Sony: The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million to make. Horizon Forbidden West €220m.
- Thread starter John Elden Ring
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Square Enix and some of these other publishers wouldn’t even be in business right now if they didn’t have a major Live Service game to keep them afloat. The potential risks of live service don’t compare to the risks of not having one but there is also plenty of risks in having to invest well over 100 million dollars in single player games with short legs.
A game like Genshin or Apex makes TLOU money every 6 months, the cost of development is continually decreased and the money it continues to bring in continues to increase.
Sony being a major platform holder only having MLB and now Destiny, is money left on the table. They are the biggest platform holder with the most influence. If sony can’t drive an audience to at least one of their multiplayer games they are failing, especially with Bungie in their corner.
Now you know why Sony is porting stuff to PC. PC ports will fund new releases and keep the wheel moving. Virtuous cycle.
Yeah, I'm sure Sony has already accounted for that.
For example, a very simplistic version, Sony is investing 10 live-service games at $100 million each and a total cost of $1 billion. They expect 8 of those games to fail, but 2 of those games to be successful. Game #1 is expected to earn $1 billion, while Game #2 is expected to earn $500 million. So the total project revenue is expected to be $1.5 billion at a cost of $1 billion.
I believe that's their approach. And if game #3 also becomes a hit contrary to expectation, or game #1 or #2 becomes a bigger hit than initially projected, then PlayStation becomes extremely profitable.
Yeah, despite most peoples idea of what a “flop” constitutes, (closing servers after a year or two) those GAAS still make money so even the failures will generate revenue. There’s almost no reality where a they invest 1 billion into a set of games and leave without making double the amount, even if 5 of those games only survive for a short time.
Theres also the idea of GAAS continuing to exist but they just aren’t talked about every day. Its not like Fall Guys and Rocket League are the talk of the town but they still have their audience and they are still generating revenue. I assume sony is counting on a lot of games just being continual revenue generators on a medium scale
Lol, the puny sales from PC ain't going to save any game that doesn't make it's money back on consoles.
The Sony games that didn't do great on PS5 did drastically worse on PC.
The thing is the most likely scenario is all 10 failing or having moderate success at best. Now they are stuck with a bunch of studios following up a failed game or supporting a dud. The GaaS strategy comes directly from the MS playbook.
Do you actually want PlayStation to have a bunch of Goundeds, Sea of Thieves, Redfall and Bleeding Edges? I rather have a single Days Gone over all that.
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The price of a GaaS doesn't drop over time like Single Player games.
And what you rather isn't smart business wise. They still need a few games that will continously be bringing in profit every quarter instead of waiting on solely AAA games that are having longer and longer dev times.
The price of a GaaS doesn't drop over time like Single Player games.
We'll see what happens, pretty much every publisher has spent the last few years going all in on GaaS trying to create hits and very few succeeded in finding that type of success.
Games like Fairgame$ is precisely the type of game that misses completely.
We haven't even seen FairGame$... I probably won't like it but we really didn't see anything.
I don't play multiplayer GaaS games (except Rocket League), so this GaaS push does not necessarily benefit me. However, I understand the need for chasing this trend.
PlayStation does so many great things. It is the market leader and produces proper 10/10 AAA gangbusters. Yet, MiHoYo's last annual profit was 400% more than the entire PlayStation division.
That proves that there's something fundamentally wrong with the gaming industry. And you can't blame a company like PlayStation to want some of that pie.
Mihoyo made more profits than the PlayStation division in 2022. That was one of the reasons why Sony is currently chasing after GAAS games. Current AAA budget games aren't sustainable in the long run. Around 200 million for production budget alone, and we're looking at ~300 million dollars per game including marketing budget.