What would it take for y'all to be ok with PlayStation on PC?

Polyh3dron

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31 Jan 2024
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I hate to think I'm the sucker that paid $70 while someone with a RTX4090 gets to play an improved version for free on day one.

It's the same way I feel about paying for a game that is on Gamepass/PS+.
Do you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat yelling out “PIIIIIIIIRATESSSS!”?

Why do you think all the people who pirate PC games are running top spec builds with RTX 4090s when it’s far more likely that they are running a 1660 or something even weaker, in some far flung poor country who would’ve never bought the game if it wasn’t available as a cracked pirate download to begin with? When you incessantly depict this theoretical hellscape scenario of the typical PC gamer spending tens of thousands on their expensive top end hardware just to turn around and pirate all their software it’s like how Ronald Reagan used to talk about his welfare queens.
 
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rinzler

rinzler

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Lol the fact that you have to bring up Microsoft imaginary "success" shows how stupid putting games on PC is and shows you have an agenda. Xbox is too ashamed to ever say how much their games have sold, because they all flop, PC isn't a viable market for 95% of AAA games. Never has been and never will be.

Xbox fanboys always expose themselves😂


How are they worth it? They can barely do 1/10th the sales they do on consoles in the same amount of time, magically putting them there day 1 isn't going to change that. It'll only make development worse and result in worse products in the end. Stop lying to yourself, you just want to see the death of PlayStation
None of their games have failed on PC as far as I'm aware and their console seems to be doing about as well as it did the previous generation so that's a big oof on your part.

Oh you're one of those people lmao. I mention Microsoft as a direct counter example AS IT'S THE ONLY ONE and your fanatical insecurity rears its head.

Grow up.
 
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BroodCorp

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28 May 2023
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A lot of us haven’t invested in PC gaming. I’m in this for the PlayStation console experience. It feels like they’re hedging their bets which as a consumer does not interest me.
 
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Nhomnhom

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25 Mar 2023
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Do you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat yelling out “PIIIIIIIIRATESSSS!”?

Why do you think all the people who pirate PC games are running top spec builds with RTX 4090s when it’s far more likely that they are running a 1660 or something even weaker, in some far flung poor country who would’ve never bought the game if it wasn’t available as a cracked pirate download to begin with? When you incessantly depict this theoretical hellscape scenario of the typical PC gamer spending tens of thousands on their expensive top end hardware just to turn around and pirate all their software it’s like how Ronald Reagan used to talk about his welfare queens.
Why does this bother you so much? Denuvo would solve the piracy issue for their single player games why do you want piracy to be easy and there on day one?
 

klomzi

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8 Mar 2024
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A PS Store on PC is not happening and if it does, it will be dead and if games are exclusive to it, sales will be dead.

Sony games on PC aren't the unicorns some people believe they are. Playstation is yet another publisher putting their games on Steam.

Sony that can't even make a good enough console storefront won't make a good PC storefront.
 
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rinzler

rinzler

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Why does this bother you so much? Denuvo would solve the piracy issue for their single player games why do you want piracy to be easy and there on day one?
I will never understand the anti-denuvo propaganda, it does literally nothing unless you have a very low end system.
 
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P.S. Xbox suicided itself with bad games and GamePass, not PC releases.

No, you have to stop this. PC Day 1 was ABSOLUTELY a factor in diminishing Xbox console's value proposition to many gamers, denying that is lunacy. It was not the ONLY factor, but it was a key one.

When Phil Spencer went on X-Cast last year and complained about Xbox struggling to find an identity, what do you think he really wanted to say out loud? Yeah he tried blaming Sony & Nintendo having exclusives as part of that, but it doesn't take a quantum physicist to realize that an Xbox having no exclusives was his roundabout point. And what is something MS themselves have done to diminish exclusives for Xbox? Doing Day 1 on PC for all of their games.

The lack of any genuine 1P exclusives for Xbox is at least 25% part of the problems with the console's market performance today. In fact you can run down the list of factors:

1: Day 1 PC for all 1P games/PC port windows too short (25%)​
2: Lack of big mainstream quality 1P & 3P exclusives for several years (25%)​
3: Lack of global regional focuses (15%)​
4: Lack of long-term 3P partnerships (10%)​
5: Bad traditional marketing & messaging (15%)​
6: Underperforming specs (10%)​

Now let's say all of these problems existing at once could sink lifetime sales by 50% or more gen-over-gen.

I'm actually going to test this with previous consoles from other companies:

SEGA

MegaDrive (28 million LTD) to Saturn (~ 10 million LTD). 65% drop gen-over-gen. Which of the 6 factors above did Saturn suffer from?

Answer: #s 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (75%). Reduces some b/c of great Japanese region focus (-5%) and having a few (very few) big mainstream 1P releases in select regions like VF in Japan (-5%). So from 75% to 65%.

NINTENDO

SNES (49 million LTD) to N64 (35 million LTD). ~ 25% drop gen-over-gen. Which of the 6 factors above did N64 suffer from?

Answer: #s 3, 4 and 6 (35%). Reduces some b/c N64 had really strong regional focus in the U.S (-5%), and some strong traditional marketing & messaging in US & parts of Europe (-5%). So from 35% to 25%

N64 (35 million LTD) to Gamecube (21 million). 40% drop gen-over-gen. Which of the 6 factors did Gamecube suffer from?

Answer: #s 3, 4 and 5 (40%)

Wii (100 million LTD) to Wii U (15 million). 85% drop gen-over-gen. Which of the 6 factors did Wii U suffer from?

Answer: #s 3, 4, 5 and 6 (50%). Obviously this one's a bit of an outlier, since PC isn't a factor here at all, and it did have some big-selling 1P games like Smash Bros., Mario Kart & 3D World.

However, none of those games did anything to move hardware, so #2 can be applied as (+10%); Wii U's specs weren't just underperforming, they were a whole generation behind and it didn't work this time like with the Wii, so $ 6 can be applied with an additional (+10%). 3P basically abandoned Nintendo with Wii U so that's another (+5%), and the messaging was just terrible, so that could be another (+10%).

Brings it up from 50% to 85%

MICROSOFT

Microsoft is harder to apply this to because they have two back-to-back generations that are largely similar in terms of mistakes, and I'm sure to a lot of casuals are seen as part of the same generation due to naming and marketing conventions. So I'll be treating XBO and XBS as a "rolling generation", but not wherein XBO & XBS numbers are cumulative.

Instead I'll compare them both to the Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 (85.7 million) to Xbox One (~ 58 million). ~30% drop gen-over-gen. However some XBO estimates put it closer to ~ 50 million, which would be an ~40% drop gen-over-gen. Which of the 6 factors did XBO suffer from?

Answer: #s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. However, there are some caveats. The first 2-3 years did have some high-profile 1P/3P exclusives, so #2 can probably be reduced to (10%).
MS didn't do Day 1 PC for all games until late 2019/2020, but the pattern of ports was already being established before then. So instead of (25%) that one can probably be closer to (10%). XBO did well in US & UK, so it didn't bomb in every global market. We can probably reduce #3 to 10%.

As far as 3P partnerships, MS did have some last gen like EA (TitanFall), the Cuphead devs, Moon Studio, Bandai-Namco (Elden Ring reveal), and a few others. So that one can probably be reduced to 5%. While it did have bad traditional marketing & messaging, MS abused use of astroturfing and grassroots messaging & marketing to make up for that among hardcore & core enthusiasts, so I think that can reduce down to 5%. And for underperforming specs, that was kind of resolved with the One X mid-gen upgrade, so I'd reduce that to 5%.

So it goes from 100% to 45%. I could reduce some of the percentages again but I've been trying to stick with 5% increments here.

And now...

Xbox 360 (85.7 million) to XBS (at current trajectory, lucky to hit 43 million by EOY 2027). ~50% drop from brand peak. Which of the 6 factors does XBS suffer from?

Answer: #s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Similar to XBO though, there are caveats. Day 1 for PC is a full contributing factor, so that amount stays the same. MS have had some big releases the past few years, like Gears 5 Hivebusters, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite and, after acquiring Zenimax, games like Starfield. The problem is that many of these either underperformed with critics & gamers, or they are not "actual" exclusives since they're also on PC from Day 1. However I'd reduce this to 10% because of those factors.

Regional focus globally has been terrible, even in once-strong markets like US & UK, but it could be worst, so I'd reduce this to (10%). Traditional marketing/messaging is weak, but during the pandemic aspects of their offering (particularly Series S & Game Pass) did pan out well, plus again they have heavy shill/astroturfing presence that balances out a lot of the lacking traditional marketing/messaging, so I'd reduce this to (5%). Lack of long-term 3P relationships has definitely hurt the console, but considering MS acquired to massive 3P publishers to heavily offset that (not to mention purchased other studios prior), I don't really see this being an issue for them, until it manifests that these acquisitions can't put out a steady amount of quality content.

The double-edged sword there being, even if they do, NOW that they're focusing on a multiplatform strategy, the console won't really benefit much from it anyway! As for underperforming specs, I think that mostly comes down to how you'd feel about the Series S. Most were not expecting Series X to curbstomp the PS5 just because of 2 extra TF and more memory bandwidth (because that bandwidth is segmented). Overall between multiplats it and PS5 have been about even, with a good number of small wins for PS5 and some small wins for Series X.

However, the deficits between them in those wins is nowhere near as pronounced as the PS4's regular wins over the XBO. It's also arguable that many situations where Series X underperformed are due to the Series S, but that system was intentionally developed to be lower-powered in the first place. I don't think its target demo cares if it's coming up a bit short of early marketing fluff, so I don't think "underperforming specs" is a factor here. If so, at best it's (5%), and you can probably shave off 5% from one of the others to balance this out.

----------------

So ending this, yes Day 1 on PC is not the only factor for the decline in Xbox console hardware sales, but it is a factor, and strongly so in the case of Xbox Series. Now, if Sony did Day 1 for all games on PC but didn't skimp on the other five things mentioned above, then I suppose one way of looking at that is they'd only see lifetime sales drop by up to 25%. But the question is, 25% from which? From the PS4 (120 million > 90 million), or the PS3 (90 million > 67.5 - 76.5 million) , or the PS2 or the PS1?

The reason I used gen-over-gen for the non-MS systems but switch to 'brand peak' for Xbox, is because both Sony and Nintendo have shown heavy sea-sawing at times but mostly seem stable at a given number of 100+ million per generation. Their performance from one gen can be directly compared to the gen before.

Microsoft are similar to SEGA, in that they've now had back-to-back gens of decline, but where I feel the decline rate for the last/current console doesn't reflect the actual timing of impactful decisions that led to brand rot. Most of the bad Xbox decisions MS made affecting Series were actually set in place in the last years of the XBO, and XBS saw an artificial jump in sales due to the pandemic plus scant supply of not only PS5s but PS4s as well. If it weren't for the pandemic Series'd probably be at least 5 million behind where it currently is. However, IF some of the moves Microsoft have made since 2020 prove fruitful, that could explain any uptick in console sales bucking the gen-over-gen drops I could try gauging with this method.

Though really, none of those moves will have a notable impact on console sales, since Microsoft seem to be prioritizing non-Xbox consoles aggressively going forward, plus again, every game is still Day 1 on PC now. Back to SEGA, while Dreamcast sold slightly less than Saturn, it also did about as well as Saturn in a shorter amount of time. 26 months for Dreamcast vs. 48+ months for Saturn.

So I'd say with Dreamcast, SEGA were actually showing a positive trajectory in console sales, meaning a lot of the problems they made with Saturn were corrected with decisions they made for Dreamcast. The only problem is that Dreamcast sales weren't fast enough for their targets, not that it wasn't selling. SEGA had internal targets for Dreamcast where it needed to be doing more than 100% better than Saturn launch-aligned, and it wasn't hitting those targets. That's why Dreamcast was ultimately their last console.
 
24 Jun 2022
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I will say Valve has done such a good and competent job with the SteamDeck that it's basically indiscernable from a console.

And yet it's selling about as well as a SEGA Saturn, going by that logic.

Just stick to calling it a handheld PC. That makes the numbers look significantly stronger for what they are.
 
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flaccidsnake

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And yet it's selling about as well as a SEGA Saturn, going by that logic.

Just stick to calling it a handheld PC. That makes the numbers look significantly stronger for what they are.
it doesn't matter how it's selling. it doesn't need special developer support. there's one library that reaches everybody no matter what hardware they're using. 34M concurrent players!
 
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rinzler

rinzler

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And yet it's selling about as well as a SEGA Saturn, going by that logic.

Just stick to calling it a handheld PC. That makes the numbers look significantly stronger for what they are.
Relative to its competition in the market it's gutting them, and the reason is SteamOS and its console like simplicity.
 
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it doesn't matter how it's selling. it doesn't need special developer support. there's one library that reaches everybody no matter what hardware they're using. 34M concurrent players!

And barely that many actually buying games and content off the storefront on a regular basis 😲.

Also AFAIK you can't access Steam on an iPhone or Android device, or any of the consoles for that matter. So no it's not one library reaching everyone regardless of hardware unless that hardware is a Windows-based PC (vast majority of Steam users aren't playing on Linux).

Relative to its competition in the market it's gutting them, and the reason is SteamOS and its console like simplicity.

It's not a console though, it's a handheld PC. You call it a console and sales-wise it only compares to lower-selling SEGA and NEC systems from the past. Of course sales don't mean everything but saying something's "practically a console" means on some level install base matters.

And for a "console", Steam Deck's install base is not good enough. But I'm not saying it's a console :/.
 
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rinzler

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And barely that many actually buying games and content off the storefront on a regular basis 😲.

Also AFAIK you can't access Steam on an iPhone or Android device, or any of the consoles for that matter. So no it's not one library reaching everyone regardless of hardware unless that hardware is a Windows-based PC (vast majority of Steam users aren't playing on Linux).



It's not a console though, it's a handheld PC. You call it a console and sales-wise it only compares to lower-selling SEGA and NEC systems from the past. Of course sales don't mean everything but saying something's "practically a console" means on some level install base matters.

And for a "console", Steam Deck's install base is not good enough. But I'm not saying it's a console :/.
I never called it a console I said and I quote "it's basically indiscernable from a console" in relation to the competency of its engineering and function.
 
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flaccidsnake

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And barely that many actually buying games and content off the storefront on a regular basis 😲.

Also AFAIK you can't access Steam on an iPhone or Android device, or any of the consoles for that matter. So no it's not one library reaching everyone regardless of hardware unless that hardware is a Windows-based PC (vast majority of Steam users aren't playing on Linux).
football touchdown GIF by The Undefeated


blatantly false. playstation isn't proactively porting their games to PC because nobody buys them. Steam is the largest gaming platform in the world.

again it doesn't matter who's running linux and who's running windows. they both play the same game library. as a user you don't have to care which kernel is running under the hood.
 
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Fenton

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I am ok with it because it doesn't matter to Sony if I bitch and cry about it....so why should I waste my time 😂
 
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