Idk why many people ignore Nintendo. Nintendo is a massive threat as the power gap gets smaller & gets more 3rd party especially as PS no longer has true exclusive & are timed for 1-2 year. PS needs to move correctly if not I can see Switch 3 taking over casual as that will prob be in line w the power of a PS5 essentially being strong enough to play any modern game & if you think devs won’t bend the knee & downgrade there games or create a switch version so they can launch day n date on Switch which has a higher installment then PS & is mobile allowing gamers to play on the go yuh if I was PS I would look at making the PS6 a hybrid handheld & also invest on 3rd part publisher of not acquire 1 or 2 imo Square Enix & Hoyoverse. Switch 2 will probably be the first console that will allow Fromsoft to release souls game on it day 1 & Nintendo being the only serious player that will allow you to play more 3rd party native on the go natively. I would worry for PS if they think this short term “profits” is beneficial for Sony while negatively devaluing the console & telling gamers across PS, Xbox, Nintendo & PC aye you really don’t need to buy our PS console if you just wait. (that’s also considering if they don’t close the timeframe for ports to 6 month)
Imo PS console should be the definitive way to play PS singleplayer games cutting out ports & making singleplayer games permanent exclusive & the best value to performance to play 3rd party (this would also apply if PS makes there console like the PS6 a hybrid handhled) only game that should go to other platforms PC, Mobile should be live service & even then some live service games like Gran Turismo should be permanent exclusive since there system sellers to the PS console if Sony want to expand reach for the GT franchise they should make a mobile version of GT. Nothing Sony does even grabbing a lil extra profit should devalue the console without PS console there’s no Sony & even putting PS at risk should not even be a consideration there’s other way of increasing profit & gaining market share on other platforms like live service, mobile games or monetizing singleplayer games give me Syphon Filter skins in days gone or give me a Jak & Daxter or Sly Cooper skin pack in R&C rift apart give me a Nathan Drake Uncharted skin in TLOU or a Jak skin for Joel or a Daxter skin for Ellie. Lower scope & decrease fat in these first party game to decrease budget some of these games have unwanted extra hours of fetch quest like days gone had 20 hours of really nothing ness better scoping increase game output these games don’t need to take 5, 6, 7 years give me a 15 hour 4 year game of pure quality no filler & im good.
In the past I would’ve said that PS doesn’t need to worry because specs & PS had exclusive but now PS doesn’t have exclusive at best they have time exclusive & PS releases very few first party games compared to Nintendo. Nintnedo is a massive threat especially as you look at the Switch 2 & eventual Switch 3. You can even look as Steamdeck 2 & Steam continue popularity & dominance in the growing PC market as a massive threat to PS especially as Sony hand them there exclusive game which for the most are compatible w Steamdeck (questionable move considering Jim Ryan said Sony sees PC as a direct competitor)
Yeah it's starting to look a bit spooky for PlayStation in terms of console market share going forward. Nintendo is right there, they have a genuine exclusivity strategy for their own 1P games (no ports to other consoles, no PC ports), and if Switch 2 is as capable as it's sounding to be, they will get a lot more 3P support from the start. 3P games that were defacto-PS5 exclusive console-wise (which wasn't much to begin with) won't have a hard time getting Switch 2 versions out of the gate. Pair that with Nintendo's own 1P games and I can definitely see whatever sales advantage PS5 has ATM in places like Japan evaporating, and losing ground to Nintendo in other global markets including here in the US.
When almost all 3P are going multiplatform by default these days, the platform holder's own exclusives have to act as the differentiator. I haven't even proposed that Sony completely lock out other platforms; however, making your porting windows to platforms like PC as short as 6 months for some games, 1-2 years on average for non-GAAS, and porting your entire current-gen catalog over at that, is a recipe for sales rot. For starters it removes a lot of the reason to even bother with a PS5 Pro; I'm sure a sizable number of hardcore & core enthusiast PS5 owners also have a PC; whether it's up to spec or not isn't the point. They have one. And most likely, a lot of them would rather upgrade their PC or invest in PC long-term vs. getting a PS5 Pro, when they can get as good or better-than-PS5 Pro performance and access to many other games & features not on PS5.
That becomes brain-dead easy for them to make as a decision when the current strategy is what it is, or gets more aggressive (i.e shorter windows between ports) in time. And a major reason for that is because, with short or shortening windows to other platforms like PC, more dev time is added to the base game meaning PS5 owners have to wait longer anyway. So over the course of a generation, they're playing less 1P games due to the added dev times, even if the games aren't Day 1 to PC, because the PC version isn't that far behind.
I mean just think about this: the only 1P games since 2020 that are still exclusive to PS5 are Demon's Souls, GT7, GOW Ragnarok and Spiderman 2. And Astro's PlayRoom. That's it. A whopping 5 games, and we're only maybe halfway through the current generation. How is that sustainable long-term in regards to driving growth towards the console? If Demon's Souls gets ported, it'll have been 4 years (acceptable time frame, but not so much when every other game's been ported and usually in half the time or less). If GT7 gets ported this year, it'll have been a little over 2 years. They'l probably end up porting Astro's Playroom at some point too.
Meanwhile at this point it'd be foolish to not expect GOW Ragnarok on PC later this year, or early 2025, and probably Spiderman 2 in late 2025, assuming of course SIE are still sticking to their current strategy, and haven't internally changed plans regarding non-GAAS ports.
But every other 1P game besides ironically MLB The Show (which is now on Nintendo & Xbox; fine in isolation as it's a sports game & GAAS but, again, it's about the whole picture) released by SIE since 2020 has come to PC, besides GOW Ragnarok and Spiderman 2. Again, if the timing for ports of the non-GAAS games (particularly AAA) ones were closer to 4-6 years, they had a good flow of new equivalent games releasing for the console exclusively, and they retained some as permanent console exclusives (at least until the next generation at earliest for a port), then that'd be a great balance of the multiplatform strategy. Some would still balk yes, but far
far less than what is being seen at current.
Oh and if Valve decide to do a hybrid handheld/console for a future Steam Deck and get manufacturing to a mass scale?
And Sony continue with the strategy as has been set the past few years? I don't see PlayStation consoles making out from that too well. You'd basically have another Xbox at that point, but maybe pulling lower averages of 70-80 million lifetime instead of 40-60 million the way it's been going for Xbox the past decade (and Series systems looking they'll finish in the lower end of that 40-60 million range).
Valve will benefit from a well-functioning emulator and NS1\2 games, even without its integration into Steam.
The NS emulator can be installed in a couple of clicks, and anyone can do it, especially with the numerous detailed instructions on YouTube.
So if SD2 is powerful enough for emulation, Valve will make a big profit and legally they will be clean.
Imagine tons of videos and articles on "NS1\2 games run great on SteamDeck2".
And this is where Sony games "play great on SteamDeck."
Well, my point was that Valve would not legally associate with those emulators as a selling feature, and there's always a possibility Nintendo and Valve work out some agreement that prevents Steam users from installing and running Nintendo emulators on Valve devices.
Because eventually if things escalate legally between Nintendo and other emulator makers, they could start to target companies hosting those emulator products as complicit in copyright and IP infringements. It can get rather messy.
Though, I'm 100% against going after emulators that were made in a "clean room" environment and whose makers aren't making money from the emulator in any way nor trying to sell and distribute ISO/ROM dumps of commercial games (including before they even go on sale), both things the Yuzu makers messed up at (hence why they went down so easily).