GameDiscoverCo estimates have anywhere between 65% and 75% of Helldivers 2's LTD players on Steam |UP| 2/24/24 Overall, over 60% PC split.

[DForce]

Microsoft announces Game Pass.

"This is the future. Sony is doing things the old fashion way."

"It's not about game sales, it's about engagement."

Microsoft hardware sales decline.

"We're moving away from consoles. They won't be around in 10-15 years."

Microsoft will slowly put their games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.

"Exclusives are going to be a thing of the past."

Many "journalists" seem to believe Microsoft can't lose and that they're somehow leading the industry forward when in reality they're failing at nearly every single turn.

 

[Thirty7ven]

The rare time I agree with him. And it's better than he's saying because it's only a 70/30 split for the first 50M. After that the revenue share drops to 80/20. In exchange you can reach an additional 150M monthly active users to sell your $200M AAA games. This isn't a hard sell. It's a way better deal for Playstation than selling a boxed game through Amazon.

It’s bullshit. For live service sure, but for the SP games that define PlayStation it’s super dumb to do that.

Steam is also competition, look at what it has done to Xbox. If they go down the same route then they will dilute the PlayStation brand beyond repair, and it won’t happen straight away, it will look great for a couple of years until it’s too late to repair the damage.

And if you’re supplying SteamDeck with your games like that… imagine how stupid that will be, when Sony wants to sell you an handheld and it makes absolutely no sense to buy one when you can just buy a steamdeck?

At that point might as well drop the pretense and put your shit everywhere. This is what’s happening to Xbox’s failed strategy, they are capitulating.

The only way it makes sense to copy Xbox’s strategy is by learning from their mistakes. That means no day 1 on PS+, that means only live service games day 1 on PC, and it also means only select sp games on PC 1 to 2 years after. Otherwise PlayStation would just be making the exact same mistakes as Xbox.

Sony needs to be really careful here.

 

[JAHGamer]

It’s bullshit. For live service sure, but for the SP games that define PlayStation it’s super dumb to do that.

Steam is also competition, look at what it has done to Xbox. If they go down the same route then they will dilute the PlayStation brand beyond repair, and it won’t happen straight away, it will look great for a couple of years until it’s too late to repair the damage.

And if you’re supplying SteamDeck with your games like that… imagine how stupid that will be, when Sony wants to sell you an handheld and it makes absolutely no sense to buy one when you can just buy a steamdeck?

At that point might as well drop the pretense and put your shit everywhere. This is what’s happening to Xbox’s failed strategy, they are capitulating.

The only way it makes sense to copy Xbox’s strategy is by learning from their mistakes. That means no day 1 on PS+, that means only live service games day 1 on PC, and it also means only select sp games on PC 1 to 2 years after. Otherwise PlayStation would just be making the exact same mistakes as Xbox.

Sony needs to be really careful here.

no single player games should go over ever, even late ports are beyond pointless.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Just to add to the previous post.

One of the lies that will be worked during the next couple of years will be this concept that “console generation reset” is a big problem for the console model and that it’s outdated yada yada.

But fact is they have already solved the problem this gen. Cross gen is the answer. It’s no different from how PC does it, the only difference is that PC does it in a more complicated way because there are so many configs and tiers.

One last point, additional “150 million active users” is a bunch of bullshit, because it assumes that those users can all access your game when that’s just a big lie about Steam unless your minimum requirements are a potato laptop where kids play football manager or whatever.

The amount of players Sony will actually be able to target with a port is way way smaller.

 

[Gamernyc78]

no single player games should go over ever, even late ports are beyond pointless.

I think the reward isn't worth the risk of devaluing the aura of exclusives.

 

[flaccidsnake]

CEO of Playstation, Jim Ryan, said, that PC competing against Playstation.

Please find the source for that. I've googled the alleged statement all kinds of ways and it just takes me back to this website. Seems fishy. And I still don't think it would be decisively against. MS and Apple are competitors but they still put their products on each other's platforms.

 

[flaccidsnake]

Do they really disagree when they don't do day 1 on PC aside from MP games?

This is a brand new statement. It is an explicit acceleration of the PC strategy. It sets an expectation of a more ambitious plan than Jim Ryan's ("I think the more the better"). Plus it was made before we really knew how much Steam contributed to Helldivers 2's success.

To be clear, I don't think Totoki explicitly promised day one single player games. But everything points to more and faster. The goal is to "grow the first party through multiplatforms". It's not about "popularizing consoles" anymore because successful games are way more profitable than consoles. The first party used to be the enticement to buy a Playstation. Now the first party itself is the driver. This is a good change. It'll lead to more and better games.

 

[Darth Vader]

Please find the source for that. I've googled the alleged statement all kinds of ways and it just takes me back to this website. Seems fishy. And I still don't think it would be decisively against. MS and Apple are competitors but they still put their products on each other's platforms.

Took me 10 seconds to find it. Even better, the first result is from this very forum.

Jim Ryan confirms that PC is a direct competitor to Playstation in FTC documents.

If he knows this then why does he continue to port the Playstation exclusive library to a competitor platform? I'm sure his defenders will come in this thread saying how PC ports are still excellent because "reasons".

icon-era.com

 

[flaccidsnake]

Took me 10 seconds to find it. Even better, the first result is from this very forum.

Jim Ryan confirms that PC is a direct competitor to Playstation in FTC documents.

If he knows this then why does he continue to port the Playstation exclusive library to a competitor platform? I'm sure his defenders will come in this thread saying how PC ports are still excellent because "reasons".

icon-era.com

Please find it anywhere else on the Internet but that post. I've tried, and I've even razzed nongkris about it with no response. It should be easily independently verifiable from the FTC docs.


FISHY:

 

[Nix]

This is a brand new statement. It is an explicit acceleration of the PC strategy. It sets an expectation of a more ambitious plan than Jim Ryan's ("I think the more the better"). Plus it was made before we really knew how much Steam contributed to Helldivers 2's success.

To be clear, I don't think Totoki explicitly promised day one single player games. But everything points to more and faster. The goal is to "grow the first party through multiplatforms". It's not about "popularizing consoles" anymore because successful games are way more profitable than consoles. The first party used to be the enticement to buy a Playstation. Now the first party itself is the driver. This is a good change. It'll lead to more and better games.

PlayStation makes the majority of their money through people on their consoles, buying games on their store, mtx, etc..

First party sales have been hovering around 15-20%, I can see their games launching on PC after a year but anything sooner is risky and I doubt they don't know that, less console sales = less people on their platform = less revenue.

 

[Yurinka]

From what we're hearing from both MS and Sony, it is not likely that these consoles will ever fall to ~$200 like in the past. Actually production costs are going up. PS5 is better able to weather this than Series X, but Sony is still feeling the pain. That's what Hiroki Totoki explained to investors.

Playstation isn't going anywhere, but the era of heavily subsidized hardware might be ending. Similar to how you used to get your phone for free with a contract commitment, now you have to pay out of pocket. The value proposition between a Playstation6 and a console-like gaming PC is going to be very close, if there's even a difference between the two.

Sony isn't feeling any pain. Press and investors asked about the reason of the lower profitability and how they are going to address it.

He said that in previous consoles over time the component prices went down which led to extra profitability from the hardware in the 2nd half of the console, but this time instead were up so that won't happen. He mentioned that on top of that they still have acquisition releated costs from previous acquisitions affectting their profiability.

Regarding how to adress it, he said acquisitions costs will ease this new FY that starts in a few weeks, and that the are getting very good profitability with their IPs outside PS (meaning PC ports of old games and movie/tv show adaptations) and that will be more aggressive in this area (because they had planned to release this FY a few GaaS now also in PC, Helldivers 2 and Concord) plus some ports of old games (so far they have announced HFW, Until Dawn and I assume that will release TLOU2R this year too).

And well, soo they should also start releasing mobile games and their mobile/smart tv client for PS+ Premium's PS Cloud Gaming, and more GaaS titles, which should give them extra profitability.

Other than that, they're only under 3M from PS5 being launch aligned their best selling console ever in units (may be it in dollars), with gaming history record console software sales, accesory sales, game sub revenues, monthly active userbase and having an all time record on 1st party game sales.

You are crazy or seriously misinformed if you seriously think they will move away from their console.

This is a brand new statement. It is an explicit acceleration of the PC strategy. It sets an expectation of a more ambitious plan than Jim Ryan's ("I think the more the better"). Plus it was made before we really knew how much Steam contributed to Helldivers 2's success.

Helldivers 2 is a PS+PC sequel of the PS+PC game Helldivers 1.

Helldivers 2 was greenlighted in 2016 by Andrew House, not jim Ryan.

There is no acceleration of PC strategy: some Sony games won't be released on PC, like GT7. Some other GaaS will be ported day 1, like Helldivers 2 or the Bungie games. That was the idea when they were announced, or when bought by Sony, nothing to do with Helldivers 2 success or any recent events.

Out of the non-GaaS ported to PC, they'll be released on PC around 2 years or more after their original release in PS (the original one, not counting re-releases/remasters/remakes).

 

[Thirty7ven]

This is a brand new statement. It is an explicit acceleration of the PC strategy. It sets an expectation of a more ambitious plan than Jim Ryan's ("I think the more the better"). Plus it was made before we really knew how much Steam contributed to Helldivers 2's success.

To be clear, I don't think Totoki explicitly promised day one single player games. But everything points to more and faster. The goal is to "grow the first party through multiplatforms". It's not about "popularizing consoles" anymore because successful games are way more profitable than consoles. The first party used to be the enticement to buy a Playstation. Now the first party itself is the driver. This is a good change. It'll lead to more and better games.

Growing first party IP through multiple platforms also mean cloud and mobile. He’s not creating any new plans, he’s not deciding anything, he’s evaluating the situation right now and where it’s going. Of course they will be more aggressive since they had no day and date release yet before Helldivers 2 and Herman already said a short while ago that live service games will be day one and single player will have at least a 1 year delay.

This is simply signaling to shareholders that what they said is happening will happen. Don’t forget all these gaas ended up being delayed. And of course Marathon and whatever Bungie is working on will be on Xbox even, they said so.

The one thing he’s saying that right now needs to improve and merits change are budgets, production schedules, accountability from the devs/studios that seemingly can’t for the life of them put out a game on time and within the budget.

 

[Darth Vader]

Please find it anywhere else on the Internet but that post. I've tried, and I've even razzed nongkris about it with no response. It should be easily independently verifiable from the FTC docs.

Go find the FTC docs yourself and stop moving the goalpost.

Edit: Someone may have kept these.

[Download] All of Microsoft's files leaked via the #FTC

Since these files have been deleted, you can find them for download below. https://we.tl/t-Z7nj2xV4LM Neither I nor IconEra claim ownership of these files. Happy reading

icon-era.com

 

[flaccidsnake]

Growing first party IP through multiple platforms also mean cloud and mobile. He’s not creating any new plans, he’s not deciding anything, he’s evaluating the situation right now and where it’s going. Of course they will be more aggressive since they had no day and date release yet before Helldivers 2 and Herman already said a short while ago that live service games will be day one and single player will have at least a 1 year delay.

This is simply signaling to shareholders that what they said is happening will happen. Don’t forget all these gaas ended up being delayed. And of course Marathon and whatever Bungie is working on will be on Xbox even, they said so.

The one thing he’s saying that right now needs to improve and merits change are budgets, production schedules, accountability from the devs/studios that seemingly can’t for the life of them put out a game on time and within the budget.

the only platform he references in the statement is "computers".

 

[flaccidsnake]

Sony isn't feeling any pain. Press and investors asked about the reason of the lower profitability and how they are going to address it.

He said that in previous consoles over time the component prices went down which led to extra profitability from the hardware in the 2nd half of the console, but this time instead were up so that won't happen. He mentioned that on top of that they still have acquisition releated costs from previous acquisitions affectting their profiability.

Regarding how to adress it, he said acquisitions costs will ease this new FY that starts in a few weeks, and that the are getting very good profitability with their IPs outside PS (meaning PC ports of old games and movie/tv show adaptations) and that will be more aggressive in this area (because they had planned to release this FY a few GaaS now also in PC, Helldivers 2 and Concord) plus some ports of old games (so far they have announced HFW, Until Dawn and I assume that will release TLOU2R this year too).

And well, soo they should also start releasing mobile games and their mobile/smart tv client for PS+ Premium's PS Cloud Gaming, and more GaaS titles, which should give them extra profitability.

Other than that, they're only under 3M from PS5 being launch aligned their best selling console ever in units (may be it in dollars), with gaming history record console software sales, accesory sales, game sub revenues, monthly active userbase and having an all time record on 1st party game sales.

You are crazy or seriously misinformed if you seriously think they will move away from their console.

Watch/Read the statement.

The pain is thin margins. Playstation 5 is selling well. I don't think missing the target is a huge deal. The huge deal is that selling Playstations is not translating to the level of profit Totoki wants:

For gaming this year, profit margin, especially the operating margin was not really a wonderful situation

He's also pretty critical of the studios for not meeting their deadlines, budgets, or accountability:

People who work in the studios have very high motivation. They're very highly motivated. They're very good people, and they're very creative people. They have great creative minds and they also have knowledge about live streaming.

However, having said that, when it comes to the business itself, I think there is room for improvement. And that's got to do about how to use the money or about the schedule of development or how to fulfill one's accountability towards development, et cetera. Those are my frank impressions.

I never said or thought (or want!) that Playstation will "move away" from their console (whatever that means). I think Playstation will continue making a console, and also aggressively sell their games on PC. "In the past", the main goal was to get you to buy a Playstation. That is no longer the main goal, which is why it's called 'the past'. A change is taking place. Now the main goal is to "grow the first party through multiplatforms" (explicitly mentioning computers). The strength of first party content is more important to Sony's profits than selling you a Playstation console as I quoted earlier.

There is no acceleration of PC strategy: some Sony games won't be released on PC, like GT7. Some other GaaS will be ported day 1, like Helldivers 2 or the Bungie games. That was the idea when they were announced, or when bought by Sony, nothing to do with Helldivers 2 success or any recent events.

Out of the non-GaaS ported to PC, they'll be released on PC around 2 years or more after their original release in PS (the original one, not counting re-releases/remasters/remakes).

What do you think "proactively" means?

 

[Thirty7ven]

the only platform he references in the statement is "computers".

“So if we have a strong first-party content, not only with our console, but also other platform like computers. And the first-party can be grown with multi-platforms and that can help operating profit to improve.”

He gave an example. People really need to properly read that seekingalpha translation, instead of picking and choosing words and quotes and extrapolating what he hasn’t said.

We already know gaas day and date with ps-pc are coming, gaas day and date PlayStation-pc-mobile are coming. Cloud is part of it too. We have seen the slides we have seen the plans. None of this is new.

 

[Darth Vader]

Please find it anywhere else on the Internet but that post. I've tried, and I've even razzed nongkris about it with no response. It should be easily independently verifiable from the FTC docs.


FISHY:

I'm sorry, you were saying?

https://files.cand.uscourts.gov/files/23-cv-02880_FTC_v_Microsoft/RX5059%20(Redacted).pdf

Page 24/55

I have reported your post since you didn't do any due diligence and instead decided to cast doubt on people, kinda implying the information is fabricated.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Y'all just put flaccidsnake on Ignore and let's keep it moving. How many need to reply to debunk his ignorant Valve fanboy talking points? IMO they aren't worth the attention.

 

[Darth Vader]

Y'all just put flaccidsnake on Ignore and let's keep it moving. How many need to reply to debunk his ignorant Valve fanboy talking points? IMO they aren't worth the attention.

Nah, this guy needs to be put in check. It's unacceptable to cast doubt on another user's information from such a big document pool. Yes, @nongkris should have pasted a source way back when, but it doesn't excuse accusing them or this forum of being "fishy" with information being shared.

Edit: I have updated the original thread with a comment showing the source.

 

[Gediminas]

I'm sorry, you were saying?

https://files.cand.uscourts.gov/files/23-cv-02880_FTC_v_Microsoft/RX5059%20(Redacted).pdf

Page 24/55

I have reported your post since you didn't do any due diligence and instead decided to cast doubt on people, kinda implying the information is fabricated.