Extreme_Popcorn

@expensiveham: You cannot compared Gabe Newell and Riccitiello in how they conduct business, Gabe Newell has the advantage of being the owner of a privately held company where as Riccitiello had lots of shareholders to deal with.

@expensiveham: Well if you think that making money isn't exactly what every single company that publishes video games set out to do then yes, you are insane. Valve didn't launch Steam because they are really nice guys, they launched it as a controlled environment to sell their product, Origin is EA doing exactly the same and Uplay is Ubisoft's version.

If you don't like EA because you don't like their games or how they've handled several PR situations then fine, but Origin is a perfectly fine service and no different at all from Steam or Uplay.

Most people just like playing games and don't give two shits whether it's launched via Steam or Origin. The people who complain about having to use Origin to launch a game rather than Steam clearly have too much time on their hands because it's really a non-issue for any sane person.

If it's more of the same stuff they put in Dead Space 3, what's the big fucking deal? It had no impact at all on the game, you could play the game completely and not touch them.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=507950

That is the thread with the analysis of their numbers, which while it doesn't make any definitive conclusions, it offers some pretty strong arguments about why their number are wrong.

The company also has a history of wildly exaggerating predicted sales, it did it for the Windows Phone, their infamous predictions for hardware sales this generation and predicting 50m+ Wii U sales in 3 years.

But we are getting away from my original point that Sony will charge for online this generation. They haven't released the number of people that pay for PS+ but are 'really proud of the number' which could just be PR but my money is on it because quite a big number. This coupled with the number of PS3's the are actively online which they claim to be 70% using PSN at least once a week means they probably already have a very nice revenue stream coming in from the PS+ money, their customers have shown they will pay for a good online service just like people pay for Xbox Live. Why wouldn't they want to expand this revenue by putting online MP or certain online services like Netflix or Hulu behind a paywall like Xbox Live Gold?

The people who will buy the new PS4 in the first year are the people who play a lot and most likely pay for PS+, why would it put them off buying a PS4 that has a Xbox Live Gold style paywall when they are already paying for PS+?

@ares42: All the rumours I've seen have show the Xbox with 8gb of Ram

@mellotronrules: Bah, I forgot which publisher they were with. I guess EA to show what Respawn are working on then.

@mikejflick: The 'iffy company' was the company who released their figures claiming that the PS3 had overtaken the 360 in units sold. It's the company that every news outlet used as a basis for their stories about the PS3 over taking the 360. And those figures were for units shipped, not sold.

The numbers being wrong has nothing to do with the fact the main strength of the PS3 late in this cycle is the quality of it's exclusive titles.

• Cheaper than the PS4
• Transferred XBLA library with increased 'Indie' dev support
• 360 controllers work with the new console
• XBL Entertainment - Cheaper than XBL Gold but no MP access just access to Netflix etc.
• Showing what the MS studios have been working on, show those 3-4 new IP's they are rumoured to be working on.
• EA showing solid IP's like FIFA, Madden and the new ME game
• Activision showing what Respawn are working on
• Kinect being more than a gimmick
• GTA V launch title with a launch date before the PS4

They need to do the first 4-5 points for me, I've been with Xbox for nearly 10 years now but Sony really tempted me last night.

@mikejflick: Those figures about the PS3 outselling the 360 were iffy, the company who released the figures have a history of being shit and someone of NeoGaf made a long post about how they weren't tracking sales figures but units shipped and how even those figures didn't add up.

Anyway, that's not my point. The reason the PS3 has had a late surge in my opinion is more down to better exclusives than free online, I mean look how many people bought the 360 during the Black Friday weekend and they'd have to pay for Live.

It might have been a huge selling point when the PS3 was released so long after the 360 but this time you'd imagine the release dates will be much closer and Sony will be confident, and rightly so, that many of the people who will be buying this system on day 1 care more about good exclusive titles and a powerful machine than paying for online.