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...

 

[ToTTenTranz]

So what happens if I get banned from my PSN account?

Do I get locked out of playing GoW Ragnarok on Steam?

my guy just play something else its not that serious if you dont get to play automata for a couple months when you are on vacation

- How are people still bitching about the PSN requirement? It's free and you can break Sony's ToS if your country doesn't have PSN.

- Because I want to play this single player game in a place without internet

-Just play something else then!

If your suggestion is to play something else, then why the fuck would the person even buy the game in the first place?

Is this the new version of "don't like it don't buy it"? It honestly sounds just as deranged.

 

[arvfab]

Do I get locked out of playing GoW Ragnarok on Steam?

Good question, but I guess you could simply make another free one?

If it's your full-digital PSN account where you bought games since PS3 on, then I guess it's bye bye to your digital library.

 

[arvfab]

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.

It's not only the ones jumping ship, but also the ones investing less on your platform. Why upgrade to a Pro, if the games you want to shine, shine brighter elsewhere? Why support the next VR headset, if you dropped support for the previous one like a stone in the sea? Why buy games day-1, if the quality you where known for keeps decreasing? Why pay a subscription for online play, when your same games can be played online for free elsewhere?

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.

What better value then exclusive games?

 

[Systemshock2023]

What better value then exclusive games?

That didn't help the Wii U much right? And we know that its library of exclusives carried the Switch through the first half of the generation at least.

There are definitely other factors at play that the customer considers.

 

[arvfab]

That didn't help the Wii U much right? And we know that its library of exclusives carried the Switch through the first half of the generation at least.

There are definitely other factors at play that the customer considers.

Of course other factors matter too, but exclusives are one of the major selling points. Otherwise Xbox would have comparable sales to PlayStation.

 

[theolreverend]

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

Less than half the PlayStation user base is on PS5. That's ~49 million.

So the <5% of 49 million PS5 users you're talking about = roughly 2.47 million "defectors."

As @Systemshock2023 pointed out, these "defectors" likely own a PS5 as their secondary platform. Ergo they spend the bulk of their game money on PC anyway. These people only buy a handful of PS exclusives, which means they have a much lower LTV than the 95% of PS5-only gamers who won't switch to PC. Let's be absurdly generous and say the LTV of this group is ½ of the average PS gamer = €278 LTV per defector (tho, in reality, it's probably much lower)

2.47 million x 278 = €686 million

If Sony continues this model of bringing 2-to-4 of their previous big exclusives to Steam with a ~2-year delay from their original launches, they'll make anywhere between €200 and €400 million per year. This means they've already covered that loss in LTV from the "defectors" in 2-2.5 years.

Therefore this absurd fearmongering about how porting exclusives to PC will "kill PlayStation" or "cost Sony billions" simply doesn't hold up to basic math.

Moreover, this entire calculation is based on the current sales numbers generated by these old games.

Did you actually expect record-breaking PC sales for God of War 2018 as it was being resold in 2022 at full price? This was the same year Elden Ring, MW2, A Plague Tale and 40K Darktide came out. I'm sorry, but we're talking about ports of 2-to-4-year-old games — their hype died down ages ago.

 

[mibu no ookami]

The narrative is Xbox is doing it and its a smart choice. Not that they were forced to because they arent selling enough hardware.

Sony isnt helping itself by coping MS moves

Breakdown for me the difference between MoviePass and AMC A-List.

 

[theolreverend]

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

There are emulators for Switch.

Totally not Piracy...

And let's also address the raw, undiluted bilge that you, @Landiri and others keep peddling about PC gamers.

Yes, piracy was common in the 90s, especially in poorer countries, due to a lack of proper distribution channels. For example, I grew up in Romania. I didn't have a GameStop or whatever that I could simply pick up Halo CE from. And even tho my family was pretty well off, physical copies of Microsoft games weren't even being sold in Romania before ~2008.

But then Steam came along in 2003 — their frequent sales and rapidly improving material conditions meant gaming was no longer a luxury for the fortunate few. Through Steam, Valve offered games you couldn't otherwise find locally.

Meanwhile, console gaming remained unfeasible because PSN only became available around 2015 and Xbox Live entered the Eastern Bloc in 2018.

Yet Valve didn't just sell us games, they created access where there was none. Before Steam, all we had access to were the handful of overpriced retail copies we could barely find locally. This is why PC gaming culture is so deeply entrenched in the Eastern Bloc and other regions.

As Gabe once stated: "Piracy is more of a service problem than a pricing problem."

This is inarguably true because Steam alone reduced PC piracy by as much as 70%.

Now I can understand this PC vs. Console shit's always had an element of tribalism to it.

However, this "us vs. them" narrative that "PC users don't buy games, they steal them." you guys are pushing? It's a baseless, 30-IQ opinion that falls apart like a cheap suit at the slightest bit of scrutiny.

@Landiri aka "please notice me, daddy!" asked me to name PC-only games that sold over 20 million copies. Then pretended I didn't answer and continued to parrot his nonsense about piracy.

If PC gamers are all thieves, why did The Witcher 3 — A SINGLE-PLAYER GAME WITH NO DRM — sell way more copies on PC than on PlayStation or Xbox?

Who did Half-Life², StarCraft 2 or all the other PC-only titles sell tens of millions of copies to?

 

[Exicide]

And let's also address the raw, undiluted bilge that you, @Landiri and others keep peddling about PC gamers.

Yes, piracy was common in the 90s, especially in poorer countries, due to a lack of proper distribution channels. For example, I grew up in Romania. I didn't have a GameStop or whatever that I could simply pick up Halo CE from. And even tho my family was pretty well off, physical copies of Microsoft games weren't even being sold in Romania before ~2008.

But then Steam came along in 2003 — their frequent sales and rapidly improving material conditions meant gaming was no longer a luxury for the fortunate few. Through Steam, Valve offered games you couldn't otherwise find locally.

Meanwhile, console gaming remained unfeasible because PSN only became available around 2015 and Xbox Live entered the Eastern Bloc in 2018.

Yet Valve didn't just sell us games, they created access where there was none. Before Steam, all we had access to were the handful of overpriced retail copies we could barely find locally. This is why PC gaming culture is so deeply entrenched in the Eastern Bloc and other regions.

As Gabe once stated: "Piracy is more of a service problem than a pricing problem."

This is inarguably true because Steam alone reduced PC piracy by as much as 70%.

Now I can understand this PC vs. Console shit's always had an element of tribalism to it.

However, this "us vs. them" narrative that "PC users don't buy games, they steal them." you guys are pushing? It's a baseless, 30-IQ opinion that falls apart like a cheap suit at the slightest bit of scrutiny.

@Landiri aka "please notice me, daddy!" asked me to name PC-only games that sold over 20 million copies. Then pretended I didn't answer and continued to parrot his nonsense about piracy.

If PC gamers are all thieves, why did The Witcher 3 — A SINGLE-PLAYER GAME WITH NO DRM — sell way more copies on PC than on PlayStation or Xbox?

Who did Half-Life², StarCraft 2 or all the other PC-only titles sell tens of millions of copies to?

I've also stated this in the past, people here don't seem to understand because a game gets cracked on launch day does not mean EVERYONE is going to go get the cracked game, the ones who crack games get paid to do so, it's literally their "job," so to speak.

 

[Gediminas]

I've also stated this in the past, people here don't seem to understand because a game gets cracked on launch day does not mean EVERYONE is going to go get the cracked game, the ones who crack games get paid to do so, it's literally their "job," so to speak.

If there would be no demand, there wouldn't be no job to do it.

And let's also address the raw, undiluted bilge that you, @Landiri and others keep peddling about PC gamers.

Yes, piracy was common in the 90s, especially in poorer countries, due to a lack of proper distribution channels. For example, I grew up in Romania. I didn't have a GameStop or whatever that I could simply pick up Halo CE from. And even tho my family was pretty well off, physical copies of Microsoft games weren't even being sold in Romania before ~2008.

But then Steam came along in 2003 — their frequent sales and rapidly improving material conditions meant gaming was no longer a luxury for the fortunate few. Through Steam, Valve offered games you couldn't otherwise find locally.

Meanwhile, console gaming remained unfeasible because PSN only became available around 2015 and Xbox Live entered the Eastern Bloc in 2018.

Yet Valve didn't just sell us games, they created access where there was none. Before Steam, all we had access to were the handful of overpriced retail copies we could barely find locally. This is why PC gaming culture is so deeply entrenched in the Eastern Bloc and other regions.

As Gabe once stated: "Piracy is more of a service problem than a pricing problem."

This is inarguably true because Steam alone reduced PC piracy by as much as 70%.

Now I can understand this PC vs. Console shit's always had an element of tribalism to it.

However, this "us vs. them" narrative that "PC users don't buy games, they steal them." you guys are pushing? It's a baseless, 30-IQ opinion that falls apart like a cheap suit at the slightest bit of scrutiny.

@Landiri aka "please notice me, daddy!" asked me to name PC-only games that sold over 20 million copies. Then pretended I didn't answer and continued to parrot his nonsense about piracy.

If PC gamers are all thieves, why did The Witcher 3 — A SINGLE-PLAYER GAME WITH NO DRM — sell way more copies on PC than on PlayStation or Xbox?

Who did Half-Life², StarCraft 2 or all the other PC-only titles sell tens of millions of copies to?

You said, you will address it, instead, we got this diarrhea.

 

[theolreverend]

If there would be no demand, there wouldn't be no job to do it.

You said, you will address it, instead, we got this diarrhea.

Instead of trying to blame me for your illiteracy and lack of reading comprehension, take responsibility for yourself and get better.

 

[Systemshock2023]

How's that diarrhea? Anything other than the "official" US/Western Europe/Japan dominated narrative in gaming is diarrhea?

Stuff such as "the gaming crash" or the massive hard on for N64 are mainly a US thing.

Keep believing the PS global appeal wasn't built on piracy and piracy was only a PC thing,when it was actually harder to pirate and game on PC than on consoles all the way from the 90s though late 00s early 10s.

 

[theolreverend]

I've also stated this in the past, people here don't seem to understand because a game gets cracked on launch day does not mean EVERYONE is going to go get the cracked game, the ones who crack games get paid to do so, it's literally their "job," so to speak.

It's also a really dumb argument that falls apart immediately.

 

[Gediminas]

Instead of trying to blame me for your illiteracy and lack of reading comprehension, take responsibility for yourself and get better.

Hard to comprehend idiotic yapping. But maybe next time...