if i were the next CEO:
immediatly stop the 'PlayStation Hits' initiative, it's unsustainable for this generation and even last gen (premium games need to have premium prices, lock that shit on 60/70)
Well, this one is an iffy. Sony's had a Greatest Hits line ever since the PS1 and was usually for games that already cleared a certain sales threshold previously, and entered reprinting stages. It's a good way to boost sales but it seems less effective across the board as time goes on, partly because of the growing dominance of digital.
If it were me, I'd do what I've been suggesting they should do: implement a per-game subscription/payment system model. Let people buying the game have the option of doing so in cheaper installments from Day 1 and pay off the game over a period of some months while still getting the full game at launch. Instead of paying $70 in a preorder or Day 1, they can pay (for example) $12/mo for six months.
Every month the game checks to make sure they've paid their monthly installment and if so they can continue to access it as normal. If not they get a certain amount of time to make the payment else the system removes the game installation. All of this would require specific versions of the game to be purchased & installed, but once all the payments have been made another update can remove the check-in requirement.
Also, if at any point the game has an official price drop sustained for a certain period of time or longer, the user only needs to pay the amount reflective of the new price so if they've already done that with previous installments, they don't have to make any further install payments. Or, they could choose to continue install payments for the older price and have those additional install payments converted to Reward points or other stuff they can use in the ecosystem.
I think with this type of payment option, customers have more choice and flexibility in buying more games at any given time, and publishers can retain MSRP longer since the pay installment system already provides an economical choice for more price-conscious customers. They can even still tie specific cosmetics bonuses or whatnot in for Day 1 buyers (or those who buy within the launch period) who purchase the game outright as normal.
There's more detail on this in the megathread I made on future Sony/SIE business prospects for the rest of this gen and 10th-gen. But what I mentioned here is the basic gist of it. Also, I don't think this type of payment/installment system has to be limited to just PlayStation, but seeing as how reliant publishers on the platform are for B2P sales, and knowing trends in game spending industry-wide, I think it would be a major benefit. Nintendo could probably do something similar; same with Microsoft, though in their case they'd need to reverse years of value perception damage among what Xbox console owners remain who'd rather want their games in Game Pass than actually buy them.
put games on Plus Extra/Premium only after 2 and a half - 3 years after the release date
Yeah, I think this one's fair. We know HFW's quick rush into PS+ hurt long-tail sales of that game. No reason to do that to other games. When you combine an increased time window for putting games into PS+ with the payment system suggested above, it makes the longer time for PS+ inclusion more than justified.
Services like PS+ should really mainly be for legacy content, I'd say at least one gen behind current, when it comes to permanent or semi-permanent inclusions.
stop PC porting immediatly, put Nixxes to work on PS3 backwards compatibility and Remastered Collections / Remakes for the PS5
Realistically, I don't expect the PC ports to stop altogether. HOWEVER, I do think SIE need to heavily adjust their current plans on that, if they haven't done so already. I think as a best compromise, most (not all) GAAS titles could probably benefit from ports to PC either as Day 1 or slightly after console launch.
However, non-GAAS AAA games IMO would need to be at least 4 years after console release, if not longer. Despite what talking heads or others want to suggest, exclusives
DO matter for content differentiation, especially among hardcore & core enthusiasts who usually set the pace of a console's sales trajectory early in the gen, and even throughout the rest of the generation (when it comes to money spend within the ecosystem).
Given that up to now only a small handful of 1P games are even still exclusive to the PS5 whatsoever (and we're only barely midway through the generation), I think going forward Sony need to basically cease PC ports of any new 1P AAA games for the remainder of the generation. They really need to build back up total value proposition for PS5 through content differentiation, and there's not much sense relying on 3P timed exclusives to do so if your own 1P games don't maintain it in practice. Only a bit after PS6 releases (supposing it's a late 2028 release for that system), should they even begin considering some of their 2024+ non-GAAS AAA 1P PS5 games for ports to platforms like PC.
There's maybe a bit more leniency with AA games though, it would probably be very case-by-case. Even so, Sony have to show they have confidence in their own hardware and the rate in which they've been porting games (specifically non-GAAS) up to this point to PC, could be interpreted as a form of lack of confidence in their console market performance going forward. But I think this type of thing actually manifests that declining market performance through its being, in an ironic sense. Sony, hopefully, shouldn't be letting misguided talk from certain analysts or pundits spook them into thinking the console market is "stalling".
What they, Sony, really need to do is stop thinking of Xbox as their only competitor. As a console, Xbox is dying, but that doesn't mean Sony should stop trying to innovate with PlayStation or make it a truly competitive offering in the market. The actual bigger threat for PlayStation now is coming from more indirect competitors, like Nintendo (especially in markets like Japan) and Steam (whom Jim Ryan even admitted is a competitor for PlayStation).
While I can see Sony/SIE leveraging these various competing platforms for some type of growth/advertising to draw them in to PlayStation (again, I went through all of this in that giant megathread from maybe a month or so back), that should always be with the goal of bringing them over to the PlayStation console, and ensuring there's enough innovation (hardware features, pricing models, product variants, services, service options, QOL features etc.) and content differentiation (genuine exclusives) to make the console attractive within the market both compared to direct competitors
AND indirect competitors.
But first, they need to (IMO) re-establish that innovation and content differentiation through action with the PS5. For the totality of what would need to be addressed on that front, it would take some time. The time to being doing that, however, is now.
work on a NATIVE handheld that is simply called
PS6 portable, released TOGETHER with the PS6, running the same games and backwards compatible with the PS4/PS5 library + PS6 games, a premium device,
designed for the japanese market, very powerful like the rog ally, priced at 600 dollars, sales of the device to be counted together with PS6 sales, same thing as PS5 Pro (the handheld could be called PS5 Lite or something similar)
They are definitely going to need a native portable option for next generation. As much as I would have liked to see, say, an affordable next-gen PSVR3 entry-style headset included by default with PS6, I do think in the grand scheme of things a native handheld takes priority (if Sony are forced to choose).
Like you said it needs to be able to play PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS5 games natively. It also needs to be able to play PS6 games natively but realistically that can only happen if the graphical fidelity is scaled back significantly. To avoid a problem like with Series X & S, though, I think Sony need tech shared between a new PS handheld and PS6 that can basically auto-scale graphical fidelity and visual targets of native PS6 games to run on a new PS handheld effortlessly, with little to no effort required on the part of the developers.
Tech like PSSR (which they're introducing in the PS5 Pro) would help a lot in this area, but they'll probably need more stuff in addition to that. Silicon and packages that can do things like auto-adjust LOD levels for assets in a frame based on distance, for example. Which would mean other things like functionality to both scale down and scale
up mesh detail for character & environment models, likely by leveraging AI & metadata (the latter being like code the dev can feed to some part of the processor, maybe would also require allowing them to program how that part of the processor functions with other parts of the hardware). Some of this could probably be done through the game engines but having tech within the system itself able to specifically handle these tasks or enforce them in a way that's engine-agnostic is always a plus.
There is the rumor of Sony working on a PS handheld for the PS6 gen which, hopefully, can do the things we're speculating on here. Hopefully the PS6 is using a more advanced chiplet-based packaging design with a highly scalable GPU. The goal should be that wafer allocations for PS6 & the handheld are shared, but the design of the systems being where you only need a single wafer type that both can utilize.
I do think this would mean a PS6 that isn't necessarily an SoC but rather a System in a Package (SiP) design. However, some aspects of the hardware (like specific custom technologies for AI and such) could still be designed in pairing with certain processors like the CPU or GPU in SoC packages in a SiP (at least to my understanding). Otherwise those components could probably be designed as ASICs connected to other components.
I'm under the impression that an SiP design can be thought of as a form of chipletization, and hopefully AMD have a flexible enough architecture design for a future GPU that can offer great granularity in shaders, fixed function, frontend geometry, and multimedia as blocks. Like for example, being able to use a single wafer that basically has all the necessary silicon for the PS6 console, but then Sony can assemble that silicon onto a larger block so each aspect (the shaders, the fixed function units, etc.) are treated as chiplet blocks. And, they can just pull however many of those chiplet blocks would be needed for a PS portable and assemble those on a larger block (a SiP) fitting that device.
They'd still need different wafers for the main silicon facilitating the SiP (unless that could also be designed in a modular/scalable way), but this approach would help a ton in maximizing every single wafer otherwise, and allow better flexibility in adjusting production targets for each device type based on supply needs.
