That would be very dumb. They're market leaders by a good margin, and they make most of their money from the 30 % cut on any sale on their store + DLC and all. Would Apple give up on the cut on Apple Store ? Don't think so either. You have no reason to change a winning strategy. They bring their games to PC to both add easy money to the bank AND make new people aware of Sony games and ecosystem. Some of them will ultimately buy their games on the PSN Store and buy their console. Some of them will talk about those games to their friends. The others will continue buying Sony games on PC when the port releases 1 or 2 years later or something, and that's fine too. There's zero reason to go 3rd party for them.
Those who could go 3rd parties are the competitors, especially Xbox if GP isn't very successful (which looks likely from the first numbers we have). But then MS would probably prefer just selling everything and move on from gaming because without the cut on the store, profit margins are limited (which is the only reason MS still tries its luck on gaming ultimately).
There's one other potential scenario that can play out for MS that effectively guarantees a spot for GamePass in the future even if it ends up never turning a big revenue with high profit margin: big influx of Azure cloud clients from the gaming scene.
MS have been wanting to expand Azure growth for a while because growth for it in the entrenched markets has slowed significantly. They know it'd be hard if not impossible to keep trying to grow Azure usage in business-related markets like data centers, finance, medical, engineering, telecommunications etc. Either because they already have fully saturated those markets, or competition from Amazon is too strong, or in the case of foreign markets, competition and favoritism from home-based rivals would make it nearly impossible.
So, that's why they want to turn to gaming. Getting more Azure clients from the game development community would net MS a lot of long-term clientele, and long-term big revenue with high profit margins. GamePass is really just acting as the door for them to get their Azure foot in and then let the Azure department get to the real business. That's why they celebrated the strategic partnership announcement with Sega earlier on, and the Kojima one, too; for MS those might represent big growth for more Azure clients from Japan, the Japanese gaming scene, it's a big growth market for them.
However, I think (or at least, I hope) companies like Sony see this other intent, and are making their own moves in this regard. It's probably a reason why Sony still aren't outright using Azure, but are on via a MOU (Memorandum of Understanding). It's probably also a reason Haven had that recent interview talking about cloud-based software development being a utility for the dev team, and the possibilities it presents. Sony simply can't compete with MS when it comes to outright cloud infrastructure, they're way too late in that game and don't have enough funds.
However, they obviously have their own SDK packages, API tools, their ICE teams (and the services & tools they can provide), and therefore a suite of technologies and services for enabling game development for 3P developers that they can provide and therefore retain developers as clientele over the long-term using their tools and services over, say, Microsoft's, at least primarily. Things like ensuring install base leadership with PS consoles and expanding PS reach into PC (thereby potentially developing tools, both native and cloud-based, that can facilitate easier dual development of PS & PC versions of games for 3P partners) will make this easier for them to accomplish. Same with retaining PS+ sub counts and expanding them, and spreading out into mobile.
This is the
other side of the resource battle things like the industry acquisitions are hiding. Or, well not really "hiding" but might be less noticeable since it's not dealing about IP or games specifically, and also because it isn't wholly dependent on acquisitions in the first place, though those can help (for example, there's some tech from studios like iD Software MS got alongside buying Zenimax that they've since been working with to bolster xCloud and, most likely, implement at an API level in the GDK and within other tools for Azure cloud services to non-gaming clients, maybe by integrating Origin code into source code of other products like Teams).
I don't know about that to be honest. I am getting vibes of software only in the future but we'll see.
I wouldn't be surprised if MS and Sony abandon consoles next-generation (2027 and beyond).
If that happens it would be the
absolute biggest mistake either company could make, and I'd be praying for Apple, Samsung, anybody to hop in with a real 10th-gen console to show them what a mistake Sony and/or MS would make by not putting something out there.
There are still so many technologies they can incorporate in a future design, there is still a need to standardize VR & AR and make them mainstream, still quite a few untapped gaming experiences that can be served in a way only a proper console can truly deliver at mass scale. Still so many efficiencies that can be had in console engineering with new technologies and methodologies.
Not to mention the software-related benefits being a platform holder brings. I still see one more true generation for console gaming but, after a PS6 or Series Z, I can definitely see the traditional console market as it currently exists subsiding into something more like where the consoles are equivalents to set top boxes or smartphones, and either all game development is done on a common OS and SDK where games can run natively regardless of platform holder box (with scalable settings), or where even that's skipped for a cloud streaming approach.
Ironically I think we'd see those type of systems built in partnership with actual set top box cable and satellite providers, in a way it could be the PSX-DVR and XBO type of designs coming full circle, just in 2040 instead of 2004 or 2013.
A while ago there was a thread showing ps had more revenue then xbox in the npd data. Some idiot mod didn't like it, so they shutdown the thread because apparantley revenue didn't matter. Don't reallty use era for news anymore, ps subreddits seems as quick as era in posting news.
Wow, that place has zero shame in the shilling now I guess.
@Swift_Star was pointing this stuff out months ago, then I started to notice, and now they're shutting down discussion over literal facts from industry analysts because they don't push the narrative they want?
There was another thread asking if PC (Steam) users would switch to console if Steam suddenly went away, and a mod locked that one up too because they said the thread was arguing based on bad faith, even though the OP just asked a hypothetical question. They have plenty of threads there with wild hypotheticals all the time, never got shut down.
Very thinly-veiled agendas there now, sadly.