With success of Helldivers Sony can't let Arrowhead remain independent |UP| Rumor of acquisition is unsubstantiated as per Arrowhead. 10 mil sales?
- Thread starter Etifilio
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Even super profitable 3Ps like Riot and T2 are doing layoffs (Strauss Zelnick alluded to future layoffs in newest T2 investors call), 3 trillion dollar Microsoft is taking a machete to their acquired companies, there's a video gaming recession happening and I don't think Sony is immune from it.
I believe we are already at %60 of last year's total layoffs in just 2 months!
I think that is the beauty of a closed platform, being totally insulated or mostly insulated from the wider economic woes.
The third parties are going to be a lot more exposed...imo
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i 100% agree, they need one game every quarter, 4 AAA games per year, the only way to achieve this is by buying more studios
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well, i don't see them massivly laying off people despite everything that's going on
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just surpassed 78k and growing, will probably reach 100kSo far, it's too early to make any proper sales estimate via user reviews.
But regarding Steam CCU all time peak (Helldivers 2 will grow more this weekend, pretty likely will become top 1 specially if they fix the PS specific issues asap):
It's right now top 1 in Steam top sellers:
- Helldivers II: 76,580
- God of War: 73,529
- Spider-Man Remastered: 66,436
- Horizon Zero Dawn: 56,557
- TLOU Part I: 36,496
- Days Gone: 27,450
- Spider-Man Miles Morales: 13,539
- Uncharted collection: 10,851
- Ratchet Rift Apart: 8,757
- Detroit: 8,222
- Helldivers 1: 6,744
- Death Stranding: 6,093
- Guns Up!: 2,277
- Journey: 1,757
- Predator Hunting Grounds: 1,504
- Beyond Two Souls: 1,346
- Heavy Rain: 747
- Sackboy: 610
It's being a big hit, and I assume that it's performing even better in PS. I assume that in a few months we'll see Sony announcing they acquired Arrowhead, as did with Housemarque after the Returnal release, and with Bluepoint after Demon's Souls remake release. Or at least they should do it to avoid another Ready At Dawn case.
I’m responsible for selling a PC copy lol. A friend was looking for a game to play and I recommended Helldivers. He got it and likes it a lot.
I agree with this. Whether they're acquired IPs or homegrown, Sony needs more content. They definitely understand the value of this as a company; that content is king - see Sony BMG.
Love the Av. I want Sly Cooper back.
They should either expand Sucker Punch to have another smaller B tEAM to make it, Like Insomaniac does with Ratchet. Or buy buy/create a small studio to make it. Same as games like Jak n Daxter
No, they didn't buy Arrowhead or Ballistic Moon. As a public company, they are forced to announce any acquisition that involves dozens or hundreds of millions to their investors.
But they may have been agreed with them that if their game achieves certain KPIs (like a certain amount of revenue, profit, units sold, retention, LTV, etc) plus maybe also depending on the SIE profits for that year/quarter and related budget available. Or may be in talks about it and may consider it depending how things go in the future.
Btw, Helldivers 2 can be played in single player. I played several missions alone before I realized how could I ask for help to team up with random users.
Then I played several missions in multiplayer, and later I went back to play more missions alone.
It's all about your cost base.
Nintendo simply doesn't make any 300m games. They aim far lower than that on budget. They keep their consoles actually profitable by not chasing the latest graphical trends.
Sony is not like that, and if anything, their high cost base is why they need alternative revenue streams like PC Ports and transmedia efforts.
PS made enough profit from there games last gen. The extra sales isn’t needed to make a profit for those titles. From Bloodborne, to Spiderman they all made good profit.
Seeing my friends saying they will wait for the PC version, now that loses money for Playstation on just those 1st party games.
When someone says I dont need a PS6 and then buys all there future games on Steams, thats money lost that could of been on PSN, from 3rd and 1st party games.
My 2 friends who have spent thousands on PSN since PS3 like myself saying there moving to PC is not good news for PS in the long run.
My brother literally has only bought God of War Ragnarok on PS5 this generation and Demons Souls. Because he didnt he didnt want to wait.
The rest he said he’ll wait for, FF16, Spiderman 2, Horizon 2. Same will happen with GOT2, Death Stranding 2, ROR, FF7Part2, Whereas last gen he’d buy them all on PS4…. No1 can tell me thats good for PS lol
You are thinking too much like a fan and not enough as a business person. Also your case is not the majority so far (as evidenced by the Insomniac leak), Sony has the telemetry data from Steam etc to know the exact numbers.
The risk factor is very high for Sony. Budgets are ballooning for no real reason (I loved SM2 but I can't call it 100m better than MM from a graphics standpoint).
The higher your budget the more compromises you need to make in order to make it back. This is what's happening with Sony rn with the PC/Mobile/TV push.
The more money you spend on mergers and acquisitions the more pressure you are under to diversify and increase your revenue sources (which is why Xbox is fucked no matter what they say on Monday). It's one thing buying a small studio like Arrowhead or Ballistic Moon, but it's a whole other ball game buying a Sega or a Square Enix.
Colin made this latter point very clearly in the latest Defining Duke Ultimate podcast (must-watch btw).
How is it good business to lose fans to PC platform and Steam?
Read what I wrote, nothing to do with being a fan.
If I leave PS platform like my friends and my brother who have spent thousands on PSN, that money going ito Steam and not PSN now.
Xbox also made the fatal mistake of chasing money on PC (good business my ass) and made it less of a reason to buy Xbox.
As much as I like his poscast I Couldnt give a shit what Colin said lol. He said PS4 Pro was "pointless, what is it for, whats the message?" etc etc and then praised Xbox One X...
There's three console manufacturers. The only one that saw decreasing sales on their games and hardware is the one that moved day and date to PC. The one that doesn't even port to PC is the one that makes the most profit.
Because you don't consider COST. You're thinking like Phil Spencer did, where his aim was always to keep the hyperfans happy, at the detriment of the business's financials, and he's about to get a public embarrassment on Monday.
If the PC push isn't worthwhile to Sony they would have suspended it ages ago. Instead they doubled down and bought the best porting studio (Nixxes). Helldivers 2 is looking like it could be a real hit on both PS5 and PC. PS5 is outpacing PS4 in console sales (and is about to receive an influx of Xbox refugees along with the PS5 Pro marketing campaign).
If Sony doesn't mitigate the massive rise in game budgets somehow, then they WILL eventually get stung (Returnal was clearly a close shave, don't expect a sequel). If you want those 1P games to expand in scope and graphical fidelity, then you have to accept things like this.
Nintendo makes stuff that doesn't cost them a lot, they make a good profit on console sales by going for budget parts, so they can afford to keep it all in-house and not lose their shirt if a game or two flop. They manage their costs extremely well and have reaped the benefits of that even during the Wii U failure.
It all begins and ends with cost management imo.
Who said anything about moving to day-and-date tho? Sony clearly believes in content gating. I don't expect their 1P fare to end up on PC day and date, unless they make their own storefront and get %100 cut (very possible if Xbox leaves the console space btw, PC and handheld are the new frontiers for Sony).
Multiplayer is a different deal tho, you NEED a maximum playerbase from the off to make sure your multiplayer games are successful. So they do day-and-date there.
Sony has vast experience in the entertainment biz, they were one of the only big movie/tv studios that DIDN'T go for the streaming gold-rush, and it revitalized their business, conversely, in the Anime biz they basically have streaming services on lockdown post-Funimation/Crunchyroll merger.
They will pick the best business model for each industry as it sees fit.
Everything you just said can be disproved by companies like Nintendo and apple not needing to port their technology to competitors. You either buy into their ecosystem, or you're shit out of luck. There's a reason for that, but keep trying to ignore it.
Call me when Apple and Nintendo try to finance and a 300m AAA game. None of them do this and you are ignoring that very key part.
Both Apple and Nintendo don't take a loss on any hardware or services either. Those are fundamental differences to the PS biz models.
If Apple ever enters the console biz (very likely imo, iPad revenue has been declining for a while and they need something to supplement that), they won't be taking a bath on console pricing, I fully expect that $1000-1200 premium device, and they will likely be ok with $80 or $90 games if it's on their own originals (which will assuredly be great, this isn't Microsoft). This way they will get to keep things 1P AND make big budget stuff.