As always, I think we tend to place too much importance on exclusives. They’re definitely important to an ecosystem, but the vast majority of gamers buy consoles to play CoD, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc. And as mentioned already, people tend to buy what they know and are comfortable with. I doubt most casual gamers care or even know about how many exclusives each platform holder has in the works.
4 Likes
It has been an industry standard for decades and isn’t very difficult to understand. A standard that extends beyond the videogame industry.
- First Party - Production apparatus owned/operated by platform holder
- Second Party - Platform holder contracts developer, not owned by them, to make a content for their platform or others (sometimes using first party IP)
- Third Party - Company develops whatever they want for whomever they want
Where that content appears has nothing to do with anything. MS could contract Arc System Works to make a Killer Instinct sequel and release it on every platform. That would still be a second party agreement.
The vast majority of Nintendo titles are second party agreements.
8 Likes
It’s rather simple really.
How can there be “third party” if there is no “second party”?
5 Likes
Counting using only Prime Numbers…
2 Likes
First, second, third party… normal people has no clue what that even means, at the end of the day what they look for is games that are exclusive to a platform, or games that can’t be played on the rival platform (console exclusives), Sony is playing the X360 game, this year will be almost as bad first party wise as 2022 was for Xbox, however, 2024 is being and will be actually a good year for Playstation with some big games, surprise megahits, and diverse exclusives, it lacked a giant budget AAA game from Sony to be very good tho.
Signing total exclusives must be getting crazy expensive, but signing console exclusives should be cheaper than ever for them now, well even big games like Baldurs Gate 3 or Black Myth: Wukong are releasing as timed exclusives without them paying, just because of priorities from the developers, so i can imagine Sony working hard on that to fill the lack of first party games per year.
Also i don’t agree with the GaaS “trashtalk” on most forums, i guess Helldivers 2 was a low tier GaaS before release, and now it’s one of the most successful games Sony has released financially.
Same thing about AAA’s, quantity doesn’t matter as much, we consider many games to be AAA nowadays, Hellblade 2 could be one of them, but what sales numbers did it do in the first month? probably 100k-200k at best, same thing for the new Astrobot, looks pretty, sure, but it’ll likely do similar numbers to Ratchet, it really isn’t going to move the needle.
1 Like
Astro Bot is going to sell 30 million copies and beat Call of Duty this year, according to a scientific and nonbiased poll, so you can take that to the bank.
5 Likes
The most anticipated game from 30th may to 1 minute after the Xbox showcase yea X’D
You have to admit some sites are good at creating traffic
3 Likes
Lol, yeah sure. If it was that obviously flawed then there’s no way that so many other websites would be taking it at face value.
Right?
2 Likes
It’s shit like hyping up Adstro Bot that shows just how biased media really is. It’s incredibly obvious to everyone.
5 Likes
Extra and Deluxe have some pretty good games, I wonder when Rise of the Ronin will enter the catalogue
Having just finished Astro’s Playroom, I totally understand a certain hype for a full sequel. It’s a fantastic game.
The question is whether they can keep that quality and creativity for more than 4-5 hours.
2 Likes
It’s not an industry standard. It’s a term made up by people out of nowhere. Spencer himself said there’s no second party and used Sunset Overdrive as an example calling it a first party game. Shuhei Yoshida is on record numerous times saying that there’s no actual second party and “those” games are considered by Sony as first party games simply because they’re treated no different than games coming from their own internal studios.
In my mind, people use second party as an excuse when a non-internal studio develops a game for the hardware manufacturer that isn’t all that good and just made up bullshit.
People can look at it their own way I guess. I will forever see games published by the hardware manufacturer regardless of if the hardware manufacturer owns the studio developing the game or not.
Ah the good ole I refuse to acknowledge it, so it isn’t real argument.
I’m not talking about whether there is a difference between the games, their quality, or where they come from. The terms, however, are objectively real and based in business reality.
5 Likes
The companies treat them as first party games and have said as much numerous times. You can look it all up yourself.
As for me, I don’t acknowledge it because if companies say it doesn’t say it exists but people on Twitter and forums do, who should I listen to? Companies ain’t perfect and aren’t always right but in this regard, they are. I’m not going to go based on those on twitter and forums because they don’t want to include Destruction All Stars or other games because they scored low. Sony needs to make better deals which since then they have done so.
I count them from both Microsoft and Sony, good and bad. To each their own I guess.
Traditionally the “second party” is the consumer. Other companies are third parties.
But in game development “second party” is often used to refer to external projects funded by the first party. So there’s no right or wrong. It’s basically subjective, depending on how you want to look at it.
1 Like
Just going to leave this here. But we’ve definitely had this conversation a few times now.
10 Likes
I literally pointed to the matter of legal record previously, this absurd new goalpost move by a select few is beyond old.
3 Likes
Fair enough. I can admit when im wrong and thus, I was wrong.
2 Likes
I dont think it really, matters to be honest shrug
2 Likes