God of War Ragnarok with Neutral reviews on Steam because the game can't run on PCs with less than 6 GB of VRAM (Update: Also because of forced PSN)

[Yobo]

Oh yeah, dawg, millions of PlayStation gamers (55% of which are still on PS4, by the way) are just itching for the chance to move to PC.

People who bought a €500-800 console simply cannot wait to pull over €2000-2500 out of their asses for a PC that can match a PS5's performance.

Jokes aside, you cannot expect a game to sell like crazy if you're releasing it on PC 2 or 4 years after your initial launch. Your massive delay killed the hype so you can count yourself lucky to break a million.

God of War 2018 sold 2.5 million copies on Steam. So even with Valve's 30% cut and the insignificant costs of porting it to PC you've still made over $100 million.

Next time, launch the game on both platforms on the same day and let's see how that goes.

See Elden Ring sales by platform for details.

The scenario I gave is less than 5% of the userbase, and even that has a massive impact on the bottom line that cannot be made up on software sales. They have released their biggest ever games on Steam and all of them combined haven't made what Horizon or Uncharted 4 alone made on PS4

It is not the casual user who is switching. It is the highest value users who spend a lot of PlayStation and are given increasingly fewer and fewer reasons to have it as their primary platform

Do day and date and there is zero reason

PC users don't buy games, they steal them. Ragnarok was cracked within hours

 

[Yobo]

Please don't equate Nintendo games with PS. PS games can sell lots of copies but they get discounted fast, specially if you pay for plus.

Nintendo games hardly ever go down in price.



Steam cut is not 30 percent after you hit a certain revenue threshold. It can go as low as 20%. And in the scenario you are presenting, they would easily get there. Also, the users that are to leave for PC are the ones that have PS as secondary platform just to play the handful of exclusives they are interested in as cheap as possible. That is not a highly valuable customer to Sony so their LTV should be much lower, just do a quick math say they like at most 10 exclusives. They are all single player games, so no PS Plus. If they get that console late in the lifecycle, those games hit rock bottom prices. Lets say best case scenario, all purchases are made via PSN on sale. An average of 200 USD spent in games. I am saying best case scenario because the user can also go to the used physical market, where Sony gets no revenue at all.

If the core Sony customer starts leaving then it is due to Sony dropping the ball elsewhere (games, nickel and diming, customer service, you name it) Also Better is relative. For a core console customer, better means no hassle and getting to play the games early, instead of playing them late, demanding more HW than console counterparts and speculating if they are released or not.

PS Pro is expensive but optional. That is like complaining a 4090 is expensive when you can game just fine with a 7600.

Do you understand what an average is? Pulling $200 LTV out of your ass is meaningless

That LTV is an average across the userbase. It is a number provided by Sony. This already accounts for the existence of used games markets and discounts

 

[Systemshock2023]

It is not the casual user who is switching. It is the highest value users who spend a lot of PlayStation and are given increasingly fewer and fewer reasons to have it as their primary platform

Do day and date and there is zero reason

If all it takes is a handful of games to be ported for your most hardcore users to jump ship, that means that the core strengths of the PS platform and console gaming in general are very few and far between. And PC gaming has a pretty steep barrier of entry, both in price and its respective learning curve, for a traditional console user. If your most hardcore users are willing to go through all that... I'd start rethinking the value proposition of a console.

At one time you have to start adding value to your customer if you want to keep it. Football club like loyalty only goes so far.

 

[Landiri]

The Hardcore Users are only a small minority, as the low sales on PC show.

 

[Yobo]

If all it takes is a handful of games to be ported for your most hardcore users to jump ship, that means that the core strengths of the PS platform and console gaming in general are very few and far between. And PC gaming has a pretty steep barrier of entry, both in price and its respective learning curve, for a traditional console user. If your most hardcore users are willing to go through all that... I'd start rethinking the value proposition of a console.

At one time you have to start adding value to your customer if you want to keep it. Football club like loyalty only goes so far.

The core strength is THE GAMES. And if they aren't incentivising people with the games, then they lose their core strength. How hard is that to get?

Nintendo as well would start losing sales if they ported their games to PC

 

[Landiri]

Nintendo as well would start losing sales if they ported their games to PC

There are emulators for Switch.

Totally not Piracy...