Exclusivity Wars, Xbox One VS PS4

Who wins,who loses?

Exclusive,  is a phrase being used more and more often within the gaming industry. The industry, as they would have us believe, is that making games exclusive to one console format is offering us (the consumer) more choice or an 'exclusive' right to play certain games. I'd argue the exact opposite! Exclusive; adjective, excluding or not admitting other things / restricted to a person, group, or area concerned. Exclusivity by definition means that by offering one person exclusivity, another will miss out, so how is this good news for the average gamer? 

As a gamer, the options are Xbox One, PS4, Wii U or PC and with console exclusives (unless you have spent £2500 on all four), you're going to miss out. I understand the premise of offering exclusives but in a market that should be driven by choice, leading to healthy competition, excluding as much as half the consumer base by way of a single format exclusive, I feel to be nonsense.

The reasoning (I believe), behind exclusives is that consumers will choose to buy one console over the other based on the upcoming exclusives that's on offer, and according to Sony and Microsoft and various publishers, exclusives are a warranted and valid reason to sway your purchasing decision! I would argue that if the last two years in the industry has taught us, is that exclusives generally haven't lived up to the hype. Sony's The Order 1886 was too short and irritated just about everyone with its limited campaign and vague story line, while Microsoft's Masterchief collection had completely broken multiplayer and that's what everyone who bought the game was interested in, the nostalgia of playing blood gulch in HD graphics with servers better than what the original Xbox could offer.

I myself have both consoles and have for the most part been pretty disappointed with games and the industry as a whole. I've been gaming since the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and fondly remember the days of connecting two or three Xbox's together at a friends house in a way that brought people together, was a personilsed experience with nothing like it now a days. 10 year old's are on Call Of Duty, Asymmetric multiplayer games such as Evolve where a mic is absolutely necessary and no one uses one or FIFA's pro clubs drop in matches where everyone is out for themselves and try to score from 80 yards out!

As a faithful gamer all I want is my £50 pounds to be enough, I want the game to live up to the hype as promised, I don't want to be lied to or manipulated and left with a feeling of dissatisfaction after finishing a game or realisng it's so blatantly obvious content has been withheld and I've just dropped£50 on half a game!

 As supposed gamer's themselves, the developers of the games we play, do they not remember the days when you would unlock weapons, characters and skin models by just playing the damn game! I would like to know where their sense of pride is when they believe people should pay for, what use to be standard practice, and add value to the experience, but now demand £3.50, £4.99, £9.99, £19.99. £34.99 up to as high as £79.99  just to get the full experience?!

What is happening is worrying and again as long as people buy into their schemes these bad practices will themselves 'Evolve'.

The Order 1886, PS4 Review

The Order 1886

I recently purchased Sony entertainments ‘supposed’ benchmark PS4 exclusive, The Order 1886. The Order 1886 was one of my most anticipated games of 2015, but how glad I am that I decided not to pre-order the game or buy it digitally at £54.99! I say this because the game, although good, took me 6 hours to finish and in one play through. I bought the game pre-owned from my local store for £34.99 which is a £20 price drop of a game that is barely a month old.

The game itself was ok, the best graphics seen to date on a console game and the voice acting was on par with The last of us. Remastered (undoubtedly one of the best PlayStation exclusives ever) and the story was enjoyable if not a little vague. The real issue with The Order 1886 is that it was inexcusably short, for a game that was in development for over 5 years, there just wasn't enough to do, with absolutely no replay ability or multiplayer.

There are around 15 chapters in the game but some last only a few minutes and are all cut scenes, only emphasising the developers attempts to fluff out the length of the game by an illusion of more chapters. These illusionary tactics of subterfuge and not so clandestine padding, only left me feeling cheated out of a chapter that I should have had some part in, rather than watching a cut scene. This feeling could have been avoided if the Sony ‘devs’ had cut the game down to 10-12 chapters with the cut scenes an extension or a prologue to a playable chapter.

What the current gen games industry is repeatedly showing us is they are on a cash grab mission, doing less and demanding more. The games culture has been growing for 30 years and it saddens me to see what gaming has become. When consumers buy products in a market where there is plenty of choice, value for money springs to mind.

There are games like The witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition and even FIFA 15 offer 100’s of hours of gameplay with multiplayer. So why is it that The ‘devs’ of The Order 1886 thought a game that limits almost everything you do to a linear story, no multiplayer, zero replay ability and a campaign that can be completed in 6-7 hours, charge £54.99 and expect people not to be irritated. There is absolutely no value for money when comparing it to other games.

I have a video from YouTube showing all the cut scenes from the game its 2.30 hours long (feel free to fast forward) . Even less actual game play offering for an extremely pricey movie!

Digital Game Downloads, Good News or Bad News?

Digital game downloads, good for us or good for them?

Since the current generation of consoles, the PS4 and Xbox One and their respective updated live digital marketplaces,  Digital downloads of games has become more prevalent. Essentially, what is happening is the powers at be (Sony and Microsoft) are attempting to increase their stranglehold on the buying and selling of pre-owned games at local gaming stores. They would argue it damages the games industry and its counterparts (publishers and developers) when in fact it seems completely beneficial to the everyday gamer and ill explain why.

For anyone who has a current generation console will be aware of the standard retail price of games these days, £49.99 and that's without season passes and various DLC packages! Games are a form of Art and like other media formats such as movies and music production costs demand a price. The issues lies with comparing production costs to other forms of media and what you pay to experience a movie or buy an album. The average cost of a 'AAA' title can be between £10 million to £50 million and we pay upwards of £50-£100 over a games life cycle. Compare this to a block buster movie with production costs of £300m and you pay £10 to see it at the cinema or can buy it for £15 on Blu-Ray.  A movie with between 10x to 30x the production costs is costing upwards of 5x less to access. It seems to me that the industry should be doing fine??

Some may argue that Games sell in less quantity but at the same time game studios tend to be smaller and have less employees. The industry has landed on this £50 benchmark for current Gen games, £10 more than last Gen games (which many are still in production). Digital downloads can even be pre-ordered and actually cost £54.99, that's £5 more than a physical copy. That makes no sense! The issue with digital copies is that they cant be returned if the game is short, bad or bugged, where as physical copies can be sold back to shops for cash or credit and used to trade for other games after you have completed it. 

People need to remember that these companies are a business and any new trend they try and invest in, like digital downloads, is in their best interest and not the average gamer. Games are the same as any other purchase, especially if you're expected to pay £100, an investment that can bring a return if you need to trade it or sell it for whatever reason. The industry will continue to find ways to get as much out of people as possible, as long as consumers are foolish enough to buy into it.