Hardware Unboxed opinion on Sony's PC strategy: "I'm surprised that's a strategy or that anyone would think that would work"

Gediminas

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In its current form, Playstation does need PC. I'm not saying I agree with the current form but it is what it is.
Sony could also leverage PC to take away the rising hardware costs for minimal returns by using PC as a stop-gap between pro releases. Microsoft got it right this gen, sort of, but cocked it up.
The series S as an affordable, decently powered machine was a good idea, they should have held off on the X until this year and had that as the console with shiny new graphics, except, it would be more affordable than a modern-day, top of the range console. If that makes sense?


Which is a way of saying Sony need PC, because Sony have forgotten how to grow and dominate a console generation. Though I agree there is a ceiling for console hardware sales and Sony are chasing MAU metrics like Microsoft were. It will end the same way as well.
Is this some sort of satire? So many fallacies, it hard to grasp it comes from reality.
 
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Evil Aloy

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If a game sells 10 million copies on PS5 and the PC port sells 1.5 to 2 million copies and 50K people move from PC to console to play the games sequel, that's still a win for Sony. That's 50K more users than they would have otherwise gotten.

How many people would have bought a PS5 for Sony's exclusives and now won't? I bet it's way more than 50K.

Sony has devalued its own platform by porting its games to pc, period. It's insane that the company that sold the most consoles (Nintendo) is also the one that doesn't port its games anywhere, yet Sony would rather mimic the sinking ship of Xbox. And for what, for half a million of extra copies sold at discounted prices? Give me a break.

pc assholes all over twitter are laughing at Sony for being naive and stupid enough to believe that they would ever buy a Playstation. Sony is giving the worst fanboys on the internet win after win instead of taking care of its loyal customers.
 

xollowsob

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No Sony doesn’t need pc at all, I already broke it down a while ago. Only disingenuous people with an agenda would make such a claim. The money they make from PC is a pittance, there’s no way anyone can say they need pc in good faith. They’d make infinitely more money focusing 100% on the console than they ever will from PC, where they’re settling for scraps.
To be clear I said in my post I don't think they should support PC but in its current form, if they're going to do it, use it as a high end hardware platform to save on money of producing their own high end hardware and instead sell affordable but powerful, just like the PS4.
It’s like saying making 200k salary isn’t enough to live on, you still need to go collect cans off the street every weekend to make an extra $5.

👇
Dumb analogy, you can do better.

Is this some sort of satire? So many fallacies, it hard to grasp it comes from reality.
How is it satire? It comes from a realistic understanding of business, cost cutting/saving and customer expectations. Combined with interacting with Xbox shills, as an Xbox fan, for twenty years and watching/listening to them talk bollocks and sending Xbox off of a cliff.
If Sony do the same, which they are, then the same will happen to playstation.

However, Microsoft made dumb decisions with Gamepass, that with a tweak could have been very successful. Sony are in the same position with PC; I wouldn't do it, but if they are going to, then there's a correct way of doing it.
 

Old Gamer

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How about sticking with only supporting their own powerful enough, but still affordable platform, and not release their best games on any competing platform?

The only correct way to do this is not doing it.

The only way to win is not to play.
 

Orangee

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In this case then how games with sales like Bloodborne, Death Stranding, Until Dawn or Days Gone are going to be profitable this or next generation having budgets of over $300M? They need to sell 9 or 10M copies to turn these budgets profitable
There is no reason why these types of games should have budgets over 300m$. That's a managment issue. Sony allows their studios to delay games for over 4 years (like with helldivers) and allows projects to go way over the budget. Sony needs to sort it's own managment out.

You have to cure the cancer, not look for ways around It.
 

Yurinka

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There is no reason why these types of games should have budgets over 300m$. That's a managment issue. Sony allows their studios to delay games for over 4 years (like with helldivers) and allows projects to go way over the budget. Sony needs to sort it's own managment out.

You have to cure the cancer, not look for ways around It.

It isn't a Sony thing, it applies to all AAA publishers. AAA games cost more every generation because every generation the games have more complex aand detailed visuals, with bigger and more dense worlds, with longer stories with more cutscenes and with more features and secondary stuff. Now people often expects post launch content, which also means more stuff that need to be done so higher costs. And there's more and better competition so in terms of marketing they have a bigger effort.

And all this costs more money.

And well, regarding delays to make games is a creative thing: it isn't like in a factory where everything is scheduled and works the first time: it's an iterative process where things that look good on paper when implemented some things work and need to be redone, and on top of that is a market where trends change super fast, to the point that when they start a game that is going to be innovative maybe it's outdated when released so it's frequent to see games making big shifts during development. Even on stablished franchises.

How about sticking with only supporting their own powerful enough, but still affordable platform, and not release their best games on any competing platform?

The only correct way to do this is not doing it.

The only way to win is not to play.

Playstation absolutely does not need PC lmao. That is a wild fantasy that PC players inflict upon themselves by thinking they have some sort of relevance to the AAA console game space.

The only sustainable/profitable way of to continue being PS only would be to limit their games to their 4/5 most successful IPs and to mostly stop making new IP, new genres and smaller IPs. Because AAA games nowadays cost over $300M and to make them profitable need to sell over $9M, and only a few from Sony achieved that.

Plus the market is focusing more and more on GaaS, so the market for these single player, non-GaaS paid games keeps getting smaller, meaning in the long term won't be sustainable / profitable at least growing and getting better visuals in every new entry.

Even if they have been growing their console active userbase to record levels and also achieving records in most areas they need a way bigger one, specially for the long term once the budgets will grow again for the next generation.

This is the reason of why they need to expand to GaaS, PC, mobile and movies/tv shows: to grow the audience, popularity and profitability of their games/IPs to make them sustainable specially for the future.

How many people would have bought a PS5 for Sony's exclusives and now won't? I bet it's way more than 50K.

Sony has devalued its own platform by porting its games to pc, period.
Nah.

Their games also have been selling better than ever under Hermen / Jim command, or what is the same, during their current PC push:
  • Days Gone sold more than all the previous Bend games together
  • Death Stranding is the best selling Hideo Kojima game ever
  • Ghost of Tsushima is the best selling Sucker Punch game ever
  • TLOU broke the record of Sony sales and goty awards for any game
  • Spider-Man 2 broke the record of Sony sales after porting the first one and Morales to PC
  • Returnal is the best selling Housemarque game ever
  • Ratchet Rift Apart is the best selling games in the Ratchet series
  • Gran Turismo 7 is the fastest selling game in the entry/Polyphony history
  • HFW was selling the same/slightly better than HZD (as I remember Sony's best selling game) after porting the first one to PC until they did put the game on PS+ (too early)
  • GoWR broke the record of Sony Sales after poprting GoW 2018 to PC
  • Helldivers 2 broke the record of Sony sales when launching day one on PC
So with the exception of Media Molecule, Japan Studio and I assume London Studio basically all their internal teams and many 2nd party ones performed better than ever in their most recent games. Specially the sequels of those ported to PC.

During their current PC push they are also growing in console userbase, didn't decrease. Their active userbase has been growing and currently is at record levels, meaning that new users kept joining more than the ones that left. And on average these users are more engaged than ever and spend more than ever.

As Nishino and Hermen said, PC is helping them not only as secondary revenue/profit channel or to reach new audiences beyond console: it's helping them to grow their sales on console, not to cannibalize them.
 
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Orangee

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It isn't a Sony thing, it applies to all AAA publishers. Games cost more because every generation the games have more complex aand detailed visuals, with bigger and more dense worlds, with longer stories with more cutscenes and with more features and secondary stuff. Now people often expects post launch content, which also means more stuff that need to be done so higher costs. And there's more and better competition so in terms of marketing they have a bigger effort.

And all this costs more money.

And well, regarding delays to make games is a creative thing: it isn't like in a factory where everything is scheduled and works the first time: it's an iterative process where things that look good on paper when implemented some things work and need to be redone, and on top of that is a market where trends change super fast, to the point that when they start a game that is going to be innovative maybe it's outdated when relesaed so it's frequent to see games making big shifts during development. Even on stablished franchises.
I dont see how Sony games became more complex from the seventh gen to now. Maybe they are longer and bloated with useless content no one cares about. Forbidden West does not need 200 side quest. No one is going to play through all of that. Even Guerilla knows It, that's why It's not needed for the plat.
No one asks for these bloated games. Cut down the fat, focus on making the games fun again.

And also, most of Sony games does not have any post launch content, besides maybe content that was cut from the main game, like NG+ and photo mode.
 
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Yurinka

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I dont see how Sony games became more complex from the seventh gen to now. Maybe they are longer and bloated with useless content no one cares about. Forbidden West does not need 200 side quest. No one is going to play through all of that. Even Guerilla knows It, that's why It's not needed for the plat.
No one asks for these bloated games. Cut down the fat, focus on making the games fun again.

And also, most of Sony games does not have any post launch content, besides maybe content that was cut from the main game, like NG+ and photo mode.
Both the characters and objects in the environments are more detailed in their models, textures, animations and shaders (basically how light reacts to them), plus also their lighting and shadows. That requires more way work.

There are also way more types of characters/enemies/objects in these worlds, which are also bigger. That also requires way more work.

Games are also longer so there are more stages meaning also there's story, cutscenes, music, dubbing, main and secondary missions, more collectibles,enemy encounters (so level design) etc. So that also requires way more work.

There are more gameplay mechanics / abilities / skills / perks / mission types / new game modes. That also requires more work from design, level design, coding, art, etc.

And well, obviously if the games expanded to MP or to GaaS/having series of post launch content that requires more work. Regarding this I'm talking AAA in general, not only the Sony ones. But as yo may know, Sony also has been working on a dozen AAA and released some of them.

These "bloated" (GTA, AC, Horizon...) games are the best selling AAA SP games. Not my case, but people who buy them expect them to get bigger, more complex and varied in each new entry.
 
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Old Gamer

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The only sustainable/profitable way of to continue being PS only would be to limit their games to their 4/5 most successful IPs and to mostly stop making new IP, new genres and smaller IPs
But... they did do that! Porting to PC isn't something they did to prevent that.

In fact, that made things worse, because supporting more platforms increases development costs.
 
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JAHGamer

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To be clear I said in my post I don't think they should support PC but in its current form, if they're going to do it, use it as a high end hardware platform to save on money of producing their own high end hardware and instead sell affordable but powerful, just like the PS4.

Dumb analogy, you can do better.


How is it satire? It comes from a realistic understanding of business, cost cutting/saving and customer expectations. Combined with interacting with Xbox shills, as an Xbox fan, for twenty years and watching/listening to them talk bollocks and sending Xbox off of a cliff.
If Sony do the same, which they are, then the same will happen to playstation.

However, Microsoft made dumb decisions with Gamepass, that with a tweak could have been very successful. Sony are in the same position with PC; I wouldn't do it, but if they are going to, then there's a correct way of doing it.
No, my analogy is perfect, take your ball and go home
 

Banana

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10 Jan 2023
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2 year delay is fine IMO. Now if only Sony would make a game that I want to play...
 
Part of the problem is people are always in their feels about things and are unwilling to see the bigger picture.

Sony isn't saying here that they expectations millions of people to jump from PC to console based on playing these games, just as they haven't suggested that they expect these games to sell as well as the console releases, years before.

If a game sells 10 million copies on PS5 and the PC port sells 1.5 to 2 million copies and 50K people move from PC to console to play the games sequel, that's still a win for Sony. That's 50K more users than they would have otherwise gotten. And it's only one game. So much of what happens in business happens on the margins, yet, so many people are unable to see that, they think everything happens in the hundreds of millions or billions for it to have an impact.

Why did Sony release the Dual Sense edge? Because they thought it would sell 20 million units? No. Why did they release the PS Portal? Because they thought it would sell 10 million units? No. Why did they buy Audeze and start releasing higher end headsets? Again not because they thought they'd sell 20 million headsets.

They know there is a market for pro controllers and they decided that they didn't want to cede that market. Like Apple, they realize that people buying PS5s are most likely to buy Sony peripherals, especially if they're at equal or similar quality as the top selling units on the market.

Sony is putting their hands into as many high margin business ventures as they can. If you look at their success during the PS1 and PS2 era, you see how limited their profitability was despite being the market leader. They missed a lot of opportunities and I think we all were less off as a result.
Corporate boot-licking: The Post
 

ToTTenTranz

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I agree that PC gamers can be patient and show a lot of inertia changing platforms, but I don't think a couple of content creators from an enthusiast PC channel on Youtube is going to be an authority on the subject.

Me and most of my 35-45 year-old friends who play games own both a PS5 and a gaming PC, and everyone concedes many advantages of a console over a PC and vice versa. Though if anything, I've seen more people my age go console-only instead of PC-only because of all the hassle that a gaming PC can bring.


That said, there's probably some people getting a PS5 to play earlier the sequels of the Sony single-player games they got on PC. We just don't know how many.
Though the thing is even if it's just 10 people, it doesn't matter.
Single player games don't sell any numbers after 3 years (on full price they won't sell much after 3 months even), so by releasing those games on PC after all that time they're not cannibalizing sales on the PS5.
 

Sircaw

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The comment in the video says that the strategy of trying to entice PC gamers to buy a console will not work.

Just release Bloodborne remaster and make bloodborne 2 an exclusive forever on PS5 and the Pro and watch the PC fanboys flock to it.
 

rofif

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The comment in the video says that the strategy of trying to entice PC gamers to buy a console will not work.

Just release Bloodborne remaster and make bloodborne 2 an exclusive forever on PS5 and the Pro and watch the PC fanboys flock to it.
tbh whoever have not gotten even cheap used ps4 to play bloodborne as of yet... is too cheap.
2000$ on a gpu? YES
200$ on a ps4 (slim even!) to play best game ever? NO. Better whine for 10 years
 
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Gediminas

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The comment in the video says that the strategy of trying to entice PC gamers to buy a console will not work.

Just release Bloodborne remaster and make bloodborne 2 an exclusive forever on PS5 and the Pro and watch the PC fanboys flock to it.
nice thought, PS ceos are out of touch and it would be released on PC too.
 
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