If You Were in Charge Of Playstation, What would you do Differently?
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Everything you type is some sad attempt at a brag. Go buy a private jet or a Lambo if you want to brag about being rich on the internet. Nobody is going to be impressed by your stupid gaming set up.
You clearly unironically believe you are part of some sort of PC master race.
edit: Why did you delete it?
-No more PC ports. Even if 30 years after release, the games will stay on console.
-Make timed exclusive deals with PS associate franchises.
-Make publishing deals with newly formed studios for new IPs and PS owned IPs.
-Acquire talented mid-sized studios like Arrowhead Studios, Ballistic Moon.
-Exclusive agrement with FromSoftware to make sure every PS generation will get a PS exclusive game.
-Make timed exclusive deals with PS associate franchises.
-Make publishing deals with newly formed studios for new IPs and PS owned IPs.
-Acquire talented mid-sized studios like Arrowhead Studios, Ballistic Moon.
-Exclusive agrement with FromSoftware to make sure every PS generation will get a PS exclusive game.
They're called PC beggars for a reason. PCs are a minuscule part of the market, kept alive because consoles exist. I've enjoyed seeing dev after dev cave over the decades and submit to console superiority. They know where their bread is buttered now and where people want to play their games, which is invariably on consoles.
Guys, stop getting roped in by @flaccidsnake , he is baiting you. If your answer doesn't involve Sony bringing all their games to Steam Day 1 (or misinterpreting Totoki's quotes as some significant shift in the current strategy to enable that), then it's simply an unacceptable answer to them.
You aren't gonna get much meaningful discourse from that type of rigidity.
You aren't gonna get much meaningful discourse from that type of rigidity.
Blocked him, sollowslob and polyhedron and the forum is a much nicer place.
That'd 100% eliminate the stupidity over growth for investors....probably honestly worth doing now that you mention it.
One year is not a significant exclusivity window for games. Considering the amount of games released, and the amount of time a typical AAA game takes to complete, one year is effectively of no consequence for many to wait for a port.
The current strategy as-is will result in the same problems for PlayStation as have manifested for Xbox. It would just take a bit longer, and the bottom-end for PlayStation would be higher than Xbox's (low-end lifetime sales of 70-80 million vs. the 40-50 million of Xbox (though Series are tracking to barely reach 45 million lifetime by 2027 selling only 7 million in 2023 and dropping below that for the years to come).
What people like you don't seem to understand, is that gamers Sony are most at-risk for losing the earliest as part of the console install base, are among the highest-ARPU hardcore & core enthusiasts who are also early adopters. Early adopters set the pace and momentum for hardware & software sales & revenue, and generally have the highest ROI per advertising/marketing dollar (company spends the least to market to them, they spend the most in hardware, peripherals, 1P & 3P software, DLC/MTX, subscriptions etc.).
The early momentum set by them helps act as a form of WOM and organic growth for the platform's sales expansion to casual and mainstream gamers who tend to start buying in later, especially when sales cuts and events like holidays come around (and the software library grows in size to more & bigger mainstream releases). Casual & mainstream probably outnumber hardcore & core customers 3:1 (low/mid ARPU hardcore & core probably outnumber high-ARPU hardcore/core by about same ratio), but are among the lowest ARPU customers in the install base.
That's why a hypothetical where Sony sticks to 1-2 year PC ports (or especially does Day 1 PC ports) for all 1P games isn't a small 5-million install base drop or 5% revenue/profits dip that can be easily made up by market expansion, but likely closer to a 30-40% install base drop and probably at least 25% revenue & profits drop (though profits drop in particular could be as high as 40% if not more) that can't be easily made up through market expansion. It's just a matter of how quickly Sony get to that point and this would be determined by how aggressive the multiplatform strategy becomes over time.
If they ease up on it (or take a significantly more measured approach), they can slow or even mitigate that type of drop and expand revenue & profits over time. If they stay with the current strategy, PlayStation'll be where Xbox is by the middle of next generation (early 2030s), although it could be as early as the end of this decade. If they get even more aggressive with their strategy, they'll wind up there by the start of next generation (or slightly earlier, so 2027-2028). Again "as bad as Xbox consoles" is relative, because PS is a bigger global brand.
But pulling 70-80 million lifetime for a PS console is basically equivalent to the 40-50 million Xbox seems it'll end up doing this generation (and it'll take a miracle to hit 50 million). That hits Sony a lot harder though because gaming is a much bigger part of their bottom line than it is for Microsoft, and console gaming in particular is the biggest part of Sony's gaming business by far.
<<< this moron.
Got a desk setup with dual monitors, a large LG OLED mounted above and behind the desk a meter or so away with LCR speakers, and a nice big sub, and surround speakers in the rear. It's a setup primarily made for post-production and music mixing where a filmmaker or musician/producer can review on the couch behind me. Behind the desk chair is a living room table and couch. I can either play a game at the desk on one of my monitors or turn on Big Picture Mode to put it on the big screen, or on the couch behind it also using that mode. Or switch inputs to run any of my consoles. I don't do KB/M gaming on the couch, that's dumb.
SIDENOTE: I love that there are people ITT who have gone to the trouble of revealing ignored content to read this.
Also @thicc_girls_are_teh_best I'd love to see you back up this potential 30-40% install base drop that can be attributed to releasing select 1st party games on PC 1-2 years after PlayStation release. I call bullshit on that. I'm following what you're saying and understand the rationale behind it with WOM and enthusiast early adopter influence on the casuals and mainstreamers, but I just flat out disagree on your numbers. The number of people that will switch from the use of user-friendly consoles to dealing with the jank, troubleshooting, and general inconvenience of Windows PCs because the first party PlayStation franchises they love might release on PC a couple years afterwards can't be anywhere near 30-40%. I don't believe the dropoff would be that big even if they did pivot to doing day-and-date releases across the board (which I vehemently doubt we will see). Like you I'm pulling this speculative number completely out of my ass, but it seems to me like the ceiling on such an exodus would be 10%.
I truly believe this timed exclusive window strat even has the potential of pushing a non-zero number of PC people into the PlayStation console world when they start chomping at the bit for the next release of a franchise they're been sucked into, and this is a sentiment shared by Totoki in that quote that @flaccidsnake seems intent on repeatedly mischaracterizing.
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@Polyh3dron Don't worry man, I plan on gathering some evidence to back this theory up. It might take a bit while though; however I do earnestly think the install base drop would be rather sharp because as you go more casual/mainstream, you have a larger chunk who are "dependencies" that come in later due to the "network effect" with friends and people they know jumping in.
And I feel, this can be traced back to much earlier generations, that the ones who set that standard of early growth that begets later growth, are hardcore & core enthusiast early adopters. Plus, even supposing across each bracket (high/mid/low hardcore > core > casual > mainstream) has a drop of just 10% for example, 10% of the high-hardcore could just be 100,000 (because maybe there are only 1,000,000 of them in the entire ecosystem), but 10% of the mainstream could be 4 million (because there could be 40 million of them in that same ecosystem).
That's supposing the percentages would remain normalized across all of them, which I don't think they would. It'd creep up a bit more for each larger tier but, again, I'm gonna try gathering evidence supporting this (or should say, cemented evidence; we have case studies in a sense with Xbox, and though involving different market segments and platforms, with Nintendo, SEGA, arcades etc.) and share it maybe near the end of the month.
Although it'd be nice if others could find such evidence to support the theory in the meantime
And I feel, this can be traced back to much earlier generations, that the ones who set that standard of early growth that begets later growth, are hardcore & core enthusiast early adopters. Plus, even supposing across each bracket (high/mid/low hardcore > core > casual > mainstream) has a drop of just 10% for example, 10% of the high-hardcore could just be 100,000 (because maybe there are only 1,000,000 of them in the entire ecosystem), but 10% of the mainstream could be 4 million (because there could be 40 million of them in that same ecosystem).
That's supposing the percentages would remain normalized across all of them, which I don't think they would. It'd creep up a bit more for each larger tier but, again, I'm gonna try gathering evidence supporting this (or should say, cemented evidence; we have case studies in a sense with Xbox, and though involving different market segments and platforms, with Nintendo, SEGA, arcades etc.) and share it maybe near the end of the month.
Although it'd be nice if others could find such evidence to support the theory in the meantime
Excuse me? I've probably watched that Q&A statement 20 times. I painstakingly transcribed it verbatim. Later Sony put out an official transcript. It notably removes what he said about first party titles' main purpose 'in the past' was to popularize the console. But the language around "aggressively" growing margins on PC is still strong:
This cannot be dismissed as 'lost in translation'. What part is mischaracterized?
Here he said there 3 things but are basically a nothingburger:
- Titles that perform particularly well in the platforms they work will help them improve their profitability (Horizon, GoW, Spider-Man, TLOU, Uncharted, GoT, MLB, GT, Destiny, now Helldivers...)
- There are opportunities for margin improvement, which in case of a gaming company or particularly their own one means:
- Cut the fat firing a small percentage of their workforce, the most unproductive one
- To cancel some project that doesn't seem promising enough
- Maybe shut down their most unproductive/unprofitable/less promising team
- Focus on more profitable project types as could be:
- New sequels of top selling IPs (like the ones mentioned above)
- New IPs from the most successful teams making new IP (Bungie, Haven, ND, Firewalk...)
- Low risk cheap projects with high profitability (remasters, PC ports of old games, supporting indie teams...)
- More movie/tv show adaptations of their IPs
- Continue investing on GaaS to repeat MLB, GT, Destiny, Helldivers success
- Continue working on expanding on mobile gaming to further widen their market via other low risk profitable partnerships letting use their IP to top mobile gaming devs
- They plan to be agressively pursue the opportunities of point 2
I find this a selective and implausible read. You might say mischaracterizing even.
As we seen in Sony and most game publishers in recent times, it is how game companies improve their profitability. It isn't a new thing, game publishers did this during decades.
Sony had their strategy expanding on the GaaS, PC, mobile gaming, game subs and movie/tv adaptations areas to grow their market and profitability to compensate the insane rise of SP AAA games budgets since the Shawn Layden era (at least the GaaS + PC part), it just takes time to implement it. They aren't changing that strategy, they are continuing it.
I forgot to mention in the previous post as one of their profitability improvement areas the further enhacements to their game subs and cloud gaming. They did many in recent years, the next steps planned are to expand them in the future to PC and specially mobile and smart tvs, where they will also bring their PS cloud gaming this generation as said in 2019.
Another profitability improvement area for the next couple of years could be to release their own PC store and launcher to skip the 30% Steam cut.
If you think that they'll do (specially Totoki, a square minded Japanese CFO) instead of following their long term strategy and the logical and typical corporate moves in the industry to improve their profitabiliy I have bad news for you. Specially if you think they could do instead something that may risk their main business, main revenue source and main profit source: their console.
You're adding a lot of things he didnt say and gliding right past the things he clearly said.
I explained what these words mean in gaming industry (+SIE long term strategy) corporate language.
If you were doing that, you'd have to contend with all the times he talks about PS5 being more expensive to make and less profitable than the PS4.
Cutting jobs and then buying bloated ass Square Enix. You're just creating the same problems again in a different area
You guys are so boring still whinging about PC ports after years..who cares
He also was asked about this other topic in the Q&A, and basically replied there what I already told you as measures to improve their profit margins to try to compensate the lack of profitability tha the hardware will have in the 2nd half of its life cycle, when typically it becames profitable, but this time won't happen because components (+shipping) costs over time became more expensive instead of cheaper (due to extarnal factors Sony) and they can't do anything else to reduce them.
So this, plus costs related to recent acquisitions that will ease out next fiscal year has been impacted their profit margins, which they need to improve going forward.
But didn't go into detail because some things at corportate level are obvious and can't make very long replies and some things aren't polite to be mentioned (like to say they may fire 900 people, shut down a studio and cancel a few games).