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[Sorral]

Reaction to me?Some here kept saying PS360 selling 150 mil units have been a success. It was not. Also, i´m leaving it out because it was, first and foremost, a different kind of success. It cartered to a bigger audience with a cheaper price and motion control. PS4, the thing we are talking about here, and likely the 720 won´t do that.

You can't really count it the way you are doing. This is just manipulating the data to suit your case. I get the point you're trying to make, but it is wrong based on how you're using your numbers.
If I do the same in counting how many are there for core gaming, then I'll include Steam (40m+ users) plus Origin (21m+). Then, we have the PC users who don't use either.

The PS3 and 360 are still selling and not at the age-point where the PS2 was at when it reached 150m+ yet they both combined still reached the PS2's 150+ milestone.

tl;dr: There is a growth in the core industry and it is not declining.

 

[ArkkAngel007]

In 7 years they forgot how these reveal presentations go. We came away with more than what was expected from past experience.

 

[cornerman]

1) people don't know what they want. The press, the detractors, they all want to be 'wowed'. They don't know what 'WOW' looks likes or consists of, they just want it and seek it.

2) people have either unexplained or unrealistic expectations. Listen to some podcasts, read a couple of articles, and hear some of these journalists, enthusiasts talk off the cuff, and you'll hear some pretty wild things if you know anything about how games are made or how programming works. "Why is every open world surrounded by water or mountains?" "Why can't I always go anywhere?" "Why can't every character always have something unique to say all the time?" "Why can't every character have their own story and role across the entire game" Things that just aren't feasible for coders and machines today. Alot of people don't know what's feasible, what reasonably lies within gaming's limits. With expectations running unbridled that like that.

3) The things Sony mentioned are little Big things. They are options and features you have to use to appreciate. A lot of what Sony showed is a foundation. Every console starts with a vision, a goal. And that goal is laid out over time and usually evolves and branches out as technology and time move forward. The launch titles, the games, the OS, and even the vision can evolve. They set out to convey what their vision is...focus on the gamer. This is the start, the reveal...this isn't E3. This isn't year 3. Its a cycle.

4) Our media is cynical, suffers from selective short term memory, has a tendency to panic and worry, and not look beyond a headline. Everything is a conspiracy, a trick, a gross miscalculation, an exaggerated level of incompetence, or an over-simplification of circumstance. Hate or love Killzone: Shadow Fall (or feel somewhere in between) but to follow this industry for any length of time and glaze over the fact that its a launch title and what that implies is just ridiculous. To knowingly go into a conference where we know pricing won't be discussed, nor release date revealed, nor will we see all the games in development...its just ridiculous. We've been here before. We know how this works.

5)"Show me new things every day." "Everything should be a surprise." Remember Destiny, its from Bungie...everybody loves Bungie...they made Halo. Bungie reveals Destiny on Sunday. People are intrigued and it dominates the news cycle. Bungie shows up at the PS Meeting...its old news. Watch Dogs...its old news. Unreal 4 demos, Agni Philosophy demo...old news. Nevermind that no one's played them or seen most of what they're about, we know it exists, what else you got? I mean its really simple....Show me everything, tell me everything, make it all gameplay, but make it all polished cause I'll judge it as is otherwise, and make sure all the 3rd party studios do the same, but make this meeting short, oh and save some stuff for E3, Gamescom, Pax, GDC, TGS, VGAs, etc. Whatever you show me today exists in a vacuum. Show me Killzone, Infamous, Knack...and I'll scream for more games...I'll clamor for you to get on the ball and get studios on new IP. And when you reveal more to me 3 months later, I'll say you finally listened even though games take years to develop and had to be in the pipeline way before you showed me anything.

6) MS hasn't shown anything.

Its a combo of all those things.

 

[JimiNutz]

The assumption is that there are not enough pure 'core' gamers anymore and you need to attract not necessarily 'casuals' but people that enjoy more than just gaming.

I love games, but I spend just as much (if not more time) watching movies/tv, reading, listening to music etc.

What if I could have one box that did it all - internet browser, games machine, something that I can watch films and tv on, something that I can listen to music on, something I can video chat with my friends on...

When you write it all out like that then you realise that such a device already exists, and its called a smart phone. Well guess what, everyone has/wants a smart phone/tablet. Its big business.

There still is not a home version equivalent. There isn't one box that you can put under the tv that does everything a smart phone does and more. Yes there are PCs that you can connect to a tv, but who wants to sit on their couch with a mouse and keyboard? That's where kinect comes in - control can be achieved intuitively through hand movement or voice (just like a phone).

This is what MS is chasing and understandably so.
It doesn't mean that you have to have casual games, there is no reason why MS cant work on getting all that functionality PLUS great games.

If one company is set up.to deliver such a product its MS and it would appear that Sony are going in a different direction.

 

[AzaK]

1) people don't know what they want. The press, the detractors, they all want to be 'wowed'. They don't know what 'WOW' looks likes or consists of, they just want it and seek it.

2) people have either unexplained or unrealistic expectations. Listen to some podcasts, read a couple of articles, and hear some of these journalists, enthusiasts talk off the cuff, and you'll hear some pretty wild things if you know anything about how games are made or how programming works. "Why is every open world surrounded by water or mountains?" "Why can't I always go anywhere?" "Why can't every character always have something unique to say all the time?" "Why can't every character have their own story and role across the entire game" Things that just aren't feasible for coders and machines today. Alot of people don't know what's feasible, what reasonably lies within gaming's limits. With expectations running unbridled that like that.

3) The things Sony mentioned are little Big things. They are options and features you have to use to appreciate. A lot of what Sony showed is a foundation. Every console starts with a vision, a goal. And that goal is laid out over time and usually evolves and branches out as technology and time move forward. The launch titles, the games, the OS, and even the vision can evolve. They set out to convey what their vision is...focus on the gamer. This is the start, the reveal...this isn't E3. This isn't year 3. Its a cycle.

4) Our media is cynical, suffers from selective short term memory, has a tendency to panic and worry, and not look beyond a headline. Everything is a conspiracy, a trick, a gross miscalculation, an exaggerated level of incompetence, or an over-simplification of circumstance. Hate or love Killzone: Shadow Fall (or feel somewhere in between) but to follow this industry for any length of time and glaze over the fact that its a launch title and what that implies is just ridiculous. To knowingly go into a conference where we know pricing won't be discussed, nor release date revealed, nor will we see all the games in development...its just ridiculous. We've been here before. We know how this works.

5)"Show me new things every day." "Everything should be a surprise." Remember Destiny, its from Bungie...everybody loves Bungie...they made Halo. Bungie reveals Destiny on Sunday. People are intrigued and it dominates the news cycle. Bungie shows up at the PS Meeting...its old news. Watch Dogs...its old news. Unreal 4 demos, Agni Philosophy demo...old news. Nevermind that no one's played them or seen most of what they're about, we know it exists, what else you got? I mean its really simple....Show me everything, tell me everything, make it all gameplay, but make it all polished cause I'll judge it as is otherwise, and make sure all the 3rd party studios do the same, but make this meeting short, oh and save some stuff for E3, Gamescom, Pax, GDC, TGS, VGAs, etc. Whatever you show me today exists in a vacuum. Show me Killzone, Infamous, Knack...and I'll scream for more games...I'll clamor for you to get on the ball and get studios on new IP. And when you reveal more to me 3 months later, I'll say you finally listened even though games take years to develop and had to be in the pipeline way before you showed me anything.

6) MS hasn't shown anything.

Its a combo of all those things.

Well said.

The assumption is that there are not enough pure 'core' gamers anymore and you need to attract not necessarily 'casuals' but people that enjoy more than just gaming.

I love games, but I spend just as much (if not more time) watching movies/tv, reading, listening to music etc.

What if I could have one box that did it all - internet browser, games machine, something that I can watch films and tv on, something that I can listen to music on, something I can video chat with my friends on...

When you write it all out like that then you realise that such a device already exists, and its called a smart phone. Well guess what, everyone has/wants a smart phone/tablet. Its big business.

There still is not a home version equivalent. There isn't one box that you can put under the tv that does everything a smart phone does and more. Yes there are PCs that you can connect to a tv, but who wants to sit on their couch with a mouse and keyboard? That's where kinect comes in - control can be achieved intuitively through hand movement or voice (just like a phone).

This is what MS is chasing and understandably so.
It doesn't mean that you have to have casual games, there is no reason why MS cant work on getting all that functionality PLUS great games.

If one company is set up.to deliver such a product its MS and it would appear that Sony are going in a different direction.

The Wii U does almost all of what you say. Nintendo just need to get music there. They need to integrate with a user's existing libraries.

 

[Metal Gear?!]

I have no idea why the press is so negative. Tablets and smartphones are a huge step back for gaming.

Tablets and smartphones are the new mainstream. If you want mainstream money and sales you're going to have to compete with them or compliment them well.

I think the mainstream press forgot that there is an entirely separate market for high quality production games. They generalize all games into one category which isn't right. Not sure if this is a good analogy but it's like cars. You have your mainstream cars that get you from point A to B and are just functional, and you have the super-expensive luxury cars or sports cars. It's like Sony introduced a sports car, then the mainstream press applied criticisms that you would hurl at commercial/mainstream cars at it. In the first place, a sports car should be held to a completely different standard. And the market that buys sports cars is completely separate and different from everyone else.

The "high end games market" absolutely positively cannot sustain itself on niche sales... and they also cannot raise prices like the sports car market can. Your analogy doesn't work.

Consoles sold last gen: ~200 million.
Consoles sold this gen: ~250 million. And with much higher prices.

The higher prices mean nothing when the costs are far outstripping the prices to the point that they lost more on every PS3 sold than anyone ever has on any console before.

The PS2 didn't sell 150 million units on the back of 'hardcore gamers' though.

Bingo.

Since gamers are their target group, and currently the sheer number of potential core gamers should be at least as high as during the PS1 and PS2 era:

Whoever you consider "core" Playstation customers to be, they clearly do not constitute that large a proportion of the PS2 marketshare, otherwise PS3 would have sold more.

PS3 was targeted at "gamers" and it has sold little more than half what the PS2 sold so far. This is a platform in decline.

They are not leaving, less and less are joining. PS2 150+ mil units sold. PS3+ XBOX360 150+ mil units sold. PS2 sold 1,5 bil videogames. PS3+ 360 round about 1,1 billion. The Apple iStore is the defacto leader of the online stores and has the biggest revenue from gaming. Sony is losing money. Apple is growing. Vita is a dead fish in the water. I could go on and on.

Exactly.

Why are you leaving out Wii sales? It was a console.

The total console sales for this gen were much higher than the PS2/GC/Xbox gen.

Sony's share of those sales were much lower than the PS2/GC/Xbox gen. You can see the problem there.

 

[Shaanyboi]

It's mostly tech press who are more down on it, it seems. People who are heavily invested in Apple ecosystems, people who are heavily following the mobile side of things where if there's an info dump, it's kinda the ONLY info dump. It seems games press atleast knows there's kind of a timeline for hype building around these machines.

 

[Chuck Norris]

A successful announcement has to show a vision, it has deliver on what gamers expect and show the, what they don't expect and ALSO convince them that thy want these new ideas. For me Sony did that, they showed me what I want which was great graphics technology with the games to support it.but more importantly they convinced me on the stuff I didn't realise I wanted, like super quick response times on the console. Instant demos and game trials. The share button and new ways of social connectivity. For me the announcement was reminiscent of the Xbox 360 announcement. Very developer oriented, and with new concepts of how the future of socialising on consoles should be attained. MS didn't just deliver on the minimum expectations back then, they delivered a future vision and redefined things. I think that's what Sony has done with Gaikai and its social elements.

I'm interested to see how MS responds, but their console does not seem to be designed around super quick instantaneous nature of the Ps4. I hope things aren't bloated on 720, MS have a good track record though.

 

[Robertto]

i think its pretty good considering it was very games focused, and they showed 3 new first party games, BUT they still kept their powder dry, in that none of their big heavy hitter franchises or studios (naughty dog, GT5, god of war, santa monica)