I mean, multilple of their games last gen were 10mil+ sellers,so they're not exactly hurting in the first party lineup.
Do you think that in the next decade MS/Xbox won't have a dedicated mascot for the Xbox brand?
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I mean, multilple of their games last gen were 10mil+ sellers,so they're not exactly hurting in the first party lineup.
I wasn't arguing sales numbers I'm talking about recognizable mascots. Compare them to Nintendo.
a cute game character isn't a mascot. a mascot is brand identity being pushed on you everywhere. mario only remains one because he got in early and hit so hard that he's coasting off of that mickey-mouse-tier-recognizability. otherwise we could just retire this extremely outdated platform-mascot notion entirely.
I would argue that Kratos is more recognisable than Chief right now
Same goes for Ellie and Joel
Pokemon is the #1 franchise in the world and Mario is like 2 or 3 - I think Hello Kitty might break up Nintendo's dominance.
With money MS can use it to buy things. You know, uh things they like.
With money MS can use it to buy things. You know, uh things they like.
Which game is the pink segment on the left ?Yup.
Like you look at Sony's First Party and what they market now is the overall catalog of IPs:
No longer one specific franchise as being the flagship.
Forza horizon car is the Xbox Mascot at this point. Could see whatever generic lead they have on the Fable box being a mascot as well.
Basically Playground Games is going to lead Xbox to the promised land and I am all for it.
Basically Playground Games is going to lead Xbox to the promised land and I am all for it.
I feel mascots have shifted from non-Nintendo platform holders to certain GaaS. Fortnite's Jonesy and Peely.
Despite being multiplatform, Microsoft could align the Overwatch ensemble with Xbox / Game Pass in a way that Minecraft Steve wasn't utilized as much. I feel like Lucio's green would mesh perfectly with branding. We gotta see if/how that OW2 campaign hits and if it can recapture some of the launch hype for the characters.
Do I wish it was Banjo and Raz as the face of Xbox? Would be cool.
Despite being multiplatform, Microsoft could align the Overwatch ensemble with Xbox / Game Pass in a way that Minecraft Steve wasn't utilized as much. I feel like Lucio's green would mesh perfectly with branding. We gotta see if/how that OW2 campaign hits and if it can recapture some of the launch hype for the characters.
Do I wish it was Banjo and Raz as the face of Xbox? Would be cool.
I don't think any of the platform holders really has a "mascot" per se these days but rather characters people associates them with, in the case of Nintendo it's Mario and in the case of Microsoft it's Master Chief.
Didn't they sort of try to get one with Toro and Kuro in Japan back in the day?
Didn't they sort of try to get one with Toro and Kuro in Japan back in the day?
When was the last time a non-Nintendo console even had a mascot? I don't even think Nintendo recognizes any one of their characters as a mascot for the Switch.
Mario (before and now Pikachu) are among the most lucrative / recognizable media IP tout court: https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/575813-the-top-10-media-franchises/
That's global and includes all media not just games. BTW this is also why Nintendo is so protective of IP (just like Disney.) No other gaming figure comes even remotely close to Pikachu and Mario. If you look at the longer report the only other gaming IP to rank is CoD: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1257650/media-franchises-revenue/
And the revenue stat might actually under sell Mario in particular. There were a lot of surveys back in the day showing Mario overtaking Mickey Mouse and approaching like religious symbols recognizability. If you like go to my father's village in India (rural UP) no one will know shit about Kratos or Master Chief but everyone knows Mario even though most in a place like that (very, very poor) don't have games (or regular electric supply in some cases.)
Sony haven't had a "dedicated mascot" in quite some time, but did a great job towards the end of the 7th-gen and particularly the 8th-gen in establishing a core set of franchises fronted by memorable characters. I think that should be the way to go. Playstation as a brand can survive a bad God of War game or a few years without an Uncharted because of this.
Yup.
Like you look at Sony's First Party and what they market now is the overall catalog of IPs:
No longer one specific franchise as being the flagship.
This is part of an overall Sony business strategy which is to try and levarage their IP over all their entertainment divisions, with games now taking the lead since it's one of the best performing parts of the Sony portfolio (hence game IPs are all becoming films, Tv shows, etc.)
I mean, you were right in the first half but the second point you made is plain wrong.
The reason PS outsold Xbox by more than 2:1 last-gen, and why Microsoft has been buying up so many studios the past few years, isn't because of PS's third-party support. It's because they had a really strong core of firsty-party studios with good histories and solid IPs and Microsoft really lacked that.
is not the entire reason to be fair, Xbox and that psycho of Mattick basically autoimploded Xbox brand from the inside lmao
they're slowly recovering just because they have Phil but Xbox almost dissapeared
I don't think mascots are necessary in modern gaming. Like I don't associate any particular character with modern Sony. Yeah Kratos and Joel and Ellie are iconic. But I don't think of them with PlayStation the same way I think of Mario with Nintendo
Well yeah, but Mario is a lucrative IP because his games are constantly quality products. I was never saying MC was on the level of Mario. Just as Xbox is not on the level of Nintendo, but right now, people, and MS, still associate MC to Xbox in a big way. If they can't continue to put out big Halo products that consumers care about, that will quickly fade.
I wasn't trying to disagree with you! Sorry if it came across that way. More elaborate the level to which these are barely apples to apples comparisons.
If it wasn't Masterchief by now, then it wont be anyone.
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Oh I misread you then. Totally agree that there is a huge gap between Mario/Pikachu and anyone MS could put out there. Even Steve.
Never said it was the "entire reason". Yes, Don Mattrick and some of the decisions made around Xbox One's launch really hurt the brand, but the issues were already cropping up before then.
It's also why despite Phil doing loads to repair Xbox's image they were still being massively outsold: their first party studios lineup was incredibly thin compared to the competition, and it actually got thinner over the first 4 years of Phil's leadership.
It has improved exponentially in terms of quantity now due to acquisitions, but only time will tell whether that translates to quality as well. But Don wasn't the main issue and Phil isn't the main saviour.
Never said it was the "entire reason". Yes, Don Mattrick and some of the decisions made around Xbox One's launch really hurt the brand, but the issues were already cropping up before then.
It's also why despite Phil doing loads to repair Xbox's image they were still being massively outsold: their first party studios lineup was incredibly thin compared to the competition, and it actually got thinner over the first 4 years of Phil's leadership.
It has improved exponentially in terms of quantity now due to acquisitions, but only time will tell whether that translates to quality as well. But Don wasn't the main issue and Phil isn't the main saviour.
He isn't coasting. There are one or more million sellers a year with his name on it and his series' style and symbols all over it, to say nothing of how his major platformer releases are always events that sell near the top of whatever system you are talking about.
I would say so, especially post Halo 2. They didn't parade him around like Disney does Mickey or Nintendo does Mario, but he was a "mascot" to represent Xbox for a time. I don't know if he still is these days, nor do I think Xbox still needs mascot at all, but for much of the 360 era, he was.
They also spend significant money to be seen as the prime destination for big third party stuff like CoD, Fortnite and Rockstar stuff.
Just like Microsoft spent big money on COD for similar reasons during the 360 generation.
Ultimately, deals with games as big as those only go through if the console is already an attractive partnership for that franchise. There's a reason they went with Xbox in the 7th-gen but not the 8th-gen - they weren't the dominant console anymore.
Anyway, those games sell bucketloads regardless of which platform partners with them, that's not the reason the PS has been outselling Xbox for the past 12-13 years and it's laughable to suggest this had a bigger impact than first-party library.
I haven't thought of Master Chief as an Xbox mascot since like 2007.
Also, I have never written Master Chief anywhere on the internet until now.
Outdated or not, mascots really help market outside of the console itself.
See Nintendo and the Universal theme parks and movies and Sega with the current Sonic movies.
Also, I have never written Master Chief anywhere on the internet until now.
Outdated or not, mascots really help market outside of the console itself.
See Nintendo and the Universal theme parks and movies and Sega with the current Sonic movies.
??? not sure why you're telling me that mario is popular as if I didn't know this.
we're talking about characters being MASCOTs for systems. not whether or not their games are popular.
I don't think that user is wrong at all tbh. There's a difference between "successful games" and memorable characters. Sony has a ton of very successful games, but as an earlier post showed, the characters themselves don't carry the same weight to the extent that they the name PlayStation immediately evokes their image to the average person in the way Mario (and to be fair a whole of of Nintendo characters) do for Nintendo, and Master Chief does for Xbox. It is indeed correct to say that PlayStation is more heavily marketed on their symbols than any character, and even for huge games like The Last Of Us, the lead can be switched easily from Joel to Ellie, to potentially someone else entirely for a new game in a manner that would be seen as blasphemy for something like Halo, as seen in past attempts like Halo Reach or Team Osiris being prominent in Halo 5. The closest PlayStation has ever come to a truly memorable character (in a successful enough game, so sorry Kat doesn't count) would be Kratos, because unlike Joel, Nathan Drake, Ellie, Aloy, Deacon, Delsin, etc.. he doesn't look like a random person that may walk past you in the street. This does make creating a "mascot fighter" using their properties a very tough sell, and is why PlayStation AllStars' roster is carried primarily by the 3rd party guests rather than PlayStation's own characters, unlike Smash where Nintendo's own character does the heavy lifting with few 3rd party guests having anywhere near the same draw.
I don't really agree with this. If reception so the games themselves were of greatest importance than Sonic would be dead as a mascot for Sega for example, but he remains a more recognisable character today than characters in games that outsell Sonic twenty times over. That's kinda what we're referring to when talking about a character being a brand mascot, when the association is deep enough to be that level of resilience, even if ideally you'd never get to the point of having that be actually tested.
I don't know what any of that had to do with the point I was arguing against, but ok.
I agreed with their point about Playstation character-identifiability (and the link to way PS All-Stars never took off as it should have). It was their point about PS's success largely being the result of 3rd-party association that I was disagreeing with. That may have been true of the PS1 and PS2 eras, before MS was established in the console market. But ever since mid-way through the PS3 cycle Sony's success (and brand image) can largely be tied to a core handful of strong first-party studios and IPs.
Ok, I read your post as having agreed with them not having a singular flagship IP, but not with that being the reason for PlayStation AllStars' struggles. Regardless however, I still agree with the user you responded to regarding what they followed that up with.
PlayStation absolutely has benefitted largely from their association with popular 3rd party content, and that has been and still remains instrumental in their model for success. That's why they're kicking up so much fuss regarding MS' potential acquisition of ABK, whilst Nintendo's stance is basically "yea, whatever"... because associating PlayStation as the place to play titles like Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto, or Fortnite, or FIFA, or Street Fighter, or Final Fantasy... etc etc, was far more instrumental towards the mass market shift from Xbox 360 back to PlayStation 4 after a large migration in the other direction occured the prior generation as a result of Xbox managing to break the cycle of defacto 3rd party exclusives for PlayStation consoles. Today it remains why Xbox signing a timed exclusive like Rise of the Tomb Raider nukes the internet, whilst the equivalent types of deal on PlayStation consoles draws almost no scrutiny at all. There's simply a sense that notable 3rd IP belongs on PlayStation by default as a result of the associations built in earlier generations.
That isn't to say strong 1st party hasn't helped strengthen their position (along with Xbox imploding in the previous generation), but it's not at all coincidence that as PlayStation lost its grip on defacto 3rd party exclusives in the transition from PS2 to PS3, that Xbox immediately became a viable destination to switch to once PlayStation was no longer required for the next GTA, or Tomb Raider, or Tekken, or Resident Evil, or... you get the point I'd assume? Nintendo doesn't throw a ton of money at 3rd parties specifically to install a sense of "Nintendo Advantage", or "exclusively not on Xbox" clauses into deals they sign, because of the 120m or so owners of their hardware, the majority are buying it specifically for titles they produce. When PlayStation sells 150m consoles however, there's a huge overlap in the 30m or so players buying a combination of titles like The Last Of Us, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn and the like. The prospect of buying a PlayStation instead for titles like GTA, FIFA and COD is extremely common, and remains key to their success to this day, which is why they fight so hard to maintain their perception hold on 3rd party IP. If a competitor ever put them in a 3rd party situation similar to that which they successfully managed to put their competitors in over the years, no amount of TLOU or God of War is preventing them suffering catastrophically in the market.
I mean, none of what you said is untrue, but labelling it the main thing completely ignores many objective truths. The reasons Xbox outsold Playstation for the first half of the 7th-gen:
- Xbox actually had fantastic exclusives from 2005-2008 (Gears of War 1 & 2, Halo 3, Mass Effect, etc.), whereas the PS3 line-up was much thinner and less critically-acclaimed (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, UC1, etc.) MGS4 was the first true "big ticket" for PS3 and even that was a divisive game among fans. It wasn't until Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and Infamous arrived in 2009 that PS3 finally began looking like it had a decent catalogue. By the time GOW3 arrived in 2010 + Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, Infamous 2 and Resistance 3 in 2011, Microsoft's well of exclusives was beginning to dry, and you can very clearly track the turnaround in sales that began for the PS3 around this time.
- People forget Sony's first-party studio line-up was noticeably smaller then. Insomniac, Suckerpunch and Media Molecule weren't Sony-owned, Guerrilla hadn't made a name for themselves, and Bend had been relegated to the PSP. Yes, they were able to do well during the PS2 due to Microsoft's late entry and lack of Japanese support meaning Playstation became the "default home" for non-Nintendo games, but that advantage faded for Western audiences during the PS3 gen. Ever since then, PS's brand has been just as tied to the reputation of the studios it owns as it is to any particular IP.
- PS3 was marketed on the back of the theoretical power of the Cell architecture, but for the first half of its lifespan this translated into multiplatform titles that performed and looked worse on Playstation. In addition to having a thinner first-party line-up, third-party games played worse as well. It wasn't hard for Microsoft to wrestle those audiences away from Sony when games performed objectively worse on PS3. This began turning around in the latter half of the gen, with the differences between consoles either becoming negligible in most titles, or even occasionally favouring the PS3. Once again, it's no coincidence the PS3 began outselling the Xbox 360 around this time.
- Xbox 360 also released a full year before the PS3, so was able to establish both an audience hungry for the "next-gen" as well as establish relationships with certain franchises and IPs before PS was able to join as a valid alternative.
- Microsoft did a disastrous job marketing the launch of the Xbox One, whereas Sony did a great job marketing the PS4.
- The PS4 had a notable power advantage over the Xbox One, meaning multiplatform titles now looked and ran better on Sony machines instead of the other way around a generation earlier.
- The addition of strong IPs over the course of the generation such as Horizon, Spider-Man, and the rebooted God of War really boosted Playstation's exclusives portfolio, whereas Xbox's line-up hit a dire state in the mid 8th-gen.
And why has that advantage continued for Playstation into the 9th-gen? Once again, stronger first-party line-up, and better marketing around upcoming exclusive titles. And there was no significant hardware advantage for Xbox to fall back on. Power/performance differential between the two brands is the least significant it has ever been. This is why Microsoft has been spending bucketloads to buy up studios with strong IPs and/or the potential the create strong IPs. And I 100% believe that if those studios are able to produce the results, it will guarantee a stronger future for Xbox as a brand than a banger Halo title ever could on its own.
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I don't think they're that important anymore. I think that even if Microsoft announced an Xbox/PC exclusive B&K, it wouldn't really move the needle in terms of sales.
None of them really need or have a mascot anymore. Gaming is larger than ever — most people can look at Nintendo and see Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing and associate those with 'Nintendo'. Sony has the PlayStation Studios umbrella and usually posts articles with the banner with all those franchises, Microsoft does the same — even more so now with Bethesda and likely soon ABK.