Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions
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Why do they need to own more WRPGs when all the main console WRPGs already are on PlayStation?
Games like Horizon, Star Wars KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Cyberpunk, Witcher, Assassin's Creed, GTA, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Deus EX, Borderlands, Disco Elysium, Warhammer and a long list of popular WRPGs of many different types including Japanese ones that are the basically same type of game (nowadays to use WRPG and JRPG is pretty stupid) like Dragon's Dogma, modern Final Fantasy, the From Soft stuff and a long etc.
They don't need to own them. But it wouldn't be bad to own some either and diversify their game portfolio
Some of those ips are not wrpgs. Assasins creed, GTA, Horizon, borderlands etc.
Well I can think of a good reason. There is no guarantee those games will remain on PlayStation if they are 3P, for starters. This doesn't even have to be because of consolidation; a 3P simply going bankrupt and the IP rights splintering to a dozen entities (like what happened to System Shock) could make that WRPG lost on PlayStation and other platforms, but since the topic is about PlayStation, I'll just stick to that.
The other, more obvious reason, is to combat against consolidation. You can break this down from the high-end (3P publishers) all the way down to the low-end (genre & specific IP). The truth is, because of the Zenimax acquisition, PlayStation doesn't get all the big WRPGs anymore: it's not getting the next Elder Scrolls. However you personally feel about the IP is besides the point. Elder Scrolls is a mainstay in the WRPG space and is the oldest one aside Wizardry and Ultima, both of which are no longer active. So it's more accurate to say Xbox is the platform now getting all the main WRPGs (there is no distinction between console & PC here because WRPGs as a genre proliferate on both platform types virtually 1:1), not PlayStation. And that's due to simply one IP now missing: The Elder Scrolls.
Another reason, that ties into consolidation, is in being able to use those types of games as variety spices to the 1P catalog which then entices people to pick up the console over competitors. You can never have enough of that type of 1P "variety spice", I don't care if your system is the default for 3P sales because we just established why that isn't always a guarantee. But beyond even that, and bringing up a chess analogy, it's also about having leverage against competitors. Why do you think companies like Microsoft went and acquired Zenimax and ABK in the first place? It's not just about (inorganically) growing Xbox's revenue; it's also about using those IP as leverage against competitors like Sony, and deterrents against would-be competitors like Google.
Using stuff like TES and COD as leverage lets companies like Microsoft attempt strong-arming conditions for themselves in dealings with competitors. It allows them to attempt cataloging with competitors in order to make it more expensive for them to get specific things they want out of the catalog (a technically anticompetitive practice BTW). It draws investor interest towards them and away from competition, which is already quite something considering how many more investors Microsoft have compared to companies like Sony (reflected in their market caps). And Xbox as a division is a direct beneficiary of it all.
You can list all of these games but doing so only shows you're looking at a current snapshot and not looking at the macro situation, nor what importance in having ownership of these type of IP as a platform holder can do in helping against competitors in the long-term.
I would agree, buy things to ensure that you don't lose them.
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Sony will guaranteed do one or more defensive buyouts. The argument “PlayStation gets these games regardless” is short minded and not thought through carefully. There is “no always”, if the partner gets bought. Prime example is Bethesda to this day proving it. 5 Heavy hitters which will miss PlayStation eventually: The Elder Scrolls VI, Fallout 5, Marvel Blade, Indiana Jones Game, next Doom. Even if some of you don’t play these type of games, bit millions would have done so on PS. It’s definitely a loss for Sony. That’s why they will finally do some counter measures in fiscal year 2024. Jim Ryan was against consolidation, and now he is finally gone. Interim CEO Totoki is very pro consolidating Intellectual Property. I am convinced they will buy a really big company based in Japan and one known company which is good at making WRPGs.
I agree with your overall point. At the same time, you can also say those games will now fail commercially by not being on PlayStation.
Avoiding consolidation would mean not being acquired by the big ones (Sony, Tencent, MS, EA etc). That includes not being acquired by Sony, too.
Also, being 3rd party means they can freely publish everywhere, the logical thing to do to maximize their revenue. Which wouldn't be logical at all would be -unless properly moneyhatted- leave their main market: PlayStation.
Even in the case of being acquired to MS makes sense to continue publishing on PS, as seen in Minecraft, CoD and so on. In the case of Zenimax, all their WRPG and their DLCs continue being released on PS with the exception -at least as of now, we'll see what happens in the future- Starfield, as we can see in Fallout 76 or ESO.
In any case, as I shown Zenimax nowadays represents a small portion of the RPG genre, and even the "WRPG" (definition that as of today doesn't make sense because there are wester devs making turn based rpgs and many Japanese devs making action -meanin non-turn based- rpgs, and because both mid and big western and Japanese games are nowadays on a big part developed on a big part by outsourcing teams from many Asian countries).
By listing these games I prove that almost all console WRPGs (and JRPGs) and their many different important devs are on PS and that the only one that as of now isn't there (and btw may end being ported in the future) is Starfield.
PS has a way bigger RPG support than Xbox and Switch. PS has been strenghtening their market share, making it more important for 3rd parties and even MS. So we'll see the rpg makers contiuing their PS support -excluding a few cases moneyhatted by Nintendo or MS, same as sometimes Sony does- and if something may see more cases of games skipping the Xbox version because their market would be too small for them.
There's no reason to be worried about lack of rpgs on PS, even if you cherrypick using the outdated WRPG label.
I'd have acquired QD and RaD, not sure about the other too but maybe yes.
Due to having many issues with the development of Journey (due to multiple delays they almost went bankrupt and the game almost got cancelled), most of the staff left thatgamecompany or had to be fired. Without Sony only did a mediocre mobile game (Sky).
Sony hired instead some of the key talent for other PS Studios teams, and also funded Stray (most of their key staff are former Quantic Dream and Ubisoft Montpellier/Paris devs), and also had deals with former ThatGameCompany talent (Abzu, etc).
Even if not acquired by Sony, future thatgamecompany or QD games will be on PS (see cases of Sky, Star Wars Eclipse and games published by QD).
I also think that some day Meta may realize some day that their bet on Metaverse and VR isn't worked as intended and may leave VR gaming, moment where they could sell RaD and Sanzaru to Sony. Or realizing that the VR gaming market is small and that their games are only a tiny portion of their own market, Oculus may release their games on PSVR2 to maximize revenue.
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There are levels to consolidation, and some have shown they are better at it than others. Sony is one of them. In a market where consolidation may be inevitable, I would prefer Sony to the other names mentioned, considering the results they've actually produced with teams they've both acquired and have built from the ground-up.
And that is the reality of it: the gaming market is in a stage of consolidation. So a company like Sony can't necessarily maintain the advantage they have now if they simply decide to stand at the sidelines. It doesn't mean they go tit for tat with these companies, or be reactionary. But they do have to assess their key interests and growth potentials, and secure them if those lie within any 3P studios or publishers.
Simply expecting to keep getting that support via being the defacto market leader is not a guarantee and you should know this.
As Microsoft themselves are showing us, "being available everywhere" does not inherently mean a substantial growth in sales. Hell, SIE themselves are showing this with the more recent PC ports, which have underperformed compared to the console versions of those games which in some cases are on a much smaller install base (PS5 vs. Steam).
You downplay that partnerships with platform holders via co-development, co-funding, marketing arrangements and just naturally having the majority of that audience already on said platform, can more than justify exclusivity in quite a lot of cases. If "being available everywhere" were the golden ticket to increasing revenue, Nintendo would be publishing their games on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam. But they aren't, and aren't bad off for avoiding such.
The difference, in that regard, between a 1P and a 3P is that the former have a platform (usually hardware) on the market which they support directly, and prioritize either exclusively or well beyond alternative platforms and/or storefronts. 3P do not have those priorities or considerations, but otherwise they are effectively similar to 1P. In fact some 3P have either at points been "larger" (in terms of revenue and market cap) than 1P platform holders, or not far off from a platform holder in market cap, or have software which generates way more revenue than any individual or most/all games combined from a platform holder do.
And, in some of those cases, that was WITH console exclusivity. Late '90s Squaresoft and Capcom were good examples of that, having a ton of PS1 exclusives which despite such, still garnered them more software sales and revenue than Sega during the same period. In some instances with software selling more than even Sony's in a given time period, who was also (obviously) a platform holder. MiHoYo generates more in revenue from Geshin Impact & Honkai Star Rail being PS console-exclusives, than MS's XGS releases have generated combined in B2P sales over the past 3 years. And, you can even throw some Zenimax games (post-acquisition) into that picture like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo.
"All their WRPGs" you're referring to are catalog/legacy releases which came to PS prior to the acquisition, and thus in some form MS feel compelled to honor the user base on that platform by bringing them additional DLC content. It says nothing about WRPGs releasing AFTER the acquisition which weren't on PlayStation prior, which is exactly the point you're dodging here.
It doesn't matter if Starfield comes to PS5 in the future; the point is it isn't on the platform today. You mention F'76 and ESO but ignore they are GaaS titles; the type of leverage for exclusivity we are talking here is dealing with traditional titles. It's been focused on that the entire time, so there's no need to bring non-traditional titles (which, again, were already on PS before the acquisition) into the discussion.
You're playing a game of quantity but that's a fake game. Back in the day there were tons of GTA clones...guess which one still represented the lions-share of that market in terms of cultural relevance, sales, revenue etc? It was GTA. None of the clones came close, that includes True Crime, The Getaway, that 50 Cent game, or even Saint's Row (which probably had the most success out of the clones, but still dwarfed by GTA).
It doesn't matter if Zenimax's WRPG output is just a small slice of the total number of games in that genre on the market. The fact is, TES as a brand name carries significantly more cache than most of the "randoms" you could list. Only titles like The Witcher really carry anything similar in brand name within that space (and the wider market) as TES, and that's a fact. Having big, well-known IP matters, as does having them tightly associated with your console brand. I criticized Microsoft on the lack of this years ago and I guess they had people who knew it well, hence the acquisitions of Zenimax and ABK (and, maybe some years from now, possibly another decently-sized publisher or two).
So they get it, I get it, many people here get it, I'm sure Sony gets it...you're the odd one out.
Again, you are too narrow-focused on this topic. You choose to only look at the current picture, but have no means of looking at the bigger one or the longer-term one.
That is one way to look at it and not necessarily wrong, but it also assumes that the status quo remain the same. Not just in terms of which consoles are selling what numbers, but that 3P publishers still prioritize B2P sales through the regular market versus preferring moneyhats, or to be acquired by yet larger companies (some of whom may be platform holders). It also assumes that platform holders who gain all these IP which can be used in the market as leverage, wish to "play fair" and feel they "need" the gaming revenue in order to bolster their bottom line or keep them financially afloat. Neither of which are the case for Xbox or Microsoft Gaming even, in the larger scope of Microsoft itself.
You see, Microsoft don't have any issue with foreclosure strategies of acquired assets in the console gaming space, because like I've said plenty times before, console gaming (and gaming in general) is a very small part of Microsoft's overall revenue and profit stream. They can afford those losses, if it means fulfilling a longer-term strategy. Which, we have seen them admit as such in the leaked emails and internal memos.
What they discussed in those weren't just "thought experiments"; not all of them, anyway. At least a good measure of it belayed their real goals and industry intentions; if they had no inklings towards achieving some of those things, they would not have engaged in discussing them whatsoever, not even as "thought experiments". Yet you continuously turn a blind eye to all of that, because of your blind faith in things playing out by what would be right and make the most "fair" sense in a market that assumes all players are equally wanting of the same thing and have equal amount of stakes in said market.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
There's nothing "outdated" with the WRPG label; acknowledging that RPGs from Western territories and RPGs from places like Japan have different cultural signifiers and tropes, influences, predominant histories & traditions etc. that they tend to draw from, which then influence aspects of the game design, is not "outdated". It's a way of respecting the differences while still regarding them as equals.
It's people who want to homogenize all the unique elements of gaming that you can generally apply to specific regions who are the "outdated" ones, IMHO.
@thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Stop posting so much, I can't keep up with likes.
All entirely true. The only way to ensure access in the future is to own the IP. No amount of loyalty will help when money comes knocking.
Stop posting so much, I can't keep up with likes.
All entirely true. The only way to ensure access in the future is to own the IP. No amount of loyalty will help when money comes knocking.
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OP
Bury that dream. Nobody is going to ever acquire TakeTwo. Activision sold because their prime is over. Call of Duty losing relevance, Crash and Spyro are dwindling in importance, Diablo is a mess…All sony needs is take two interactive
Anyway nobody is going to acquire them.
Yes, it's obvious that Sony has better team management than MS. And if people like Capcom, CD Project, Square, Ubi, Take 2, EA etc had to be sold as Sony fan I'd prefer Sony being the one who would get them.
But in terms of consolidation and competition it isn't the same when the one making a big acquisition is the market leader vs the one making it being the last one in the race.
Yes, they can. MS spend almost $100B in acquisitions since Minecraft and Sony is in better position now than before the Minecraft acquisition.
This is becase the companies acquired by MS represent a tiny % of the market. And Sony managed to grow more than them by focusing on organical growth instead on in big acquisitions.
Yes, and Sony acquired focusing on their key interests and growth potentials. Their main growth potential for them was in GaaS, multiplayer, PC, mobile and eSports, on top of the usual Sony stuff of acquiring long time partners who worked with them in the typical 2nd party games, plus support teams because nowadays games need way more manpower. So they invested there.
This, combined with aggresive hirings for their existing teams to allow them work in more games at the same time and to release them faster is their main strategy to grow. Plus also strategically invested in key companies as Epic, Devolver, From, Kadokawa, etc.
The bigger market share they have, the more chances are that publishers will want to publish there. Even other platform holders. This is the only reason of why PS has more 3rd party support than Xbox and Nintendo combined, and why MS, Sony and Nintendo (and all the other publishers) have been expanding to mobile. And why all publishers -with the exception of (as of now) Nintendo- also expanded to PC.
If Sony keeps enlarging their market share MS will surrender and will go full 3rd party abandoning Xbox and their exclusives. More and more companies will stop supporting Xbox and it will be more and more expensive the moneyhats for MS.
Yes, means going full 3rd party publishing in all platforms because they realized this makes more money than only publishing on a console nobody buys. This is the reason of why CoD will continue on PS and why the ABK games will be in all game subs who will want to get them (including the Sony one).
And guess what, only games published on the PSN sture can be included in PS Plus Premium, which means that if Sony gets the ABK games for the sub is because they also will be on PSN for the last 15 years. Meaning, MS plans to continue releasing all the ABK console games on PS for the next 15 years.
Bullshit, they didn't underperform.
They only missed a target for a little because Returnal and TLOU got delayed to the very end of the fiscal year, so most of their sales were in the current one. And for that reason this H1 they had a 50% YoY increase.
PC ports are generating them hundreds of millions per year with a huge growth. And obviusly, a full priced port of a 2-10 years old will sell less than a day one release, nobody sane would expect the same sales than in console. Even if in the long term all the big sellers are selling millions of copies on PC.
No, I don't. Sony has more 2nd party deals than MS, more 3P excluvity deals of all kinds than MS, more marketing deals with 3P than MS. I think they are important because most of the game sales are 3P, not 1P.
On top of that, there are many companies -like many Japanese publishers that aren't very big- who see that their sales on Xbox suck and prefer to release only on PS because their sales are there. Just because of common sense, no moneyhat needed.
Nintendo doesn't need it because their huge amount of fans buy any underpowered and overpriced stuff they make and any overpriced games they make. Which results on a great profit margin.
Also, the game budgets aren't insanely high as are the big AAA games from the AAA publishers, plus they have a ton of cash, so they have less pressure to grow.
The difference between 1P and 3P is that 1P is when the publisher is the platform maker. In both cases 1P and 3P what they search is the biggest amount of profit and specially revenue (and related growth) possible.
I'm talking about their catalog AFTER the acquisition. The only published WRPG game or DLC console exclusive (as of now, could end being timed) on Xbox is Starfield.
They continue releasing the DLCs of Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, (and also Doom Eternal, Minecraft etc.) on PS.
And well the impact of Starfield being console exclusive has been zero, PS highly outsould Xbox as usual, or even more the month it released. Because guess what, most people didn't give a fuck about Starfield. And most of the ones who did it already had GP and didn't even buy the game or even a console to play it.
Yes, they are GaaS. Like Halo Infinite, Forza Motorsport, Minecraft or Starfield.
GTAV sold in 10 years 190 million copies. In this decade there has been maybe an average of around 4-6 open world games per year from Ubi, Sony or others who sold 10-20M+, meaning 40-120M+ copies of these other open world per year and around 400-1200M for the decade even if individually there is a huge diggerence. Meaning, even if GTA broke all the -non Minecraft- records, it wasn't the lion share of the market.
In a way smaller scale, before GTAV the difference was bigger.
Yes, it matters. Because Starfield being exclusive didn't affect a shit in the console wars. It only mean that MS left a ton of money on the table of the PS copies they didn't sell.
Meanwhile, people had games in PS like FFXVI, Baldur's Gate 3, Spider-Man 2 and all the multis.
So for you Sea of Stars is a JRPG or not? It has all the tropes, combat type etc. of the JRPGs but is made in Quebec.
And Elden Ring? And Lords of the Fallen? The are the same type of game, but one is made in Japan and the other mostly in Spain. Plus both had outsourcing teams from many -non Japanese- Asian countries. And both are RPGs but none of them have the typical tropes of JRPGs.
We're no longer in the SNES days. The WRPG and JRPG labels don't make sense anymore. Makes more sense to use other labels for RPG subgenres like Souls-like or turn-based RPGs etc.
Final Fantasy XVI, Other Square Enix Titles May Never Make It to Xbox, as Sony Exclusivity Is Going to Get Much Worse
Final Fantasy XVI and other Square Enix titles may never make it to Xbox consoles, as Sony exclusivity is going to get much worse, according to rumors
t.co
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Guys look at this.
Square Enix received apparently to a report the PS5 Pro devkits even before Sony’s own 1st party studios
2024 will be the year where Sony will announce the buyout of Square Enix.
Square Enix received apparently to a report the PS5 Pro devkits even before Sony’s own 1st party studios
2024 will be the year where Sony will announce the buyout of Square Enix.
Guys look at this.
Square Enix received apparently to a report the PS5 Pro devkits even before Sony’s own 1st party studios
2024 will be the year where Sony will announce the buyout of Square Enix.
Alex Smith doesn't actually know anything unfortunately.
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He says it’s from the guys who are leaking the PS5 Pro specs and infos…