No one invested in this little war will ever publicly come out and say it.... specially fanboys of the other side of 30 age and older who know better.... but It's always been a silent strategic war. The rationale of any money > 0 money as the basis for Sony releasing its exclusives on PC IS conditional on many market factors ensuring Sony dominance in the console space.... were those factors, which I rather not waste my time detailing, not hold true for whatever reason in the far future, that is, the competitive environment changing to Sony's detriment, these moves should weaken Sony's position in the console space. Valve's STEAMDECK SHOULD BE a MASSIVE EYE OPENER for SIE/Sony's leadership..... as Sony "exclusives" games can be played on a dedicated "closed system" hardware from a middle-man leech like VALVE's Steam.... but you can't fix stupid. What would the PlayStation VITA say from its grave? It would say, "FUCK YOU!". You can ignore the elephant in the room at your leisure cause Valve and its Steamdeck now enjoys literally 0 market penetration but who knows tomorrow if Nintendo shits the bed with the Switch 2.0, or if Valve even dares to get into the console market proper (nothing is stopping them except market viability/investment)? The blueprint to follow is there. In that hypothetical what then? Pull the games from the Steam Store after conditioning consumers to access?
What would more likely happen, and be ideal for Valve is to have success with the Steamdeck ala Xbox going from the OG XBox, to Xbox 360 and then branch into the console space proper with MS fumbling and shitting the bed as usual providing the opening. As you can see, a lot of IFs, but the opening for Valve is there to exploit.
Just imagine if Nintendo followed the fervor of the American/European investor class pushing for mobile and PC releases - aka, the MARIO EVERYWHERE crowd, leading to suddenly seeing Mario and all other iconic Nintendo IP appearing on the Steamdeck (a direct Switch competitor) as a result of putting the games on the Steam Store years prior. I mean, you would be laughed off the fucking room at Nintendo for being so short-shortsightedly greedy and stupid - but only in hindsight. Obviously Nintendo, in such hypothetical, would hurry up to quickly pull out the IPs from Steam but the shitstorm alone, never mind the consumer conditioning created beforehand would have been massive hits - beyond the potential damage market share wise, ultimately, profit wise. There is a reason Sony of old held firm on PC releases, as there is a reason Nintendo, despite the strong pressure to fold, even at the height of failure, doubled down on the strategic imperative of keeping and tending its garden. It would have been the easy way out to go the other way to please "wise investors" but that also would have meant creating Nintendo's writ of death. The thing that separates decent leadership from great leadership are these sort of clutch moment decisions. It's sort of funny Sony is actually helping Valve position the Steamdeck as the go-to place for Sony IP's on the handheld space. All of this while Valve takes a cut, improves its attractiveness off Sony's shine etc.... thus helping themselves in other ventures, current (Steam VR) or hypothetical (proper console) by fattening the war chest and the stranglehold on a growing consumer base - silently, slowly. "But but... it goes both ways" - bitch, please, you a dom or a sub? You take or give? Gabe Newell must be laughing his ass off with the whores he likes to rent next to champagne....... just like he was btw during the X360 era when Valve ganged up with MS to push the knife deeper into Sony when the PS3 fiasco happened (Left4Dead?) - NEVER FORGET. "Q: Who's better Xbox or PlayStation?" "A: Xbox", "Q: Why?" "A: It just is" - Gabe Newell circa 2020. When Philly boy says Valve (and Gabe) has "done it right", he's talking to an informed crowd - not just the superficial meaning of the words meant for sheep and press whores. These olds cats (Valve/MS) don't change....truly... only idiots at Sony do. And so when Sony releases on PC, you see all the shilling, whoring press welcome and cheer the mistake .... a public discourse seed btw, planted by MS marketing and amplified by Phil Spencer. "Games everywhere™" "When we all play, we all win™" etc etc. Now why would Philly boy, whose job is to sell a console do that? That MS/Philly boy went back on all that BS after regrouping during the middle-late cycle of the Xbox One era and after seeing Sony bite the bait should have been expected by a wary, cutthroat business savvy mind/leadership. The Activision/Bethesda deals, the disruptive Gamepass market model, "ALL IN ON GAMING" was meant to be /is the coup de grâce coming full circle - "The Empire Strikes Back" moment although in MS fashion, they can't quite land it right - see FTC, Gamepass subs plateauing and the shitstorm. That doesn't detract from the plan being sound - the excutor is just mid. Simple strategy: Sucker your competition (Sony) to waterdown their strengths aka buying incensives by coming to "your level" when you're weak and in a vulnerable position and then suddenly, in a quick successive series of moves buff yourself up with ammo to outgun and overtake your competitors strengths. The focus by the commentariat in analyzing these things should not be just dismissals and clownery focused on the mistakes of MS/Xbox to carry out this strategy - still ongoing btw. The focus should also be on what the effects would've been had a more competent competitor, one that took care of their deficiencies better, executed the plan? The conclusion is obvious and says a lot about Sony's leadership. I mean, this shit writes itself. You only need a critical thinking mind. "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - Napoleon Bonaparte. There is nothing like old, true greed to lead men stray from the path, and turn good to shit.
But let the Sony "geniuses" pinching pennies on PC to satiate the proverbial need to "increase shareholder value" aka the #1 mandate, to figure that out - I mean you would think after leaving school you would realize it's never like the books. We all know what happens to tech companies when corporate leadership shits the bed strategically by planting silent time bombs beneath their own feet. The failures flee and leave the mess to the next leadership in line that takes over after the bombs go off - and it's not guaranteed the new leadership, depending on the degree of damage, can make things right back again. Bottom line, a almost assuredly PS6/PS7 console, in a hypothetical higher/more competitive environment, may find itself with a diminished/lesser "have to own incentive", on top of massive SIE upkeep via dev studio funding costs of this
forced by competition expansionary phase. In other words, couple the two factors and you may find Sony/SIE facing an avalanche rushing against them of partly their own making. The assumptions of the current market structure/environment holding somewhat the same MUST hold true for another decade+ for the pinching pennies on PC crowd (aka "let the good times roll" - profit maximization golden age). Now.. SIE's current leadership can dress their shit with all the flavors they may wish while pointing at the money coming in and how it's invested into VR and studio acquisitions which have a reinforcing positive effect on Sony's continued stranglehold of the console space ....while pointing to PC releases as the necessary evil that helps catalyze and feed, in part, those ventures but it's a gamble, no two ways about it. Never mind the philosophical BS...."at our heart we're simply creative, experience creators" "As creators we want to reach more gamers and audiences".... or any and all BS the human mind can creatively come up with to justify a business decision. I personally love the unspoken one: "Look we're establishing ground for a potential hardware-less future?" Hardware-less = no PC as well, right dummy? Then what have you established that lasts? The end of MS Windows more or less as well? Think again. Not to even break the bubble that such future keeps being aloof despite billions upon billions being thrown at it - Hi Google! "But but... it's possible, it's coming" Sure, and definitely MS will be the vanguard, while still keeping Windows viable, those server blades need a backend shake after all
Bottom line is the market fundamentals are strong and almost always never change, established even before Sony came to town. Anyways, the obvious medium term (10-15 yrs) patch-in solution/correction to the Valve threat/mistake is a dedicated PlayStation Store front on PC, one that, unlike EA Origins or Ubisoft's Connect offers full third party library support like Steam/Epic's Game Store. In other words, not a store front solely and exclusively for SIE published games but a catalog with participation of all third parties who actively participate for PS home consoles. By comparison to Epic who started from scratch, Sony is in a position to leverage PSN/Third-party relations to greater, and hopefully more success - for both the breadth of content, and the exclusive differentiation content. The lazy, boneheaded thing to do is to shoot yourself in the head by doing what EA or Ubisoft did - that is, be seen as gatekeepers of a selection of content in the PC garden by Steam's crowd.... once PC consumers brand you a certain way - it's over. A PSN/PlayStation Store on PC must include full-third party library support - #1 bullet point/requirement OUT THE GATE - definitely not easy - but what is? Then SIE can gatekeep exclusives as normal and expose Valve for the useless leeches that they're - at which point you'll quickly see Valve react with Half-Life and other IPs as well as new games suddenly revived and in development - exclusive to Steam of course - cause they're greedy but not stupid as to sell then on a PS PC store. But even if SIE does it all right/correctly - and knowing Sony, with current personal, won't..... there is still no guarantee the sheep will flee Steam for a PSN Storefront (at least not to a significant market impacting degree - it will take time/$$). Just watch the previous behavioral consumer response of PC fanboys to new entrants - library attachment trumps shiny new games or "open platform" competition blabber 100% of the time - they even become fiercely hostile when their little, dear Valve garden is threatened by competition - pure corporate slavery - but that is the human mind at work for you. You can even say with certainty that the casual, and to an extent, core console audience are more open to new entrants in the console space, as with Xbox or Sega of old than consumers on PC to new client storefronts. Origins/uPlay/Epic Games Store are living, walking, breathing examples of this. Overall however this would actually bring healthy competition to the "open platform" - currently devoid off such with only one strong player - Steam. As far as MS is concerned - aka Windows OS monopoly, it's a win either way - and those at Redmond finally got half of what they wanted when they released the OG Xbox - they're clearly working on the other half of the equation on the console space, which they keep failing at horribly - but make no mistake, the bag is still at work, and the enemy (PlayStation) is tip toying around bombs. A win for Philly boy on a net scale.
But even a storefront on PC is a double-edged sword and long term strategic mistake imo. You're conditioning your core audience to have access and enjoy your content outside the golden goose that lays the golden eggs - aka PlayStation hardware. "Different customers!!!!!!" - the casuals maybe. Good luck for gamblers out there. "We must break from the console shackles to make more money!" Okay!
www.playstationlifestyle.net
