Jimquisition: Why The PS4 Is Kicking Xbox One's Arse

[Ham Blitz]

While I am satisfied with my purchase of the xbox one (more of the exclusives appealed to me), after getting it and playing through the games I got around release/the holidays (3 in total) I had nothing really to do for about 2 to 3 months except occasionally go back to DR3 on it (since BF4 didn't seem to stick much with my group [I prefer to play it with some friends on my team]) and even then most of the time I just played either computer games or went back to some 360 games until Titanfall came out. While I enjoy Titanfall a lot, I can't think of any game I am really excited for coming out on the One until the fall now (though I am curious about Watch_Dogs, though recent news has kind of curbed my enthusiasm a bit, so it has become more of a "wait and see" rather than an "I'm anxious for its release").
Funny thing right now is the next game I am extremely hyped for has already come out (and thanks to a gift card I remembered I had it is coming in 2 days) which is Dark Souls 2 (for the 360 because my computer is a laptop... and crap).

 

[Kameburger]

I'm currently living in Japan and literally were it not for the fact that I work in the Gaming industry, I probably wouldn't know the Xbox one was even out. Aside from the occasional article in Famitsu (the more popular Japanese gaming magazine), there are no advertisements, no signs in stores, no signs for pre-orders, no upcoming titles. Sony even released PS4 late here despite Japan being its "domestic" market. I live in a country where games are literally everywhere, and yet the Xbox one doesn't exist. I've had the occasional conversation about Titan Fall at work, but everyone agrees that they really want to play it but not enough to find an Xbox.

 

[Shayman]

I liked the comparison of indie games on the PC to the PS4. PC gets most, if not all indie games, including the bad ones. Sony presents the "best of" to it's consumers.

 

[Nimzabaat]

EDIT: Okay ninja'd. But that's piss poor garm-jurnalizm if you ask me. Sony is beating MS because they're available in 40 more markets. So even if MS just doubles the amount of markets they sell to, they win, hands down. Now that's something to think about.

Not necessarily. Not all markets are the same size, or have the same amount of enthusiasm for the Microsoft product. The Xbone is already available in the key Xbox-friendly markets, so other territories are likely to result in diminishing returns.

True enough. Mind you MS would have to move a ludicrously low amount of units in those other 40 markets.

All i'm saying is that if i'm running for office and my people tell me; "sir we've counted 100% of your votes and 25% of your opponents and you have a slight lead." I,for one, would not be celebrating just yet.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm currently living in Japan and literally were it not for the fact that I work in the Gaming industry, I probably wouldn't know the Xbox one was even out. Aside from the occasional article in Famitsu (the more popular Japanese gaming magazine), there are no advertisements, no signs in stores, no signs for pre-orders, no upcoming titles. Sony even released PS4 late here despite Japan being its "domestic" market. I live in a country where games are literally everywhere, and yet the Xbox one doesn't exist. I've had the occasional conversation about Titan Fall at work, but everyone agrees that they really want to play it but not enough to find an Xbox.

That's cause MS hasn't actually released the system in Japan yet nor does it have a release date for it set.


In Japan Xbox 360 was marketed towards the heavy-otaku people with games like Dream Host Club and Idolmaster so outside of those people nobody else ever got into it. It had no hopes anyways in that country due to the red ring problems early on building an incredibly bad rep for it so that's the path it took and eventually Sony came along using Vita's superior ability to touch the characters in the games and a host of Idol/hostess games to go with it as well as many anime-based games so all the pervy otaku went Sony's way never looking back and they're still there, leaving xbox as a brand out in the cold. It was a short-term moneygrab which backfired hilariously.

 

[Olas]

Wind the clocks back 6 months and everyone was calling the Xbone (remember when we called it that?) a disaster in the making. It was being pummeled right and left over it's used games policy and Kinect requirements until Microsoft was forced to make (some) major concessions. Then you had resolutiongate and framerategate(or whatever you want to call it) Flash to today and the Xbox One is still more expensive, nowhere near as available overseas, clearly less powerful, and even Titanfall, it's guaranteed grand slam exclusive(not counting PC) is receiving some ire for being over-hyped. I really don't think anyone is surprised or confused about the PS4's lead. PS+, PS4's indie scene, and it's Twitch compatibility seem more like icing on the cake really.

Why do you say Scientific fact? What is scientific about it? Did you perturb the system to test a hypothesis? Did you use proper controls? Did you do any statistical analysis regarding the significance of your observation?

You're joking right? Jim is the lord of all things true and righteous, his word is objective scientific truth by the very nature of it coming from Jim Sterling. Perhaps in the future you could be more respectful and appreciative of what Jim does for us.

 

[Vigormortis]

Gotta side with Jim on this one.

I mean, think of it this way:
I'm a PC gamer. Through and through, heart and soul, balls to bones.

However, because of Sony's change of business model, their much improved behavior towards the gaming community, their admirable (yet sadly still limited) support of the indie scene, and their lineup of exclusives, even I have started giving some serious thought into buying a PS4.

And this after I'd sworn off console gaming entirely a little over four years ago...

 

[Toadfish1]

I still dont understand why indi games cant be system sellers...

Well they can be, but would you buy a PS4 for an indie game? Any available now?

(also, Jim perhaps that lighting's a bit too luminuous)

Well evidently people are, considering its the fastest selling console of all time.

 

[Kameburger]

I'm currently living in Japan and literally were it not for the fact that I work in the Gaming industry, I probably wouldn't know the Xbox one was even out. Aside from the occasional article in Famitsu (the more popular Japanese gaming magazine), there are no advertisements, no signs in stores, no signs for pre-orders, no upcoming titles. Sony even released PS4 late here despite Japan being its "domestic" market. I live in a country where games are literally everywhere, and yet the Xbox one doesn't exist. I've had the occasional conversation about Titan Fall at work, but everyone agrees that they really want to play it but not enough to find an Xbox.

That's cause MS hasn't actually released the system in Japan yet nor does it have a release date for it set.


In Japan Xbox 360 was marketed towards the heavy-otaku people with games like Dream Host Club and Idolmaster so outside of those people nobody else ever got into it. It had no hopes anyways in that country due to the red ring problems early on building an incredibly bad rep for it so that's the path it took and eventually Sony came along using Vita's superior ability to touch the characters in the games and a host of Idol/hostess games to go with it as well as many anime-based games so all the pervy otaku went Sony's way never looking back and they're still there, leaving xbox as a brand out in the cold. It was a short-term moneygrab which backfired hilariously.

Oh believe me, I know. It wasn't until they released Blue-Dragon as an Xbox exclusive that they were even able to move console's there. As for the Vita, a lot of the credit goes to the release of Hatsune-Miku, but also a lot of the failure of the Vita is attributed to Capcom bringing Monster Hunter to the 3DS as an exclusive instead of to Sony. Considering how many PSP's Monster hunter helped sell in Japan, Sony was probably banking on having some support there. I kind of disagree (emphasis on the kind of) with the assertion that just pervy games secured the win for Sony although there are quite a few. But there are a lot of series in Japan that get to be exclusive Sony titles simply because Xbox was never able to secure the partnerships it needed. So many popular games in Japan (not even just the pervy ones) move consoles in Japan but barely get sold in the US, and all of these titles go to Sony and I don't think Microsoft even bothers anymore. The Yakuza series (Ryu ga gotoku) is one such example.

 

[loa]

Fun fact: I only bought a 360 to get castle crashers, sotn and ikaruga while all it had in the "AAA" field was call of bioshock: the haloing.
Indie games and ports can totally sell systems and microsoft absolutely shot themselves in the foot by being complete douches to indie devs.

 

[TomWiley]

How is the PS4 kicking Xbox One's arse? I just checked the sales for last month out of interest. Microsoft moved 260,000 consoles and Sony moved roughly 287,000. That's not even a 10 percent difference. Now factor in that Sony has released their system in more countries and cost considerable less, it's not even certain that Sony's gained more profit.

I know starting fanboy wars is fun and all but let's not exaggerate things here.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Is not a matter from "better than", is more like "less wrong", both consoles still doesn't have backward compatibility.

You do realise just how difficult backwards compatibility between completely different hardware is right? The only way to get it to function properly is to have previous gen hardware in the same box. That means buying two consoles in one, and bumping up the price quite a bit.

I generally just lurk, but I had to comment on this. And all I can say is PC! My PC with all new parts when it was bought 2 years ago runs games that are just now coming out at max settings at 1080p resolution with 60+ FPS, while also playing games from 1995 with little to no hassle (usually no hassle, as in, I install them, they work), and games even older than that with some to little hassle (dosbox is about as "hassle-full" as it gets and really, once you've take the 10-30 mins to figure out how it works the first time you use it, it's never a hassle after that).

So yeah. The only reason the consoles don't have backwards compatibility is because the people making the consoles don't want you to have it. It's as simple as that.

As a fellow PC gamer I'm going to put a massive CITATION NEEDED on your post.

Comparing a PC emulating or using DOSbox to the PS3's CELL processor is a fallacy, most PC emulation is bruteforcing the simulation of the entire console's hardware. This is the main reason why the few (if any) 360 and PS3 emulators require monster specs, combined this with the PC for the most part remaining constant and only increasing in power (and going X86 which isn't much compared to the shift that the consoles did going from 7th to 8th generation) while any sort of backwards compatible PS4 would require a CELL processor if not an entire PS3 inside the new console. Which is what they did to produce the BC PS2.

 

[Drummodino]

This is something I call one of the biggest paradoxes in gaming. Microsoft should be doing everything in their power to promote the PC ecosystem as superior. Why? Because Microsoft is a company that makes the majority of its money making Operating Systems for PCs.

Microsoft should be doing everything they can to promote the PC as a superior gaming platform over consoles. The prevalence of gaming available exclusively for the Windows platform is one of the main reasons why Windows achieved its monopoly. Now that market share erodes daily over to Apple and Linux as Microsoft flounders in its support for PC gaming, offering half baked applications (Games For Windows Live, lol) and empty platitudes about how they "care" about PC gaming as they barely release anything there. Or if they do, it's shoddy PC ports.

It makes no sense for Microsoft to be in the gaming space. They are actively competing with themselves, and screwing their company over the long term. Gaming makes up a very small fraction of Microsoft's overall revenues, most of which come from Windows and enterprise suites for Windows. Fanboys rage whenever you say that Microsoft should be selling the Xbox division but any serious thought about the topic indicates it's something that must be done.

Microsoft is in the gaming industry with Xbox because they make money from every game that gets sold for it. Just think about that - every game that's sold on an Xbox platform. They do not get anything for every PC game that is bought unless it was made by one of their studios.

Microsoft would much rather people were on Xbox and people just used PC for everything else. Let's face it - the vast majority of people who own an Xbox also own a PC with Windows. So they still get the sale of the OS, they will still sell things like Office. The only games Microsoft would prefer be on PC are free to play games and MMOs - they wouldn't make money off free to play titles and they don't want to have to provide the infrastructure for something like WoW.

 

[Caiphus]

How is the PS4 kicking Xbox One's arse? I just checked the sales for last month out of interest. Microsoft moved 260,000 consoles and Sony moved roughly 287,000. That's not even a 10 percent difference. Now factor in that Sony has released their system in more countries and cost considerable less, it's not even certain that Sony's gained more profit.

I know starting fanboy wars is fun and all but let's not exaggerate things here.

That would be the NPD statistic which, I believe, only measures sales in the US (it may include Canada, I'm not sure).

Vgchartz measures global sales:

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/251540/ps4-vs-xbox-onevgchartz-gap-chartsfebruary-2014-update/

Which shows that the PS4 sold ~670,000 more consoles worldwide. Less impressive, perhaps, when you consider the Japanese launch would have made up roughly half that difference. Either way, it's still more than 10%.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

How is the PS4 kicking Xbox One's arse? I just checked the sales for last month out of interest. Microsoft moved 260,000 consoles and Sony moved roughly 287,000. That's not even a 10 percent difference. Now factor in that Sony has released their system in more countries and cost considerable less, it's not even certain that Sony's gained more profit.

I know starting fanboy wars is fun and all but let's not exaggerate things here.

And another even bigger CITATION NEEDED on this one as well folks!

By any chance is this for America only? Because last month Sony released the PS4 in Japan, generating over 300,000 sales in the first two days alone.

There is something to be said about pushing your console out in order to get a large install base in order to get the real money earners as well as (I'm still assuming this is American sales figures we are talking about) beating your opposition in their home country and stronghold of the last generation is something to be amazed about.

It is true that Sony cast its net wide and far in order to achieve this and may not be generating much of a profit on the sale of each console when considering shipping etc, but the Xbone's rather heavy albatross around its neck called Kinect and its associated R&D costs and production isn't doing it any favours either.

And finally as the PS3 showed us its an uphill battle to gain ground against an already entrenched opponent, especially with a higher price point for the most part.

 

[daxterx2005]

I thought Sony was still in the red...?

 

[Caiphus]

I thought Sony was still in the red...?

They certainly still are having trouble, yes:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-06/sony-forecasts-annual-loss-as-hirai-turnaround-stalls-on-tvs.html

And news from today:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-17/sony-corp-said-to-begin-cutting-jobs-at-entertainment-division.html

 

[Nimzabaat]

How is the PS4 kicking Xbox One's arse? I just checked the sales for last month out of interest. Microsoft moved 260,000 consoles and Sony moved roughly 287,000. That's not even a 10 percent difference. Now factor in that Sony has released their system in more countries and cost considerable less, it's not even certain that Sony's gained more profit.

I know starting fanboy wars is fun and all but let's not exaggerate things here.

Well that's Jim Shil-er-Stirling for you. Only a 7k difference and PS4 is available in 40 more markets than the XB1 is. That's actually kind of pathetic when you think about it.

You have to remember that this is an entertainment website only. This is the last place one should look for informed reporting

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

How is the PS4 kicking Xbox One's arse? I just checked the sales for last month out of interest. Microsoft moved 260,000 consoles and Sony moved roughly 287,000. That's not even a 10 percent difference. Now factor in that Sony has released their system in more countries and cost considerable less, it's not even certain that Sony's gained more profit.

I know starting fanboy wars is fun and all but let's not exaggerate things here.

Well that's Jim Shil-er-Stirling for you. Only a 7k difference and PS4 is available in 40 more markets than the XB1 is. That's actually kind of pathetic when you think about it.

You have to remember that this is an entertainment website only. This is the last place one should look for informed reporting

Your own advice should go double for internet forums when posters stick up numbers without providing a source.

Mainly because [user]TomWiley[/user]'s number seem to be mysteriously absent of Sony's 300,000 PS4's sold in Japan for the last week of February.

http://www.24-7gamer.com/ps4-japan-sales/

Personally I believe those numbers he put up were for US only, it makes much more sense then. But still, achieveving higher sales numbers in the former MS stronghold of the last generation isn't a good sign for Microsoft.

 

[Caiphus]

This is the last place one should look for informed reporting

As opposed to you, who saw one unsourced forum post and immediately went "Oh well! Guess Jim must have been wrong then. What a hack."