Console Wars Thread! PS4 vs. Xbox One vs. Wii U Fight!

DF face-off for MGS Ground Zeroes:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-metal-gear-solid-ground-zeroes-face-off
PS4 vs XBO has more or less been detailed before, though more details are given with 360 vs PS3. This Sony-loving developer who likes to screw over the XB platform apparently forgot to hold back the 360 version of the game.

I've played a bit of the game. I ended up spoiling the story for myself on Youtube, just so I wouldn't get spoiled in some other way (still working on my playthrough). I'd probably recommend it to most MGS fans.

 

More fun with percentages!
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ps4-hardware-sales-jump-106-on-infamous-second-son-launch/0130068

And this was after a 72% increase in sales the previous week (obviously people buying PS4s in preparation of Infamous!).

Joking aside, it seems Infamous is selling well over there (as is Ground Zeroes). I believe it was confirmed Infamous sold less than Titanfall though, in case anyone wanted to speculate about that (TF does have PC+XBO, but I'm assuming the XBO-only numbers were also higher).

 

More bad news for Sony's development studios:
http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/drive...dge_and_sce_london_studio_hit_by_layoffs.html

 

Gah! Totally off-topic, but how does euphemistic language just keep getting worse? I think of George Carlin every time ("is that a grotesque enough evasion for you!?").

"Made redundant." Come. On. The denotation of that phrase has nothing to do with someone's job ending. We can't say "let go"? Or "laid off"?

 

Deleted. Sorry, meant to have this in the PS4 thread.

edit: Let me salvage this...

Sales expectations for March NPD?

I suck at this, but I'll throw something out:
XBO > PS4
Titanfall > 1M (including PC)
Infamous > 250K
MGS:GZ > 500K (all platforms)
Dark Souls 2 > 400K (360/PS3)

Um...XBO 400K and PS4 350K. Vita > 0.5K

I don't know what I'm doing. I never do this, and I did absolutely no research.

 

Does that include pre-orders? Cus I'm pretty sure Infamous had more pre-orders than that alone unless the Last of Us had less than that.

 

I think that pre-order amount was just for the UK (and there were no actual figures IIRC). On top of that, I never know how to tie pre-order numbers to final sales numbers. I'm mostly just basing this off of sales for previous Infamous games, and me just trying to guess how many PS4 owners will actually pick up the game (somewhat extrapolating from rough UK numbers, if I remembered them right).

I think the Infamous games should sell better than they have, and I certainly would like to see Sucker Punch get some recognition (and a bigger budget for future games).

I hopefully am underestimating it a bit. Something like 350K-450K would be pretty nice (possibly totaling ~1M in its first month globally). Plus I think NPD would exclude digital sales, so I guess technically my estimates would exclude those.

 

I think this one is a bit of a perfect storm. It's the best first party game (and arguably the best looking game) on a console that desperately needs big games. Normally I wouldn't think the sales would be so high for a single player only game that doesn't have 40+ hours of gameplay, but like I said the circumstances are unique.

 

True, though I also think there are factors going against it. Lots of high profile games in the month. It isn't like every PS4 owner is ignoring good multiplatform games (or games available on other platforms). The PS4 is doing well despite good exclusives because people are buying it to play AC, Battlefield, FIFA, NBA 2K, and eventually games like Destiny, Arkham Knight, etc.

Also, is someone who is interested in Infamous also going to be interested in Dark Souls 2, MGS, Titanfall, etc.? (I'm interested in 2 of the 3) Maybe some people decided to pass on Infamous (at least for this month). I don't think the reviews helped either. I think they're fairly accurate (and I'm certainly having fun with the game), but a Metacritic of "only" 80 might hurt word of mouth for the game.

(I want to be wrong! )

 

I don't think a score of 80 hurts a game. Below that maybe. Obviously having 90 on up is always lovely.

You're right about that, there is a lot of good games out this month. I picked up South Park, Titanfall, and Infamous myself.

 

I have sort of been posting about the folks leaving Sony, but it is really starting to sound bad. It is somewhat expected in the industry, and it has happened before (without studios/games really being harmed). But it is starting to seem crazy at this point.

The Uncharted 4 director just revealed he's leaving ND. Just to recap, the other creative director of the game (Amy Hennig, who essentially created Uncharted, at least creatively) already left. Sony Santa Monica (God of War franchise primarily, though they assist with tons of other games) canceled a new PS4 IP, and essentially laid off the team creating it (which lead to the GoW3 director leaving the studio, and another talented guy from Capcom also left). The lead designer for Infamous Second Son left Sucker Punch. The director for Drive Club has left Evolution (as have many from SCEE studios). It was a while ago, but Ueda left SCEJ (though still working on TLG). Probably leaving out several others (certainly a lot of talented "nameless" people in the layoffs too). Oh yeah, and Jack Tretton.

A lot of these projects seemed to be mismanaged (TLG, Drive Club, etc.), and I suppose SCEA did drop the ball in some areas. So maybe this is part of a major restructure to regain control of their companies/projects. Still, that's a lot of talent to lose in a short amount of time, even with high turnover. Somewhat more surprising given how successful the gaming division seems to be lately. Clearly Sony's overall financial picture is playing a factor, though I wonder if something else is also going on in some of these cases (Sony has been doing badly for years, and yet SCEI seemed largely unaffected, especially since the company saw it as one of the few divisions to rally behind).

 

All the news is absolutely concerning. You'd think they'd take their momentum and run with it...

I don't trust their "reorganizing". It seems like a classic basketball salary dump in a way. Pretty sad, hopefully it doesn't affect things as much as it looks like it will.

 

FWIW, Pete Dodd was commenting on what he heard about the issues at Sony. IIRC, Tretton left because he couldn't go any higher at Sony (plus apparently doesn't like House?). He said the Driveclub director was let go due to the problems on the project, though one person who knows the guy called him out on that (apparently the guy is having personal problems).

For SSM, he said that Stig (the GoW 3 director) was mismanaging his project, and they had to reboot it 3 times I think. Pete was saying Sony sunk nearly a $100M into the project, which seems a little off to me. But yeah, apparently Sony gives a little too much leeway to some of its developers, and they eventually gave up on the project. They offered Stig a (lesser) position, but he refused.



Anyway...more random stories:


http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03...how-it-became-a-visual-showcase-for-xbox-one/
Pretty interesting if you like tech stuff.

Full breakdown of Infamous by DF:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-vs-infamous-second-son

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/27/xbox-boss-a-halo-2-remake-would-have-to-nail-multiplayer
Kind of a "well, IF we were going to announce a Halo 2 Remake, this is what we'd do" statement from Phil Spencer....possibly with some winks.

 

Everyone keeps saying it is a full restructure of their games division for "efficiency". I have to believe they wouldn't be firing all these people after having such a successful launch for monetary reasons entirely (even though this is a monetary thing). I'm hoping all of that is accurate and it's not something more serious. Who is to say this will help things though?

 

Given that a lot of these studios are still hiring new people (and no studios are actually shutting down), I'm guessing things aren't THAT bad, and maybe this is all just bad timing.


Just to update, it turned out that Pete was wrong about DriveClub. The game director himself (Col Rogers) made a NeoGAF account, and set the record straight. Turns out his son is very sick, and that's why he ended up leaving. He was quite offended at the claims Dodd made of course.

NeoGAF as banned Dodd permanently (at least for now) due to this I think. He was kind of being an ass about it on Twitter, though I think he's now apologized for getting this info wrong.

This certainly puts much of what he said in doubt, at least in my mind. All these gaming insiders are being disproven.

 

I'm wondering how long he was working for them (Col that is). No offense to him or anything and I hope his child is okay, but I wouldn't be working 200 miles (his words, not mine) from home to begin with personally.

 

Phil Spencer is getting a promotion!
http://news.xbox.com/2014/03/xbox-one-a-new-day-at-xbox
Phil's one of the more likable guys in the XB division, so I think this is good news. He does seem to know what the right "messages" should be...for the most part. They're already in a hole in the "console war," but I think this should help.

 

http://www.neowin.net/news/directx-12-a-game-changer-for-xbox-one

Exciting stuff, read the whole article for the tech behind it...

 

Yeah it's really exciting for 2016...you know that's not coming any time soon right?

It's really PR fluff just like the "power of the cloud".

 

I swear I used to actually check out NeoWin back in the day. Was the writing always so bad and I just never noticed? It read like "aioaiosdaj gigabytes alksfjdadsjf double performance adlfjkasdklfjasdflj 1080P!" I understood some of the words, but the meaning behind these words just doesn't make any sense.

Here's an article written by someone who actually seems to understands technology:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7835/directx-12-to-be-unveiled-at-gdc-2014
The part about console development:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7889/...level-graphics-programming-comes-to-directx/3