Shawn layden interview When your costs for a game exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel.

flaccidsnake

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Majority of PC userbase have GPU 3060/4060 and lower. Which is have weaker rastirization performance that PS5, 3070 is what PS5 at rastirization wise, Ray-tracing is not worth the performance impact for marginal gain since lightings depends heavily on level designers any2ay.

@flaccidsnake what GPU you have. Prove that you have a least a 4070/3080 above before talking about holding back argument.
I have a 6700, a 3060, and a steam deck. I don't generally subscribe to extremely high end PC gaming, this "PCMR" nonsense. But if a PC oriented dev (like GSC for ex) goes the extra mile to use high end features, thats sick.
 

Gods&Monsters

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The port gets released in PC when no longer sells in PS and it's included in PS+. There's no selling point lost because almost nobody buys it anymore.

If costs 2M to be made and generates 80M to Sony it means it generated 78M in profit for that game. All Sony PC ports have been profitable. Profits are good. 78M of extra profit are good and better than nothing.

They use these profits to fund more games and make their games more profitable because the revenue from the console won't be enough for games costing over 300M, because only a few will sell like Spider-Man 2. PC ports help ensure their profitability. It's plain and simple.
In what universe Ratchet port made 78 millions in profit? It didn't even break even. That shit was a total lost. Same for Sackboy and Returnal.
 
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Gediminas

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I have a 6700, a 3060, and a steam deck. I don't generally subscribe to extremely high end PC gaming, this "PCMR" nonsense. But if a PC oriented dev (like GSC for ex) goes the extra mile to use high end features, thats sick.
Trying Not To Laugh GIF
 

Yurinka

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In what universe Ratchet port made 78 millions in profit? It didn't even break even. That shit was a total lost. Same for Sackboy and Returnal.
I never said that the Ratched port did make 78M in profit.

That port, one of the ones with worse sales, did cost $2.5. That one had a $59.99 price most of the time, with 2 short discounts to $47.99 and 2 to $40.19.

Let's say if its copies have been sold at an average of $47.99, removing the Valve cut Sony got on average $33.593 per copy. Something very similar to the average $34.45/per copy we saw Sony did with all their FY21,20 and catalog games January 2022 in this other post.

At that $33.593 average Sony would have need to sell 74420 copies for the break even.

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This game was released very recently, so the leaked docs didn't feature old sales data for this port, unlike other ones. So let's estimate its sales with the users review x 25 method. 8987 reviews x 25 = around 224675 copies sold.

As I remember the most recent PC ports sales data shared in the docs is this from early February 2023:

q46edC8.png

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These are 150255 copies more than the ones needed to break even with that estimated average price. At the average revenue estimated of $33.593 per copy, 150255 x $33.593 that would be $5.05M in profit. In this case, both the average price and copies sold are rough estimates.

A port that with an average cost of $2M that would generate over 78M in profit (or 80M in revenue) selling at an average revenue of $34/copy would need to sell more than 2.35M copies, as Horizon or God of War did, and Spider-Man Remastered should achieve soon (doing the x25 estimate it's at 2.26M). Doing the x25 sales estimate Days Gone would be now at 1.9M.

Doing these kind of rough estimates we can see that even Sackboy was already profitable with the sales it had in the Insomniac Feb. 2023 slide I shared, which only had its first 3 months of sales.
 
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Nhomnhom

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I never said that the Ratched port did make 78M in profit.

That port, one of the ones with worse sales, did cost $2.5. That one had a $59.99 price most of the time, with 2 short discounts to $47.99 and 2 to $40.19.

Let's say if its copies have been sold at an average of $47.99, removing the Valve cut Sony got on average $33.593 per copy. At that average Sony would have need to sell 74420 copies for the break even.

image.png

image.png


This game was released very recently, so the leaked docs didn't feature old sales data for this port, unlike other ones. So let's estimate its sales with the users review x 25 method. 8987 reviews x 25 = around 224675 copies sold.

As I remember the most recent PC ports sales data shared in the docs is this from February 2023:

q46edC8.png

image.png


These are 150255 copies more than the ones needed to break even with that estimated average price. At the average revenue estimated of $33.593 per copy, 150255 x $33.593 that would be $5.05M in profit. In this case, both the average price and copies sold are rough estimates.

A port that with an average cost of $2M that would generate over 78M in profit (or 80M in revenue) selling at an average revenue of $34/copy would need to sell more than 2.35M copies, as Horizon or God of War did, and Spider-Man Remastered should achieve soon (doing the x25 estimate it's at 2.26M). Doing the x25 sales estimate Days Gone would be now at 1.9M.

Doing these kind of rough estimates we can see that even Sackboy was already profitable with the sales it had in the Insomniac Feb. 2023 slide I shared, which only had its first 3 months of sales.
So a PC port of R&C that completely bombed on PC and got cracked day one funds almost half the budget of Spider-man 2 despite the 30% Valve cut and yet people are saying that budget is unsustainable?

If any of this is true, if they were to open their own store on PC and add Denuvo to all their games, they would be profiting like crazy.
 
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flaccidsnake

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Flaccid bamboozled us all

8ipboa.jpg

I've said over and over again PC is not about this "master race" shit. 3060 is the most popular gpu and still gives better performance than PS5.

Weird how console dead enders are suddenly 4090 elitists.
 

Yurinka

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Regarding the "When your costs for a game exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel" quote:

As a reference, here if we combine the leaked FY2021, FY2020 and catalog sales of this late January 2022 document we get $10822M in sales.

from-insomniac-games-leak-65-of-sony-studio-game-sales-were-v0-xaf3iob7xtec1.jpeg

If we combine their sell-through we get 314097k (314.1M) units.

So on average, Sony got $34.45 per copy.


Considering that $34.45 average revenue per copy, this is what a Sony game would need to sell to break even/become profitable depending on their budget:
  • $50M budget: 1.45M units
  • $100M budget: 2.9M units
  • $150M budget: 4.35M units
  • $200M budget: 5.81M units
  • $250M budget: 7.26M units
  • $300M budget: 8.71M units
  • $350M budget: 10.16M units
  • $400M budget: 11.61M units
We see there games like Bloodborne or Days Gone having sold 7.46M and 7.32M in PS. This means that with a $250M budget would be barely profitable.

So you can see why the price rise and PC ports to give them extra revenue and profitability, and cutting costs reducing their manpower by 8% make sense.
 
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Yurinka

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He’s the one who started all this PC shit
Yes, this is the second interview where he says he started it/was his idea.

But unlike this poster said, Shawn said in both interviews that the main goal wasn't to bring PC players to PC itself (which in a smaller scale they also pursued), but instead the point itself of reaching players who never would go to PS (so to get extra revenue/profit from them). And the same for mobile.

It's the "if the mountain doesn't go to Mahoma, Mahoma goes to the mountain" idea: there's a gazillion players on PC and mobile (way more than in PS), and a portion of them who aren't already PS users would love their games, but may not know it until they play them on their own platform.

Once they play them and love them, they buy more games from them, and a small portion of them would ended buying the console to play the games not released outside the console.

So (in addition to get more revenue and profit, which is what any company always has as main goal) their main idea with the PC ports was to make brand awareness expanding to new markets. A pretty logical move when they need extra revenue and profit sources because budgets are skyrocketing but prices and sales don't.
 
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Gods&Monsters

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I never said that the Ratched port did make 78M in profit.

That port, one of the ones with worse sales, did cost $2.5. That one had a $59.99 price most of the time, with 2 short discounts to $47.99 and 2 to $40.19.

Let's say if its copies have been sold at an average of $47.99, removing the Valve cut Sony got on average $33.593 per copy. Something very similar to the average $34.45/per copy we saw Sony did with all their FY21,20 and catalog games January 2022 in this other post.

At that $33.593 average Sony would have need to sell 74420 copies for the break even.

image.png

image.png


This game was released very recently, so the leaked docs didn't feature old sales data for this port, unlike other ones. So let's estimate its sales with the users review x 25 method. 8987 reviews x 25 = around 224675 copies sold.

As I remember the most recent PC ports sales data shared in the docs is this from early February 2023:

q46edC8.png

image.png


These are 150255 copies more than the ones needed to break even with that estimated average price. At the average revenue estimated of $33.593 per copy, 150255 x $33.593 that would be $5.05M in profit. In this case, both the average price and copies sold are rough estimates.

A port that with an average cost of $2M that would generate over 78M in profit (or 80M in revenue) selling at an average revenue of $34/copy would need to sell more than 2.35M copies, as Horizon or God of War did, and Spider-Man Remastered should achieve soon (doing the x25 estimate it's at 2.26M). Doing the x25 sales estimate Days Gone would be now at 1.9M.

Doing these kind of rough estimates we can see that even Sackboy was already profitable with the sales it had in the Insomniac Feb. 2023 slide I shared, which only had its first 3 months of sales.
They threw away one of the few PS5 exclusive and selling point for 5 millions and you continue to make us believe it's good business 🤣

Ratchet was also a good bundle opportunity for the slim but they destroyed the value so much it wouldn't sell.

They made 5 millions yesterday by selling Helldivers DLC on PSN and they made that with random outfits in COD. 5 millions is nothing. Jim Ryan restaurant budget for the year 🤣
 

Nhomnhom

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He’s the one who started all this PC shit
Seems like they originally had a plan to just port old games and once they saw how easy it had become to just cash in these PC ports they went all in without thinking too much about the long term repercussions.

It's also pretty insane to attribute all the development cost to the PS5 version and only the port costs to PC ports. It's a really stupid calculation that set the bar extremely low for these PC ports to be seen as profitable while inflating game budgets.

Pretty much all the reasons used these days to put their games on PC would also be true if they were putting their games on Xbox or Nintendo consoles.
 
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Cool hand luke

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Yes, this is the second interview where he says he started it/was his idea.

But unlike this poster said, Shawn said in both interviews that the main goal wasn't to bring PC players to PC itself (which in a smaller scale they also pursued), but instead the point itself of reaching players who never would go to PS (so to get extra revenue/profit from them). And the same for mobile.

It's the "if the mountain doesn't go to Mahoma, Mahoma goes to the mountain" idea: there's a gazillion players on PC and mobile (way more than in PS), and a portion of them who aren't already PS users would love their games, but may not know it until they play them on their own platform.

Once they play them and love them, they buy more games from them, and a small portion of them would ended buying the console to play the games not released outside the console.

So (in addition to get more revenue and profit, which is what any company always has as main goal) their main idea with the PC ports was to make brand awareness expanding to new markets. A pretty logical move when they need extra revenue and profit sources because budgets are skyrocketing but prices and sales don't.
That's what I suggested was an intelligent use of PC ports - brand awareness in anticipation of exclusive sequels. Doesn't work if you keep porting more and more franchises and the sequels themselves over.
 

Yurinka

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They threw away one of the few PS5 exclusive and selling point for 5 millions and you continue to make us believe it's good business 🤣

Ratchet was also a good bundle opportunity for the slim but they destroyed the value so much it wouldn't sell.

They made 5 millions yesterday by selling Helldivers DLC on PSN and they made that with random outfits in COD. 5 millions is nothing. Jim Ryan restaurant budget for the year 🤣
That's what I suggested was an intelligent use of PC ports - brand awareness in anticipation of exclusive sequels. Doesn't work if you keep porting more and more franchises and the sequels themselves over.

Yes, around 5 millions in profit from the PC version until now in only around 7 months with only a few small and short discounts. Will continue selling more over time when discounted more aggresively.


image.png

In a leaked June 2020 forecast, Insomniac projected 2.2M ($73M sales) sales for the PS5 version, which would make the game unprofitable (had a $81M budget).

In the document posted above from January 2022 we see it sold in PS5 2.34M (shipped 2.72M) until then, generating $145M in sales (but as we see in Insomniac projection doc to calculate the profitability of their games, not all the money from sales goes to Sony/Insomniac recoup of the project).

If with 2.2M they were going to make $73M, with 2.34M sold they make $77.65M. Meaning, the game would be unprofitable only with the PS5 version (at least until mid Jan. 2022, which is the most recent data I think we have, so the one posted here) and thanks to the profits of the PC port it became profitable.

If instead counting units sold of the PS version you count the shipped ones, then with 2.72M they'd made 90.25M, $9M in profit. The PC port made over half these profits in only 7 months with almost no discounts.

We have to remember Rift Apart is one of the Sony worse selling games this generation both in PS and PC. Games like Helldivers 2, GoW, Horizon, Destiny 2, Days Gone, Spider-Man made much more money in PC.

According to the Sony fiscal reports all their 1st party games combined make hundreds of millions per year outside their console, with a big groth YoY.

Games like Demon's Souls, Returnal, Sackboy, with considerably lower sales than Ratchet and maybe even with higher budget shouldn't be profitable with their PS revenue. So the profit of their PC ports should help reduce the loses they generated.

And yes, releasing Helldivers 2 on PC day one did help it selling a lot and become profitable just a few weeks after release.

Regarding CoD, being optimistic it should make around $1B on PS (at least the year it did $3B being $1B from the mobile version). Sony gets 30% -if we ignore platform holders have a lower revenue cut for top performers- so, Sony should make around $300M from CoD per year. Split into 365 days, it means CoD game+passes/dlc/mtx makes to Sony around $822K/day.
 
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JAHGamer

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Yes, around 5 millions in profit from the PC version until now in only around 7 months with only a few small and short discounts. Will continue selling more over time when discounted more aggresively.

In a leaked June 2020 Insomniac forecast projected 2.2M ($73M sales) sales for the PS5 version, making the game unprofitable (had a $81M budget). In the document above from January 2022 we see it sold in PS5 2.34M (shipped 2.72M) until then.

If with 2.2M they were going to make $73M, with 2.34M they make $77.65M. Meaning, the game would be unprofitable and the profits of the PC port would have made the project profitable.

If instead counting units sold of the PS version you count the shipped ones, then with 2.72M they'd made 90.25M, $9M in profit.

We have to remember it's one of the Sony worse selling games both in PS and PC. According to the Sony fiscal reports all their 1st party games combined make hundreds of millions per year outside their console, with a big groth YoY.
This is false 🤦‍♂️ how do you always type so much just to constantly be wrong? You’re really trying to lie and say Rift Apart wouldn’t be profitable without the PC port that flopped? 😂😂

Rift Apart was profitable within its first month of launching. Bro you are the epitome of Dunning Kruger syndrome.
 

Yurinka

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This is false 🤦‍♂️ how do you always type so much just to constantly be wrong? You’re really trying to lie and say Rift Apart wouldn’t be profitable without the PC port that flopped? 😂😂
Bro you are the epitome of Dunning Kruger syndrome.
First, stop trolling me.

Second, read properly what I posted.

Third, if you think something I post is wrong, specially when I'm posting leaked or oficial data from Sony or publicly available Steam data plus doing some basic maths. Feel free to correct if something in the maths is wrong or if there is some other factual leaked or publicly available that proves it wrong. Because if not, just saying "this is false" and claiming something that goes against the provided factual data without providing any factual receipts makes you look like a gaming flathearther, denying the reality of the available data just because it doesn't fits your narrative.

Rift Apart was profitable within its first month of launching.
The Sony/Insomniac sales data I posted above debunks this.

Also, Sony publicly mentioned Rift Apart sold 1.1M on aprox. its first months here.

Please provide receipts that prove Sony/Insomniac are lying.

Pc version of Rift Apart didnt even sell 500k. It bombed hard just like Sackboy. Completely pointless ports
Both ports are profitable. Their PS5 versions barey were profitable or weren't profitable. So they are helping these games to be more profitable or to reduce the loses they had.
 
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