I have a hard time believing that anyone would claim pc or steam is dying. Like seriously?
Horizon Forbidden West climbing the Steam top sellers list. |UP| Releases on Steam with lower player count than Zero: Dawn.
- Thread starter rinzler
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I have a hard time believing that anyone would claim pc or steam is dying. Like seriously?
Baldur's Gate 3 was a late port on PS5 and Xbox and it was full-price. I didn't see a huge uproar about the price like they are doing with Horizon.
Sony sells more games than EA, Ubisoft and Capcom. Some of them even combined...and they don't have to share the 30% platform fee. If Sony can't make money with their games that regularly sell 20+ millions then nobody can and the whole market is bankrupted.
The ceiling for PS5 is 100+ millions. They are nowhere close to that yet.
OP
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Oh there's definitely a few people on this forum saying that, it's total nonsense.I have a hard time believing that anyone would claim pc or steam is dying. Like seriously?
Well I think you're downplaying the role of PC ports in making Xbox consoles irrelevant to many hardcore & core enthusiasts (thus affecting uptick with casual and mainstream gamers), because that has absolutely played a role in the console's current trajectory.
However, I've always maintained that BECAUSE PC, platforms like Steam in particular, are now so competitive with home consoles like PlayStation & Xbox, not because PC is irrelevant. It's more relevant now than it's ever been IMHO, so console platform holders taking what few content differentiators they have and bringing them over to an "indirect" competing platform with way more content differentiation (exclusives) is a great way to decay the value proposition of your console long-term.
Microsoft have learned that the hard way; unless Sony make some changes they are going to find out in due time themselves.
Yup, the console market didn't grow meaningfully in over two decades. In that period PC gaming market doubled its own size and mobile grew way more. According to Sony they plan to grow during this generation their console market share from 45% to "above 50%" (showing 55% on their graph).
But the AAA game budgets keep aprox. doubling their budget every generation, and since they also take longer to be made Sony tries to compensate it growing their amount of teams to keep having a good amount of yearly 1st party releases. But the thing is, even if they improved the average revenue per user they get in PS5, and managed to grow their active userbase to record levels, this isn't enough. They need more revenue and profit.
So the obvious step is expanding to PC and mobile.
Particularly to better cover the Asia-Pacific region, non Japan countries and particularly China. Countries where consoles aren't as big as in the west at all, and where even more than in the west GaaS and particularly F2P are king.
In addition to their expansion to PC, Sony has been partering with the most important mobile Asian devs like Tencent, Netease, NCSoft, MiHoyo, Cygames+Kadokawa, Akatsuki+Koei Tecmo etc. to in the near future adapt their IPs to the mobile+PC Asian market.
As can be seen in these graphs, Asia Pacific generate like half of the worlwide game revenue and has like half of the players:
So if Sony needs to highly grow their revenue and highly improve their profitability yes, the logical step is to grow in PC and specially mobile. And specially targeting Asia Pacific, particularly China (biggest gaming market in the world) and India (fastest growing country). So it makes sense to partner with local devs and publishers from these markets, both big publishers and devs with deals and new teams via initiatives like PlayStation Indies and China & India Hero Initiatives.
Sony's current plan is to expand in GaaS/shooters/MP and PC, next step will be to grow in mobile and Asia Pacific. After that I think they'll try to expand in LATAM and MEA too (smaller regions, but in recent years have been the fastest growing ones).
And all this while they contine growing their console business, and also grow in non-gaming areas like the movies/tv show/theme park/etc stuff (which I think should be expanded later to a big expansion on books, comics, toys, figurines, model kits, table games, apparel, etc.
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Any evidence for all of that?
Also, what about the losses because people drop out of the ecosystem? Or the profit they could have gained if they actually made the people who "are ok to wait for discounts" buy a PlayStation system?
Yes, you have their PC revenue of all their games in their yearly fiscal reports, this is the FY22 one:
And this one the FY21 one (in their $300M estimate didn' know that Returnal and TLOUP1 PC weren't going to be delayed to the very end of the FY, achieved $250M instead):
They show there some early unit and revenue numbers from several games, so you can calculate the average money Sony gets per copy (after Steam cut etc).
Regarding the costs of the ports, it was leaked in the Insomniac leaks, which are the same as other AAA ports (around 2M). Knowing the aprox. average cost of a port, and aprox. the average money they get per copy, you can know how many units on average these ports need to be profitable.
In quarterly reports they don't show the PC specific sales, they report instead since they acquired Bungie "Other software", which is 1st party game revenue (Bungie + PS Studios) outside PS (PC + rival consoles). During the first 3 FY23 quarters they performed better than in the same period of FY22. Which combined to the massive success of Helldivers 2 leads to think they'll achieve way more than the estimated $450M for FY23 regarding PC revenue.
Their ecosystem isn't losing people, it's growing instead: in the most recent quarterly report they announced last month that in December 2023 they had the biggest active userbase they ever had, 123M MAU.
These old PC games are ported once they basically no longer sell anymore on PS after discounts and price cuts, and even have been included in PS+. So once they milked them all they could in PS.
Also, the PS5 sequel of the ported games sold better than the previous entries: GoWR and Spider-Man 2 broke fastest selling records for any PS exclusive release and according to one of the Insomniac leaks HFW performed in sales the same -or slightly better- than HZD until included in PS+.
Regarding revenue and profit, they are better than they ever have been. In terms of profit they have been growing but the growth was temporally interrupted in FY21 because of the costs relalated the many acquisitions they did (they're still paying costs, which will start to ease out next FY, FY24) and also the rising hardware component and shipment costs, which skyrocketed during and after covid:
Totoki said in the QA of the most recent fiscal report that the costs from recent acquisitions will start to ease out next FY (and btw that FY or before some like Firewalk, Bungie and maybe Haven will start releaasing their first games) but since they can't do anything regarding the hardware costs they had to do some actions to improve the short term profitability specially considering the current market unstability (gaming market growth stagnated, AAA costs rising, global economical climate and NATO vs BRICS war not looking good).
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He's a very influential alpha chad twitter user.
I based my entire PlayStation business strategy around his incredible insights.
Yes, you have their PC revenue of all their games in their yearly fiscal reports, this is the FY22 one:
And this one the FY21 one (in their $300M estimate didn' know that Returnal and TLOUP1 PC weren't going to be delayed to the very end of the FY, achieved $250M instead):
They show there some early unit and revenue numbers from several games, so you can calculate the average money Sony gets per copy (after Steam cut etc).
Regarding the costs of the ports, it was leaked in the Insomniac leaks, which are the same as other AAA ports (around 2M). Knowing the aprox. average cost of a port, and aprox. the average money they get per copy, you can know how many units on average these ports need to be profitable.
In quarterly reports they don't show the PC specific sales, they report instead since they acquired Bungie "Other software", which is 1st party game revenue (Bungie + PS Studios) outside PS (PC + rival consoles). During the first 3 FY23 quarters they performed better than in the same period of FY22. Which combined to the massive success of Helldivers 2 leads to think they'll achieve way more than the estimated $450M for FY23 regarding PC revenue.
Their ecosystem isn't losing people, it's growing instead: in the most recent quarterly report they announced last month that in December 2023 they had the biggest active userbase they ever had, 123M MAU.
These old PC games are ported once they basically no longer sell anymore on PS after discounts and price cuts, and even have been included in PS+. So once they milked them all they could in PS.
Also, the PS5 sequel of the ported games sold better than the previous entries: GoWR and Spider-Man 2 broke fastest selling records for any PS exclusive release and according to one of the Insomniac leaks HFW performed in sales the same -or slightly better- than HZD until included in PS+.
Regarding revenue and profit, they are better than they ever have been. In terms of profit they have been growing but the growth was temporally interrupted in FY21 because of the costs relalated the many acquisitions they did (they're still paying costs, which will start to ease out next FY, FY24) and also the rising hardware component and shipment costs, which skyrocketed during and after covid:
Totoki said in the QA of the most recent fiscal report that the costs from recent acquisitions will start to ease out next FY (and btw that FY or before some like Firewalk, Bungie and maybe Haven will start releaasing their first games) but since they can't do anything regarding the hardware costs they had to do some actions to improve the short term profitability specially considering the current market unstability (gaming market growth stagnated, AAA costs rising, global economical climate and NATO vs BRICS war not looking good).
Aren't those "good" numbers the first including Bungie revenue? Looks pretty poor to me when you calculate the revenue due to Destiny microtransactions.
And they aren't losing userbase now, like Xbox didn't lose theirs immediately. Look where they are now.
If their 1st party studio games continue to release buggy and with missing features on PlayStation consoles, combined with the decrease of output quantity, long-term damage in unavoidable.
No, these slides were made before completing the Bungie acquisition, so only included PS Studios.
The first numbers including Bungie are the ones I mentioned before of "other software" (1st party game revenue outside PS), which aren't PC only because also include rival consoles. They are included in their recent quaterly fiscal reports and modified the FY22 ones to include Bungie.
In "other software" they did $447M in FY22, and so far in FY23 until Q3 did $336M:
Meaning, if in FY22 they did $250M with the PS Studios late PC ports, with Bungie+MLB outside PS did $197M. Last fiscal year outside PS they did more money with the late PC ports than with Bungie.
Last FY Sony was the top 20 publisher on Steam. This FY thanks to mainly Helldivers 2 very likely will be way higher in the ranking, pretty likely inside the top 10.
Sony userbase is in all time history record. Instead of decreasing it's growing. Launch aligned, PS5 is only under 3M behind PS4, and because of the heavy shortages they had in the yearly days.
Their 1st party games sell more than ever and get more awards than ever. So fa no signs of "damage", the opposite.
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Yes it does include Bungie so there's about 50 millions left for all PC ports combined. Yurinka keeps spinning the numbers no matter how many times we repeat it. I must have repeated it 10 times myself that there's 200 millions for Bungie included.
Next report will be bigger because of Destiny + Helldivers. They will spin the numbers like Xbox did when they added Activision.
We know that's not real growth but some people here like to play dumb. Delete Bungie and Helldivers and there's barely anything left.
Again mods...where is the option to flag posts as propaganda??Yes, you have their PC revenue of all their games in their yearly fiscal reports, this is the FY22 one:
And this one the FY21 one (in their $300M estimate didn' know that Returnal and TLOUP1 PC weren't going to be delayed to the very end of the FY, achieved $250M instead):
They show there some early unit and revenue numbers from several games, so you can calculate the average money Sony gets per copy (after Steam cut etc).
Regarding the costs of the ports, it was leaked in the Insomniac leaks, which are the same as other AAA ports (around 2M). Knowing the aprox. average cost of a port, and aprox. the average money they get per copy, you can know how many units on average these ports need to be profitable.
In quarterly reports they don't show the PC specific sales, they report instead since they acquired Bungie "Other software", which is 1st party game revenue (Bungie + PS Studios) outside PS (PC + rival consoles). During the first 3 FY23 quarters they performed better than in the same period of FY22. Which combined to the massive success of Helldivers 2 leads to think they'll achieve way more than the estimated $450M for FY23 regarding PC revenue.
Their ecosystem isn't losing people, it's growing instead: in the most recent quarterly report they announced last month that in December 2023 they had the biggest active userbase they ever had, 123M MAU.
These old PC games are ported once they basically no longer sell anymore on PS after discounts and price cuts, and even have been included in PS+. So once they milked them all they could in PS.
Also, the PS5 sequel of the ported games sold better than the previous entries: GoWR and Spider-Man 2 broke fastest selling records for any PS exclusive release and according to one of the Insomniac leaks HFW performed in sales the same -or slightly better- than HZD until included in PS+.
Regarding revenue and profit, they are better than they ever have been. In terms of profit they have been growing but the growth was temporally interrupted in FY21 because of the costs relalated the many acquisitions they did (they're still paying costs, which will start to ease out next FY, FY24) and also the rising hardware component and shipment costs, which skyrocketed during and after covid:
Totoki said in the QA of the most recent fiscal report that the costs from recent acquisitions will start to ease out next FY (and btw that FY or before some like Firewalk, Bungie and maybe Haven will start releaasing their first games) but since they can't do anything regarding the hardware costs they had to do some actions to improve the short term profitability specially considering the current market unstability (gaming market growth stagnated, AAA costs rising, global economical climate and NATO vs BRICS war not looking good).
"All time history record"
"...only under 3M behind PS4"
So what is it?
"So far" is key here. Many first party games are bought because of the trust Sony built with their excellent releases. Since the PC ports begun, the quality of their 1st party games has been on decline, with bugs and missing features at launch. Trust is vanishing.
Of course you won't see the consequences immediately. But it's not hard to see what will happen if they continue. Another platform holder already went through that.
"Removes certain games and there's barely anything left"
That's not how things work.
Well, removing certain software from the picture aside. PC chunk definitely going to be bigger this year for obvious reasons.
Helldivers and Final Shape will both make hundreds of millions on steam/windows/epic. And then there’s the evergreen nature of most of the single player games they’ve brought to steam.
These debates will def get interesting as pc revenues grow year after year.
Helldivers and Final Shape will both make hundreds of millions on steam/windows/epic. And then there’s the evergreen nature of most of the single player games they’ve brought to steam.
These debates will def get interesting as pc revenues grow year after year.
Destiny is there since last decade, the total just went under Sony. Helldivers was Day 1 GAAS.
Do you also believe Xbox sold shit tons of CODs and Candy Crush and Phil should get a raise for all his work
All that needs to be said honestly.
Yurinka, you're just dead wrong about those PC figures not including Bungie titles in the revenue. They clearly, clearly do.
That makes no sense. Next thing you know folks will be blaming the pandemic on Sony's PC ports. After all, everything ramped up in March 2020, exactly when Horizon Zero Dawn was announced for PC.
Also I am not seeing this doomsday scenario where your average console gamer starts building gaming rigs en masse and ditch Playstation or consoles for that matter. Some will (enthusiasts, like folks on this and other forums) but your average Joe couldn't care less. Xbox, with every major screwup will eventually sell 40 - 50M boxes somehow with their games on PC day one. Picture PlayStation...
The average Joe will see the drop in quality of PS Studio games and decide that maybe he shouldn't buy their games day 1 anymore, like he did the past few years. Maybe he will notice that the type of games he used to love on PlayStation, haven't been as frequent as previously.
So the average Joe might want to look for alternatives and might spend less and less time and money on PlayStation.
You really think they will? What about the next generation (if there is any for Xbox), when people will look back and see 0 reasons to buy another Xbox?