How many killer multiplayer games are PS-exclusive? That’s an honest question; the last time I seriously looked at a PS-exclusive game is when I bought Rogue Galaxy for my PS2.
MS can get away with it, I think, due to having Halo and Gears of War. CODBLOPS/BF4EXGE (Extra Xtreme Gold Edition, of course) are cross-platform, so they’re not exactly in the “Pay for Sony over Microsoft!” camp.
If both platforms were pay-to-play, wouldn’t you assume that the one with better multiplayer exclusives and (if it’s noticeably and consistently so) the stronger online offering in general would far and away beat out the other?
Then again, I’m probably a bad example. I own all of about 7 games for my 360 and have never used Live.
This will cause me to dump console gaming, I just won’t pay to play online. I dumped the 360 because I figured out XBL over the life of the console would cost me well, about what a PS3 would these days.
The only thing I would miss is fighting games, and well, those are going to start declining again after 2012, and I expect that genre to move to the PC eventually anyways, at least on the 2D side.
It might be revived somewhat by MLG’s decision to pick up 2-3 fighting titles for the 2012 season. . . at least the high-level competitive scene will be bolstered by that (in addition to the already excellent EVO tourney).
But regardless, if Capcom is leading a charge for PC versions of fighters, maybe more will follow suit!
It would be nice if Sony figured out better value-adds for playstation plus to actually make it attractive (and thus profitable) while keeping multiplayer free. I’m not sure what you could put there that would work though. Maybe they could charge for the ability to have voice chat or party-rooms, or something like that, that I would never use.
As much as I can’t believe that MS charges for multiplayer, I really can’t believe that Netflix is a Gold service (assuming it still is).
Just my personal opinion, but I think PSN stayed free because first of all it lured people who didn’t want to pay to play online to the Sony camp, and secondly it helped offset the higher price you had to pay for the console up front. I know a few people who bought a PS3 based on the logic that if it was 3 or 4 years until the next generation of consoles and they paid $60 a year to play online with an Xbox then the total cost of Xbox ownership was going to be far more than the $100 up front difference they were spending on a PS3.
That said, I also believe that whatever Sony’s next-gen console is, they will start charging for online play. As was mentioned upthread, it’s working for Microsoft to the tune of $1B annually, and that kind of money can’t be ignored.
Nintendo is just plain screwed. 3DS is an official flop at this point, and honestly the Wii U doesn’t look like it has enough going for it to see the sort of sales that the original Wii saw in the year or so after it’s release. With the Wii being so cheap, everyone who wanted one has one at this point, and selling Wii U consoles to those folks who already have a Wii is going to be a tough sell in most cases.
Maybe they’ll realize people don’t want limited function devices anymore, with high priced games that more often then not don’t life up to the price asked for them?
The market place is changing, they’ll have to:
A. move with the times
B. succeed in pushing SOPA-like monstrosities
C. go the way of the dodo.
I hope they’ll go for option A, since I would hate to see them go. Option B I’ll not even consider.
Somehow I don’t think the world will turn to $3 casual games and abandon more deep higher prices ones just yet.
Nintendo’s main problem as i see it is they do make a lot of those ultra casual $3 games but they don’t sell them for ultra casual prices. For a while now they have focused not on getting good games for their systems but exclusively on gimmicks. Sometimes the gimmicks pay off, like with nds and wii and sometimes they don’t, like with 3ds and wii-u. The problem with gimmicks is they get old so by the time people get bored that they can draw on their screen with a stylus, you need to have games in place to keep them there. Wii didn’t do this, nds did.
Yeah, unless people start jumping ship en masse over the Live fee, Sony would be extremely foolish to leave that money on the table. As much as I loathe to admit it, people have shown that they are entirely willing to cough up $30-$60 a year for access to multiplayer games and to watch the Netflix subscription they already pay for. That’s easy money for Sony and Microsoft.
Really? Why not? I’m always curious when someone says this, why they think it is so.
Do you think that someone would continue to pay $60 for a movie if they can get a different movie for $3? Even if the movie is 20 times better, the price point in between them makes it a very easy economic argument.
While your point stands, I frequently suspect that the iOS market is doing more to expand the gaming market than directly cannibalize dedicated handheld sales. The people I see on the train playing Angry Birds weren’t going to be playing a DS instead, they were going to read the paper, or check email, or listen to music, etc.
People seem very eager to call the 3DS and WiiU flops, even though one is early in it’s life cycle and the other doesn’t exist yet. (I’m not saying I think they are / going to be successful). People seem to forget that Nintendo has a ton of cash on hand, and that even the Gamecube was profitable for them overall. The price cut undoubtedly killed a lot of their 3DS profits, but it’s still early to say how that will shake out financially.
I will not buy any new consoles if Sony starts charging for online play. It was one of the reasons that I stopped using my Xbox 360 because multiplayer on PSN is free. I hope it remains free or I will fully return to pc gaming.
Microsoft and Sony combine for a single platform (Microsoft OS and network, Sony hardware and entertainment content), and Nintendo gets out of hardware and supplies the innovative software for it that can not be played else where. If not now, then soon.
Right, like how Coke and Pepsi have teamed up to provide the delicious taste of coke and the hip marketing acumen of Pepsi in one super-cool, super-tasty beverage.
While Nintendo may never do that, I could see Microsoft and Sony doing what he mentioned. Microsoft really isn’t huge on the whole hardware end (and didn’t exactly have a great experience with the 360 in that regard). It wouldn’t be the first time Sony and Microsoft worked together.
I can’t be the only one that reads this and has their eyes just glaze over…Mario cart…7 the best since…the umpteenth Mario…another RE… seriously can they not think of anything new…really?
They will if they’re playing those deeper, higher priced games on a console or a PC. Besides, it’s not just the pure smartphone market competing with the handhelds, but also the tablet computers. From the perspective of getting games for kids, I’m much happier downloading freebies or 99 cent games on my IPad than I would be spending $10 or $20 on DS games, and the little guy is just as happy on the IPad as he is with the 3DS.
