Strategic Deals
If you look at the PlayStation 4 exclusive lineup in comparison to that of the Xbox One you may notice that the former is a bit light on major AAA exclusives. Even if you look at the year before, you will see that Sony’s latest console was a bit light on content. Aside from Bloodborne and Until Dawn, none of PlayStation’s exclusives made major waves. Sure, games like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and SOMA (console exclusive) were incredible, but they just didn’t carry the weight of smaller titles released by the competition like Ori and the Blind Forest. Then you had The Order 1886 which didn’t have the best reception.
How was the PS4 going to survive 2015 (especially the holiday season) if it didn’t have its own major games to put out throughout the whole year? The answer was strategic partnerships with huge third-party games. The PS4 came into the year with the largest install base of the current generation of consoles, so that was used as an advantage. The year’s biggest third-party titles did amazingly well on Sony’s console, and a few deals were made to keep things interesting.
The PS4 maintained its Destiny deal leading to exclusive The Taken King content, and also managed to snag advertising and early DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, as well as a neat bundle for Star Wars: Battlefront. Whether you’re a fan of shooters or not, those were three of the biggest releases of the year and those partnerships helped to push the PS4 over 30 Million sold.
And let us not forget E3 and that amazing showing. Final Fantasy VII Remake, Shenmue 3, and the return of The Last Guardian helped tie up even more of the future. Just perfectly timed announcement after perfectly timed announcement to shift everyone’s focus to next year as they rode this one out.
Securing exclusives in markets outside of North America has helped out tremendously, as well. JRPGS are something that the Xbox One is seriously lacking in, as is a foothold in the Asian markets. Microsoft’s console has started to make some big moves in NA, but the PS4 securing its spot worldwide is definitely a major factor in why it was able to have such a strong year.
The leveraging of other developers in order to give their own stable time to do what they do best was a smart move pulled right out of Microsoft’s book and it definitely payed off.
