"Unfortunately, the later release date meant the game launched deeper into a competitive holiday window where heavy price discounting was a big factor"
The games he mentioned as competition were barely discounted at all, BFV was the most heavily discounted of all. Being half price immediately after release also makes that 7.3 million not as big as it seems.
Anyway, plenty of reasons why Battlefield V isn't that popular, but we all know one big reason he doesn't even hint at.
Switch has been breaking records since launch. Crazy that Smash had the best-selling launch month for an exclusive game ever in the US, and that's without even counting digital copies.
@logan117: You sound dumb, wtf. Who even mentioned Sony. Plus, what information comes from nowhere? Microsoft's plan to use server blades based on Xbox One S hardware when Xcloud launches (trials begin next year) is in the official announcement. Also, you write that and call others fanboys? Hilarious. Seems like you're too focused on your favorite corporation, rather than the stream vs local discussion point.
@logan117: Even if someone were to agree with you that it's this "positive pro-consumer idea", that is the last reason they're pushing for it.
By the way, Xcloud is planned to launch with Xbox 1S based hardware and game versions, despite the much better Xbox One X versions existing. That's in addition to the expected picture quality and responsiveness degradation streaming introduces vs local rendering. Talk about a low bar.
Haha, they're trying to make it sound as if it's about the current consumer. The reason these publishers want streaming is so they'd only have to make one version of a game instead of multiple, to eliminate physical and pre-owned, to try to increase their margins, and to try to get some of those phone/tablet only players.
Fact is, the streaming experience is much worse than local. Look up an analysis, even the most top tier streaming available is basically YouTube video quality, not to mention degraded responsiveness and occasional hiccups. I mean you can't even play a multiplayer game without occasionally running into connection issues, and these guys want to deliver the whole game like that. Then you got required internet for even the most basic and solo of games, and bandwidth limits and requirements to deal with.
I tried PSnow and GeForceNow, they were both garbage compared to playing on the respective local hardware. Not even close.
Anyway, let's teardown these platform walls, and put up the streaming subscription service walls.
Also, hate to break it to you, but 99% of those phone/tablet players you're going after don't want to spend a single dime on gaming. They'd rather have "free" over anything.
1) The same old "option" and "player choice" excuse. Listen, if it was really about player choice, you'd make it a cheat or a difficulty level where everything is unlocked.
2) A progression system is supposed to be enjoyable, rewarding, and a core part of the game and how it is played. It should be something that adds to the experience. If you've made a progression system and yet think some people would rather go as far as pay to skip it, then there's no bigger admission that what you've made isn't that fun, interesting, enjoyable, or most importantly essential. So you either suck at making a progression system that adds to the enjoyment of the game and is essential for it, or you intentionally made it so it would get grindy and boring at some point.
Very disappointing, I was hyped for this game. Now I worry about RE2 and Sekiro (Because Activision obviously).
@samurai1: I think the major difference is that Xbox One tried to take away something that people were used to and, for many, relied on. So it was something that affected the vast majority. Plus it was heavily covered by mainstream news, so a lot of people who don't follow gaming news were aware. I also don't think the Xbox suffered solely because of the withdrawn policies. It forced an accessory that people already found useless from the previous generation, it was weaker hardware, and most importantly it was more expensive. So, it was a bad combination of things.
On the other hand, Playstation is simply not embracing something kind of new all the way, and really the only difference in practice is that Xbox can play with Nintendo Switch, while PS4 can't. So I think the issue itself is really much much smaller. Fortnite cross-play was briefly covered by mainstream news, but I didn't see any significant impact on purchasing decisions.
To be clear, I don't disagree that it could grow to be a more significant issue, especially as more games incorporate the feature and the negative preception being more recurring, along with the arrival of a new gen. However, I really don't see it being anywhere near as impactful as the Xbox launch issues this gen.
I also don't see a scenario where a major game like Fortnite would skip a Playstation platform. Playstation is a strong global brand that is favored vs Xbox in many markets by a factor of 3, 4, 5, 9, or even as high as 80 to 1. I don't think any amount of cross-play related issue would change that by much.
Ultimately, we don't disagree that this issue could get more significant, and that if they plan to ever change policy, they should do it now rather than later. We just disagree on how much impactful this issue could ever be.
Personally, I think if Sony's policy is solely about money and not wanting to give up any current advantage over the competition, then they should really not worry about it and change the policy, as I doubt it would change much at all for them in terms of revenue and popularity, certainly not anything worth generating a negative preception over.
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