There should've been alot more when they launched it it's embarrassing how bad it is & they have the audacity to increase the price
PlayStation Plus price has increased
- Thread starter Puff
- Start date
60% investment in GaaS. More 1st party multiplayer GaaS games so more people have to pay for an overpriced PS+.
Pathetic. I hope all of this (their GaaS strategy and the PS+ price hike) backfires spectacularly.
Pathetic. I hope all of this (their GaaS strategy and the PS+ price hike) backfires spectacularly.
Playstation wants to become the Apple of gaming. They want to become ONLY a premium brand. They said so themselves. They want to condition their base to feel like giving them all their money gives a status similar to iphones lol. The only problem is they keep forgetting gaming isn't a one time purchase like Apple product is... We have to pay for subs, games, controllers, DLC, accessories... That shit adds up.
Jim Ryan is now in an uncomfortable position where he has a CEO who hates Gaming to answer to, but that same penny pinching accountant CEO wants Playstation to still bring in record breaking profits while handicapping the entire operation.
They better be careful as gamers have no issues moving away from a brand over time.
Either way, I fear the worst is still yet to come from these money hungry leeches. Just wait for the fallout when the GaaS push crashes off a cliff.
Jim Ryan is now in an uncomfortable position where he has a CEO who hates Gaming to answer to, but that same penny pinching accountant CEO wants Playstation to still bring in record breaking profits while handicapping the entire operation.
They better be careful as gamers have no issues moving away from a brand over time.
Either way, I fear the worst is still yet to come from these money hungry leeches. Just wait for the fallout when the GaaS push crashes off a cliff.
As far as I remember they had in beta the new cloud gaming thing of being able to play via cloud gaming -if you have Premium- at least some of the PS5 games you bought and aren't in the subscription.
They are also working on bringing the PS Cloud gaming to smartphones, tablets and smart tvs for many years and said that they planned to release it this generation.
Jimbo said recently that this year will push their cloud gaming efforts, and part of the budget they had for investments/acquisitions/stocks repurchases for this FY was moved to buy servers for SIE instead, so may release these things for everybody in the coming months.
And they also had in soft launch in Poland something similar to Netflix called PlayStation Plus Video Pass since almost a couple years ago.
They are also working on their PC PSN store/app. They are also working on improving/replacing/adding new emulators for games of old platforms.
Who knows, they may release all these things soon, or at least some of them, for everybody.
In terms of finantials SIE is much, much ahead of Nintendo. SIE's revenue was $15.2B ahead of Nintendo.
If the profits weren't much higher for Sony was because they had bought this or the previous year several companies spending billions there, and also had to pay the R&D + marketing of several accesories like PSVR2, and also made the PS+ rework which meant many R&D work and also licensing costs to sign games. In addition to this, they also invest in the development of a record number of games.
Meaning, Sony reinvests pretty much all the money they make instead of keeping much of it for profits. In fact, the R&D budget they have the current FY for the division is basically the revenue they generated last FY removing from there taxes etc.
I think this will change this fiscal year or the next one: Sony decided to pause the acquisitions until the mid to long term, meaning no new acquisitions will affect the profits. They also will have released a shit ton of accessories so I assume they won't announce more for this or the next year, and I assume they won't make huge changes to PS+. So I assume that these areas will affect less the profits specially in the next fiscal year.
But well, since Sony doesn't like to keep the money they make sitting in the bank and instead prefers to reinvest it into making more and better games and releasing or improving their hardware or services, I assume they will spend it elsewhere, eating the profits again.
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In response to the bolded part: that isnt exclusive to PlayStation. For my iPhone, i bought a case, magsafe battery pack, a magsafe dock, an apple watch, 4x magsafe chargers, one of which cost $100 by belkin, airpods, airpods pro, screen protector, plus more I dont remember right now… in terms of software and subs, i pay $22 per month for Apple One sub and more subs on top of that.
Basic point is, iPhone is farrrrrr from being a “one and done” device.
The amount of new PS+ subs got stagnant during the shortages and did stop growing because normally most new subbers are new console buyers, but the PS+ new tiers did help to highly boost the revenue they make from there, peeople seem to like the Extra and Premium tiers and many people have been upgrading.
The new PS+ is a big success for them. This year, now that they got rid of shortages they will sell way more consoles, which means an important increase on subbers and revenue. So even if some people don't renew, they will continue improving their revenue.
Yes, Sony's acquisitions like Bungie will benefit Sony. Not you. In fact they already are benefiting Sony. Firesprite did help with Horizon CoM to have a better PSVR2 launch than PSVR1 had, Nixxes already sold around 2.5M copies of their Spider-Man PC ports, Bluepoint codeveloped the fastest selling PS exclusive ever: GoWR, Returnal won many awards and Bungie helps increasing SIE's revenue and profits since acquired and achieved a new record in youtube getting 19M views of the Marathon trailer in only a few weeks.
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Yeah this actually makes sense. They are absolutely expecting a drop in subscriber count. Microsoft tactics.
None of this is a new offer to subscribers yet, and they can only charge extra for Plus Video Pass after it's deployed. Same for PS Cloud on Smart TVs. The concept of Sony charging more money to their current subscribers to pay for an infrastructure upgrade that only serves to house more subscribers is ridiculous.
The service is still the same. The games available in Plus are the same. Sony still isn't getting any day-one games in there. For his own sake, I sure hope Jim doesn't give any interview saying "we're charging more money from you so we can improve our infrastructure".
What they're doing is much simpler: they decreased the cost of the consoles to increase userbase and now they're aiming to massively increase the subscription revenue by ripping off a giant bandaid.
Increasing subscription cost isn't unprecedented, either for inflation or taxation. Increasing a subscription cost by 30 to 40% is taking things to a whole new level of bullish and only takes a massive chunk out of the Plus' value proposition. I don't see this going well for Sony, and I don't get what made them so bullish all of the sudden.
I usually love the inflation arguments when increasing costs, especially when companies never bump their salaries in equal measure. Not saying you're wrong btw, you're absolutely correct.
You can buy an iphone and have it function perfectly fine without needing all the optional personal costs you added.
A gaming system doesn't work that way.
Yeah I have been playing a ton of Chivalry 2 (MP game) and now I have to pay more just to play online (essential tier). I would accept if they took away free monthly games, but keep the price unchanged, that way I can at least play online WO paying more. With Sony's push to GAAS, they really are making it hard to attract people there.
As far as I know the 'stream PS5 games you bought' feature already is available to beta users and the PS Video Pass was given as a 1 year free trial for PS Plus (which today would be Essential) in Poland, but maybe it was a special promotion because it was an early test.
Sony has been working for years on the mobile version of their cloud gaming, and made related patents for dedicated optimizations and technology. And well, they'll develop the clients for these devices. People don't work for free specially when we're talking about innovative R&D, obviously will charge for that.
Also, if now you're going to be able to play via cloud gaming the games you bought for PS5, that means a lot of server costs more. And if in addition to in the current platforms you will be able to stream these games in addition to the ones from the PS+ sub also in way bigger platforms like mobile and smart tvs, which could potentially mean a spike on users, may need more server costs.
And Sony will never do it because a financial suicide.
MS does that as a desperate attempt to get some attention and after seeing that they aren't capable of competing against Sony and Nintendo selling consoles and games MS wants to destroy the gaming business model based on selling games and replace it with a Netflix subscription to kill the other platform holders and most publishers.
Because almost giving away AAA games that cost almost half a billion each means loses of several billions of dollars, which is something MS can afford but the other companies don't.
That only would work if MS would get hundreds of millions of people paying the subscriptions, but they have issues to pass the 25M mark and that's including people who only paid $1 trials or $1 upgrades, or didn't pay anything because got free months of GP from different sources where they give them away.
Sony doesn't need that. Sony already have twice the subbers and generate even more revenue from game subs, with a business model that gives them profits instead of billions of loses. And that's a small portion of their business: Sony is the market leader on consoles and selling games for their consoles.
Sony sells their AAA at $70 and sell over 20M copies, it would be really dumb to give away these games at launch.
Yes, I assume the big inflation we saw across the world in the last year or so, and that pretty likely will continue rising for a while may be one of the several reasons of why Microsoft and Sony (and many other companies) increased the prices of their consoles and game subs prices.
Watching online outrage happening and amounting to nothing is never not amusing...
The same happened with Hogwarts Legacy and other stuff lol
The same happened with Hogwarts Legacy and other stuff lol
Nah, i mean if enough people reject the subs at that price they either have to bring prices down or make it worth the price increase aka putting more big Third or First party titles in it. Or just add more value in general.
As it stands this price increase was way too much for a one time increase. Sony will either have to adapt, or will see people not care about subscribing to play online titles which is where their money is.
They will find other avenues to play, this right here will be a big test.
Honestly I think they need to make essentials 69.99, and only include base PS+ titles. Leave the premium ones at the high prices since they cater to the more hardcore crowd.
But they are fucking themselves for growth at these prices.
They'd need to lose 11 million subscribers for this to be really relevant to their revenue. This isn't happening.
The sub prices haven't actually risen, they just lowered the annual fee discount, the monthly fee is still the same.
So, unless the vast majority of the user base pays annually (which I seriously doubt), this will change absolutely nothing.
It is just a forum/social media bubble. Real world won't budge because everything went up. There are much bigger problems than this price increase.
Why would it be amusing to hear people complain that they have to pay more, to get nothing more, for something that didn't cost any more to produce?