I personally think SIE's GAAS pivot is a right move(Market analysis).
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Why does everything have to be either big 1P or GaaS? What happened to varied, experimental, low financial risk AA games? Sony used to do those.
No one bought them so Sony stopped making them.
People bought Uncharted, TLOU, God of War, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Gran Turismo and Spider-Man. So Sony keeps making more of them.
It was more than that, no? They wanted all their gaming IP to be leverage into film and tv media. It’s not the worst approach as game IPs after the Mario movie will be even more lucrative and desirable. But this meant less risks on smaller games and doubling down on tentpole ip.
I don’t think this general direction will change at all. The investment in GaaS is already cut before it launched after the Bungie review. TLOU Online chopped in scope, Deviation cancelled and that Horizon abomination that leaked most likely canned too. That’s 3 games that may never come out and wasted development. They’re gonna want to recoup that somehow.
This further squeeze on finances is something that I mostly think is just that irregardless of record ps5 sales.
I actually think a major SIE restructure is coming across all studios.
I personally think their gaas strategy has been showing the cracks and failing before it even started. They were supposed to release 12 gaas games by fy 2025 so by end of march 2026 but so none have released and only one will be released by end of this fy. We havent seen most of those 12. To meet that goal they will have to release 5-6 gaas games over the next two years but that wont happen. Where are these gaas games that we were supposed to have seen by now? where is factions? the rumoured twisted metal game? Horizon online? Deviation's gaas game? We were supposed to have gotten a gameplay reveal for factions this year but nothing. The twisted metal show released already but the game is nowhere to be seen. We have been hearing and seeing more negative than positive stuff about there gaas plan .
Jeez you can tell who's either a fake PS fan or a novice to the brand. Gran Turismo was the "only good" Sony game up to that point? FOH. Parappa was awesome and basically kickstarted the rhythm game genre. But you'd need to have either been there or been a longtime fan to know that. Wipeout was basically the big arcade-style racer of that gen alongside games like Ridge Racer, and brought a style & aesthetic to racers that most others didn't start attempting to build off of until the end of that gen or into the 6th generation.
There's just a ton of ignorance about PlayStation's past with some of you here and that's rather surprising considering this is supposedly a PlayStation-centric forum. Like the idea "no one" bought Sony's AA games in the past. No; people bought them. The problem was Sony did very little marketing for a lot of those games or confined them to platforms they screwed up with bad practices like the PS Vita. They were also very quick to abandoned their AA IP without longer-term retention and cultivation, a similar mistake SEGA made with many of their smaller and big IP in the mid-'90s when a lot of them had potential still (i.e Eternal Champions, Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star etc.). Whereas Microsoft's problem in that regard, is that they ran most of their big IPs into the ground (i.e Halo, and now a notable decline happening with Forza. Stagnation with Gears etc.) while ALSO neglecting their AA IP over the years and not building off of them properly.
But yeah, sure. Double-down on GaaS, double-down on PC ports. Just stick to more 3-month timed exclusivity deals. Forget about 1P AA. Those the answer, right? Well if Sony want a death spiral for PlayStation to creep in, sure it's the answer. I'd like to think they are smarter than that though.
Calm down, I didn't get into PlayStation until late 2004. I'm not privy to their earlier titles as I grew up a Nintendo fanboy, the N64 ran circles around those shitty ass PSone graphics. However over Christmas break in 2003 I was visiting family out of town and my little cousin had Gran Turismo 3 on PS2, it was the best looking car game I'd ever seen and played even better. When I got back home I bought a PS2 GT3 bundle and been PlayStation ever since.
Please mate... I played on ps consoles from 97 through 2006. Don't pull that one on me,it won't work. Gran Turismo and you can add Crash Bandicoot were the first party behemoths that pulled the brand. All the others were there, they added variety to the catalogue but for the most part weren't heavy hitters.
There's a reason why playstation all stars sucked... Sony did not have a Nintendo like roster of iconic characters. Hell it doesn't now, picture back then. Who was the most recognizable first party character up to that point excluding Drake and Kratos? NISMO Skyline R34?
Sony relied on third parties on those first 2 generations way more than today. They had those AA games and many were good but they didn't sell that much. Parappa the rapper ffs...
What they do now with the cinematic Oscar bait titles is boring the way I see it but it makes money. Modern Sony fans are extremely picky on graphics and production values so they can't pivot back to an AA strategy, even if that would mean more freedom to create games in other genres.
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They’re still going to make those AA type games with Housemarque and Team Asobi.
With GAAS it's all about more flow of revenue for Sony. It's why they've been dipping into PC and entering into mobile. GT7, MLB The Show, and Bungie are already sources of revenue for them in the GAAS space but like with every Corporation, they are not contempt to settle they always want more.
That guy is a clown.This guy spreads fake info about Xbox making more profit than PlayStation, I tell him it’s fake, and he gets mad and calls ME the console warrioryou can’t make this stuff up.
A “pathetic little fanboy” is someone that clings onto information that they know isn’t true, simply because it makes them feel better.
Not true. Most of these GaaS started their development before 2019, which is when Jim Ryan and Hermen joined their current positions.
Sony wants to have 12 IPs with GaaS games by March 2026. They already released MLB, Gran Turismo 7, Firewall Ultra, bought Destiny 2 and depending how you count them you could include Destruction AllStars because as I remember was in the timeline. For 2024 they have at least Helldivers 2 and Concord. Marathon is rumored that was planned for 2024 but delayed to 2025.
We have no date for the London Studio new MP GaaS IP, Fairgame$, Horizon Online, TLOU Online, the Deviation game or the other Bungie IP they are working on (apparently Matter) but all of them, looking at when they did start their development, are very likely to be released before April 2026, with maybe one or two of them delayed to be released some months later.
We also know Firesprite has been working during several years on a multiplayer game. The Bend new open world IP under development has MP elements. Insomniac is also working on a MP game (no the first one they make) in addition to Wolverine and pretty likely more SP games like Spider-Man or Ratchet. Maybe some of these games with MP are GaaS and maybe one of them gets released before April 2026 too but I assume many of them won't.
In recent years Sony prefers to focus their marketing on games that will be released in the upcoming months, or the next year. With a couple of exceptions, maximum a year and a half from the planned release (which can be later delayed). That means that as this 2023 summer they shown games they had planned maximum until aprox. the end of 2024. And that some of the games they have planned for 2024 still aren't show. And that obviously they still didn't start to market games they have planned for 2025 or 2026.
So yes, a few could be delayed beyond April 2026 or get canned, but very likely they'll have a dozen GaaS (or at least MP games) in the market by March 2026. If they still didn't show many of them it's because Sony in recent years it's because Sony waits until they are relatively pretty close to release, when they are ready.
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This is recency bias and untrue...before the PS5 generation, Sony was regularly making way more profit than Nintendo. PS5 gen is when their profits started to decline, which is natural for all the costs involved at the beginning of a new generation
I was talking about now, not the past. Also glad to see you back.
Do you mean like Astro, Sackboy Adventures, Dreams, Death Stranding and VR games like Horizon CoM, Firewall Ultra etc?
Hermen said a year or two ago that he is produ of games like Astro, Dreams, Sackboy or Death Stranding, smaller an more experimental games, and that thye have more of this kind coming.
In addition to this, they also support indies via PlayStation Indies, China Hero Project and India Hero Project (in Spain they also have PlayStation Talents to support some Spanish indie games every year, but isn't handled directly by Sony and there has been some related horror stories).
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Push for GAAS is definitely the right one.
If a big publisher got bought out and that publishers games had mtx which hugely contributed to sonys revenue, then that would be a huge loss.
That money is most likely invested back into those really expensive single player games.
Sony needs to protect itself from those scenarios and have their own massive GAAS revenue generator.
I guess my only concern is the excessive push.
If a big publisher got bought out and that publishers games had mtx which hugely contributed to sonys revenue, then that would be a huge loss.
That money is most likely invested back into those really expensive single player games.
Sony needs to protect itself from those scenarios and have their own massive GAAS revenue generator.
I guess my only concern is the excessive push.
Lol cmon....ABK finally gets bought after 20 months of regulation battles and now you guys are acting like massive publishers being bought has suddenly become a weekly occurrence...
CoD was by far the biggest and the game and is still on PlayStation. The next biggest game Fortnite, literally makes 45% of their revenue from PlayStation. Removing it would be suicide. Not to mention Sony owns a minority stake in Epic Games.
Sony is under no threat of losing anymore big live service games.... Single player games like Starfield? Sure, but those aren't the type of games that hugely contribute to their revenue.
The best way for Sony to protect itself is by continuing to grow their install base and make their platform too big to miss out on. The way to do that is by creating more great single player games. Chasing for gaas is a waste of time, money, and energy.