.
You now just listed two games from small teams that could only be classified as "indie" when they came out, which blew up into literal worldwide phenomenons. And they are certainly not the only examples.
Obviously, such examples are going to be the exception.
And this was what I was getting at. They are an exception and we need to look at the overall effect of what the genre or type of games has on the impact on the market. It's great that Sony is betting on all angles, but showing Minecraft as an example of how much weight the indie market pulls isn't proof at all IMO. I know you extend the point in a second, so let me get to that.
Such remarkably successful titles are the exception amongst ALL games, let alone AAA titles. But my point is that we have no way to predict this one way or the other. In this day and age, there's really no particular reason to give a leg up to retail games over digital games in terms of their potential impact... in both cases, we have examples where they fail and they succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination.
I agree there's no way to predict a break out hit sometimes, but you're still playing an odds game and businesses gamble accordingly. It's best to cover your bases to hope to get that big hit, but in general, the physical, normal retail game holds a lot more weight among the consumers than indie games do right now. Technically there's no real reason that a game in any format is any better or worse than a game on any different form factor, but the cold reality is that is not the case. It's the same reason that mid-tier games struggled this generation. It's about perception and perception is closer to reality than what we would like reality to be.
And more centrally, to separate our argument real quick about the potential market impact versus the impact on a gamer-by-gamer basis, to me it shouldn't matter whether something is AAA or not. That's part of the reason for this discussion. We as gamers are - whether subconsciously or not - segmenting indie titles into some form of 'lesser tier' game, and the only true distinguishing fact is that they cost less to develop and that most are not retail releases. But does having a physical disc upgrade the game's quality? I don't think that should matter when assessing a system's library. Just the quality of the game itself.
I agree with this in theory. But like I said before, and I think I'll make it more clear at the end where I'm coming from, what should be true, isn't always true. One reason I'm platform agnostic is so I don't deal with the crap and nuances of different consoles or platforms. Buying them all just frees me up to buy the best games out there. So I'm right there with you that the form factor should not determine or hinder the game.
Well as I said, they still did reveal one or two bigger budget games at Gamescom. So the conversation didn't just stop at pure indies. But, I feel right now is the perfect opportunity for indie devs to take the spotlight and demonstrate how important it is to the "healthy ecosystem" - which is a killer app for me and others - to allow the widest and most diverse range of possible tastes to be satiated. For me, this is integral to what I want out of a platform, and I feel whether the average consumer would list this outright as a reason, subconsciously many consumers choose on this basis as well: whether they think the system is a good investment because of the gaming ecosystem. These indie games help create such a healthy ecosystem.
Well to me they came off as a Journey level style game, not a full retail disc. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I got. They felt like smaller games that are just bigger budget indie games. Nothing wrong with that, but what I felt they should have done was have just at least one announcement or tease of something to expect after Infamous. Something that just tells me there isn't going to be a drought after February.
And since we know Sony ALSO has a huge number of unannounced AAA products, and that they already have announced some big ones that are further down the line (inFamous and The Order, and potentially Shadow of the Beast and Rime), the ecosystem could only be described as very healthy indeed early on. Especially when, like the XBO, third party support is extremely vibrant.
It's hard for me to say it's healthy or not without seeing what to expect after the holiday season and Infamous. I have no doubts that they have a lot of content in the works, but what I question is how far off that content is. Focusing on smaller games because they're quicker and cheaper to make to fill in the gap certainly helps with a drought but again it speaks that there might be a gap on the retail front.
I just don't know why we keep thinking Knack, Killzone, DriveClub, inFamous, The Order, Rime and Shadow of the Beast is not currently enough to tell these people that those AAA experiences are coming as well, while not putting Sony at a strategic disadvantage by letting them play their most important cards when they're going to need them?
What # of AAA games do you think would meet the requirement that Sony is adequately doing both? To say nothing of the fact that they're ALSO supporting the PS3 with some of the most astonishingly impressive end of life support I've ever seen for a console. This is a company that means serious business. I don't know why anyone would doubt that given they already announced a ton of AAA PS4 games, we know they have tons more in the pipe, and they're supplementing that with exclusive indie games and non-exclusive indie games.
Right now I'm not counting Rime and Shadow of the Beast for reasons I listed before. The Order isn't due until late 2014 though right? So what comes after Infamous is what I'm wondering about. They don't need to play all their cards, or even a lot of big names. I just felt they needed to announce or tease at least one title to keep the hype train moving.
In fact I think they have struck a rather perfect balance at the moment.
I felt Gamescom wasn't balanced to me though. It was too one sided which is why many people didn't like the presentation. Let me elaborate and maybe this will help clear my stance up.
- I'm not saying Sony shouldn't put effort or focus on Indie games.
- I'm not saying that many of the games didn't look good or can't be great experiences.
- I think it's a great strategy to invest on games on all fronts and all types because you never know where that break out hit can come from and it helps with the diversity of games in your library.
- I agree with you that indies of today could be the AAA of tomorrow
- I agree that Indie games are important
So on a personal level, I'm right there with you about Indie games. Had this been a topic about why you should look at Indie games more, or why Indie games are important, or why it's good for Sony to invest supporting Indie games, I think I'd be more in agreement. From an overall internal strategy, it's something they should be doing.
However, and maybe it's just the wording you use, this topic was about Sony's Gamescom strategy and I felt their strategy, which hits more of a public eye, was not the best way to go. The public doesn't weigh the importance of Indie games over retail ones. Retail ones have a much better presence and importance to those people. By focusing on pretty much Indie games, you excluded them. From a perception and business strategy, I felt they didn't best utilize the stage.
To make a terrible analogy, retail games are 90% of the gamers and indie games are 10% of the gamers. They spent most of the time catering to the 10% when at this point in time, they really need to be reaching to as many people as possible. Neither system has launched and in just weeks, Microsoft has made up lost ground. I'm saying from a perception, marketing, and hype strategy, Sony should not give Microsoft much leeway and take advantage of the momentum they have. Having continuous announcements of titles spread out over time is what they should do to make sure everyone keeps getting excited about the PS4. Clearly people felt underwhelmed from Gamescom and we can blow that off all we want, but we shouldn't. That's not to degrade the importance of Indie games, but it was a missed opportunity IMO.
