Old-school gamers, let it go: the 90s are over.
We will never see what we witnessed in the 90s ever again. The business of gaming has changed far too much. And the latest, greatest example is Sega deciding to ditch console gaming altogether at the same time as Titanfall 2 being announced as multi-platform as opposed to just being an XBox One exclusive like the original.
Those backyard wars days are over. Companies don’t team up anymore, they just join all the parties that want to participate. You now need to fetch extra money to have exclusive material. The XBox and the Playstation has had a similar lineup of games for the past decade. This is why their sales become eerily similar in recent generations and recent times:
PS3: 85 million
XBox 360: 84 million
PS4 (In 2015): 1.5 million
XBox One (In 2015): 650,000
However the close numbers from the 90s was because the entire world was split between choosing the Genesis and the Super Nintendo: two drastically different pieces of hardware with similar power but totally dissimilar lineup of games. You could go with the sports-heavy, more mature, more underground Sega Genesis, or go with the Japanese-friendly, platform-heavy, family-oriented Super Nintendo. Third-party companies were picking sides, trying to figure out the winning team while simultaneously establishing stronger relationships with whomever they picked. Capcom picked Nintendo, EA picked Sega, Square Soft picked Nintendo, and Disney/Virgin Interactive picked Sega.
Nowadays, good luck getting a major third-party publisher choose you and only you. Grand Theft Auto used to belong to just Sony: now the XBox shares the series. Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid are Japanese favorites that found their way to both Playstation and XBox. Nowadays you need a strong first-party lineup and a good slew of indie games to separate from the rest---which fully explains why PS4 is outperforming the XBox One.
Currently the best-selling game in the planet is The Order: 1886, a Sony-published game. The best-selling game of 2015 so far? Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, a Nintendo-published game. Depending on third-party companies to cater only to you is a pipe dream; games have become more expensive to produce and contribute, and why limit yourself to one hardware when you can also make money on the competitive machine?
Titanfall 2 becoming a PS4 game as well as an XBox One game should not have surprised anybody. Although the original did well on the XBox systems with over 4 million sold, wouldn’t it be better to have your game available to 32 million systems as opposed to 12 million? On a business standpoint, it only makes too much sense. Microsoft however needs to see that their first-party offerings must be stronger since their most successful new franchise is now becoming a Sony property.
Those playground arguments nowadays sure are more boring, since the top two systems have nearly the same games to choose from. This is why more focus has been made on graphics and the specs. There is no Mario vs. Sonic—you can actually now find Sonic across all the platforms, console-wise and handheld-wise. There are only a handful of games that each system has exclusive to themselves. Of course there’s Nintendo but it’s consistently remained a third-wheel whether it’s frighteningly ahead of the pack (Nintendo Wii 2007-2009) or far behind (Nintendo Gamecube 2001-2006, Nintendo WiiU 2012-Now).
There is a very thin line between choosing a PS4 over the XBox, and vice versa. This is very contrasting to what was occurring in the 1990s. Even different companies were developing the same game for the system they had chosen; Aladdin was made by Capcom for the SNES and was made by Virgin for the Sega Genesis. Then let’s not forget when pretty much everybody joined the Playstation team, leaving little to nothing for the N64, Gamecube, Dreamcast, and XBox. That third-party lineup of friends for Sony was amazing from 1995-2005. Third-party business now focuses on achieving the most widespread amount of exposure to hit as much money as possible. To accomplish this, you simply can’t pick sides anymore.
Can’t behave like the 90s. Sega is officially gone, Nintendo’s punch is weaker, there is no Midway, there is no Akklaim, there is no Neversoft, and we are close to seeing the end of Capcom if nothing is done to help them. The game has changed. There is much more money involved, from the spending to the earnings. With Sega gone, an entire chapter of gaming history has pretty much reached its final page.
And we never got that sequel to F-Zero GX….
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