Forza Horizon is great, Sea of Thieves lives in a different plane. MS Flight Simulator is a banger, but let’s be honest there - gaming market is big, but the Internet discussions on similar boards are dominated by “graphics” and awards. Also media loves awards. Award nerd-dom or something.
I agree, but to me the numbers here paints a different picture than what people are saying. These games are successful, so there are more than just what people think.
Fortnite is very popular too, but let’s just say that it is a not very hot topic 
Gaming is just very very big. So many various niches there and some markets there are enormous - like mobile market for example (and on the forums people will argue that it is not the true gaming) or for example MMOs.
That’s true. Just when people say MS has to do something to be as popular as some Sony games, I disagree because some of them already have that popularity.
1 Like
The thing is that the popular MS’ games live in a different…market or so to say.
Here is the thing. Due to bias towards Sony, as soon as Sony stopped making other camera angles the narrative moved towards MS, who doesn’t have exact same camera angle - I have no idea why though. In addition to that Sony siphoned all the awards, so MS games - despite covering various genres - deemed to be inferior because they did not collect enough awards for example.
That’s fair, and you’re right, there’s certainly a phenomenon where you have games like Sea of Thieves that are super popular but aren’t the kind of games that win awards and “drive the conversation” on message boards. Flight Simulator is another example.
But in that “driving the conversation” space, you’ve got Forza Horizon, definitely, and past that… maybe Gears still. That’s basically it. While for Sony I could rattle off like 10 games. And maybe you don’t care about that type of game which is totally fine. But Microsoft’s major players in that space are still in the future while Sony’s are here now, so that’s what the narrative is going to reflect.
Yeah, but the narrative doesn’t reflect what players are actually playing, and when you go out of the forums, you see a totally different picture than media, awards and forums. Sea of Thieves and Forza are well loved and talked about. Awards are not anything, neither some forums or medias. The best way to gauge an interest in a game is to see the retention over time and FH4, as well as SoT are doing very well in that regard.
I would even go further and say that third party games are much more popular than Sony own exclusives.
I don’t really consider market, to me 20 millions is 20 millions no matter the market. A huge number showing the popularity of a game no matter what the media or awards think about.
TLOU also sold probably around 20 mil. while being a single player non F2P game and collected awards at the same. That’s the achievement that MS doesn’t have.
Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft have the huge numbers too but nobody is gonna compare them to God of War for example. A lot of indie games are insanely popular - and nobody is gonna compare those with Miles Morales.
There are basically slices of the whole gaming market that people compare, but and some slices are not touched at all in that comparison.
Yeah, this sums it up well, I think. To continue the slice thing, Sony are taking a few large pieces and MS are taking many many small ones. Here’s where the metaphor falls apart: MS also bought a bakery though, so they’ll producing a lot of large pieces too.
The presumption many have is that Xbox has yet to prove itself with its new studios. I personally don’t understand where that skepticism comes from myself, since each of these teams has super strong track records. If Ninja Theory hadn’t been bought, nobody would question if it was capable of making a major high-quality action game (again). Same for inXile and Obsidian and Bethesda Softworks wrt wrpg’s. And Playground efficiently pumps out the best racing games every other year like clockwork. Psychonauts is taking a while, but does anyone really doubt it will be a great platformer?
I can see from a platform pov why you’d be skeptical of MS 1P in a vague sense, but once ya see the teams we are talking about that whole line of skepticism falls on its face. We don’t see the skepticism for any of Sony’s unreleased games, ever. Instead they get the benefit of the doubt (Day’s Gone, Returnal to name two prominent examples).
5 Likes
Dude, Microsoft has YET to deliver on that number of exclusive AAA/AA games! It’s all just theory/speculation at this point. Maybe Everwild/Avowed will be AAA bangers, or totally flop. Nobody knows. Sony has a proven track-record of blockbusters for 25 years.
1 Like
I think it’s a mishmash of past negative experience with Microsoft’s direction and vague hope of multiplatform release. And after all, past success isn’t necessarily an indicator of future success: influential developers could leave, for one. And if you have a predisposition towards being skeptical regarding MS, you could just miss the positive things that are being said by the studios they’ve acquired.
It makes sense to me that they would want to put out quality stuff and have money to spare, so they’d be willing to delay and put more money into games. But if for instance, you’re mad at the idea you might miss out on something, you might indulge in some preemptive sour grapes.
Microsoft had to brute force a great 1st party line-up given the previous regime(Mattrick) had gutted it and prioritized TV/Kinect/Sports while Sony doubled-down on 1st party diverse gaming lineup. Xbox is still paying the price for that.
Because nobody would have first-party level expectations of them. Like nobody expects first-party level of polish from Far Cry for example. First party implies big budget and high production values.
Also nobody doubts Bethesda and there is a lot of hype for Starfield. Though some people hope that Bethesda’s games will be less buggy with MS QA.
We should include decline at late 360 era. Effectively Xbox lost 10 years.
I have no idea why Playstation community generates the hype around Returnal. Looks like more polished and better looking single player Outriders.
Regarding Playground - nobody doubts that they will produce a great racing game. Who doubts it? Inxile is a case, where the company did not have high budget games for a long time so don’t know what to expect. I believe in Brian Fargo though.
You are missing my point. Yes, if you look only at the teams one by one everyone knows they make great stuff that can compete with the best in the industry in their genres, but their games become ignored/dismissed when the broader context of ‘Xbox 1P’ is discussed.
That notion that Xbox 1P is ignorable and boring while Sony’s is exciting and industry-leading is a narrative leftover from attitudes towards X1/PS4 and it persists still. It was never really good faith to classify things that way even during last gen since so much of the public perception of game quality stems from whether someone has the system or not (or whether a reviewer feels the game is so good to sell systems vs presuming the readers have the system already). Someone who has a PS4 is going to be much more forgiving of any flaws in its lineup compared to games on a competing platform. It’s confirmation bias at play there.
My personal view is that this happens both among gamers/fans as well as the press and that it shapes press coverage and broader discourse in a highly slanted fashion that reinforces that narrative. Middling releases like Days Gone can be ignored or even treated as ‘cult hits’ whereas stuff like Gears 5 or Ori 2 are immediately forgotten and not part of the discourse post-release. Even games that were panned hard on release like Death Stranding was in tons of reviews still somehow end up competing for GotY awards. After a while great Xbox 1P games are forgotten whereas middling PS4 1P games somehow become elevated to GotY contenders or blockbusters worthy of a sequel no matter what.
Ppl seem to see only the best in Sony 1P games and recognize potential even in games that didn’t fair well critically, yet many also see the worst in Xbox 1P games, ignoring whether Crackdown (for instance) was actually fun to play or ignoring the quality of Quantum Break because it included live action ‘TV TV TV’ stuff which many conflate with X1 launch ambitions. But use a marketing deal to associate a pseudo-Quantum Break-like game on PS4 with similar gameplay and loops and call it Control, and suddenly it’s GotY material.
For an example of the kinda nonsensical thinking I am referring to:
Note how @TLLDOB is framing this as ‘Microsoft’ not delivering instead of the ppl actually making the games. They apparently are skeptical whether Rare, one of the most legendary devs in human history, is capable of making a great game. And Obsidian, another studio who has among the best legacies in gaming is apparently seen as some sort of wild card wrt quality…yet they ignore the ‘misses’ from Sony’s 1P and talk of them as monolithic. >.>
/rant
5 Likes
To be fair, they don’t claim there were 8. In 2020, we had top tier games like FlightSim, Ori 2 and an awesome DLC for Gears 5. In 2021, we will likely end up with Halo, Forza Horizon 5, FlightSim on consoles, Starfield, Psychonauts 3 and Wolfenstein 3. Again, all being top tier wrt their quality.
I don’t think ‘AAA’ has much meaning anymore tbh. FlightSim is the most technologically advanced game likely ever made, yet it was made in relatively short order by a not huge team and didn’t cost a ton compared to ‘AAA’ titles. I assume the OP is specifically conflating AAA and top quality, but I also assume mos of us know what they meant.
2 Likes
He said 4-8. I wanted to hear the 4-8 AAA games he was talking about. AAA does very much have a meaning still.
Lets move beyond petty List Wars…
5 Likes
I think the OP likely just meant ‘AAA’ in the sense of top quality. The literal meaning of AAA is only about funding and has nothing to do with quality, mind you, but I think the OP was conflating it with quality and in that sense there are plenty of great Xbox 1P games that do seem to be systemically overlooked/dismissed/forgotten imho.