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[Azzanadra]

Well they had what many on GAF consider to be the GOTY of 2015, so I think it was alright.

 

[ElCidTmax]

The only game they needed to put out this year was Bloodborne (my GOTY). They did that and followed up with a great DLC the same year. Everything else is gravy.

Until Dawn was a nice surprise, the Order was meh, but pretty. The Uncharted Collection was a remaster, but a great way to catch up for those who didn't play em on PS3. What else was there? Don't know, and don't really care. Bloodborne FTW!

 

[Elandyll]

Bloodborne was published by Sony, so is Until dawn, many deals like this actually have people from Sony working on the game, second party doesn't exist in the real world. Don't get why something from Sony internal studios are now the measuring stick to the platforms exclusive performance. Lol goal posts...many of Sonys studios were put in place not even to drive hardware, but to be a showpiece for devs etc...WWS while exciting, was never meant to be the driving force of the platform, PS is meant for third parties. Someone can hopefully find an article highlighting this.

2nd party refers specifically to IPs that are owned by a platform holder, but worked on by external studios.
Afaik it absolutely is a thing, particularly in the case of high profile releases like with Insomniac or more recently The Order (Bloodborne is a bit more grey ish as SCEJ was involved in the development, even though it is a From game).

From a -Marketing- standpoint platform holders do not generally acknowledge a difference in the sense that what's important is who owns the IP and whether it's e

xclusive, but as far as management, cost and "talent" is involved (not talking skill per se, but people) there absolutely is a difference. 1st party vs 2nd party also shows how much a platform holder is willing to invest in development and people in the long term vs opportunistic one-time-and-done contracts.
Lately, one thing that has somewhat blurred the term imo is external studios working on remakes of 1st party titles.

Looking at 2013-2015, for retail releases (excluding remasters, aside from The "remake" Tearaway) we had on PS4

2013: Knack (1st), Killzone Shadowfall (1st)
2014: Infamous 2nd Son/ First Light (1st), MLB 14 (1st), Driveclub (1st), Little Big Planet 3 (2nd)
2015: Bloodborne (2nd), The Order 1886 (2nd), MLB 15 (1st), Until Dawn (2nd), Tearaway Unfolded (1st), Helldivers (2nd)
-> Planetside 2 would normally have been a 1st party release, but they split off from Sony with their own IPs (still wondering what happened there tbh)

PS: I don't have anything about 2nd party vs 1st party btw, and Sony will have plenty of both in 2016.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

Last Gen Sony had Uncharted, Gran Turismo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, InFamous and some more I'm not thinking of or didn't care for.

Now Uncharted is without Direction from Amy Hennig, MGS is not exclusive, InFamous SS was by fare the worst the entry in the series (at least nice looking though), way less people care about a GoW game and I fear there might be a good reason why we haven't seen much of anything from Gran Turismo Sport. The Order and Driveclub tanked critics-wise (and sales and image-wise they can't be considered a great start for new franchises) ...and the PS+ games were so bad I canceled PS+ and got back only for the Rocket League month.
Good that Sony at least had Bloodborne, which wasn't for me (Souls games are too hard and especially too punishing for me), but at least I can see that it's something polished and well made

I hope Uncharted will still be great even if they threw away a lot of stuff that was made under Hennig's direction. Without Uncharted and GT (and Forza on XB1, but at least that's annual) I would consider hard to go PC+NintendoPlatform next gen.

 

[Stillmatic]

Bloodborne and Until Dawn are 2 of the best games I've played in their genres, and they're both new IP's. You don't get that every year.

It's been an awesome year for me for exclusives and third party. Next year's obviously on another level, can't wait to see how many games I can sneak past the missus.

Spoiler

it's never usually many

 

[Maintenance]

No shit, Sherlock.

Thank god next year is looking better.

 

[CrimsonSquall]

He was right. The only great Playstation exclusive I've played in the past five years or so has been Until Dawn, which I adore so hard you'd think it was some sort of puppy.

Street Fighter and No Man's Sky are not exclusives.

Best game out of both the bone and ps4 is bloodborne tho, u missin out

 

[On Demand]

Even MS has Sony executives fooled.

 

[Schweinehund]

but has he seen the lists!?!!?

2016 looks pretty barren as well, I'm admittedly not a huge fan of uncharted. But I am looking forward to Nier and persona. I think PS3 had a better selection at this point.

 

[Disaster Nebraska]

Peter Molyneux Syndrome

"The last Fable was trash, but don't worry this new one will be way better".

It's easy to apologize for the year when we have 2 weeks remaining.

That said, I had a fantastic year on my PS4. Bought it end of June so I realize that I had a lot of catching up to do, but I had no complaints. I am excited to see what they bring to the table in '16.

 

[piccio_ssl]

Not really, but at least it's a relevant franchise (unlike Driveclub/GT).


Edit: I wonder if some people here consider Bayo 2 and W101 as 1st-party or not.

 

[Torment]

What Microsoft delivered exactly??
Even not considering remasters and indies where Sony has a clear overall advantage, MS had basically nothing for all the year and then they released the annual Forza game, Halo 5 and Tomb Raider (which they got through a money hat and we know how it ended...).
Sony released The Order, Bloodborne ( highest rated exclusive of the year if I'm not mistaking), annual MLB The Show, Until Dawn (which is considered by many the sleeper hit of the year), Tearaway (semi-remake of an other great game).
Sony's lineup was obviously ruined by the delays of Uncharted 4 and Ratchet&Clank that left them with nothing for the Q4 period (not considering the Uncharted Collection) and no one can deny that Sony dropped the ball with their holiday lineup this year because of this.
But looking at the whole year I'm really not seeing this disparity in quality and quantity between what the two companies offered.

 

[On Demand]

I find the way Sony talk about their line-up this year to be a bit odd personally. You'd think they would be talking up all the new IPs they launched: Helldivers, The Order 1886, Until Dawn, Bloodborne, Rapture... mixed in with Uncharted Collection, God of War 3R, Tearaway Unfolded, MLB The Show

Ok it probably wasn't their strongest line-up ever but outside of The Order the rest seem to have done pretty good or really good I thought? Certainly a few in there I could see them going again with.

Obviously its nice they are being honest about it I guess but... I don't know, I'm surprised they are talking it down rather than up. I think a lot of Playstation fans will be quite happy with their load this year. Same with Andrew House saying their line-up was "sparse" although he may have just been referring to the holidays, I can't really remember.

Next year looks better though, quite excited for Ratchet & Clank, Horizon and Alienation, I'm sure I will pick up Uncharted 4 later on and I will almost certainly get No Man's Sky too

Sony doesn't know to market their games. The amount of exclusives this year were plentiful. I don't get how you can look at all of them and say it wasn't enough. I think the other problem is the perception of if it's not AAA and not holiday released it doesn't matter. Liked i said, i think even Sony is fooled by this. When Shu was asked to adress the "lack of games" this year, he didn't even mention any of the smaller titles that were released for PS4. Those are games too right? Guess not.

 

[Eolz]

So you think the forza games are popular and have good sales with 1-1.5M per game (even if you have no source for them) but Driveclub at +2M copies sold through before PS+ edition launched and GT6 on last gen only well over that 2.5M figure as GT series grew +5M copies since GT6 launch until GTSports announcement are irrelevant.

That's not exactly what I said. Racing games aren't as popular as in previous gens, but MS managed to still make an event of every Forza release, by pushing it (for better and for worse) every year, with once again, sponsors and deals as GT did in the past. Again, it's not just the retail sales, but also the DLC, the microtransactions (not saying this is good), etc. It's about keeping a franchise relevant and bringing home money every year.
I'm not saying GT is irrelevant as a whole (couldn't say that), just that for now, it's hard to compare both series during this gen when it's not here, and when the last episode was a disappointment on a lot of points (sales, content, updates, reception, etc). I wouldn't say that if they managed its development differently.

For Driveclub, again, you can easily see here what kind of thread was on this forum before the PS+ edition ("bomba sale buy it!", "PSN sale buy it!", "is it good now?", etc), or the number of people in the OT or other thread that waited for a good bargain before getting the game. It's hard to compare an arcade game with a simulation game, or with Horizon (that is just about as arcade, but more about open world racing). That's where it would have been useful to have PGR on the other side.

If we are talking about global relevancy and sales, then yeah I'm not sure I see your argument here as Forza simply does not sell that well as a franchise, and Xbox itself is only really popular in U.S this Gen where racers struggle. Its like saying Mario Kart isn't relevant because they only come out once every 4 years. There's not a single kart racer that gets even close to it in sales - period. This is pretty much the case with GT. We have some tough critics on forums, but in reality the latest title was likely overshadowed by the ps4 launch and was well received both commercially and critically. Sorry on my phone but try a search for GT6 on GAF and you should find a thread where it has the latest numbers on the game. Even the iteration that sold the least doubled and tripled forza titles. Its extremely unlikely this trend won't continue with the given circumstances unless GTSport and GT7 are both horrible experiences.

Cf above for sales and relevancy. Mario Kart is not irrelevant since Mario is (at least for now) still relevant, and MK is out more regularly than every 4 years, as the single good game in its sub-genre, on top of being a really good evergreen title.
Anyway, will look for GT6 sales numbers, which seem harder to find (in a definitive/close way) than I thought (and same for Forza), especially since we're talking about WW sales.
GT is a different kind of evergreen title, that slow down way faster than others. Too many people focus on first day/week/month sales (thanks to the NPD threads) without going further than that. That's certainly not to say it does not sell, but it's in decline (again, like the whole genre), and is not that profitable anymore (development costs vs lack of revenue sources post-launch). There's a reason GT Sport is going a different route.
GT7 will certainly be a title to watch if it comes out before 2018, especially to see how it fares on a userbase like the PS4, and after getting userbases from other consoles.

Did you just call Forza a relevant franchise and said Gran Turismo is not? Congratulations for the dumbest post of the year sir.

Good job for not reading and going the smart route of just posting a reaction gif.


Fake edit just in case, since I know how some posters on this forum react: I don't have an X1, have a PS4 and played Driveclub. It's also far from my first gen, and it's a bit sad to see people do as if the racing genre was going well over the years (quantity, quality, and sales), or if GT was exempt of criticisms.

Real edit: Hey, what a surprise for the post below...

 

[GravityInsanity]

Not really, but at least it's a relevant franchise (unlike Driveclub/GT).


Edit: I wonder if some people here consider Bayo 2 and W101 as 1st-party or not.

 

[derExperte]

Sony doesn't know to market their games. The amount of exclusives this year were plentiful. I don't get how you can look at all of them and say it wasn't enough. I think the other problem is the perception of if it's not AAA and not holiday released it doesn't matter. Liked i said, i think even Sony is fooled by this. When Shu was asked to adress the "lack of games" this year, he didn't even mention any of the smaller titles that were released for PS4. Those are games too right? Guess not.

Can't blame him for forgetting about them as quickly as everyone else. Had a look at the list on Wiki and there's, uh.... Everybody's Gone to the Rapture generated some interest until people played it. The ex-exclusives Galak-Z and Helldivers fared a little better at least on GAF and that's about it, he can hardly ask anyone to get excited for Fat Princess Adventures or pretend The Order and Tearaway aren't dead IPs. But at least this year's wasteland makes 2016 look better than it probably actually will be after inevitable delays and disappointments.

 

[Fdkn]

That's not exactly what I said. Racing games aren't as popular as in previous gens, but MS managed to still make an event of every Forza release, by pushing it (for better and for worse) every year, with once again, sponsors and deals as GT did in the past. Again, it's not just the retail sales, but also the DLC, the microtransactions (not saying this is good), etc. It's about keeping a franchise relevant and bringing home money every year.
I'm not saying GT is irrelevant as a whole (couldn't say that), just that for now, it's hard to compare both series during this gen when it's not here, and when the last episode was a disappointment on a lot of points (sales, content, updates, reception, etc). I wouldn't say that if they managed its development differently.

For Driveclub, again, you can easily see here what kind of thread was on this forum before the PS+ edition ("bomba sale buy it!", "PSN sale buy it!", "is it good now?", etc), or the number of people in the OT or other thread that waited for a good bargain before getting the game. It's hard to compare an arcade game with a simulation game, or with Horizon (that is just about as arcade, but more about open world racing). That's where it would have been useful to have PGR on the other side.

you're making the mistake of using gaf as a barometer of what happens in the real world. Driveclub, the game that launched with a broken online mode for months and was mocked endlessly by the internet, has reached more people than probably any forza game in years in the end and the fact that Evolution is still investing in the game shows that the game is still making money.

And I find it funny that precisely today PD updated their GT sales page, making your claims about sub 2.5million more ridiculous, as the game has shipped 4.71M units launching only on ps3 after ps4 launch, a decision that surely didn't help the game at all.

 

[EatinOlives]

Well, there was Bloodborne and Until Dawn and ... uhhh.... hmmm... err...