Who is the biggest risk taker?

Hey everyone. Iv been thinking about something for a few days and would love some feedback. Who do you guys think are biggest risk takers in the industry of the 3 current console makers (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft). What I mean is who seems to be taking the most risks with what they do and the games they make. And lets set a time frame starting at when the original xbox was released. It would for sure have to be Nintendo or Sony right? Both took huge risks with consoles in the past and both create plenty of new IP's. As far as I can remember Sony seemed to be making the most new IP's but a lot of it being hit or miss. Nintendo I think creates a little less new IP's but they are hits more often then not.

People always seem to be looking to 3rd parties for new IP's but historically, its the platform maker that seems to take the most risks with creating new IP.

But what about Microsoft? They took a BIG risk when they announced Xbox One (even though they backed out with a lot of it). Of course they have created new IP's over the years too. But both Sony and Nintendo dwarf Microsoft in this regard. And I'm not sure why? For some reason Microsoft has preferred to acquire 3rd party exclusives (like Gears of War) or hire an external studio (like mist walker who made blue dragon.)

Isn't it a more effective strategy to invest in your own talent? When I look at Nintendo it would sure seem to be. Would really love to know what you guys think on this matter.

Nintendo breaking out of the cycle of console power parity with the Wii and now with the Wii U was ballsy and it paid dividends the first time at least. They really veered away from the traditional "keeping up with the Jones's" that Sony and MS continue to do. I'm not saying it was the best or worst idea but it was drastically different from all other console generations.

You can't ignore the move to motion controls either. "Here's a controller that looks like a TV remote. Now your grandma is going to play video games." Crazy.

As far as IPs I guess Sony would get the nod but they kind of always did that. They just didn't jump on the yearly rehash and sequelitis train as hard as the other two. Sony has probably made the best decisions this generation but they weren't so much ballsy as they were fundamentally sound and smart.

I wonder if Nintendo will ever try to "catch up" and release a console technically on par with the competition again. They'd basically be moving two generations ahead then.

On a hardware front, like @morelikelames said, Nintendo has been taking risks since the Gamecube. The DS was a weird fucking idea, and they didn't even need to take that risk since the GBA was by far the most successful handheld at the time. Then the Wii and Wii U continue to buck the trend of just offering a weird input experience, since the Gamecube kinda got lost in the shuffle and I guess Nintendo is still afraid that if they just put out a normal-ass console with a standard dual analog, 4-trigger, 4-face button controller then nobody will buy it.

On a software front, I think nobody is taking risks. None of the three console makers are taking big risks on new game ideas at this point, and frankly very few of the large 3rd party publishers are either. Bloodborne is coming out only because Demon's Souls and Dark Souls became weird cult hits all on their own. Same deal for Bayonetta 2, basically. EA, Ubisoft, and Activision are riding that sequel train pretty hard; the era where EA was trying random new stuff (Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, etc.) is over. Ubisoft's era of doing weird shit like Beyond Good & Evil is similarly over. To their credit, all the major publishers are making up for this lack of creativity in their big projects by having an "indie imprint" or whatever you want to call it, which is where you get all the weird indie shit like Child of Light coming from.

WB Games is weirdly cool with giving a bunch of time and budget to a game that isn't already an established hit? Like, they enabled Batman: Arkham Asylum and Shadow of Mordor to get made, so that's alright, plus they publisher Bastion.

Nintendo is the obvious choice but Sony leading the charge on CD's, DVD's and Blue-Rays on their consoles could be considered quite risky. Other than that they tend to play things conservatively on the hardware front. Microsoft had pretty big gambles with putting so much emphasis on online infrastructure and then Kinect. But yeah, Nintendo began as a risky venture wading into a damaged console market, then coming out with both the DS and the Wii in succession.

@brendan said:

I think going with CDs and DVDs and Blu-ray was more smart than anything, as obviously at some point those media formats were going to change, so the only gamble was going with Blu-ray instead of HD-DVD. On the other hand, Nintendo leaping into the DS and touch/stylus-based gaming when that was pretty much not a thing that existed in gaming up until that point was kinda nuts. Similarly, as much as the tech was there, almost no one was doing motion controlled gaming when the Wii was announced.

On the other hand, by the time the Xbox One was announced, people had tried out and eventually got tired of motion controlled gaming (between the Wii, Kinect, and Playstation Move), so it was fucking crazy of Microsoft to force the Kinect on people, when the trend was already pretty much "meh". It was equally crazy to semi-force people to give audio commands to Kinect, seeing as the whole "dictate audio commands to a computer thing" is also a fad and people barely use shit like Siri because it's often way faster to just type stuff. It felt less like a risk, and more like Microsoft just trying to force a paradigm shift on people that had almost no obvious advantages to it. But yes, Microsoft's online stuff has always been pretty smart, especially with the launch of the Xbox 360.

Basically, I think Sony and Microsoft usually take smart risks based on industry trends (launch of the Xbox One being a big exception), whereas Nintendo just takes crazy shoot for the moon risks for the fuck of it, because they're the Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory of console manufacturers and if they make enough bad bets they may eventually end up like Sega which would make me very sad. I guess Nintendo hedges their bets by putting on really safe software that is exactly what people expect, to counterbalance all the weird shit they do with hardware.

Nintendo is a weird paradox. Sometimes they take big risks - touch screens before they were huge, motion control, secondary screen interacting with the television - in the market and at the same time on the software side of things they tend to play it very safely and formulaic.

It's safe to say they set their own trends for the most part, but then they tend to follow them ad nauseum. Which isn't to say they don't make good games - they most certainly do - they're just not risky endeavours.

I don't feel like I can give an answer to this which doesn't seem very reductionist, and the answer to this question changes depending on whether we're looking at which company has taken the most risks in their lifetime or which one is taking the most risks now. I'm tempted to say Nintendo because of the Wii, DS, etc. but even when talking about hardware there are clearly times during which Nintendo has gone much more outside of the box with it than other times, and when it comes to software they (for better or worse) generally stick to doing the same kind of thing.

Not saying you're wrong, but it's pretty funny, because every game that supports the pro controller I'm playing with the pro controller. I use the wii gamepad more like a monitor than a controller at this point.

None of them? Everyone seems to be playing it really safe right now.

Microsoft is the only one that's bringing back it's old brands in great ways though (Killer Instinct, Phantom Dust, Crackdown).

@amafi said:

You're not the only one who uses the Gamepad sparingly and just uses the Pro Controller whenever possible. But it's not packed in the box, which guarantees that it's a minority of people who go to the extra effort of buying the Pro Controller and making it their primary method of playing Wii U games.

But yeah, the Wii U is definitely less of a risk/less of a new idea, given that it launched almost ten years after the DS but using very similar stylus-based tech. Maybe there is an alternate universe where instead of launching the Wii in 2006 with motion controls, and instead Nintendo launched the Wii U with its gamepad in 2006 and that would've been more mindblowing back then since tablets and smartphones weren't really a thing in 2006. But that was probably impossible because making the gamepad would've been super costly (compared to Wii remotes and sensor bar which are all really cheap components), and even now Nintendo cut as many costs with the gamepad as possible and it's still a very expensive aspect of the hardware. My point is, having two different screens in one game was in impressive trick when the DS did it before anybody else, but the Wii U is coming SO LONG after that that it's not doing anything you haven't seen before. Especially when half the devs don't do anything special with the bottom screen. It's like everybody used up all of their cool design tricks on the DS.

Where is the Wii U's The World Ends With You?

Honestly, it fluctuates wildly. All three companies tend to gamble big and then either ride that high for years or retreat and play it safe. Right now, Microsoft.

Nintendo. though MS was pretty ballsy with their initial XBone release statement.

Sega hasn't put out a console in 15 years. I would describe that as very risky.

hmm yeah maybe I should have narrowed the scope down a bit. It does fluctuate quite a bit. But lets say in terms of software. For sure it would be Sony and Microsoft. Especially Microsoft recently. Since the PS1 probably Sony? I havent really checked it, but based on what I remember I Sony have made the most new IP's (mostly not that great too lol...) Anyone remember or researched otherwise?

Nintendo.... Their biggest franchises are still the ones from the 80's. And they have been playing it safe with those franchises pretty much for ever. Other then smaller, side games like Dr. Mario, Mario has been essentially the same since the 80's. The only exception I can think of is maybe Super Mario RPG? But that was done by Square.

I dunno if its a risky move or just took incredible balls but what Sony has done with indies and 3rd party support has been really refreshing from one of the console makers. They talked about it some on the Bombcast this week, about how Sony is going to developers and offering to do the porting work themselves to get games on their console. Sony built these teams under Adam Boyes and Gio Corsi thats sole purpose is to go aquire games from studios that might not otherwise be able to bring them to PlayStation consoles. I don't know if it was risky, i think we all saw it as a very smart move. However the sheer scale of it i think is the "that takes balls" part. They went all in from the start on this program. The first E3 before the ps4 was actually out they had that Indie showcase on the stage at E3, like 9 indie games on stage being played at once during their E3 Press Conference. Man at the time that was a big fucking deal and not something we had seen before really. That wasn't for show either because every single conference or showcase of any sort Sony has been out their with a massive variety and amount of Indies and ports like Yakuza 5 (what?). It seems like every day their is a announcement of a ps3, ps4, and vita title of some sort. Its just so crazy after how last generation ended with Indie devs really having a massive backlash against how the console makers treated them and how hard it was to bring their games to that market.

Not only that i'd like to point out risks like giving Ready at Dawn, a studio whose done a wii game, and 2 psp games. Giving them the budget and time to make a huge AAA graphical showpiece kind of game for the PS4, thats risky. They bought the Pixelopus studio who were just a couple college kids, they gave a little port house like Sanzaru Games a chance to make a full fledged Sky Cooper game. Admittedly I follow Sony much more closely than the other 2 companies and i respect what they are doing as well. I do think Sony has taken some incredible risks lately and most have paid off extremely well.

Whether they take more risks then the crazy people at Nintendo I dunno, for sure not hardware wise. I think its also underrated what Nintendo does with their franchises. Sure they have been the same titles over the course of a few decades now but its pretty risky how thoroughly they change those franchises and how often they do it. Look at a franchise like AC or CoD they are terrified of changing that formula and burning people to the point where its not CoD anymore right? There is risk in changing what a franchise does every time you release one.