I still find it hard to believe they would make there games exclusive to a PS PC launcher even if I agree that the PS PC launcher will fail if it doesn’t have some sort of exclusive such as these ports or multiplayer & acting more like Riot or Hoyoverse which seeing Herman as CEO I doubt he looks at long term like that.
Also if PS was going to make there PC port exclusive to the PS PC launcher they would save notable games like Spiderman 2, GOW ragnarok & Horizon monster hunter, again I think Herman & PS leadership are to short sighted to think long term.
I think PS will have a PS PC launcher in 2025 that will ultimately fail because it didn’t have some sort of exclusive & PS PC port & multilayer games still releasing on Steam which PC gamers already prioritized. Will PS cut sales on PC to get 100% + push a PS+ PC on PC (which ofc doesn’t gates online but it’s more of a multilayer centric exclusive cosmetic instead) I doubt. PS is moving more like Xbox than even Riot, Hoyoverse or even Netflix. Because of this failing I think PS will just further rampant PC port diminishing the PS platform & it will just be a never ending of self inflicted damage till they fully spiral like Xbox & have to publish games on PC, Nintendo & Apple devices to make back the investment & profit they themselves have lost because they spend the last 4+ years harming there own storefront, hardware & ecosystem.
Yeah, a lot of what's in the last paragraph is what I worry about with the subsidiary. A cycle of bad decisions that create a self-fulfilling prophecy and creating a Catch-22 for the brand. I'm already of the mind a shift in the GAAS plans that reduces them significantly could result in them accelerating their ports to Steam with much shorter intervals or even Day 1, which will just have a negative impact on console revenue for B2P, subscription, & MTX sales going forward, but especially cutting into early adoption rates for the PS6.
A PC launcher for PlayStation only works if they make their 1P titles exclusive to it (at least for a good measure of time), rescind the trend of porting most or all of their games to other launchers (Valve keeps their non-GAAS and even GAAS titles exclusive to Steam, for example, and on PC Epic keeps Fortnite exclusive to EGS), get 3P support on the storefront similar to console, and find a way to monetize the storefront in non-intrusive ways that don't require a person to sub to PS+ (to make up for removing PS+ requirement for paid online, among other things). They'll also have to remove the paid online requirement on console side, to establish feature parity between the console and storefront, or else they'll have to add a
LOT more value to the console PS+ to justify the price and keeping online paywalled behind it for non-F2P titles.
What's the confidence on SIE doing all of this? It's honestly 50/50 at best; I also don't think they'll have a storefront ready by 2025, but whenever it IS ready, anything they do for the storefront will be directly compared to the console and if the value proposition is better on the storefront side, SIE WILL see a drop in console sales as a result. And that assumes a "small" drop, which is dependent on their 1P lineup remaining strong, still getting big 3P exclusives (something that seems less and less likely), and not raising prices any further (decent chance they still increase prices going forward).
I was watching Moore's Law Is Dead today and they were discussing the possibility of Nintendo (yes, Nintendo) putting games on PC. The consensus he and NX Gamer arrived at, is that IF Nintendo did any sort of thing, it'd be a
verrry drawn-out process and would only involve very old games like NES, SNES, N64 or maybe some Gamecube titles. And, they'd basically look at how all of that goes.
TBH, I think Nintendo would have the best approach expanding to a platform like PC where it doesn't cannibalize their console, because they've already proven they can do this with mobile. And, if they decided to bring new games to PC, it wouldn't be any of the games on their console; rather it'd probably be some F2P MOBA/adventure-whatever type of game made with a 3P developer specifically for PC & mobile platforms. You know, like what SCE
used to do with their older PC initiatives when they prioritized PC-centric IPs like EverQuest for that platform? That's the type of thing I could see Nintendo doing within the next 10 years, after re-releasing a few of their older classics to platforms like Steam.
So at least that way, if someone who played say Super Mario 64 or Sunshine on PC wanted to play Mario Odyssey 2, they'd have to get a Switch 2. Nintendo's traditionally been a
lot more conservative than even Sony, let alone Microsoft, and that won't be changing anytime in the future, so I can see the culmination of any efforts on PC or other platforms (e.g mobile, PlayStation) being that type of aforementioned bespoke, 3P-developed F2P GAAS-type title based around an IP or two. But it'd be its own experience, to leverage the IP in appealing to those gamers and enticing them to try other games of that IP, specifically the newest ones exclusive to Nintendo's system.
AKA, the strategy SIE
should've taken with their own multiplatform push, but it's too late now. They can make adjustments of course, but whether SIE make the right adjustments or not, I am 50/50 on at best.
Concord & Fairgames alone is 500 million I can’t even count the waste of money spend on studios that had no worth & or game cancelled