Sony chief bets on original content as part of ‘creation shift’

Vertigo

Did you show the Darkness what Light can do?
26 Jun 2022
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Xbox is no longer a viable platform for Sony to consider porting software to. It doesn’t offer much opportunity when their consumer is strictly dependent on gamepass. Otherwise maybe Sony could consider more ports of online games etc.

This is cope and hope from Xbots. There is only one home console right now and Microsoft clearly sees that now too.

Xbox was killed off. It’s over. Concord bombing doesn’t offset Wukong, Helldivers or how PS5 will be the only console bought for the year.
 
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Yurinka

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Then why did the CEO of Sony say they want to expand more into PC/Cloud/Mobile
Because the cost of making their AAA 1st party games more than doubles every generation and their revenue (price x units sold + addons) -even if grows- doesn't grow at the same pace. At the current point the investment they take is so fucking huge and the units sold needed to make them profitable is gettin too high.

So they have to increase their revenue and profitability first to reduce the risk of investing hundreds of millions per game and second to make easier/more likely profitability in the long term. And considering that the console market is finite and they already are growing fast their console market share and increasing ARPU to record levels, they still need to expand their audience to reach new players in other platforms.

Even more in the context where unlike in all the previous generations the hardware components of the console instead of decreasing over time, allowing to sell the hardware at a profit in the 2nd half of the generation, the costs kept increasing increases the loses generated by selling hardware. So they have to find extra profitability in the other areas to compensate it.

PS revenue from 3rd parties, accesories or game subs are at record levels and growing thanks to efforts done in these areas.

To increase first party games revenue and profitability they grew their teams, made acquisitions and are expanding to / growing in top genres, business models or platforms where their first party games weren't so big even if already have been there for decades: genres like shooters or platformers, multiplayer, GaaS, PC or mobile, in addition to popularize and further monetize their IPs in movies or tv shows.
 
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64bitmodels

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I bet if a doctor tells you that jumping off a bridge is good for your health, you'll run off to the closest enthusiastically. A doctor would know, right?
No, but if you were to give advice to that doctor on why jumping off a bridge is bad, we'd assume you have some experience working in the medical field
 

Old Gamer

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No, but if you were to give advice to that doctor on why jumping off a bridge is bad, we'd assume you have some experience working in the medical field
Of course, only a health expert should determine whether jumping off a bridge could be harmful. Heaven forbid the luxury of common sense.
 
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Gediminas

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Hermen is the CEO and has been for several months. He had the call to cancel or delay and didn't despite the entire market giving them feedback over a year that they weren't interested in the product.
Maybe he is half ceo, but remember, the company approached, valued and bought by Playstation, and who was Studio Head from 2019?
 

Yurinka

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He's talking about going third party.

Microsoft-Sony-Kooperation-Yoshida-Nadella-640x336.jpg
That partnership with MS was totally unrelated to game development or game publishing, even less to publish Sony games on Xbox.

It was to rent MS datacenters (this is, buildings optimized to have a lot of servers) to store Sony servers and to make joint research and development on AI, semiconductors, image sensors and (not only for gaming) cloud, as was the case of the Sony car.

https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-microsoft-to-explore-strategic-partnership/

Regarding the article in the OP, absolutely nothing says or even hints that they will stop being 1st party in gaming or that they plan to bring their games (other than the already known Bungie + MLB exceptions) to Xbox. It talks about the strategy that the whole Sony (not only gaming) has since some years ago, there's nothing new in the article.
 
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Neversummer

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And what if none of the original studios want to work on their old IP again? PlayStation doesn't have any more studios that can work on decade old IP and not feel out of place.
You force them. You say Suckerpunch work on a new inFAMOUS, doesn’t have to be the main team but crate a inFAMOUS team & hire 100 devs to make a inFAMOUS 3 featuring Cole as the main character.

Not sure why the studios can’t create a 2nd or 3rd team literally Insomniac does this. You go to Naughty Dog & say hey create a uncharted team & a jak & daxter team uncharted team has 100+ devs for a AAA game & the jak & daxter team has 50 & focus on AA games. Maybe even look at licensing ip to 3rd party to get spin off games & try to get an annualized to by yearly cadence of games from these franchise. These games from beloved franchise are easy money maker & safe bets
 
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Neversummer

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Because the cost of making their AAA 1st party games more than doubles every generation and their revenue (price x units sold + addons) -even if grows- doesn't grow at the same pace. At the current point the investment they take is so fucking huge and the units sold needed to make them profitable is gettin too high.

So they have to increase their revenue and profitability first to reduce the risk of investing hundreds of millions per game and second to make easier/more likely profitability in the long term. And considering that the console market is finite and they already are growing fast their console market share and increasing ARPU to record levels, they still need to expand their audience to reach new players in other platforms.

Even more in the context where unlike in all the previous generations the hardware components of the console instead of decreasing over time, allowing to sell the hardware at a profit in the 2nd half of the generation, the costs kept increasing increases the loses generated by selling hardware. So they have to find extra profitability in the other areas to compensate it.

PS revenue from 3rd parties, accesories or game subs are at record levels and growing thanks to efforts done in these areas.

To increase first party games revenue and profitability they grew their teams, made acquisitions and are expanding to / growing in top genres, business models or platforms where their first party games weren't so big even if already have been there for decades: genres like shooters or platformers, multiplayer, GaaS, PC or mobile, in addition to popularize and further monetize their IPs in movies or tv shows.
I like how people say AAA games budget increases per gen yet somehow ignore how they can be maintained & kept the same if not shrink budget while remaining quality.

Spider-Man 2 has a budget of 300 million most of that likely $50 million being promotion + licensing. You removed all of that trash Mary Jane parts + the woke bs mission/clear focus on agenda + don’t make a side multiplayer game & pc port on the side & you would’ve ship SM2 much earlier cutting of 6 month easily that brings that game under 200 million which is really great considering the game will sell 15-20 million making over 1 billion in profits/revenue. The only issue w AAA games aren’t the budget but unnecessary bloat + how long they take which co inside with each other.
 

Yurinka

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I like how people say AAA games budget increases per gen yet somehow ignore how they can be maintained & kept the same if not shrink budget while remaining quality.

Spider-Man 2 has a budget of 300 million most of that likely $50 million being promotion + licensing. You removed all of that trash Mary Jane parts + the woke bs mission/clear focus on agenda + don’t make a side multiplayer game & pc port on the side & you would’ve ship SM2 much earlier cutting of 6 month easily that brings that game under 200 million which is really great considering the game will sell 15-20 million making over 1 billion in profits/revenue. The only issue w AAA games aren’t the budget but unnecessary bloat + how long they take which co inside with each other.
Yes, they could continue making games looking like early PS4 games with the same features and size and don't add anything new but it is not the case.

They highly improve the visuals and add way more models, animations, features, mission types, attacks, costumes, voice acting, etc. and that costs money. And they are way more detailed, so that costs more money. They add all this because it's what people wants and sells and if not they complain about it. And well, to these extra costs you have to add the plus the inflation on top.

Inflation that makes the $60 (this gen $70) of each copy sold to really be less money than the $60 were when PS4 or PS3 were released. So, even if they could keep the costs the same, they'd still have to increase the sales because the prices of the games don't increase to be updated with inflation.
 

Yurinka

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You force them. You say Suckerpunch work on a new inFAMOUS, doesn’t have to be the main team but crate a inFAMOUS team & hire 100 devs to make a inFAMOUS 3 featuring Cole as the main character.
GoT sold way more, so if they only have a team the sequel they'd forced

Not sure why the studios can’t create a 2nd or 3rd team literally Insomniac does this.
Because each project costs hundreds of millions and money doesn't grow in tress.

To create a 2nd and 3rd team means more than to double or triple the costs (management and workflow gets bigger and more complex with multiple teams).

Let's say GoT did cost 150M and GoT will cost 250M because of the normal increase every generation, inflation etc. Adding two teams more would mean to grow from 150M to more than 750M instead. The increase is crazy.

In recent years they did that growth in PD, ND, Guerrilla, SSM, Firesprite and Bungie. Plus acquired several lead dev teams and support teams and also increased investment in 2nd party and 3rd party exclusives.

As Totoki said, they increased their costs a ton but these investments still haven't shown its results as the revenue/profits. So they took a pause on the growth and make also some cuts to improve profitability until many of the projects from that previous growth get released.

I think around 2026 they'll start to go back to acquire and also to grow internal teams to put them making 3 games at the same time. This time Sucker Punch, Bend, Housemarque, Asobi and Bluepoint (the 3 teams for Bluepoint would be a game in support role, a game leaded by them and a remake).

I think they'll try to fix Concord and rerelease it but once they notice isn't possible they'll merge Firewalk into Bungie firing some people in the process (they are in the same city and many workers are ex-Bungie).

tf is a DEI character? Your brains are so broken
In the past the main game characters were designed to appeal mainly the main demographics of the submarket/niche of that game genre/subgenre in that platform.

The idea was basically trying to make games/characters that people who normally buy that type of game were going to like.

Competitive shooters, tactical shooters, eSports have a population over 90%-95% of males, mostly from Europe and specially North America. Meaning, looking at statistics most of them are white and heterosexual. Regarding age, shooter players typically are around 20-40 years old.

So basically in this type of game the average player is a white, heterosexual young adult male from NA or EU.

Like anyone, they prefer attractive and charismatic characters, an idealistic projection of themselves as avatars, specially being a power fantasy game, they want mostly muscular (and mostly white) male characters as main characters and regarding female they -like everybody- like attractive females and prefer them over ugly, fat, old and androginous females.

The problem is that the whole and only point of DEI is to replace/remove -with the excuse of adding "diversity" and "representation" males, white and heterosexual people, if possible totally with people of the other skin colors, other sexual preferences, other sexual genders (non-binary ones if possible), etc.

And also characters -particularly female ones- who are attractive specially for heterosexual people, because according to them men getting attracted by females and viceversa is something bad that has to be removed and replaced by "trans friendly" characters with different body shapes different than the attractive for the heterosexual people.

So all the characters added to fill these checklists instead of to appeal the target user would be the DEI characters: non-white, non-heterosexual, not male/hot female.

This means all the non-robot Concord characters are DEI characters with the exception of Teo (at least for Europe, since most Europeans consider the people light tan / with origins from the latin / mediterrean countries as white).
 
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Men_in_Boxes

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Good.

Most of their GAAS projects are new IP. They're betting big in the right area. This is the future. This is the way.