As of now, PS5 sales are skyrocketing after solving the chips shortage and will outsell launch aligned PS4.
And a 30% of their PS5 users are new, didn't have a PS4. Meaning that like in every generation they may have new users and may lose other ones, but now in total they are growing with a big flow of new users.
These users interested on these type of game could come from Xbox or PC, but according to MS Xbox is getting better numbers than in the previous generation, meaning that most of the new PS5 users come from PC.
TBF, Microsoft's metrics for having better numbers compared to last gen don't necessarily bare out if just talking unit sales. They could be talking about a temporary period where they were selling ahead of 360 & XBO launch-aligned, or talking in terms of pure revenue. At which point, we have to ask how much is the Zenimax revenue being rolled into Xbox's boosting those numbers, so on and so forth.
But on the PlayStation side of things, you're right that sales have shot up significantly now that supply is being sorted out. I've never once doubted that would happen or that they'd exceed PS4 launch-aligned once that happened. Though I'm still waiting to say it's going to hit PS2 numbers when all is said and done; PS2 partly benefited from PS3's early slow sales, but on the flipside, this gen might run slightly longer due to the pandemic effects, so PS5 will probably have at least one extra year for itself compared to PS4, and if sales track ahead of PS4 for this fiscal year coming and for multiple ones by a notable margin, they could certainly outdo PS2 lifetime either before PS6 releases or by the first year or so PS6 is available.
Maybe. I'm still thinking PS5 lifetime will be somewhere between PS4 and PS2, but trend closer to the PS4 side. So, more than PS4, but less than 137 million.
Maybe they are moving to console because the recent PC GPU price are too fucking expensive and the games don't take advantage of their horsepower. Or because they had a tast of Sony's exclusives and want to play ALL the other ones and not only the few ones ported late.
I can see the PC GPU situation being a main reason; most PC gamers don't even have those expensive GPUs or the CPUs & motherboards to power them. Most are on cheap integrated Intel or AMD graphics. If they want an affordable upgrade to a more modern console-like experience, why not just actually buy a console?
Because I doubt the majority of PC gamers want to bother with messing around with drivers and changing a suite of settings per game to get optimal performance, or managing system resources in the background through Task Manager. So that increases appeal for a console to them, considering you don't get THAT much more in performance with a powerful CPU/GPU for modern games (unless you are a very competitive eSports player, but at that point you aren't talking about graphically intensive games so much as framerate-heavy games that require high refresh rates).
I think if it's also to some notable degree, Sony having games on PC attracting users there to pick up a PS5, that bodes well for a more measured PC strategy. It means even though they may be getting some extra revenue off PC sales, PC is mainly acting as an advertising space and once they convert PC gamers over to PlayStation, they can scale back on certain ports until they feel a need to get more to convert. It can happen in phases, more or less. The money they would lose on scaling back specific PC releases is made up for in having new customers on the console buying the 1P games there, picking up a sub, buying 3P software and so forth.
Seeing their Wipeout and Sackboy games for mobile they aren't simply porting them. Sure, they'll end having the PS+ cloud gaming streaming in mobile and maybe some game will be ported directly but seems that their mobile games seems are going to be in most cases game designed specifically as separate games for mobile.
At least, those are their plans for now. And it makes sense the mobile games are specifically designed for that audience, as they have a different taste in games and spending. But if baseline design scope ambitions grow for them and those games can maybe be a decent fit to also bring to the console as bonus content in PS+, then I don't see why they wouldn't explore the possibility.
Regarding PC, big SP AAA games are working great but very likely their new take on GaaS MP titles will work better both in console and PC. Maybe even a few of these GaaS MP titles may be more PC oriented, like MMORPG for Asian market typical from PC: the rumored Horizon title from that Korean company sounded like that.
Yeah, and what I'm saying in this regard is if they can get some live-service GaaS titles specifically tuned for the PC audience and be big revenue generators, that puts less reliance on needing to port the marquee AAA SP games in general, let alone risk shortening porting windows. And IMO that helps add perceived value to the console and its content, at the end of the day.
Sony prioritizes and will continue prioritizing PS, which is by far their main market. And inside their 1st party games their priority aren't GaaS, are the SP AAA games instead.
Some of their GaaS will be ported to PC, not all. And some of them will be released on PC (like the Bungie ones and potentially some day MLB) and others not (like Dreams, PS Destruction All Star, GT7 or -until now- MLB).
The odd thing here for me is that something like Dreams actually WOULD be a strong fit for a PC port, at least in theory. But personally I'd rather them prioritize adding functions for PS5 & PSVR2, and opening up the ability to secure a license for selling your own games & content created with the program through a marketplace. There are probably a lot of creators who have been wanting it for a while, so hopefully it's on the way.
Plague of Tale is a small game compared to the big Sony AAA games, which are selling over 15-20M with a single console plus at least a handful million each on PC.
Yeah but after the success of Sony's games on PC you'd think Plague Tale Requiem would've moved more than it did. It's got a lot of the similar story-driven flavor, so is the audience for that on PC really in it for the genre or just for Sony's offerings in particular? And if the latter, what's the actual size of that audience?
Returnal and Sackboy are smaller niche games compared to GoW or TLOU. Compared to PS, Returnal fits better with the Steam audience, while Sackboy fits worse than in PS.
Dunno about that take on Sackboy; 3D platformers don't do too bad on Steam. It Takes Two did pretty well IIRC. I still think it was a victim of bad release timing.
Returnal was released when PS5 had a tiny userbase, and Steam has an insanely huge audience.
So Returnal should perform in PC way better than in PS and way better than Sackboy.
It'll be interesting to see how it does but I'm hoping it finds a big audience. I think a lot of the Soulsborne fans will probably take a liking to it, although it's scifi and not dark fantasy, and its challenge is a lot more on testing dexterity and movement, which is a bit different from the type of challenge Soulsborne games tend to focus on.
TLOU is a too old game like Uncharted 4, but got a more extensive update with the remake and now with the tv show bump I'd bet it will sell very well in PC as seen with Days Gone, Horizon, GoW or Spider-Man. Because also like them and unlike Uncharted 4, TLOU is the start of the story and with Uncharted they did a dumb move starting in PC with the last episode instead of with the first one.
They probably did that with Uncharted because they thought it'd be a tough sell to bring the first game or two to PC as simple remasters, and not do a remake for them. Dunno what their Uncharted plans for PC will be going forward; do know that if Uncharted 5 is in the works, that won't be hitting PC for a long while (or at least, in line with how I feel the porting strategy should go, it shouldn't).
