Has 2024 so far been the most extreme roller coaster ride ever for PlayStation?

[RE4-City]

Nothing but really high highs and really low lows this year.

In 2024 PlayStation started off the year on a high note,
In January we got TLOU part 2 remastered. However on February 8th, 2024 We got Hell Divers II which in my opinion is the highest note of the year so far which was that this was Sony's fastest selling game ever and took a lot of people by surprise with it's sales rising week over week for a while there.


Then shortly after on February 14th, 2024 we got the first low note from Sony themselves saying the PS5 was in the latter stage of it's cycle: https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-some...-cycle-but-sony-says-a-price-cut-is-unlikely/

However the very next day we get out of the lows and get bright back up to the another high with the good news for 4 Xbox Titles coming to PS5 and Switch: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/15/24073691/microsoft-xbox-games-ps5-nintendo-switch-exclusivity

Then on February 22nd, 2024 PS5 owners finally get more awesome news with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth scoring a 92 on Metacritic and being the highest rated game so far this year.

Then less than a week later on February 27th, 2024 we hit the lowest point of the year imo with 900 employees shutting down and London Studios shutting down: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/202...-from-playstation-studios-have-been-cancelled

Then even worse in on March 3rd, 2024 we got this news straight from Hiroki Totoki: https://www.vgchartz.com/article/45...-existing-franchise-titles-before-april-2025/
Which some have interpreted in many ways

Then on March 7th, 2024 we found out the first week sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are lower than FF16 from nearly a year ago: .

Then on April we get a bit of good news with Stellar Blade releasing exclusively on PS5 and getting a good amount of praise

However shortly after we get the news of Sony putting up a 26 Billion Dollar bid to purchase paramount which quite a few people on this site had a problem with. However rest assured nothing went thru between Sony, Paramount, and Apollo.

but the news kept getting worse in the middle of May with the PSN Helldivers II PC fiasco and then around the same time Square Enix admitted that FF7 Rebirth had not met sales expectations: https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/...culation, Square Enix,word of mouth on launch.

Then the May 30th, 2024 State of Play received mostly negative reactions online with mostly Astrobot receiving the most praise.
It had everything from opening to the badly received Concord trailer and the highly praised Astrobot trailer but then a little over a week later we had The Lego Horizon reveal which was great but cause quite a stir with it also coming to Switch alongside PC.

There was a little glimpse of good news with estimates of Stellar Blade hitting 1 million on PS5 alone: https://icon-era.com/threads/stella...firms-they-are-looking-into-pc-version.12967/

Then here comes a great bit of news for Sony, Black Myth Wukong is a PS5 timed console exclusive and increases the sales of PS5 China. Also even more funny are was the weak attempt of Xbox fans claiming it was an exclusive because of an exclusivity deal. Also this is shortly after Indiana Jones and the great Circle was announced to be coming to PlayStation 5 early next year!

Then we get news of another PS5 Price increase in Japan:

How Will PS5 Price Increases in Japan Impact the PS5 Pro Price? What the Experts are Saying - IGN

Sony’s price hike on the PlayStation 5 in Japan comes as rumors swirl that the company is on the cusp of announcing an even more expensive console in a PS5 Pro. What’s Sony thinking jacking up console prices now, and how will it impact the Pro? I asked professional analysts to explain.

www.ign.com

Which was a bad look for Sony to Gamers but a great look for Sony to the shareholders

So after all that we finally get to another big one which is Concord releases on August 23rd, 2024 and flops so hard it's servers shut down in less than 2 weeks on September 6th, 2024.

However on that same Day Astrobot would release and be the highest rated release of 2024 above Final Fantasy VII Rebirth but lower than the expansion DLC of Elden Ring. It would practically erase Concords failure out of every bodies minds.
Also Astrobot on OpenCritic is now the highest rated Sony game of all time at a 95.

Then there was the PS5 pro announcement of it been both $699 and not come with a disc drive and while I have no problem with the price personally, I do think there not being a disc drive bundle does make me worry about the PS6. But no matter what I think or not, The overall reaction seems to be mostly negative.

Then about a week later we got news of a Freedom Wars remaster which brought us back up to the highs

Only right after for a Horizon: Zero Dawn Remaster to leak and bring us right back down to the lows. (To be fair this leaked in late 2022 but we didn't know if it was a remake or remaster back then: https://mp1st.com/news/report-horiz...r-ps5-horizon-multiplayer-game-in-development.)

Then soon after we got the announcement of the 30th Anniversary collection for the PS5 Pro, and PS Portal which brought us back to the highs.

But right after we got news for a Day's Gone Remaster coming soon and brought us right back down. (I love this game but they need to remaster Infamous instead.)

Just one big low followed by another big high.

and that brings me to the point of this thread. 2024 has to be the most wild roller-coaster year ever for PlayStation right? 2006 was just went low thanks to E3 2006 and the rest of the year never really recovered for PlayStation. 2022 started off low because of the PS5 shortages but ended high with their most successful Holiday quarter yet.

But 2024 has been all over the place for PlayStation. It's just been a bad year for Xbox besides having a pretty good summer show. Lastly Nintendo has had some lows like Paper Mario TTYD on Switch being 30fps and Switch 2 not being talked about so far at all besides being mentioned at an investor meeting but this year has been barely a rocky year for Nintendo!

 

[TrishaCat]

 

[Danja]

No it's been a great year for them, it's only an extreme rollercoaster if you live vicariously through online outrage

 

[mibu no ookami]

No people are just overdramatic.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

During the past 12 months, Sony entered such a dominant position in the console space that they're willing to go through massively negative news cycles to test the market reaction for several things:


- Suddenly pushing for large increases in the Plus subscription price.

- Removing 1st party games from their subscription service so they can double-dip on selling remasters at a higher price.

- Instead of gradually reducing console prices, they've increased those 3 to 4 years after release.

- Leaving the subsidized console model and selling the PS5 Pro at a profit, knowing that gamers have largely rejected more expensive consoles in the past;

- Charging a massive premium for consoles and peripherals on non-USA customers.

- Selling the PS5 Pro, supposedly for enthusiasts, without a disc drive, knowing most enthusiasts have games on disc.

- Forcing a PSN account on single-player games on Steam, even if it means paying customers stop being able to access previously purchased games unless they break PSN Terms of Service.


So far it hasn't gone too bad for Sony, but eventually the hubris will hurt brand perception to the point that any competition will be favored, just like it did during the PS3 era. And when that time comes, the only people clamoring for the Playstation brand will be the dozen IconEra users that defend every single decision made by Sony as if their lives depended on it.



This is the cost of absent competition, and it should bother every self-respecting consumer. I would have preferred a much more competitive Xbox with functioning 1st party studios and without a stupidly forced attempt at full videogame servitization that breaks videogame value perception by throwing billions at it, but unfortunately this is what Phil Spencer did to the whole industry.

 

[uyoung1989]

During the past 12 months, Sony entered such a dominant position in the console space that they're willing to go through massively negative news cycles to test the market reaction for several things:


- Suddenly pushing for large increases in the Plus subscription price.

- Removing 1st party games from their subscription service so they can double-dip on selling remasters at a higher price.

- Instead of gradually reducing console prices, they've increased those 3 to 4 years after release.

- Leaving the subsidized console model and selling the PS5 Pro at a profit, knowing that gamers have largely rejected more expensive consoles in the past;

- Charging a massive premium for consoles and peripherals on non-USA customers.

- Selling the PS5 Pro, supposedly for enthusiasts, without a disc drive, knowing most enthusiasts have games on disc.

- Forcing a PSN account on single-player games on Steam, even if it means paying customers stop being able to access previously purchased games unless they break PSN Terms of Service.


So far it hasn't gone too bad for Sony, but eventually the hubris will hurt brand perception to the point that any competition will be favored, just like it did during the PS3 era. And when that time comes, the only people clamoring for the Playstation brand will be the dozen IconEra users that defend every single decision made by Sony as if their lives depended on it.



This is the cost of absent competition, and it should bother every self-respecting consumer. I would have preferred a much more competitive Xbox with functioning 1st party studios and without a stupidly forced attempt at full videogame servitization that breaks videogame value perception by throwing billions at it, but unfortunately this is what Phil Spencer did to the whole industry.

At this stage, they’d be so dumb if they still think Xbox is their only competitor. Personally, I think the PS5 Pro is a sign they are trying to compete with pc, starting with matching their performance. A subsidized console won’t achieve that.

 

[Yurinka]

I'd say nope, that it's just some -a tiny portion of the total userbase- often uninformed people being too overly dramatic on social media and forums.

Helldivers 2 broke the sales record, but they already broke it in 2023, 2022 and 2020 so I assume that they think that one or another of the games they release every year or two may break it.

Destiny 2 The Final Shape, Astro Bot and specially Helldivers 2 and performed better than they pretty likely expected, and Concord tanked hard way harder than they expected. It's normal business for them that some games outperform and others underperform. But I assume that at the end of the year their general estimation for all games may compensate one with the other ones. Same goes with delays or games getting cancelled or not greenlighted from time to time, it's just normal business in gamedev.

Regarding a few enthusiast "fans" and haters complaining in forums about things like PS5 Pro pricing or remasters, later we see that the (even more expensive) 30th anniversary stuff got sold out super quickly and that their first party sales continue performing well and that many of the people complaining about the remasters later buy them.

Regarding the rising prices, it has nothing to do with lack of competition. It's because of the rise of inflation and component prices. They mentioned multiple times that one of the issues they have is that they want to price cut the hardware but can't because of that, so are trying to improve the profitability elsewhere to compensate it.

If we look at the objective, factual numbers they report every quarter things are perfectly ok for them, so don't have to worry about.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

At this stage, they’d be so dumb if they still think Xbox is their only competitor. Personally, I think the PS5 Pro is a sign they are trying to compete with pc, starting with matching their performance. A subsidized console won’t achieve that.

Why would the subsidized console not be able to achieve what they already did last gen? There's really nothing in the PS5 Pro that takes it apart from the PS5 in costs. It's just an upgraded SoC with probably a similar die area and built on a newer, ~30% more expensive process.

Considering how much cheaper the GDDR6 and NAND prices are right now compared to 2020, there's a good chance Sony isn't spending a dime more on the PS5 Pro now than they were spending on the PS5 then. It's definitely not $300 more expensive to produce.

Plus, if the RDNA4 expectations are correct, it won't be much longer until we can actually build a PC with better hardware and more evolved featureset than the PS5 Pro for not much more than 800€.

Regarding a few enthusiast "fans" and haters complaining in forums about things like PS5 Pro pricing

LOL few enthusiast "fans" and haters complaining in forums.




Sure dude, there's like 8 people complaining. Surely, it's just Xbots.

 

[Yurinka]

LOL few enthusiast "fans" and haters complaining in forums.

View attachment 5666


Sure dude, there's like 8 people complaining. Surely, it's just Xbots.

In addition to Xbots there are the PC fanboys and specially the PS 'fans' who are the ones who complain louder and more frequently at whatever Sony does.

But they later buy their consoles and games, as we can see with the selling out of the disk drives and 30th anniversary edition stuff.

I also wouldn't take the dislikes very seriously since YouTube doesn't provide them and it's just a plugin that estimates them and according to a few people with big channels often is very wrong. But in this specific case yes, I believe sould be substantially higher than the likes.

 

[Entropi]

2005 and 2006 were more extreme.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

But they later buy their consoles and games, as we can see with the selling out of the disk drives and 30th anniversary edition stuff.

Sony sold out 12300 units of a limited edition of the PS5 Pro. Wow, what an achievement.

I also wouldn't take the dislikes very seriously since YouTube doesn't provide them and it's just a plugin that estimates them and according to a few people with big channels often is very wrong.

You mean like the Playstation channel that has 15.8 million subscribers?

But in this specific case yes, I believe sould be substantially higher than the likes.

About 5 to 1.

 

[RE4-City]

2005 and 2006 were more extreme.

I think a lot of people are mis understanding this thread. I am not saying this is an extremely bad year for them, But this has been one heck of a roller-coaster of a year for them.

Once E3 2006 happened and people saw $599, Giant Enemy Crabs, Weak Point for Massive Damage, Get a Second Job it was all down hill for the rest of 2006.
It also didn't help Killzone and Motorstorms trailers looked far beyond what the PS3 could realistically handle and people were pointing that out.

This year has been Great News Followed by Bad news and so on and so on for PlayStation Specifically.

Just up, down, up, down and very little time this year in a neutral position.

 

[voke]

Yes. But not in the way you probably think.

Final Fantasy VIIR2
Rise of The Ronin
Helldivers 2
Astro Bot
Stellar Blade.

They have been pumping out hit after hit like it's nothing. No other publisher this year even comes close. Notice how a lot of talking points in this thread are meaningless FUD articles meant to outrage those who happen to have video games as a hobby.

 

[Yurinka]

You mean like the Playstation channel that has 15.8 million subscribers?

No, PlayStation channel isn't one of the big youtube channels who mentioned that the unoficial plugin to add the Youtube dislike numbers doesn't report accurate numbers.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

No it's been a great year for them, it's only an extreme rollercoaster if you live vicariously through online outrage

Nailed it.

 

[rofif]

I feel like the hate boner for playstation is extreme. Tons of people online and posts about moving to pc and hate for sony over anything.
Move to pc emboldened too many arrogant pc people and others.

But also, the truth is that sony hired a ton of dei incompetent people and they took over. you see them even in 30th anniversary reveal where cerny and totoki should be humbled... but we see some dei pr no chin lady. Totally unappealing.
But you see it in games, studios, even recent rumors that sucker punch staff has been replaced by dei hires.
it really is troublesome.

BUT STILL the hate boner is too much. People hang up on wrong stuff like ps5 pro price.
extreme roller coasters

 

[Dr Bass]

Playstation has been my "primary platform" since the PS1 released.

I can definitely say this is the least interested I've ever been in the platform. I sold my PS5 in prep for the PS5 pro and ... I just cancelled my Pro reservation. So I have no Playstation for the first time since the 90s and I have no plans to buy it again until I see something I really want to play. If that happens I'll pick up a pro, as originally planned. But if that doesn't happen, at this point, I am totally fine without one.

 

[rofif]

Playstation has been my "primary platform" since the PS1 released.

I can definitely say this is the least interested I've ever been in the platform. I sold my PS5 in prep for the PS5 pro and ... I just cancelled my Pro reservation. So I have no Playstation for the first time since the 90s and I have no plans to buy it again until I see something I really want to play. If that happens I'll pick up a pro, as originally planned. But if that doesn't happen, at this point, I am totally fine without one.

so you don't want a way to play your ps4 and ps5 collection ?

 

[mibu no ookami]

Sony sold out 12300 units of a limited edition of the PS5 Pro. Wow, what an achievement.

Go on the record.

How many PS5 Pro units will sell between launch and the end of March, 2025?

How many PS5s will sell for this fiscal year? More or less than the 18 million forecasted?

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Go on the record.

How many PS5 Pro units will sell between launch and the end of March, 2025?

How many PS5s will sell for this fiscal year? More or less than the 18 million forecasted?

If they don't lower the price nor bundle the disc drive:

~8% of all PS5 sales in the USA, ~3% in EU+UK, <1% in Japan.