They'll be able to fuel warring between Sony's upcoming PC launcher and Steam, and the Sony and Nintendo handhelds.
Reuters: Sony in talks to buy media powerhouse behind 'Elden Ring', sources say
- Thread starter Puff
- Start date
A lot of people are calling him out.
It's just another astroturfing campaign, pushed by that shitstain of a company.
It's just another astroturfing campaign, pushed by that shitstain of a company.
Kadokawa also has Acquire (Octopath Traveller, Mario & Luigi Brothership), which I think is more important than Spike Chunsoft (but not than FromSoft).
On top of them Kadokawa also has more teams, but mostly mobile or Japan only smaller stuff.
The problem with that though, is that they aren't nearly as interesting topics.
Let's start with PC launcher competition. Games on a Sony PC launcher are going to look and play just as well as a Steam launcher. There's no difference. There's only so much you can really talk about in terms of UI and costs, and site features. Notice no one talks about the fact that Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Valorant, and League of Legends aren't on Steam. Five of the biggest PC games in the world... At the end of the day... nobody cares.
Sony puts Elden Ring 2 and Helldivers 3 as well as others on their PC Launcher, and they're going to have success. This is why Sony is inherently more dangerous than others in the PC space and why Steam loyalists are so worried and why they've waged a campaign against Sony PSN logins. You think most of these guys really care about creating an account and logging in once? No, that happens on a multitude of publisher's games. They know Sony wants to take market share from Steam.
Now let's talk about handhelds. Even during the days of the PSP and DS, they offered such different games, there's not too much to argue over. Switch 2 and PS handheld will probably be far more similar, but you still have very different games coming from Sony and Nintendo. I think Sony is starting to look at more family friendly games in its portfolio just to round things off a bit more, but unless Nintendo is going to get into the AAA gaming space for which Sony has eaten their lunch for the last 30 years, I don't think Switch 2 and PS Handheld are going to engender much debate.
I think Sony Music and SIE need to take a better look at their strategy moving forward starting with the allocation of these studios.
You should get astroturfing tatted on you somewhere. Perhaps your buttocks? You simply adore that word.
SIE can't successfully release a PC launcher without risking some loss in console install base. The number of hardcore high-ARPU enthusiasts who tend to be early adopters, & also likely own a gaming PC alongside a console, isn't insignificant, and a subset of those are who SIE immediately risk noping out of picking up future hardware like a PS6.
Because in order to push a PC launcher, they'll have to also push all of their games to be Day 1 on that launcher. People overestimate how much Microsoft putting their games Day 1 on Microsoft Store negatively affected Xbox One, but if SIE were to do the same with their own titles to their own launcher, it'd have somewhat similar effects. Note that Xbox console sales didn't begin to tank until around 2020, the same year MS decided to do everything Day 1 on Steam. A PS PC launcher to start with would have even smaller market share than Microsoft Store for games, one reason why the consequence would be softened in terms of impact to console sales.
But, the risk of a PC launcher is still in the subset of hardcore/core high-ARPU enthusiast early adopters that decide to switch to PC in lieu of a console. Realistically, this number might only be something like 2 million to 2.5 million out of the total who normally buy PlayStations in a generation. So around 2% - 3%, small on its own. But these people have a disproportionate amount of spending power in the ecosystem, and that spending power will be reduced if they shift purchasing habits to PC. SIE might still get their B2P and MTX revenue from 1P titles, but they'll miss out on 3P B2P and MTX by a large amount (the longer it takes their launcher to garner 3P support, the more they miss out), they'll miss out on subscription revenue, they'll miss out on peripherals revenue. They'll either have to find ways to make up for that lost revenue & profit or they'll lose money.
The other issue is, that 2-2.5 million, we aren't talking about them leaving slowly over the course of the gen. They'll either leave immediately (during the launch period), or only hop in much later down the line if there's some fringe reason for them to do so. So immediately, a new system, say PS6, will feel that impact in slower early adoption rates. This could have a knock-on effect for subsets of future system adoption, as drops early on in adoption rates & revenue could make SIE hold back on price reductions, hold back on system production rates, and more. All of which have downstream effects.
Again, if SIE have avenues of growth opportunities to offset those losses and then some, then....fine. But they'd have to figure out just how big the knock-on effect of an early drop would be, and what associated revenue and profits go along with it. Then they'd have to see what avenues, say, a PC launcher provide in guaranteeing some portion of making up for those losses, and what other areas of the business they expect to see growth in. Calculate what's the realistic amount of growth in revenue & profits those areas can bring, and if all of that together offset losses from lower early adoption rates and the knock-on effect of that unto general core, casual & mainstream audiences (pockets of them, not huge swaths).
I'd say up to 12% - 15% of general core/casual/mainstream customer base could be effected by the aforementioned 2-2.5 million early adopter drop, so say with a typical 110 million generation, a drop to 91 million could be the worst-case. But, they could get that install base back through a hypothetical PC launcher, which combined with the console install base would generate a larger install base depending on how well the PC launcher could do. The bigger challenge would be how to make up for revenue & profit drops due to the console install base decrease, because without having mechanisms in the PC launcher to cover it and/or not hitting dollar growth in other areas to make up for it, gen-long revenue drop would look closer to probably 25% - 30%. Profit drop is harder to predict but it wouldn't be insignificant.
That said, if they do acquire Kadokawa, and they make games like Elden Ring 2 multiplatform, sales from stuff like that would go a good way to cover themselves financially. But multiplat in this sense means genuinely multiplat; I don't think your idea of locking games like ER2 to their own PS PC launcher would pan out. Exclusives of that nature haven't done much for EGS, I don't see why it'd be much different for SIE's. I do think SIE would need to copy Valve's strategy in terms of picking select 1P that remain exclusive to their launcher and their console, but that's probably ideal for smaller titles. IP strongly associated with PS either exclusively or primarily, so you know the bulk of sales would come from console anyway, and they have modest budgets at best. But big AAA releases that already have multiplatform/multi-storefront audiences? Likely best to keep it that way.
Which kind of creates an issue for some of SIE's current IP like Horizon, Ghosts, Days Gone, God of War etc. as they already have audiences now on Steam and even GOG. I can't see them reneging and making those exclusive to their own launcher for future entries. However, they haven't ported GT7 or Demon's Souls to Steam yet, or Bloodborne for that matter, so IP like that are fair game to retain exclusive to their own PS launcher/storefront on PC, and of course smaller titles like (hopeful) revivals of some legacy IP that haven't even had a new console release in ages. Or let's say, SSM's new AAA space game, leveraged as exclusives to their own PS launcher. But titles like Horizon 3, next God of War, Spiderman 3, or Ghosts of Yotei and Elden Ring 2...yeah, I'd expect those to be Day 1 Steam releases alongside the PS launcher's and PlayStation console(s).
I think the Sony pc launcher will be a failure. Steam fans are very loyal and work as a collective. They have shut down Epics pc launcher, and even Microsoft pc launcher from gaining popularity. Epic and Microsoft have used exclusive games third party and first party. This was used as a way to gain players but this didn't work out. Epic is spending less money on exclusive deals because for a long time they have been throwing money with very little gain. Steam fans were patient and did not budge. FF7 Remake, Alan wake 2 and a few others released as exclusives on Epics launcher and Steam users were patient and did not fall for it. Epic now spends less money on these deals because it did very little to move the needle and they weren't making profits. Microsoft on the other hand ran into a similar issue with Steam fans. There was a time where Microsoft didn't release their 1st party games day one on Steam. Once again, Steam fans were patient and did not budge. As a result Microsoft now releases all first party day one on Steam. Steam is now 2-0 against the competition. What makes the Sony launcher much different? The answer is nothing. Sony just like others before them will lose to Steam on PC.
Imagine the day Gabe Newell dies. The probability of Valve to go on sale will rise immediatelyMaybe Microsoft will buy steam
Its certainly the move for MS. And Gabe if he wants to retire into the sunset with bajillions, its the easy way outMaybe Microsoft will buy steam