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

Let us not forget that the Halo TV series will also build hype for the franchise... and if Halo: Forward Unto Dawn is any indicator - it should be great.

 

I think that was the point... it was on par with people considering Wii Sports as a best selling game.

 

I played super mario 3d world on my friends wii u the other day. It was fun as hell. Reminded me of my child super nintendo days.

I won't really care much for xbox one until halo and gears come out.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said (what I said and what you're saying can both be true).

My point was more along the lines that the franchise appears to be trending downward in sales. Halo 3 > Halo Reach > Halo 4 (in sales). This is despite the fact that the 360 userbase has grown over-time (i.e., 4M sold with 10M consoles is more impressive IMO than 4M sold and 40M consoles...although here, it is more like 4M vs 3.5M). Now, some of this is due to the fact that the older games have been out longer, but the franchise does seem to be trending downward a bit. Sure, I guess Halo 3 had less competition at its launch (no BF, CoD, etc.), but that's not getting any better for the franchise (we'll see a lot more from BF, CoD, Titanfall, Destiny, etc).

That's not that surprising given the circumstances. Games (especially with strong narratives) tend to trend downwards with each release. Bungie is no longer at the helm. Increased competition in the genre. Etc.

Is Halo 5 100% guaranteed for 2014? I think it is, but wanted to double-check. It probably will do a few millions copies, though depending on the userbase numbers at its launch, that could be difficult.

Sony exclusives aren't particularly relevant (especially if this was more directed to my post). Sony has never really had a franchise that dominated in sales (other than GT, and that is trending down). They've generally gone the route of 10 1M sellers vs 1 10M seller. The thought that perhaps those 10 games will sell more consoles than the 1 game (or something along those lines). Of course, it is easy to say that's your focus when you're struggling to have a 10M+ IP. But yeah, the MS exclusives (individually) generally out-perform most/all Sony exclusives. There's not even much of an argument there IMO.

I touched on my general points about Halo earlier in this post.

Couple of other points:
* Poor review/reception of a game doesn't usually have a huge impact on the sales of the game itself (it can affect its "legs," but for heavily front-loaded games, it doesn't matter as much). What it DOES impact is sales for the next game in the franchise. If Halo 4 is the worst in the series, we'll probably see that impact Halo 5's sales more than anything. Though I'm not sure it was really that poorly received (sure, maybe could have been better, but didn't seem horrible), so not sure that will matter too much.

* Are there any solid sources about Halo 4's sales, other than VGChartz? That looks about right, but I was just curious. All I can see from reputable sources is ~4M at the end of 2012 I believe. I was curious if MS gave a direct figure themselves since I'm not a huge fan of VGChartz (even if that number seems reasonable).

 

I've been playing it with my wife, it's very nostalgic. They've added a lot of new stuff, and there's a lot of twists to the old content. Veryyyyy fun co-op game, and change of pace from Modern_FPS_X or Y.

 

I'm well aware of how VGChartz "computes" its figures, which is why I was asking for another source. They can be (and have been) way off on their numbers (sometimes way over, sometimes way under). All I've seen is the ~4M figure for Halo 4, but I haven't looked too closely. The number they give seems reasonable, but 4M to 9M is a big jump, especially if we only have VGChartz and their "algorithms" to rely on. Preferably, there would be some "Halo 4 sells 7M Units As of July 2013" PR or something.

(actually, I just realized you noted Halo 4 sold 9M in 2012...that is definitely wrong AFAIK, but likely a mistake on your part, and I know what you meant)

 

There will be a Halo game before Christmas 2014. I don't have any inside information, I just know it'll be there. I'd expect an announcement at E3. 343 Industries job postings a while back make this almost a certainty.

Halo 4 was the 3rd most sold game in 2012 - across all platforms (CoD: BOII, FIFA13). It sold 3.8 million copies in the first week alone, but to date has only sold about 9 million copies. Which is a ton for a console exclusive.

I don't trust VGChartz or any other numbers that aren't based off of official announcements. Digital distribution throws all traditional estimates out the window.

 

So where is the 9M figure coming from if you don't trust VGChartz?

NPD, Media Create, European charts (I forgot their names), regional PR (e.g., MS France sales Halo tops 200K), etc. are all fine IMO. Though to your point, those are only good for the individual regions, whereas you can likely only get global totals from official PR. DD will also be throwing a wrench in things (some of these trackers attempt to track that, though not sure how reliable that data is).

 

http://news.xbox.com/2013/07/games-halo-4-top-seller

You can correlate Halo 3's sales during the same time period, which Halo 4 surpassed.

 

Thanks for reminding me how much I dislike the PR from MS. :\ (well, the others pull crazy word games to say "all-time best selling" too, but geez MS goes overboard with it sometimes IMO).

Bah, finally got some US LTD figures from July 2013 for the Halo games after doing some searching:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=67834651&postcount=14
I still don't know where the 9M figure is coming from exactly. I guess some are saying since Halo 3 was above 8M in its first year, Halo 4 must be above that. But that PR was just about the US (and might have been about sell-through vs shipped perhaps?). I can see how some estimated 9M, but that might be too many assumptions for my preference. Unless I'm missing something. I'd rather just use those NPD figures. That gives us apples to apples for the most part (and no strange PR words to battle with).

 

Say what you like about Halo, it's one of the very few games that would make someone buy a new console to play it. How many games like that are there?

I'm hoping GTAV is released on next gen. Even if it's not the solo player game but more the online part of GTA. If pay another Au$100 for that. Especially if they kept making DLC for it.

On Titanfall, I'm not all that pumped up for it tbh. I probably will buy it though. Hopefully it doesn't face too many issues at launch. If it does I think it would be a huge blow for next gen consoles in general. Too many new games have issues at the moment.

 

Hopefully all devs have learned some lessons from the troubles of BF4. GTAV will come to next-gen, it is only a matter of time.

 

Unfortunately, despite owning the original Xbox and its fat controllers within weeks release, Halo 1 and 2 didn't quite make me stick with my eagerly purchased and overheating Xbox 360 for more than a week.

I do somewhat miss Halo just for the sake of nostalgia and continuation though, the rest of the Xbox line up are just brown shooters and racing garbage.

 

You're point on Halo is cool. My only point is there are a lot of other exclusives on Sony that sold really well. The only other one on XBox was Gears of War. When you look at the total exclusives, Sony would have better numbers I'm pretty sure.

I did a search of the Game of the Year over the past few years and there were a few Sony exclusives on most sites. Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us are two that come to mind right now. You'll find that Gears of War 2 had a few votes the year it came out, but most didn't pick it that year.

My only point is that overall better games have come out on Sony from what I've experienced. Again, the only games I ever yearned for on XBox were the Mass Effect games, but they ultimately came over.

 

You could have just played Mass Effect with a college issued laptop.

 

See I had a PS2 and bought eventually bought an Xbox just for Halo alone. I kinda moved into playing the Xbox more and then moved onto the 360 and now have an XBone.

I agree about the shooters, a lot of them are just fade into the other. Few really stand out. I don't play too many shooters tbh.

Halo itself has had it's ups and downs in terms of quality. The thing is, your judging its against itself in that regard. Even the worst halo game is better than 95% of the shooters out there on any system.

As for the rest of the Xbox lineup, it's what, 98% the same games you find on Playstation? A few exclusives are different but for the most part the games are all the same, play the same, look the same..

 

See I'm the other way in that I wasn't really all that interested in too many of the Sony exclusives but the Xbox exclusives were games I wanted to play.

It's all just personal preference at the end of the day.

 

Yeah, I was going to say this earlier, but pretty much any game can be a system seller. Something like Dark Souls or Persona 5 would probably sell a system for me, even if it wouldn't get much more than 500K in sales in the US (well...Dark Souls is actually getting somewhat popular). I care about some of those games MUCH more than GT, Halo, Titanfall, etc. As mentioned, it is all about personal preference.

You could discuss the general strategies of how each company pursues exclusives, and how/why you think they might be more effective (though I'm not sure it is really clear which one is more effective). As I said earlier, MS will generally have fewer exclusives, but they'll be be big sellers (also generally shooters, but that isn't necessarily a bad strategy). Sony will have more exclusives (maybe many more depending on your definition), but few (if any) will really sell like gangbusters. Gears, Halo, Titanfall vs Uncharted, Heavy Rain, LittleBigPlanet. That kind of thing.

MS is trying to add some variety in their exclusives, and Sony is trying to find some games that DO sell very well, so it isn't like you can't have both. But those seem to be the general takeaways from the exclusives for each platform. Well, at least historically, this is true. Though it seems to still be the case for XBO and PS4. PS4 has something like 100 exclusives planned, compared to say 30 for XBO*. But XBO has the more popular exclusives like Halo, Titanfall, etc.

* Just went off the lists in Wikipedia, based on anything that was exclusive, console exclusive, or timed exclusive. Geez, according to this list, there are more Sony exclusives than there are XBO games. Majority of that has to be those indie games I think.

 

Does anyone care about sales elsewhere?

Along with the figures I gave several pages ago, here are some updated figures from France (through the end of 2013 I believe):
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=754847

Someone in the thread gave this as a reference to last-gen consoles (from December 2007):

PS4 almost did 6 month PS3 numbers in 1 month, and Xbox One has ~25% of 2 years 360 numbers (also in ~1 month).

edit: Bah, NeoGAF posters already updated the numbers I was talking about. Again for reference: