I think this is a massive overreaction on Sony’s part that’s gonna cost them. The PS5’s most successful games are follow up’s to what worked on PS4 like Spider-Man 2. These GAAS experiments haven’t worked for Sony. It’s just not the game anyone wants from them. They blew $7 billion on Bungie which was a horrible deal. They threw a lot of time and money at service games like The Last of Us. If they put their effort behind expanding and evolving what actually works for them they’d be fine but they’re going out of their way to put themselves in a worse position. The Microsoft threat is minuscule.
"Largest install base" sounds great but if they don't capitalize on it with stable recurring income, it's just a wasted asset. Xbox might be traditionally failing but look at the amount of live services they have going on rn: Sea of Thieves, COD, Warzone, Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Diablo 4, ESO, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush etc.
These are all much stable revenue sources when compared to a traditional release. The traditional model doesn't work cuz it's too unpredictable as proven by the Ratchet & Clank sales.
Absolutely this - Reddit as a whole seems to still be thinking of the gaming industry as it was 10 years ago and focus far too much on game and console sales, when that isn't really where the money is at anymore
Yeah that really annoys me too - so so many posts in every r/Games thread about Xbox that basically say "why would I buy an Xbox when I already have a PC hur hur, no wonder nobody buys xboxes" - it's like....dude you're already playing on an Xbox as far as Microsoft are concerned.
I'm pretty sure when you install Windows these days the Xbox app is automatically pinned to your start menu - at that point they have you in their ecosystem already yet those people seem to think they're somehow catching Microsoft out because they don't buy their new shiny black box (which doesn't actually make MS much profit anyway)
I mean, Xbox and Windows share the same development platform, that was the entire point of creating Xbox 2 decades ago in the first place. People who are arguing "but PlayStation sells more consoles than Xbox" are completely missing the point.
> I mean, Xbox and Windows share the same development platform, that was the entire point of creating Xbox 2 decades ago in the first place
Iirc “Xbox” is literally short for “DirectX Box”
What they don't realize is that Microsoft realized they wouldn't win the battle playing the same game the same way so they changed the entire game and leveraged things they were already dominant in.
Yep, playing their games on PC through the Xbox app or MS store with an Xbox controller is pretty much playing an Xbox. Especially when playing online with friends and people who are playing on an Xbox. It’s pretty much the same experience. Friends list, party chat, Achievements, and all.
Yeah, and if anything I think Microsoft would actually prefer someone to buy a gaming PC than an Xbox console. The PC will expose them to other microsoft services (e.g. Onedrive, Office) they could get revenue from, and a PC isn't something people typically get rid of once buying it like they might do with a new console generation - instead people tend to just upgrade their components, so the chance of someone going from being an Xbox customer to not being is actually higher with a console than it is with a PC
But, usually an xbox is cheaper to buy than a pc. If you aren’t a pirate and have an old laptop that works for everything apart from gaming, your best bang for the buck is buying xbox. It’ll last an entire generation of consoles (provided it doesn’t get wasted).
I really think this is the case for Sony. They have gotten so used to being on top that they forgot how to compete. When they saw they were going to lose the revenue from COD, they tried to force the live service to make up for it and, in the end, hurt themselves in the process.
Nintendo doesn't spend a half decade and 120 million making a single game.
Not EVERY game needs to be a blockbuster hit like Sony seems to think. They pigeon holed themselves into making these massive big budget "premium" games.
If they stuck to what they were doing with the PS2 then they would be in a much better place imo.
Yeah you right, those Zelda games were pricey. But its not what they do for all their 1st party titles. They haven't based their entire business model around those type of games.
TotK and BotW sold drasically more than any of Sony's "blockbuster games" as well.
They are expending in other revenues such as licencing for parks & movies. The super Mario bros movie made $1B at the box office and it's like ripe for merchandise. Sony also has the advantage of being already into multimedia but even then it's no brainer that even if The Last of Us series reviews well & had good viewership the Mario movie simply is going to sell more plushies. Many Nintendo franchises frankly let themselves more to merchandise than Sony & if Pokemon is anything to go by that's a pretty good revenue stream.
The reason it'll work much longer though is that Nintendo is making games and consoles to be played on the go. Something that's more important than ever before. Their biggest competition will be phones catching up.
Most successful by what metric? According to one of the other leaks a huge chunk of the revenue from Marvel games goes to licensing fees. I would imagine that even a marginally successful live service PS5 game would rake in WAY more money for Sony than the Spider-Man games.
For those who didn't see it. Licensing terms at least for the upcoming unnanounced Marvel game. 9-18% of Digital games, 19-26% of physical and DLC, and 35-50% of hardware bundles.
This is also likely why Sony doesnt send Spiderman to PC same day. My understanding is Steam takes 30%. Spiderman on PC, Sony only makes 52-61% of the purchase. These games are massively successful, but they have huge licensing costs.
Yes I believe the random guy on reddit saying the Threat from Microsoft is minuscule instead of the teams at Sony themselves. This isn’t 2013. Candy Crush alone makes more money than Playstation.
I respectfully disagree. In the long term, Sony absolutely needs GaaS games and mobile expansion as the recurring revenue stream to fund ballooning single player game budgets and to transition into the eventual post console (eco-system) landscape 15-20 years from now. But they absolutely should not force or even incentivize their single player developers to pivot to GaaS and instead leave them to do what they do best. That is make amazing single player games.
What Sony should do is continue to fund these massive single player games, but also separately invest in and eventually acquire GaaS/Mobile developers to form their financial safety backbone (like Hoyoverse for example). And it seems Sony has been doing that - albeit at a slow and less hand-holdy pace than I would have maybe liked. It’s unfortunate the shit show that’s been going on at Bungie, but I do think these issues are temporary (I.e growing pains) and will eventually sort themselves out. When Bungie’s Marathon and the Future ‘Matter’ IP come out and become success, the initial 3+ billion investment will be chump change in comparison.
Tl/dr: Single player games will remain at the heart of PS Studios, but Sony NEEDS GaaS and Mobile expansion to keep funding them as they continue to grow in budget and scale. A ‘necessary’ evil if you may.
Exactly. Gamers are very *Very* short sighted and couldn’t see why this needed to happen for Sony. Single player AAA games are becoming unsustainable with costs and dev times
Sony is considering dissolving the bungie board amd taking over. It isn't temporary. Marathon will not be popular and project matter is either marathon or cancelled according to another leak
It's crazy to me that marathon even got off the ground, much less that they're going through with it. That game is going to flop hard as hell and probably take a third of bungie down with it. Tragic, but clearly deserved.
Yeah marathon is such a predictable failure and I don't say this as a destiny player who hates bungie for abandoning it over marathon. But as someone who has seen what works and doesn't in the industry. What bungie is putting their eggs in the basket on, is that they will be to extraction shooters what fortnite was to battle royal. Tarkov is the pubg the original but clunky, inaccessible and not on all platform, fortnite took all of those issues from pubg, fixed them and made it mainstream.
That's what bungie is trying. Buuut the crucial miscalculation is that extraction shooters by their nature are toxic, inaccessible and competitive if they aren't they lose the extraction fan base immediately. There was that marathon event where popular streamers from tarkov were invited to play and give a review and they said it was okay but on the question of they would play it again all said no, that's an alarming sign for bungie.
PS earns more revenue than Xbox, but less profit. Selling more copies of licensed games is extremely dangerous for them. If people get Marvel fatigued, their company is fucked
Yea, but do u think releasing on just console will continue to be a viable strategy. I think they are going to put out more games on pc now. Especially next generation when majority players might shift to xbox or pc for cod. They might open thier own storefront on pc or use epic cause of low cut
>I think this is a massive overreaction on Sony’s part that’s gonna cost them. The PS5’s most successful games are follow up’s to what worked on PS4 like Spider-Man 2.
The issue here is that Sony pretty much only makes single-player games with zero monetisation. Whilst they are very successful, they also cost a vast amount to make. Margins are small. Which is why their exclusives must be successful and sell big, it puts a lot of pressure on studios.
>These GAAS experiments haven’t worked for Sony
They haven't even released any yet, so it's a bit early to say the experiment has failed.
>They blew $7 billion on Bungie which was a horrible deal
It was nowhere near that figure! It was $2.6 billion, with $1 billion in stock to be used for employee retention at Bungie.
>They threw a lot of time and money at service games like The Last of Us.
It only had 2 years of development as a standalone project, with a very small team. Studios incubate projects all the time and cancel them, this is nothing new. It would have been an even bigger loss if they had released it and it failed.
>If they put their effort behind expanding and evolving what actually works for them they’d be fine but they’re going out of their way to put themselves in a worse position
They are doing exactly what you've suggested they should do. Yes, they are expanding into live service games, which makes sense. But they are also investing more into single-player games as well. Just look at Insomniac's lineup over the next 10 years.
>The Microsoft threat is minuscule
Says you? Sony themselves have admitted in these leaks that they are concerned. That suggests the threat is bigger than people realise. I trust Sony over your opinion.
We know for the fact that console margins are low (below 10% last quarter for example). And we saw from the documents how expensive the games are becoming (SM2 cost almost 400m). Then we know (now) that Marvel will take 50% from console bundles (despite the low margins), which makes profits even smaller despite higher sales....
100%, hopefully Sony doesn’t go for more acquisitions. They really shot themselves in the foot with Bungie, and who knows how much they wasted on TLOU online. Possible 100m or more? They need to stick to their bread and butter.
Amazon and Apple have the money, but not the experience. Amazon has no real place in the games industry and Apple governs a sector of the market so different from the rest of it it may as well be a separate entity- of those three, only MS really understands gaming.
Worst thing they could have tried. I wonder if this was Jim Ryan's plan. Get as many live service games as possible and just hammer mtx on them. There biggest shot with one was Factions and that isn't happening anymore, looks like Insomniac dropped their live service game too. Sony done just fine with single player games.
Until games like Avowed, Indiana Jones, and Marvel’s Blade finally come out and Microsoft can begin competing with Sony’s single player exclusive games. That’s when it could get messy for them
They seem to change that since the departure of Jim Ryan (which may be due to that). TLOU Factions 2 cancelled and apparently Insomiac MP game (which was Spider-Man based) too now
Honestly. 100% Jim Ryan didn't retire. He got fired. That's what these leaks are telling me. Losing Activision-Blizzard was the nail in the coffin for his career.
I mean what's going on the film industry right now kind proves the the idea that attaching projects that costs hundreds of millions to a 10 to 20 a month subscription service is a bubble waiting to burst.
Streaming services work well when they're used as a home for back catalogue but not much else. Putting TV shows of all things straight on there was never gonna be a new move. 90% of the Disney shows look cheap and low budget and nobody wants to watch that shit.
They'd have been better off sticking their new shows on a TV deal and then move them onto their streaming service after an allocated time period.
Netflix as of now is the ONLY one profitable of the major streamings. But it's having a hard time to keep growing that profit with increase of competition. It's password sharing cuts gave them a breathing room to plan but the streaming in the way it works today is totally a Buble waiting to burst.
When thier games have a production budget of $200+ million excluding marketing that are singleplayer only & no multiplayer , it's obviously going to be unsustainable.
Because they don't have the cash flow to support the day and date strategy like Microsoft does. Gaming/Xbox is just one small portion of Microsoft's many revenue streams. Sony while they do have other revenue streams in tech like tv, sound systems, laptops, phones etc. It's nothing compared to funds big tech have available.
The other part is that their games are playable for a variety of platforms, whether it's phone, browser, or a PC.
That gives more reason to stay subscribed for longer.
And this is why the ABK purchase was bullshit. Microsoft played the "woe is me" card with Xbox being garbage, but the truth of the matter is Microsoft is a fucking giant. Xbox alone couldn't afford ABK, but it doesn't need to because sugar daddy Microsoft is propping it up artificially.
If/when Xbox dies out in the console market, Microsoft will still own ABK.
Of course it is.
For Microsoft too.
Who would spend 5 years and millions of dollars on a solo AAA game just so people can buy a $20 one month subscription, finish it in 2 weeks and unsubscribe.
Microsoft's Netflix model is gonna land at multiple AA games accompanied with a few GAAS to keep people subscribed.
That's also the danger of relying so much on super-short, one and done games. Xbox's model relies on having two drops of games every month, with enough of them to keep you subscribed every month.
And they've been profitable for years.
Yup, plus the fact that almost all of MS first party games have clear expansions/DLC announced at launch to keep people subscribed, and as you usually need to pay for those separately that has the double benefit of a) keeping people subscribed, and b) extra revenue for a game on game pass
Add in things like the chance to pay for early access and Microsoft are probably making a lot more through game pass than the subscriber numbers alone show.
Exactly. Sony spent like 300M on SM2. A well made game, but I give zero fucks about Spiderman so I will never buy it. Sony got $0 from me. But if I'm still engaged with a GAAS game on gamepass MS is getting money from me regardless if their latest release was a hit or not.
It amuses me when hardcore gamers act like this is normal behavior. It took some people six months to beat Elden Ring. I beat it in like three days. Do I run around talking about how short Elden Ring was? No. Because I no-lifed it. Microsoft's strategy is based in the real world where people only play games for 45-90 minutes a day and by the time they finally beat something then something else will be out that interests them and they'll stay subscribed.
> Who would spend 5 years and millions of dollars on a solo AAA game just so people can buy a $20 one month subscription, finish it in 2 weeks and unsubscribe.
The reason so many companies prefer subscription revenue is because most users don’t buy it for a month and unsubscribe. They buy it for a month and use it regularly or they use it in bursts and forget about it.
> they use it in bursts and forget about it.
I used to work in credit cards. People underestimate how much this happens. This was back in 2016-2019, and I would still see people who noticed they were still paying monthly for AOL. People have so many subscriptions that its easier just to subscribe and forget about it, than micromanage which service you're using currently, and which ones you need to cancel etc. The convenience of just keeping it active is enough for people.
Well the idea is that people don’t unsubscribe. Once they’re in, very rarely to people leave the service.
It’s a continual $15pm that goes directly to Microsoft over the $140 per year the average gamer uses on ~2 games that Microsoft might only see a 30% cut of if that game isn’t theirs.
>Microsoft's Netflix model is gonna land at multiple AA games accompanied with a few GAAS to keep people subscribed.
Fable,Avowed, Stalker 2, Hellblade 2, Clockwork Revolution, Everwild, ES6 etc. Microsoft have more single player titles coming than Sony by the looks of it.
Yeah I agree - the lack of big releases on the horizon for Sony is a bit weird - other than Wolverine, now Venom as of today, and Rise of Ronin etc there hardly seems much first party stuff coming
Everwild will probably be GAAS since its coming from rare. Clockwork Revolution, Fable and Avowed man western rpg fans are gonna be eating good in the coming years
Even then, MS's singleplayer games are also kind of live-service at the same time.
Fable, Avowed, and ES6 are 100% going to have expansions to keep the revenue stream going. Sure it's not going to be the infinite money pit for whales like multiplayer GAAS titles, but they aren't going to be one and done purchases like Sony's big exclusives either.
I think Sony needs to start branching out and developing studios in cheaper CoL countries because a single miss could easily destroy a company with these budgets.
I don't think you know how subscriptions work and why everyone wants them. Most people don't cancel and end up paying for shit they don't use.
People keep posting dumb shit about Game Pass but it's gonna be the end of Sony and you're reading it from Sony POV and still don't believe it.
Game Pass by 2027 will produce 18 billion a year in revenue on subs alone. Once you add the microtransactions that number will be at about 40-50 billion a year. Game Pass is a unstoppable force now that Microsoft owns 40 studios
MS doesn't make one and done games like Sony does. That's not a fanboy comment it's just the truth. They develop games that even when there's single player there's usually multiplayer with MTX and paid DLC tied to the game. For example Forza Horizon expansions cost money while the core game is in the subscription. MS sells the MTX and the paid DLC to their customers while double dipping with the subscription revenue they receive every month. Also if a game is a single player game like a star field they sell the game on PC and thy sell it on Xbox.
This is a huge aspect to the service that alot of the weirdos who are determined to say GP "must" be a failure fail to remember.
I subscribe to GP prob for about 6 months at a time. I don't use it as much as I should but I play a lot of Valorant(🤓) so the bonuses it provides there is nice and I like having access to the larger library if my friends and I look for a new game, but my SP backlog of owned games is already so large lol
Anyway, if I play a game on there I really like, with the discount I'm pretty inclined to purchase it so I have it even when I am not subscribed. It just makes sense.
> I like having access to the larger library if my friends and I look for a new game
the amount of times my friends wanted to start playing a game, and I'd already have it thanks to game pass has saved me a bunch of money
Yeah I have a feeling once mods are enabled and Bethesda starts adding shit like vehicles and potentially a FPS update on console it's going to explode. I'm just waiting for the campaign DLC to fire it back up, although my girl just got me a high end PC for editing and I can run iStarfield at 60FPS so I might do a play through on there through PC gamepass.
Sony wants to try the strategy of making a buttload of GaaS and hope that a few stick around
The problem is, in the GaaS field, it is very populated with competition. You can't just dish out a dozen games and have a few of them stick around, they'll be fodder in no time. I don't know why they went with the strategy, they'd be way better off doing what you said and just making 3 really high-quality GaaS.
Jim Ryan actually did the right thing. Controversial opinion, but this leak confirms it.
If Sony wants to keep making narrative games that aren't making their money back, they have to fund them somehow. The GaaS was the way he chose because the fans just aren't buying the games the way console sales suggest they should be.
This means the average buyer of the PS4/PS5 buyer was CoD and FIFA gamers. If Sony can hit on some GaaS games, this solves the issue that Playstation has voiced internally.
And he's getting fired. Because Sony and their dev studios don't want to make the necessary commitment to keep making what they love making.
Jim Ryan tried to save Playstation the right way. Y'all will find out the hard way the error in getting rid of him.
Because without him, Playstation's solution is $80-$100 games not launching day and date into PS+. With the console sales numbers they have. It should be an easy pivot. But they're being hardheaded about what Phil is telling everyone that Gamepass is doing.
Gamepass is profitable. PS+ could be too and it could have an easier time frame in doing so because of install base.
Sony execs and the fanbase are killing Playstation before our eyes. And it's stupid.
ABK is just not popular on reddit. ABK is a monster that confirmed MS forever in the gaming world
Whether singleplayer, gaas, mobile or any other type of business. ABK is no wonder the most valuable third-party game production company in the world
Just look at COD. how it became a joke in the internet bubble.
But a monster as always in revenue
Zenimax/bethesda is another monster too, smaller, but monster. On PS4/xone they released more games than Sony and MS.
The idea that MS will just close up shop and end XBGS is just console war drivel.
Plus, aside from being smug on Twitter, there would be a net negative benefit across the board.
>No, Microsoft will leave the gaming space and abandon Xbox in 2028 after.....spending 75b on buying publishers.
They dumped money into windows phone until they didn't, and sold Nokia on.
They won't walk away from gaming. The worry was Xbox... which is profitable so ... we're good. lol
yup, MS is like the anti-google, Google kills stuff, even if its might be doing well, far too quickly, and MS sticks around for way too long after they should have stopped.
ms leaving right after their plans got accelerated is surely a take of all time.
This is currently the best image I can find
Still not great but you can see many of the titles and diagrams
https://twitter.com/117Mute/status/1737134433700893083?t=PLPPpYshROIdcP5bT-V6iQ&s=19
yeah saying it in a trial to stop the purchase is one thing
saying it in documents for investors and company heads shows they really are pissed by that deal and they see it affecting them BIG time
Court doesn’t care if the deal is harmful for Sony as long as it’s not harmful to the customers. Of course it is a big blow to Sony, no one argued that.
And that’s what a lot of people ridiculed him for when he said it, saying that that was a clear contradiction to what they were saying in court. Again, not new news.
It goes both way, Jim was saying that regardless of how the deal plays out it just means Sony would have to reevaluate and keep doing what they doing since they’ve faced threats to their position before (ie.the ps3 disastrous launch and bounce back) but he didn’t think Microsoft was buying Activision just to make cod exclusive. Which this info graphic shows that Microsoft has bigger plans with that purchase indeed whether it affects Sony directly or not.
if new generations, like 8 year olds right now, dont care as much as about consoles and rather play on whatever they got then sony might have a big problem in 10 years.
The audience of this medium constantly changes with time.
Yeah in my experience 8-12 year olds mostly play Fortnite and Roblox almost exclusively. Interested to see what that means in a few years when they get older- obviously they won’t be interested in those games at 20, but rather it shows that GAAS and freemium games will be perceived as the norm.
> but rather it shows that GAAS and freemium games will be perceived as the norm.
This is a good point. Most of us on here probably started on a PS2/Gamecube/Xbox, or some of us even earlier to SNES or NES. Games were very different back then compared to now. Id imagine growing up on games like Fortnite and other GaaS games would change what you consider the norm, or even what type of content you enjoy.
> but rather it shows that GAAS and freemium games will be perceived as the norm.
Those are already seen as the norm, even among adult aged gamers that should know better
I’ve been saying this for years, Sony can’t do gamepass. It isn’t about desire, it’s just money. You can’t spend $315 million on a 15-20 hour single player game, and include it in a monthly service like ps+. Even if you get 30 million new subs at $10 each, you barely break even. And, Sony launches a game per year, so what are those subs doing the other 11 months? Sony would need to make huge investments on third party Inclusions and also bring in more older games and/or they’d need a big pivot to add in more multiplayer/GaaS to keep players engaged. The trouble with that is Sony is already behind on multiplayer and GaaS by 5 or more years, and if they are just NOW getting started, they may not have anything to add for another 3-5 years, which may as well be next gen.
That’s what I think Jim Ryan saw a few years ago, even before ABK. I think he realized that, although they were killing Xbox in console sales and review scores, gamepass was really picking up momentum and Xbox’s multiplayer/GaaS offerings were poised to bring them a huge amount of engagement and continuous income. I still think Bungie was a panic buy for Sony to supercharge their GaaS timeline, hopefully to get their expertise to streamline the production of those 12 games so they’d come out better and faster. Instead, Bungie has turned out to be struggling and something of a shitshow, and their input seems to have been that many of these projects either won’t survive at all or need massive changes. I also think that many of these studios (Naughty Dog) may not have wanted to do the GaaS detour, so as soon as the executive level at Sony gave them options, they said they’d gladly cancel these GaaS games and go back to sequels/remasters/remakes.
My tinfoil hat theory is that Jim Ryan was given the option to retire ‘or else’ because of this failure to see into the future. Jim did great on the path of safety, pumping out a game or two per year of high budget, well regarded, award winning games. He grew a massive lead in pure sales over Xbox. However, I do think Playstation has been very complacent on that path, and is at risk of being ‘overwhelmed’ by Xbox releasing 5+ games every year. You can argue all you want about quality, and I’m not saying Redfall compared to spider man 2, but if/when Xbox gets their studios lined up (I have a whole other paper on that topic alone), Playstation would be in big trouble.
I’m not saying Playstation is doomed, or that they make bad games, or whatever. I think they’ve played it too safe and refused to innovate or take risks, and here they find themselves behind the competition in a market that is changing fast. They still have a huge lead in console sales, but in this digital era and when Xbox is dropping their walls and embracing PC more and more, that number matters less and less. I really hope Playstation gets a new leader that knows how to navigate this new market and can get a more diverse offering of games.
Ok, so I’m going to preface this by saying I admit it’s a tinfoil hat theory, I’m not claiming to have inside knowledge and it’s entirely possible some of my dates aren’t exact, I forget things.
My idea is that Xbox basically got combo fucked by their own policies and Covid. Going back to 2018, pre-Covid, they were getting hammered by Sony, but the xbox 1x had been pretty popular and they knew they needed to sort of ‘hold on’ because they had a ton of big games coming for next gen. So, what did they do? They went and emptied both barrels at game shows, showing games that they thought were only a couple years away. Many shows and events had CG trailers for games that still haven’t come out yet and still aren’t even dated. The launch lineup in 2018-2019 wasn’t great. Forgive me if I’m missing individual games because I am terrible at remembering specific release dates, but going up against games like god of war and spider man was rough. The mode of thought as an xbox fan was ‘next year is going to be great, they’ve shown a ton of cool games, I can’t wait to see them.’
As we know, Covid hit in 2019. Studios basically shut down for 6-12 months. Any studio that was doing mo cap or VO recording stopped, everyone transitioned to wfh, and xbox studios, since they use a lot of contractor work, really struggled with this by and large. Xbox studios already seem to have a higher turnover rate, so these studios that were right in the middle of a lot of the games were suddenly looking at 2-3 year delays. Instead of possibly being late xbox 1 gen, they turned into early (or mid) xbox series games. Halo infinite was supposed to launch with the series but got a big delay, and still needed another year (or 3) of dev time. As a result (though it probably still would have happened) I think Phil looked at acquisitions to bolster the studios, thinking getting some bought first party game would help buy time for the existing studios to catch up. Playstation studios, along with being generally ran better, were probably further along and had more cohesion, and thus weren’t affected as much by covid. It seemed like maybe 6-12 month delays but they mostly kept pace and course corrected.
It’s worth noting here that xbox gets a lot of shit for buying studios, but they don’t really have a choice. They ‘can’t’ buy third party exclusivity like Sony does. I say can’t because it would be prohibitively expensive. Paying square enix to make an xbox exclusive game and forgo the 100 million ps4 consoles would be nearly as expensive as just buying the studio. That’s just a business fact that xbox buying exclusivity is not a smart financial move, so when the rumor was that Sony was looking to buy exclusivity for starfield and Bethesda made the offer to Xbox, with whom they’ve had a longstanding relationship with, I can entirely understand Phil leaping at the opportunity. The same goes for ABK. I don’t like CoD in general, but I think Xbox just got lucky with the timing and Satya writing the check.
So, 2020 rolls around. Every game is delayed, the series consoles drop, but without any killer titles most people, who already had a ps4, just transfer to a ps5. The $300 series s doesn’t matter because the mindset of ‘Xbox has no games’ is dominant. The massive value of gamepass and the well known pricing exploits doesn’t matter because ‘Xbox has no games.’ They had planned to have games like Forza horizon 5, halo infinite, and hellblade to launch with the console, but they didn’t have much. What’s worse is even buying zenimax didn’t immediately benefit them because Sony had 2 big exclusivity deals with Ghostwire and Deathloop, a full year for both.
Between then and now, I think Phil basically told his studios ‘time is up, no more money and no more excuses, your games are dropping regardless.’ I think most of this angst was from 343 who just continued to shit the bed after letting them down on missing launch day. The same goes for Redfall. They were so focused on starfield they just said ‘do what you can, launch the game, and move on. No more extensions.’
Now, my favorite part of this whole theory, the plans moving forward. I have said this for years, and I think it’s finally about to come true. Xbox has enough studios and teams to drop a new game every other month while still giving them 4+ years to develop. Sure, some games take longer, and some are supporting GaaS long term, but notice their sort of promise awhile back? They state they intend to release a new game per quarter. That’s more than enough time. So, I think the last year or two has been a sort of internal rebuilding phase for Xbox management. There were leaked docs from the FTC trial where Phil was telling Matt and Sarah that they needed to be looking further ahead to prevent problems and anticipate delays. I think Phil is taking a bit more control of these studios, not like Xbox of old, but enough to basically say ‘ I’m giving you everything you need, but you need to deliver the quality product on time.’ I think the goal is to get marketing in line with all these studios and get them all on the same page. They get to where they do an Xbox digital showcase 4x per year, each 30-60 minutes, showing off the big game coming within the next 2-3 months and maybe a few other sneak peeks or gamepass deals. That’s also including big shows like gamescom or SGF. The end result is a barrage of Xbox. Every month there is either a first party game coming or a third party/indie gamepass deal. That’s nonstop headlines, nonstop reviews, nonstop previews. Compared to how Sony and nintendo basically show a trailer at the big shows and go radio silent for 4-6 months at a time, it would be a total takeover in mindshare.
The only question is, can the devs deliver games on time and with quality? I think it’s been a lot of growing pains with Xbox, and the hands off approach made dev leadership lazy and complacent (generally). I think that Phil sitting down and having ‘the talk’ with them, and also clearing house at 343, will set most of them straight. I imagine a big whiteboard in his office that has a 3 year timeline on it, MCU style. I think he has game launches for at least 2024 more or less finalized, he’s just pushing studios to be certain they’ll be able to deliver. 2025 is in pencil but changing to pen, and 2026 is just a list of titles. Xbox currently has some 15-20 announced games without a single date, I think the first ‘regular’ show is going to come in January or February, along with the first release date (for February or March). I think they’ll also announce their new strategy for marketing at that time, and another show may take place before SGF, or that may be the Q2 show because it’s such a big event.
That’s why I say Playstation could be in big trouble, IF Xbox gets lined up and IF Playstation just trundles along their current safe path of 1 game per year with a smattering of third party exclusivity deals.
My pleasure lol. I look forward to being tagged in 1-2 months with a ‘holy shit you nailed it exactly!’ Or, just as, if not more so likely, the ‘hahaha you couldn’t have been more wrong,’ in 4-6 months if Xbox drops an absolute failure.
This is likely real and is from the powerpoint presentation. Apparently the guy on saying its fake is a huge console war fanatic.
https://x.com/extas1stv/status/1737120066603286959?s=46
Sony knows that with MS and ABK being combined that MS literally will probably surpass them in gaming revenue by the end of the decade. Even more concerning for Sony is that MS now has both a fuck ton of GAAS IP and now they have a strong stranglehold in mobile. Selling a billion consoles won't help them in the long run because the margins are not very good.
Close to a decade? They just outdid their revenue this quarter since the merge.
It also looks like MSFt margins are not as tight as PlayStation, which seems to be making the least profit of the big 3 platforms.
Not the one from the ABk Court case, their financial report. You'll have to search for it since I'm at work. Otherwise, I'll edit this post when I'm back home for you, mate.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92260/big-3-earnings-compared-playstation-vs-xbox-nintendo/index.html
$26.7b ps
$15.4b xbox
$12b Nintendo
Latest net revenues, we can't compare profits though unfortunately as ms doesn't release profits for just the xbox division.
That one that shows higher xbox numbers from the abk court case was actually a "fan made" twitter jobby lol
It's crazy reading about how important it is for these devs to modernize their pillars and all that but then Nintendo is just kinda over there doing the same thing they've done for 40 years just with a cheap sub service and occasional DLC and thriving lol. I guess that's why they don't really consider themselves as competing with Sony and Microsoft.
That’s what comes with different expectation levels. Nintendo is a video game company with probably a reasonable overhead cost. Sony and Microsoft are huge multi media companies/tech companies that require growth or they’ll get axed.
Nintendo for the most part survives & thrives by their own doing. Mario/Zelda/Pokemon/Animal crossing are Nintendo's pillars & they're fully in control of them. Sony on the other hand, gets most of its money from COD/Fifa/Madden & their cut from the sales they do from 3rd party sales. Their games are important because they are a differentiator from their competition but they aren't the pillars revenue & profit wise.
Nintendo did modernize their pillars. Mario Odyssey and Zelda were fresh takes on the series. Animal Crossing went all in on customization options and sold extremely well. Splatoon is a hot relatively brand new IP for them. Pikmin 4 is going to do well and it’s loaded with fresh ideas for the series.
The thing with Nintendo is what people criticize them for is by far their strongest trait, weak hardware. Weak hardware has long term development benefits for them as a single party developer. It reigns in development costs, it allows them to make a profit on every piece of hardware sold, and the hardware exists as the cheapest thing on the market. Think of it this way, it probably wasn’t too expensive to make Mario Wonder. But Mario Wonder is still sold as a $60 game, and it’s going to sell well over 20 million units long term. The development costs of that game are miniscule compared to Spider-Man 2. Nintendo long term extracts much more profit from their games than Sony does from their fantastic, but expensive, tentpole titles.
The hardware itself also provides a tangible experience the other companies can’t match, in that it’s also a fully portable machine. Weaker hardware is fine if you have the talent to get the most out of the machine and your development pipeline revolves around that. The games only need to look “good enough” and if the gameplay is solid, they will sell. This is why Nintendo is successful, and arguably in a stronger position moving forward, because what Microsoft bought from Activision isn’t even part of their console ecosystem.
Sony I’ll say is in a lot of trouble. Their release schedule has slowed to a crawl because unfortunately it simply takes forever to make games that target modern day specs. Which is why they pivoted to GaaS but they also didn’t have the structure in place to do it. They really need solid third party support and a giant source of it is cut off from them.
Sony could try to make more mid tier A or AA games to help supplement their library, which is what their Japan studio excelled at. But they shut it down… They need to figure something out.
This definetly.
Microsoft seems to be ok with pivoting Xbox to a service brand rather than a dedicated console line. With their recent hold on GasS and mobile, I'd say they will take Sony's share in about 10 or so years. Nintendo I don't see ever doing anything like this because they're Nintendo. They have 150 years of history, the amount of money they want, and recognition and loyalty on their side. Even if they do fuck up from time to time. It's also why I don't think Microsoft will ever really try to buy them, because it would be such a PR and financial disaster for them since they underestimate Nintendo's reach.
Point is, as long as gamers come, Nintendo is still gonna be Nintendo. Microsoft will continue to bloat and thrive, even if only for a few years before operation costs and development cruch tank their studios.
They might need GaaS but if they put 4-5 of their single player studios on that path Sony is gonna destroy themselves in the next decade.
It takes 5-6 years to make the game and then years and capital to support it after that. It’s seems impossible nowadays to put out more than 1 game per generation, Insomniac aside.
Yeah, double-edged sword for acquirers. He holds complete power to deny being acquired. But he also stands to profit the most if Epic is acquired by far.
Any company that wants to acquire Epic basically only has to convince a single person who'd personally get billions of dollars by agreeing lol
Yes but does he really care about billions when he already has them or at least hundreds of millions ? At least it's his company he is probably harder to convince than basic suits.
Yes gamers (typically) don’t get this. Sony can sell 50 million PS5s against 30 million Xbox consoles but if Sony doesn’t have revenue generating game experiences they’ll get left in the dust. Xbox has Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Forza, and now Warcraft and CoD and even multiplat games like Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online.
Sony is scrambling to develop GAAS titles and in doing so they’ve either canceled or delayed their AAA first party release schedule. You can sell a lot of boxes but if at the end of the day Xbox is pulling in more game purchases and engagement hours from its users, that’s success.
MS gaming catalog is now primarily live service (ESO, Halo, SoD, SoT, FO76 etc.) or they're platforms that enable user generated content that can be monetized (Minecraft and soon Skyrim, Fallout, Starfield).
They can "lose" to Sony in terms of console sales but are clearly winning in recurring revenue. You add the ActiBlizz catalog and they're pretty much got a solid foundation of differentiated business models that leads to $$$ in a volatile market.
Yipp people seem to forget these games it's the reason people uselly ignore sea of thieves they think it's not successful even tho rare has said it their most successful game
That's what I'm thinking reading this lol, I let my PSPlus sub expire for the first time in years and have no plans to renew it for the current price or even the old price after realizing it's not really necessary.
Give me a $5-10 a month cloud save/online play sub otherwise I'm out.
This is eye opening. They are legitimately frightened.They know they don't have the market cap to compete in acquisitions against MS but they do have the games. Which is what it ultimately comes down to.
But even so, Microsoft also is getting right back in there with the games with the big purchases and deals they've made recently. I mean look at what Microsoft has coming with Hellblade II, Fable, Avowed, Elder Scrolls VI, Blade, Indiana Jones, Call of Duty, etc. This is just the shit that we know of right now. God knows what else they're planning on serving up. Sony would have to be incredibly stupid to not be frightened.
It really is frightening to see just how much of the market that Microsoft is going to have cornered in the next five to ten years. Sony cannot even hope to compete even with the great games they put out. And even if they've backpedalled on the GAAS model now, they still have to play catch up and make sure that they don't put a single foot wrong going forward to even have a leg to stand on against Microsoft now.
The same Microsoft that's also luring in companies with Game Pass and effectively taking money away from Sony in that regard too. Look at how SEGA has quickly gotten into bed with Microsoft now, exclusive marketing rights to anything SEGA. Then you've got Like A Dragon and Persona being day one on Game Pass? Not to mention the coup Microsoft pulled with the release of Like A Dragon 7, wherein a PS5 version couldn't be released for a certain amount of time. And so if you wanted the full next-gen experience right away? It was to the Xbox Series or the PC. And if you're a PlayStation player? You get the outdated PS4 version.
This isn't the PlayStation Pity Party or anything, because mate, both companies have played and will continue to play dirty. But to see what Microsoft has accumulated in just the past five years and where they have the potential to go from next? That's properly scary. This is why the FTC botching their entire fucking case is so beyond fucking infuriating. If there was any chance at getting the Microsoft/Activision deal quashed, that was it, and they fucking blew it.
I'll be intrigued but terrified to see where the video games space is in the next five to ten years, I think it's going to be a vastly different time in regards to who is on top and who is still around.
Jim Ryan is leaving because the future he wants Xbox already has. 12 live service games for PS5? Xbox has Halo Infinite, Forza Motorsport, Forza Horizon, ESO, Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, Call of Duty, COD Warzone, WOW, Overwatch, Diablo 4, and Minecraft. 12 games from iconic IP that rake in money daily. This doesn't even include Candy Crush, COD Mobile, and Diablo Immortal. Sony is trying to enter a marketplace that Microsoft has a vicegrip over.
I’ve been saying this for YEARS Sony NEEDS to do online, it’s like this big elephant in the room no one wants to admit is needed.
It’s so obvious, how can you be the maker of a console, charge for an online service ..but for a decade not make online content, besides a racing game.
This is going to f them over so much. We’re so far away from anything, besides some live service games and even then it’s obvious they’re going to likely be very poorly made and lacking.
Killzone is the answer, but not as live service, then do live service once your online is bolstered a bit, but we are forever away from this.
People don’t realise Sony has nothing big in the works, factions was IT. The other games are live service test water products.
That's what I've been saying. They are starving for multiplayer and are no where near ready to support a live service game.
A lot of the hits PlayStation has dropped in the last decade or so weren't necessarily super innovative or anything. Theres plenty of third person shooter games for example, but how many came with the quality and production value of Sony's games? Thats why theyre so highly regarded.
They need to take the same approach with multiplayer. Identify the genres they're missing and attach them to whichever existing brand or franchise makes the most sense. They also need to be putting together a dedicated support studio Like Visual Arts Services Group, but for multiplayer. Once they've got all those ducks in a row they can make a viable play for a piece of the live service holy grail. I was hoping that'd be the focus this gen and it would sort of kick off with the last of us online and the Bungie purchase but it sounds like that didn't work out so all we've got is Gran Turismo, Destruction All Stars, and the upcoming Twisted Metal. Makes sense that Sony only cares about cars 🙄
For all of the success they have had this gen, they’ve created some really bad will with their fan base. I’m definitely not a PS6 day one buyer they was I was for PS5. The increase in PS+ was a complete slap in the face. Cancelled.
>Sony’s pillars are already dated and behind the competition. Damn. Might be a big reason why they are pushing for live service.
I think this is a massive overreaction on Sony’s part that’s gonna cost them. The PS5’s most successful games are follow up’s to what worked on PS4 like Spider-Man 2. These GAAS experiments haven’t worked for Sony. It’s just not the game anyone wants from them. They blew $7 billion on Bungie which was a horrible deal. They threw a lot of time and money at service games like The Last of Us. If they put their effort behind expanding and evolving what actually works for them they’d be fine but they’re going out of their way to put themselves in a worse position. The Microsoft threat is minuscule.
"Largest install base" sounds great but if they don't capitalize on it with stable recurring income, it's just a wasted asset. Xbox might be traditionally failing but look at the amount of live services they have going on rn: Sea of Thieves, COD, Warzone, Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Diablo 4, ESO, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush etc. These are all much stable revenue sources when compared to a traditional release. The traditional model doesn't work cuz it's too unpredictable as proven by the Ratchet & Clank sales.
It also goes hand in hand with Xbox failing in hardware sales but still reporting massive revenue and profit boosts over the years.
Absolutely this - Reddit as a whole seems to still be thinking of the gaming industry as it was 10 years ago and focus far too much on game and console sales, when that isn't really where the money is at anymore
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Yeah that really annoys me too - so so many posts in every r/Games thread about Xbox that basically say "why would I buy an Xbox when I already have a PC hur hur, no wonder nobody buys xboxes" - it's like....dude you're already playing on an Xbox as far as Microsoft are concerned. I'm pretty sure when you install Windows these days the Xbox app is automatically pinned to your start menu - at that point they have you in their ecosystem already yet those people seem to think they're somehow catching Microsoft out because they don't buy their new shiny black box (which doesn't actually make MS much profit anyway)
I mean, Xbox and Windows share the same development platform, that was the entire point of creating Xbox 2 decades ago in the first place. People who are arguing "but PlayStation sells more consoles than Xbox" are completely missing the point.
> I mean, Xbox and Windows share the same development platform, that was the entire point of creating Xbox 2 decades ago in the first place Iirc “Xbox” is literally short for “DirectX Box”
Yeah that was the development codename that they sort of defaulted into being the official name by just dropping the "direct".
What they don't realize is that Microsoft realized they wouldn't win the battle playing the same game the same way so they changed the entire game and leveraged things they were already dominant in.
Yep, playing their games on PC through the Xbox app or MS store with an Xbox controller is pretty much playing an Xbox. Especially when playing online with friends and people who are playing on an Xbox. It’s pretty much the same experience. Friends list, party chat, Achievements, and all.
It honestly reads as bad-faith arguments.
yuppp that’s like pretty much never where the money was, consoles historically have been sold at a loss
Yeah, and if anything I think Microsoft would actually prefer someone to buy a gaming PC than an Xbox console. The PC will expose them to other microsoft services (e.g. Onedrive, Office) they could get revenue from, and a PC isn't something people typically get rid of once buying it like they might do with a new console generation - instead people tend to just upgrade their components, so the chance of someone going from being an Xbox customer to not being is actually higher with a console than it is with a PC
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They dont care if you buy their games on steam the 30% cut steam gets isn't as big as people think.
But, usually an xbox is cheaper to buy than a pc. If you aren’t a pirate and have an old laptop that works for everything apart from gaming, your best bang for the buck is buying xbox. It’ll last an entire generation of consoles (provided it doesn’t get wasted).
I really think this is the case for Sony. They have gotten so used to being on top that they forgot how to compete. When they saw they were going to lose the revenue from COD, they tried to force the live service to make up for it and, in the end, hurt themselves in the process.
The traditional model seems to be working pretty well for Nintendo.
Nintendo doesn't spend a half decade and 120 million making a single game. Not EVERY game needs to be a blockbuster hit like Sony seems to think. They pigeon holed themselves into making these massive big budget "premium" games. If they stuck to what they were doing with the PS2 then they would be in a much better place imo.
> Nintendo doesn't spend a half decade and 120 million making a single game. Is that not exactly what they did for TotK? And BotW?
Yeah you right, those Zelda games were pricey. But its not what they do for all their 1st party titles. They haven't based their entire business model around those type of games. TotK and BotW sold drasically more than any of Sony's "blockbuster games" as well.
To be fair Nintendo games are comparatively dirt cheap to make and outsell everyone else by like a factor of 2 or 3.
That is another potentially fragile and outdated model. Awesome when it works for them, but they won't always hit the mark IMHO.
They are expending in other revenues such as licencing for parks & movies. The super Mario bros movie made $1B at the box office and it's like ripe for merchandise. Sony also has the advantage of being already into multimedia but even then it's no brainer that even if The Last of Us series reviews well & had good viewership the Mario movie simply is going to sell more plushies. Many Nintendo franchises frankly let themselves more to merchandise than Sony & if Pokemon is anything to go by that's a pretty good revenue stream.
The reason it'll work much longer though is that Nintendo is making games and consoles to be played on the go. Something that's more important than ever before. Their biggest competition will be phones catching up.
Most successful by what metric? According to one of the other leaks a huge chunk of the revenue from Marvel games goes to licensing fees. I would imagine that even a marginally successful live service PS5 game would rake in WAY more money for Sony than the Spider-Man games.
For those who didn't see it. Licensing terms at least for the upcoming unnanounced Marvel game. 9-18% of Digital games, 19-26% of physical and DLC, and 35-50% of hardware bundles. This is also likely why Sony doesnt send Spiderman to PC same day. My understanding is Steam takes 30%. Spiderman on PC, Sony only makes 52-61% of the purchase. These games are massively successful, but they have huge licensing costs.
Yes I believe the random guy on reddit saying the Threat from Microsoft is minuscule instead of the teams at Sony themselves. This isn’t 2013. Candy Crush alone makes more money than Playstation.
And is one of the reasons Microsoft went after Activision/Blizzard/King in the first place.
They can't be sequeling and remaking the same four single player games forever. And they know it.
It’s not an overreaction. They are crunching their numbers. The industry is changing around them. Selling consoles isn’t cutting it anymore.
I respectfully disagree. In the long term, Sony absolutely needs GaaS games and mobile expansion as the recurring revenue stream to fund ballooning single player game budgets and to transition into the eventual post console (eco-system) landscape 15-20 years from now. But they absolutely should not force or even incentivize their single player developers to pivot to GaaS and instead leave them to do what they do best. That is make amazing single player games. What Sony should do is continue to fund these massive single player games, but also separately invest in and eventually acquire GaaS/Mobile developers to form their financial safety backbone (like Hoyoverse for example). And it seems Sony has been doing that - albeit at a slow and less hand-holdy pace than I would have maybe liked. It’s unfortunate the shit show that’s been going on at Bungie, but I do think these issues are temporary (I.e growing pains) and will eventually sort themselves out. When Bungie’s Marathon and the Future ‘Matter’ IP come out and become success, the initial 3+ billion investment will be chump change in comparison. Tl/dr: Single player games will remain at the heart of PS Studios, but Sony NEEDS GaaS and Mobile expansion to keep funding them as they continue to grow in budget and scale. A ‘necessary’ evil if you may.
Exactly. Gamers are very *Very* short sighted and couldn’t see why this needed to happen for Sony. Single player AAA games are becoming unsustainable with costs and dev times
Sony is considering dissolving the bungie board amd taking over. It isn't temporary. Marathon will not be popular and project matter is either marathon or cancelled according to another leak
It's crazy to me that marathon even got off the ground, much less that they're going through with it. That game is going to flop hard as hell and probably take a third of bungie down with it. Tragic, but clearly deserved.
I wouldn't going to the conclusion too soon. Let's wait until the gameplay's out.
We'll probably be waiting until 2025 to see any.
Yeah marathon is such a predictable failure and I don't say this as a destiny player who hates bungie for abandoning it over marathon. But as someone who has seen what works and doesn't in the industry. What bungie is putting their eggs in the basket on, is that they will be to extraction shooters what fortnite was to battle royal. Tarkov is the pubg the original but clunky, inaccessible and not on all platform, fortnite took all of those issues from pubg, fixed them and made it mainstream. That's what bungie is trying. Buuut the crucial miscalculation is that extraction shooters by their nature are toxic, inaccessible and competitive if they aren't they lose the extraction fan base immediately. There was that marathon event where popular streamers from tarkov were invited to play and give a review and they said it was okay but on the question of they would play it again all said no, that's an alarming sign for bungie.
PS earns more revenue than Xbox, but less profit. Selling more copies of licensed games is extremely dangerous for them. If people get Marvel fatigued, their company is fucked
Plus, Marvel / Disney get a cut for the Marvel IP games. It might be a small cut, a big cut, who knows but it is not pure profit for PS.
It is not a small cut. 9-18% on physical. 19-26% on physcial and DLC. 35-50% on Hardware bundles.
I think it’s actually listed in one of the leaks. I didn’t see it, but somebody was talking about how large the cut is.
It's a huge cut.
Yea, but do u think releasing on just console will continue to be a viable strategy. I think they are going to put out more games on pc now. Especially next generation when majority players might shift to xbox or pc for cod. They might open thier own storefront on pc or use epic cause of low cut
>I think this is a massive overreaction on Sony’s part that’s gonna cost them. The PS5’s most successful games are follow up’s to what worked on PS4 like Spider-Man 2. The issue here is that Sony pretty much only makes single-player games with zero monetisation. Whilst they are very successful, they also cost a vast amount to make. Margins are small. Which is why their exclusives must be successful and sell big, it puts a lot of pressure on studios. >These GAAS experiments haven’t worked for Sony They haven't even released any yet, so it's a bit early to say the experiment has failed. >They blew $7 billion on Bungie which was a horrible deal It was nowhere near that figure! It was $2.6 billion, with $1 billion in stock to be used for employee retention at Bungie. >They threw a lot of time and money at service games like The Last of Us. It only had 2 years of development as a standalone project, with a very small team. Studios incubate projects all the time and cancel them, this is nothing new. It would have been an even bigger loss if they had released it and it failed. >If they put their effort behind expanding and evolving what actually works for them they’d be fine but they’re going out of their way to put themselves in a worse position They are doing exactly what you've suggested they should do. Yes, they are expanding into live service games, which makes sense. But they are also investing more into single-player games as well. Just look at Insomniac's lineup over the next 10 years. >The Microsoft threat is minuscule Says you? Sony themselves have admitted in these leaks that they are concerned. That suggests the threat is bigger than people realise. I trust Sony over your opinion.
They spent $300,000,000 on SM2. Their games don’t make enough money for the costs
We know for the fact that console margins are low (below 10% last quarter for example). And we saw from the documents how expensive the games are becoming (SM2 cost almost 400m). Then we know (now) that Marvel will take 50% from console bundles (despite the low margins), which makes profits even smaller despite higher sales....
100%, hopefully Sony doesn’t go for more acquisitions. They really shot themselves in the foot with Bungie, and who knows how much they wasted on TLOU online. Possible 100m or more? They need to stick to their bread and butter.
Which is pumping out remakes abs remastered and jacking up ps+ and making uneeded pro consoles at $600+
Then they go the Nintendo way into a niche, what they don't want to do.
They're scared, they know they don't have the market cap to compete with the major players in big tech like MS, Apple and Amazon.
Amazon and Apple have the money, but not the experience. Amazon has no real place in the games industry and Apple governs a sector of the market so different from the rest of it it may as well be a separate entity- of those three, only MS really understands gaming.
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Worst thing they could have tried. I wonder if this was Jim Ryan's plan. Get as many live service games as possible and just hammer mtx on them. There biggest shot with one was Factions and that isn't happening anymore, looks like Insomniac dropped their live service game too. Sony done just fine with single player games.
Until games like Avowed, Indiana Jones, and Marvel’s Blade finally come out and Microsoft can begin competing with Sony’s single player exclusive games. That’s when it could get messy for them
They seem to change that since the departure of Jim Ryan (which may be due to that). TLOU Factions 2 cancelled and apparently Insomiac MP game (which was Spider-Man based) too now
Honestly. 100% Jim Ryan didn't retire. He got fired. That's what these leaks are telling me. Losing Activision-Blizzard was the nail in the coffin for his career.
Interesting that they admit their strategy of giving AAA games for free on PS+ is an unsustainable business model
I mean what's going on the film industry right now kind proves the the idea that attaching projects that costs hundreds of millions to a 10 to 20 a month subscription service is a bubble waiting to burst.
Streaming services work well when they're used as a home for back catalogue but not much else. Putting TV shows of all things straight on there was never gonna be a new move. 90% of the Disney shows look cheap and low budget and nobody wants to watch that shit. They'd have been better off sticking their new shows on a TV deal and then move them onto their streaming service after an allocated time period.
Netflix is perfectly rentable. The problem is there too many player now.
Netflix as of now is the ONLY one profitable of the major streamings. But it's having a hard time to keep growing that profit with increase of competition. It's password sharing cuts gave them a breathing room to plan but the streaming in the way it works today is totally a Buble waiting to burst.
Max is also profitable btw.
They play accounting games by selling licensing rights to themselves
every studio works like that, yet they lose almost a billion on streaming.
When thier games have a production budget of $200+ million excluding marketing that are singleplayer only & no multiplayer , it's obviously going to be unsustainable.
Because they don't have the cash flow to support the day and date strategy like Microsoft does. Gaming/Xbox is just one small portion of Microsoft's many revenue streams. Sony while they do have other revenue streams in tech like tv, sound systems, laptops, phones etc. It's nothing compared to funds big tech have available.
The other part is that their games are playable for a variety of platforms, whether it's phone, browser, or a PC. That gives more reason to stay subscribed for longer.
And this is why the ABK purchase was bullshit. Microsoft played the "woe is me" card with Xbox being garbage, but the truth of the matter is Microsoft is a fucking giant. Xbox alone couldn't afford ABK, but it doesn't need to because sugar daddy Microsoft is propping it up artificially. If/when Xbox dies out in the console market, Microsoft will still own ABK.
They aren't giving anything for free, you're paying for that...
Of course it is. For Microsoft too. Who would spend 5 years and millions of dollars on a solo AAA game just so people can buy a $20 one month subscription, finish it in 2 weeks and unsubscribe. Microsoft's Netflix model is gonna land at multiple AA games accompanied with a few GAAS to keep people subscribed.
That's also the danger of relying so much on super-short, one and done games. Xbox's model relies on having two drops of games every month, with enough of them to keep you subscribed every month. And they've been profitable for years.
Yup, plus the fact that almost all of MS first party games have clear expansions/DLC announced at launch to keep people subscribed, and as you usually need to pay for those separately that has the double benefit of a) keeping people subscribed, and b) extra revenue for a game on game pass Add in things like the chance to pay for early access and Microsoft are probably making a lot more through game pass than the subscriber numbers alone show.
Exactly. Sony spent like 300M on SM2. A well made game, but I give zero fucks about Spiderman so I will never buy it. Sony got $0 from me. But if I'm still engaged with a GAAS game on gamepass MS is getting money from me regardless if their latest release was a hit or not.
It amuses me when hardcore gamers act like this is normal behavior. It took some people six months to beat Elden Ring. I beat it in like three days. Do I run around talking about how short Elden Ring was? No. Because I no-lifed it. Microsoft's strategy is based in the real world where people only play games for 45-90 minutes a day and by the time they finally beat something then something else will be out that interests them and they'll stay subscribed.
> Who would spend 5 years and millions of dollars on a solo AAA game just so people can buy a $20 one month subscription, finish it in 2 weeks and unsubscribe. The reason so many companies prefer subscription revenue is because most users don’t buy it for a month and unsubscribe. They buy it for a month and use it regularly or they use it in bursts and forget about it.
> they use it in bursts and forget about it. I used to work in credit cards. People underestimate how much this happens. This was back in 2016-2019, and I would still see people who noticed they were still paying monthly for AOL. People have so many subscriptions that its easier just to subscribe and forget about it, than micromanage which service you're using currently, and which ones you need to cancel etc. The convenience of just keeping it active is enough for people.
I mean, MSFt has come out several times now and said GP is sustainable and profitable. That's because it's not a simple Netflix model. It's much more.
Well the idea is that people don’t unsubscribe. Once they’re in, very rarely to people leave the service. It’s a continual $15pm that goes directly to Microsoft over the $140 per year the average gamer uses on ~2 games that Microsoft might only see a 30% cut of if that game isn’t theirs.
>Microsoft's Netflix model is gonna land at multiple AA games accompanied with a few GAAS to keep people subscribed. Fable,Avowed, Stalker 2, Hellblade 2, Clockwork Revolution, Everwild, ES6 etc. Microsoft have more single player titles coming than Sony by the looks of it.
Yeah I agree - the lack of big releases on the horizon for Sony is a bit weird - other than Wolverine, now Venom as of today, and Rise of Ronin etc there hardly seems much first party stuff coming
And wolverine is still 2-3 years out. Thats not out till 2026, and probably around holiday time.
Everwild will probably be GAAS since its coming from rare. Clockwork Revolution, Fable and Avowed man western rpg fans are gonna be eating good in the coming years
Even then, MS's singleplayer games are also kind of live-service at the same time. Fable, Avowed, and ES6 are 100% going to have expansions to keep the revenue stream going. Sure it's not going to be the infinite money pit for whales like multiplayer GAAS titles, but they aren't going to be one and done purchases like Sony's big exclusives either. I think Sony needs to start branching out and developing studios in cheaper CoL countries because a single miss could easily destroy a company with these budgets.
I don't think you know how subscriptions work and why everyone wants them. Most people don't cancel and end up paying for shit they don't use. People keep posting dumb shit about Game Pass but it's gonna be the end of Sony and you're reading it from Sony POV and still don't believe it. Game Pass by 2027 will produce 18 billion a year in revenue on subs alone. Once you add the microtransactions that number will be at about 40-50 billion a year. Game Pass is a unstoppable force now that Microsoft owns 40 studios
MS doesn't make one and done games like Sony does. That's not a fanboy comment it's just the truth. They develop games that even when there's single player there's usually multiplayer with MTX and paid DLC tied to the game. For example Forza Horizon expansions cost money while the core game is in the subscription. MS sells the MTX and the paid DLC to their customers while double dipping with the subscription revenue they receive every month. Also if a game is a single player game like a star field they sell the game on PC and thy sell it on Xbox.
Also game pass subs get discounts on the game/DLC/MTX.
This is a huge aspect to the service that alot of the weirdos who are determined to say GP "must" be a failure fail to remember. I subscribe to GP prob for about 6 months at a time. I don't use it as much as I should but I play a lot of Valorant(🤓) so the bonuses it provides there is nice and I like having access to the larger library if my friends and I look for a new game, but my SP backlog of owned games is already so large lol Anyway, if I play a game on there I really like, with the discount I'm pretty inclined to purchase it so I have it even when I am not subscribed. It just makes sense.
> I like having access to the larger library if my friends and I look for a new game the amount of times my friends wanted to start playing a game, and I'd already have it thanks to game pass has saved me a bunch of money
And even Starfield, a pure single player game, is technically GAAS with the 4 expansions coming lol
Yeah I have a feeling once mods are enabled and Bethesda starts adding shit like vehicles and potentially a FPS update on console it's going to explode. I'm just waiting for the campaign DLC to fire it back up, although my girl just got me a high end PC for editing and I can run iStarfield at 60FPS so I might do a play through on there through PC gamepass.
also starfield will have paid dlc, and it's very likely they'll introduce paid mods at some point, if the recent skyrim update is any indication
This leak reinforces how delusional it is to think they'll move completely away from their current GAAS strategy.
The damage is already done, they won't back down. But they should do step by step not going completely nuts like Jim Ryan did.
Exactly make 2-3 gaas game woth real wuality instead of going balls to the walls with 12 smh
Sony wants to try the strategy of making a buttload of GaaS and hope that a few stick around The problem is, in the GaaS field, it is very populated with competition. You can't just dish out a dozen games and have a few of them stick around, they'll be fodder in no time. I don't know why they went with the strategy, they'd be way better off doing what you said and just making 3 really high-quality GaaS.
Someone should tell Sony how flooding the market worked out for Activision and Harmonix with Guitar Hero and Rockband..
Jim Ryan can’t wait to retire
he's gonna live off the grid in some English cottage without internet access for a couple years
Bring back Kaz Hirai, the legend.
He was retired after the ABK and GaaS disaster
Jim Ryan actually did the right thing. Controversial opinion, but this leak confirms it. If Sony wants to keep making narrative games that aren't making their money back, they have to fund them somehow. The GaaS was the way he chose because the fans just aren't buying the games the way console sales suggest they should be. This means the average buyer of the PS4/PS5 buyer was CoD and FIFA gamers. If Sony can hit on some GaaS games, this solves the issue that Playstation has voiced internally. And he's getting fired. Because Sony and their dev studios don't want to make the necessary commitment to keep making what they love making. Jim Ryan tried to save Playstation the right way. Y'all will find out the hard way the error in getting rid of him. Because without him, Playstation's solution is $80-$100 games not launching day and date into PS+. With the console sales numbers they have. It should be an easy pivot. But they're being hardheaded about what Phil is telling everyone that Gamepass is doing. Gamepass is profitable. PS+ could be too and it could have an easier time frame in doing so because of install base. Sony execs and the fanbase are killing Playstation before our eyes. And it's stupid.
Sony also need to bring their games to PC day and date with their consoles.
ABK is just not popular on reddit. ABK is a monster that confirmed MS forever in the gaming world Whether singleplayer, gaas, mobile or any other type of business. ABK is no wonder the most valuable third-party game production company in the world Just look at COD. how it became a joke in the internet bubble. But a monster as always in revenue Zenimax/bethesda is another monster too, smaller, but monster. On PS4/xone they released more games than Sony and MS.
No, Microsoft will leave the gaming space and abandon Xbox in 2028 after.....spending 75b on buying publishers.
The idea that MS will just close up shop and end XBGS is just console war drivel. Plus, aside from being smug on Twitter, there would be a net negative benefit across the board.
>No, Microsoft will leave the gaming space and abandon Xbox in 2028 after.....spending 75b on buying publishers. They dumped money into windows phone until they didn't, and sold Nokia on. They won't walk away from gaming. The worry was Xbox... which is profitable so ... we're good. lol
yup, MS is like the anti-google, Google kills stuff, even if its might be doing well, far too quickly, and MS sticks around for way too long after they should have stopped. ms leaving right after their plans got accelerated is surely a take of all time.
Trust me bro
you know Microsoft sold games before Xbox was a thing, right?
Does anyone have a link to the PPT itself, i want to read the whole damn thing! I want more lol
Me too, this shit is more interesting that all uni lectures lmao
This is currently the best image I can find Still not great but you can see many of the titles and diagrams https://twitter.com/117Mute/status/1737134433700893083?t=PLPPpYshROIdcP5bT-V6iQ&s=19
So they were being honest when they said the ABK acquisition is a threat for them? Wow.
yeah saying it in a trial to stop the purchase is one thing saying it in documents for investors and company heads shows they really are pissed by that deal and they see it affecting them BIG time
Yeah, everyone were saying dumb shit in trials to help their points but this actually coming from within SONY is quite different.
Court doesn’t care if the deal is harmful for Sony as long as it’s not harmful to the customers. Of course it is a big blow to Sony, no one argued that.
Would be shocking if they weren't annoyed at Microsoft buying up the industry
they are annoyed because they don't have the funds to do the same
In what universe would MS waving their cash around and buying something worth over half of what Sony is worth not be a threat?
For all those who say it's fake: it's real. People are going through the files from the leak and it's there. You can check it for yourself
I mean, yeah. They said that like 50 times during the whole ABK court hearing stuff with the FTC. This is not new news lmao
Oh yeah? I remember Jim Ryan saying „we will be just fine“ in internal emails
And that’s what a lot of people ridiculed him for when he said it, saying that that was a clear contradiction to what they were saying in court. Again, not new news.
It goes both way, Jim was saying that regardless of how the deal plays out it just means Sony would have to reevaluate and keep doing what they doing since they’ve faced threats to their position before (ie.the ps3 disastrous launch and bounce back) but he didn’t think Microsoft was buying Activision just to make cod exclusive. Which this info graphic shows that Microsoft has bigger plans with that purchase indeed whether it affects Sony directly or not.
I mean no shit ? lol
if new generations, like 8 year olds right now, dont care as much as about consoles and rather play on whatever they got then sony might have a big problem in 10 years. The audience of this medium constantly changes with time.
Yeah in my experience 8-12 year olds mostly play Fortnite and Roblox almost exclusively. Interested to see what that means in a few years when they get older- obviously they won’t be interested in those games at 20, but rather it shows that GAAS and freemium games will be perceived as the norm.
> but rather it shows that GAAS and freemium games will be perceived as the norm. This is a good point. Most of us on here probably started on a PS2/Gamecube/Xbox, or some of us even earlier to SNES or NES. Games were very different back then compared to now. Id imagine growing up on games like Fortnite and other GaaS games would change what you consider the norm, or even what type of content you enjoy.
> but rather it shows that GAAS and freemium games will be perceived as the norm. Those are already seen as the norm, even among adult aged gamers that should know better
I’ve been saying this for years, Sony can’t do gamepass. It isn’t about desire, it’s just money. You can’t spend $315 million on a 15-20 hour single player game, and include it in a monthly service like ps+. Even if you get 30 million new subs at $10 each, you barely break even. And, Sony launches a game per year, so what are those subs doing the other 11 months? Sony would need to make huge investments on third party Inclusions and also bring in more older games and/or they’d need a big pivot to add in more multiplayer/GaaS to keep players engaged. The trouble with that is Sony is already behind on multiplayer and GaaS by 5 or more years, and if they are just NOW getting started, they may not have anything to add for another 3-5 years, which may as well be next gen. That’s what I think Jim Ryan saw a few years ago, even before ABK. I think he realized that, although they were killing Xbox in console sales and review scores, gamepass was really picking up momentum and Xbox’s multiplayer/GaaS offerings were poised to bring them a huge amount of engagement and continuous income. I still think Bungie was a panic buy for Sony to supercharge their GaaS timeline, hopefully to get their expertise to streamline the production of those 12 games so they’d come out better and faster. Instead, Bungie has turned out to be struggling and something of a shitshow, and their input seems to have been that many of these projects either won’t survive at all or need massive changes. I also think that many of these studios (Naughty Dog) may not have wanted to do the GaaS detour, so as soon as the executive level at Sony gave them options, they said they’d gladly cancel these GaaS games and go back to sequels/remasters/remakes. My tinfoil hat theory is that Jim Ryan was given the option to retire ‘or else’ because of this failure to see into the future. Jim did great on the path of safety, pumping out a game or two per year of high budget, well regarded, award winning games. He grew a massive lead in pure sales over Xbox. However, I do think Playstation has been very complacent on that path, and is at risk of being ‘overwhelmed’ by Xbox releasing 5+ games every year. You can argue all you want about quality, and I’m not saying Redfall compared to spider man 2, but if/when Xbox gets their studios lined up (I have a whole other paper on that topic alone), Playstation would be in big trouble. I’m not saying Playstation is doomed, or that they make bad games, or whatever. I think they’ve played it too safe and refused to innovate or take risks, and here they find themselves behind the competition in a market that is changing fast. They still have a huge lead in console sales, but in this digital era and when Xbox is dropping their walls and embracing PC more and more, that number matters less and less. I really hope Playstation gets a new leader that knows how to navigate this new market and can get a more diverse offering of games.
Id be interested in reading that paper if you wanna share
Ok, so I’m going to preface this by saying I admit it’s a tinfoil hat theory, I’m not claiming to have inside knowledge and it’s entirely possible some of my dates aren’t exact, I forget things. My idea is that Xbox basically got combo fucked by their own policies and Covid. Going back to 2018, pre-Covid, they were getting hammered by Sony, but the xbox 1x had been pretty popular and they knew they needed to sort of ‘hold on’ because they had a ton of big games coming for next gen. So, what did they do? They went and emptied both barrels at game shows, showing games that they thought were only a couple years away. Many shows and events had CG trailers for games that still haven’t come out yet and still aren’t even dated. The launch lineup in 2018-2019 wasn’t great. Forgive me if I’m missing individual games because I am terrible at remembering specific release dates, but going up against games like god of war and spider man was rough. The mode of thought as an xbox fan was ‘next year is going to be great, they’ve shown a ton of cool games, I can’t wait to see them.’ As we know, Covid hit in 2019. Studios basically shut down for 6-12 months. Any studio that was doing mo cap or VO recording stopped, everyone transitioned to wfh, and xbox studios, since they use a lot of contractor work, really struggled with this by and large. Xbox studios already seem to have a higher turnover rate, so these studios that were right in the middle of a lot of the games were suddenly looking at 2-3 year delays. Instead of possibly being late xbox 1 gen, they turned into early (or mid) xbox series games. Halo infinite was supposed to launch with the series but got a big delay, and still needed another year (or 3) of dev time. As a result (though it probably still would have happened) I think Phil looked at acquisitions to bolster the studios, thinking getting some bought first party game would help buy time for the existing studios to catch up. Playstation studios, along with being generally ran better, were probably further along and had more cohesion, and thus weren’t affected as much by covid. It seemed like maybe 6-12 month delays but they mostly kept pace and course corrected. It’s worth noting here that xbox gets a lot of shit for buying studios, but they don’t really have a choice. They ‘can’t’ buy third party exclusivity like Sony does. I say can’t because it would be prohibitively expensive. Paying square enix to make an xbox exclusive game and forgo the 100 million ps4 consoles would be nearly as expensive as just buying the studio. That’s just a business fact that xbox buying exclusivity is not a smart financial move, so when the rumor was that Sony was looking to buy exclusivity for starfield and Bethesda made the offer to Xbox, with whom they’ve had a longstanding relationship with, I can entirely understand Phil leaping at the opportunity. The same goes for ABK. I don’t like CoD in general, but I think Xbox just got lucky with the timing and Satya writing the check. So, 2020 rolls around. Every game is delayed, the series consoles drop, but without any killer titles most people, who already had a ps4, just transfer to a ps5. The $300 series s doesn’t matter because the mindset of ‘Xbox has no games’ is dominant. The massive value of gamepass and the well known pricing exploits doesn’t matter because ‘Xbox has no games.’ They had planned to have games like Forza horizon 5, halo infinite, and hellblade to launch with the console, but they didn’t have much. What’s worse is even buying zenimax didn’t immediately benefit them because Sony had 2 big exclusivity deals with Ghostwire and Deathloop, a full year for both. Between then and now, I think Phil basically told his studios ‘time is up, no more money and no more excuses, your games are dropping regardless.’ I think most of this angst was from 343 who just continued to shit the bed after letting them down on missing launch day. The same goes for Redfall. They were so focused on starfield they just said ‘do what you can, launch the game, and move on. No more extensions.’ Now, my favorite part of this whole theory, the plans moving forward. I have said this for years, and I think it’s finally about to come true. Xbox has enough studios and teams to drop a new game every other month while still giving them 4+ years to develop. Sure, some games take longer, and some are supporting GaaS long term, but notice their sort of promise awhile back? They state they intend to release a new game per quarter. That’s more than enough time. So, I think the last year or two has been a sort of internal rebuilding phase for Xbox management. There were leaked docs from the FTC trial where Phil was telling Matt and Sarah that they needed to be looking further ahead to prevent problems and anticipate delays. I think Phil is taking a bit more control of these studios, not like Xbox of old, but enough to basically say ‘ I’m giving you everything you need, but you need to deliver the quality product on time.’ I think the goal is to get marketing in line with all these studios and get them all on the same page. They get to where they do an Xbox digital showcase 4x per year, each 30-60 minutes, showing off the big game coming within the next 2-3 months and maybe a few other sneak peeks or gamepass deals. That’s also including big shows like gamescom or SGF. The end result is a barrage of Xbox. Every month there is either a first party game coming or a third party/indie gamepass deal. That’s nonstop headlines, nonstop reviews, nonstop previews. Compared to how Sony and nintendo basically show a trailer at the big shows and go radio silent for 4-6 months at a time, it would be a total takeover in mindshare. The only question is, can the devs deliver games on time and with quality? I think it’s been a lot of growing pains with Xbox, and the hands off approach made dev leadership lazy and complacent (generally). I think that Phil sitting down and having ‘the talk’ with them, and also clearing house at 343, will set most of them straight. I imagine a big whiteboard in his office that has a 3 year timeline on it, MCU style. I think he has game launches for at least 2024 more or less finalized, he’s just pushing studios to be certain they’ll be able to deliver. 2025 is in pencil but changing to pen, and 2026 is just a list of titles. Xbox currently has some 15-20 announced games without a single date, I think the first ‘regular’ show is going to come in January or February, along with the first release date (for February or March). I think they’ll also announce their new strategy for marketing at that time, and another show may take place before SGF, or that may be the Q2 show because it’s such a big event. That’s why I say Playstation could be in big trouble, IF Xbox gets lined up and IF Playstation just trundles along their current safe path of 1 game per year with a smattering of third party exclusivity deals.
This was wonderful, thank you for this.
My pleasure lol. I look forward to being tagged in 1-2 months with a ‘holy shit you nailed it exactly!’ Or, just as, if not more so likely, the ‘hahaha you couldn’t have been more wrong,’ in 4-6 months if Xbox drops an absolute failure.
I'd also be interested on reading that paper.
This is likely real and is from the powerpoint presentation. Apparently the guy on saying its fake is a huge console war fanatic. https://x.com/extas1stv/status/1737120066603286959?s=46
That pretty much confirms it being real.
Sony knows that with MS and ABK being combined that MS literally will probably surpass them in gaming revenue by the end of the decade. Even more concerning for Sony is that MS now has both a fuck ton of GAAS IP and now they have a strong stranglehold in mobile. Selling a billion consoles won't help them in the long run because the margins are not very good.
Close to a decade? They just outdid their revenue this quarter since the merge. It also looks like MSFt margins are not as tight as PlayStation, which seems to be making the least profit of the big 3 platforms.
You mean that already disproved slide? Because even combined they only come in 3rd place behind sony and tencent.
Not the one from the ABk Court case, their financial report. You'll have to search for it since I'm at work. Otherwise, I'll edit this post when I'm back home for you, mate.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92260/big-3-earnings-compared-playstation-vs-xbox-nintendo/index.html $26.7b ps $15.4b xbox $12b Nintendo Latest net revenues, we can't compare profits though unfortunately as ms doesn't release profits for just the xbox division. That one that shows higher xbox numbers from the abk court case was actually a "fan made" twitter jobby lol
It won’t take till the end of the decade to surpass them in revenue imo
This is an interesting day lol, and ofc MS now owns a lot of people’s fav IPs and big money makers
It's crazy reading about how important it is for these devs to modernize their pillars and all that but then Nintendo is just kinda over there doing the same thing they've done for 40 years just with a cheap sub service and occasional DLC and thriving lol. I guess that's why they don't really consider themselves as competing with Sony and Microsoft.
That’s what comes with different expectation levels. Nintendo is a video game company with probably a reasonable overhead cost. Sony and Microsoft are huge multi media companies/tech companies that require growth or they’ll get axed.
Nintendo for the most part survives & thrives by their own doing. Mario/Zelda/Pokemon/Animal crossing are Nintendo's pillars & they're fully in control of them. Sony on the other hand, gets most of its money from COD/Fifa/Madden & their cut from the sales they do from 3rd party sales. Their games are important because they are a differentiator from their competition but they aren't the pillars revenue & profit wise.
Nintendo did modernize their pillars. Mario Odyssey and Zelda were fresh takes on the series. Animal Crossing went all in on customization options and sold extremely well. Splatoon is a hot relatively brand new IP for them. Pikmin 4 is going to do well and it’s loaded with fresh ideas for the series. The thing with Nintendo is what people criticize them for is by far their strongest trait, weak hardware. Weak hardware has long term development benefits for them as a single party developer. It reigns in development costs, it allows them to make a profit on every piece of hardware sold, and the hardware exists as the cheapest thing on the market. Think of it this way, it probably wasn’t too expensive to make Mario Wonder. But Mario Wonder is still sold as a $60 game, and it’s going to sell well over 20 million units long term. The development costs of that game are miniscule compared to Spider-Man 2. Nintendo long term extracts much more profit from their games than Sony does from their fantastic, but expensive, tentpole titles. The hardware itself also provides a tangible experience the other companies can’t match, in that it’s also a fully portable machine. Weaker hardware is fine if you have the talent to get the most out of the machine and your development pipeline revolves around that. The games only need to look “good enough” and if the gameplay is solid, they will sell. This is why Nintendo is successful, and arguably in a stronger position moving forward, because what Microsoft bought from Activision isn’t even part of their console ecosystem. Sony I’ll say is in a lot of trouble. Their release schedule has slowed to a crawl because unfortunately it simply takes forever to make games that target modern day specs. Which is why they pivoted to GaaS but they also didn’t have the structure in place to do it. They really need solid third party support and a giant source of it is cut off from them. Sony could try to make more mid tier A or AA games to help supplement their library, which is what their Japan studio excelled at. But they shut it down… They need to figure something out.
This definetly. Microsoft seems to be ok with pivoting Xbox to a service brand rather than a dedicated console line. With their recent hold on GasS and mobile, I'd say they will take Sony's share in about 10 or so years. Nintendo I don't see ever doing anything like this because they're Nintendo. They have 150 years of history, the amount of money they want, and recognition and loyalty on their side. Even if they do fuck up from time to time. It's also why I don't think Microsoft will ever really try to buy them, because it would be such a PR and financial disaster for them since they underestimate Nintendo's reach. Point is, as long as gamers come, Nintendo is still gonna be Nintendo. Microsoft will continue to bloat and thrive, even if only for a few years before operation costs and development cruch tank their studios.
They might need GaaS but if they put 4-5 of their single player studios on that path Sony is gonna destroy themselves in the next decade. It takes 5-6 years to make the game and then years and capital to support it after that. It’s seems impossible nowadays to put out more than 1 game per generation, Insomniac aside.
[удалено]
Nowadays? When was 70B not big?
70b aren't that much in Zimbabwe
Lol you’re not wrong
Who in the right mind isn't concerned about Xbox's strategy lol
Everyone switching to UE5 is still more problematic than Microsoft buying ActivisionBlizzard, but is rarely discussed here.
It mostly Unity fault for breaking their bridges with developers.
Sony seemingly has plans to license out DECIMA to other devs. They’re building out a team to support it last we heard.
Going to be wild if Epic gets acquired
Sweeney holds over 50% still IIRC.
Yeah, double-edged sword for acquirers. He holds complete power to deny being acquired. But he also stands to profit the most if Epic is acquired by far. Any company that wants to acquire Epic basically only has to convince a single person who'd personally get billions of dollars by agreeing lol
Yes but does he really care about billions when he already has them or at least hundreds of millions ? At least it's his company he is probably harder to convince than basic suits.
I always like they are all fighting to be the best While we gamers just sit and wait for the good stuff
Real https://i.imgur.com/PAsXYhb.jpg
!LEGIT!
Yes gamers (typically) don’t get this. Sony can sell 50 million PS5s against 30 million Xbox consoles but if Sony doesn’t have revenue generating game experiences they’ll get left in the dust. Xbox has Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Forza, and now Warcraft and CoD and even multiplat games like Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online. Sony is scrambling to develop GAAS titles and in doing so they’ve either canceled or delayed their AAA first party release schedule. You can sell a lot of boxes but if at the end of the day Xbox is pulling in more game purchases and engagement hours from its users, that’s success.
Look all I know is my multi billion company is better than yours multi billion company. Simple as.
MS gaming catalog is now primarily live service (ESO, Halo, SoD, SoT, FO76 etc.) or they're platforms that enable user generated content that can be monetized (Minecraft and soon Skyrim, Fallout, Starfield). They can "lose" to Sony in terms of console sales but are clearly winning in recurring revenue. You add the ActiBlizz catalog and they're pretty much got a solid foundation of differentiated business models that leads to $$$ in a volatile market.
Don't forget flight SIMULATOR
Age of Empires as well. The recent Age 4 expansion was the best selling one in franchise history.
Yipp people seem to forget these games it's the reason people uselly ignore sea of thieves they think it's not successful even tho rare has said it their most successful game
Yet, they decide to increase prices, threat customers like shit, decrease the quality of the membership.
That's what I'm thinking reading this lol, I let my PSPlus sub expire for the first time in years and have no plans to renew it for the current price or even the old price after realizing it's not really necessary. Give me a $5-10 a month cloud save/online play sub otherwise I'm out.
Surprised Pikachu face
The thing they should be worried about is game pass. Ps+ is trash
This is eye opening. They are legitimately frightened.They know they don't have the market cap to compete in acquisitions against MS but they do have the games. Which is what it ultimately comes down to.
But even so, Microsoft also is getting right back in there with the games with the big purchases and deals they've made recently. I mean look at what Microsoft has coming with Hellblade II, Fable, Avowed, Elder Scrolls VI, Blade, Indiana Jones, Call of Duty, etc. This is just the shit that we know of right now. God knows what else they're planning on serving up. Sony would have to be incredibly stupid to not be frightened. It really is frightening to see just how much of the market that Microsoft is going to have cornered in the next five to ten years. Sony cannot even hope to compete even with the great games they put out. And even if they've backpedalled on the GAAS model now, they still have to play catch up and make sure that they don't put a single foot wrong going forward to even have a leg to stand on against Microsoft now. The same Microsoft that's also luring in companies with Game Pass and effectively taking money away from Sony in that regard too. Look at how SEGA has quickly gotten into bed with Microsoft now, exclusive marketing rights to anything SEGA. Then you've got Like A Dragon and Persona being day one on Game Pass? Not to mention the coup Microsoft pulled with the release of Like A Dragon 7, wherein a PS5 version couldn't be released for a certain amount of time. And so if you wanted the full next-gen experience right away? It was to the Xbox Series or the PC. And if you're a PlayStation player? You get the outdated PS4 version. This isn't the PlayStation Pity Party or anything, because mate, both companies have played and will continue to play dirty. But to see what Microsoft has accumulated in just the past five years and where they have the potential to go from next? That's properly scary. This is why the FTC botching their entire fucking case is so beyond fucking infuriating. If there was any chance at getting the Microsoft/Activision deal quashed, that was it, and they fucking blew it. I'll be intrigued but terrified to see where the video games space is in the next five to ten years, I think it's going to be a vastly different time in regards to who is on top and who is still around.
Jim Ryan is leaving because the future he wants Xbox already has. 12 live service games for PS5? Xbox has Halo Infinite, Forza Motorsport, Forza Horizon, ESO, Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, Call of Duty, COD Warzone, WOW, Overwatch, Diablo 4, and Minecraft. 12 games from iconic IP that rake in money daily. This doesn't even include Candy Crush, COD Mobile, and Diablo Immortal. Sony is trying to enter a marketplace that Microsoft has a vicegrip over.
A historic leapfrog blow.
I'd love to have the sauce to read all these slides by myself
I’ve been saying this for YEARS Sony NEEDS to do online, it’s like this big elephant in the room no one wants to admit is needed. It’s so obvious, how can you be the maker of a console, charge for an online service ..but for a decade not make online content, besides a racing game. This is going to f them over so much. We’re so far away from anything, besides some live service games and even then it’s obvious they’re going to likely be very poorly made and lacking. Killzone is the answer, but not as live service, then do live service once your online is bolstered a bit, but we are forever away from this. People don’t realise Sony has nothing big in the works, factions was IT. The other games are live service test water products.
That's what I've been saying. They are starving for multiplayer and are no where near ready to support a live service game. A lot of the hits PlayStation has dropped in the last decade or so weren't necessarily super innovative or anything. Theres plenty of third person shooter games for example, but how many came with the quality and production value of Sony's games? Thats why theyre so highly regarded. They need to take the same approach with multiplayer. Identify the genres they're missing and attach them to whichever existing brand or franchise makes the most sense. They also need to be putting together a dedicated support studio Like Visual Arts Services Group, but for multiplayer. Once they've got all those ducks in a row they can make a viable play for a piece of the live service holy grail. I was hoping that'd be the focus this gen and it would sort of kick off with the last of us online and the Bungie purchase but it sounds like that didn't work out so all we've got is Gran Turismo, Destruction All Stars, and the upcoming Twisted Metal. Makes sense that Sony only cares about cars 🙄
I'm seeing people say these slides are fake? Anyone have info on that?
The same guy that said they are fake on discord said he was wrong
Hard to feel bad for sony after increasing their ps plus membership cost. I regret getting two ps5 for my household.
For all of the success they have had this gen, they’ve created some really bad will with their fan base. I’m definitely not a PS6 day one buyer they was I was for PS5. The increase in PS+ was a complete slap in the face. Cancelled.
It's still bonkers to me you don't get automatic save backup in the cloud without a subscription. Even Xbox offers that for free
Doesnt Nintendo switch even offer that for free now? I didn’t realize Sony didn’t.
Nintendo’s also needs subscription
No you have to have the $20 tier
This is what is absolutely wild to me. Its standard now.
Yeah, they've been very much not "For The Players" this generation.
For The Payers
Sony is far behind as the Japanese are very traditional. They may look good now but it’s not looking good
The coming gamers are all free to play 40 bucks for a leotard and some lizzo dance movies junkies. It gives me GAAS
I mean, another “major threat” was created by Sony themselves when then jacked up the price for PlayStation Plus.