How Would You Improve Playstation Plus on the PS5?

[EricHiggin]

DonFerrari said:

EricHiggin said: So if online wasn't free on PS3 and you had to pay $25 for a basic package, how many would have paid that, and how many wouldn't have purchased a PS3 because of it? How many would have gone ahead and paid $60 anyway for the higher tier package while they were at it? Plus was also brand new product for PS. It's not often something brand new takes off immediately and see's no changes as it grows yet inevitably slowly stagnates. You need to charge more, or offer more choice, which typically means a cheaper choice at the very least. Probably around 30-50M would have paid 25 for MP if Sony put it behind a paywall, similar to how it would be today. People didn't stop purchasing X360 even with a double the price XBL for online so I don't see many not purchasing PS3 because of the half priced online. Probably same 1-2M would pay 50 for the PS+ with games, that is already historical data. You already pointed out it's one third of the existing user base. I simply didn't increase it because like I said, I wanted to be conservative. I don't see what's wrong with thinking way way more people will choose the cheaper base package over the higher tiers. That's what you've been saying. I'm just assuming a cheaper base package would push more people over the edge, who wouldn't be otherwise, to buy into Plus. Sure more people would chose the cheaper alternative on PS+, but that wouldn't make it double the sales of the cheaper and 6x the more expensive compared to PS3. How many played PS3 online that weren't paying anything? How many would have paid $25 back then if they were forced to? How do you know it wouldn't double? If you look at many high selling games, after they've only sold a couple million copies give or take, the price has been getting cut in half and then it goes on to sell double or triple or more. Why couldn't this work for Plus? Which game have you followed that released for half price for double sale? CoD have launched for similar prices whole gen and sales were naturally increasing, it wouldn't double because of price cut. Also most of the sales of the games happen on the first couple months, they don't double after the price cut (or triple). I'm yet to see you provide a single evidence to your assumptions. We're basically assuming everything. Just because we have some general numbers to go off of doesn't guarantee anything. Did XB 360 numbers guarantee XB1 success? Did the changes to the XB1 ecosystem cause the problems it had? What about PS3 to PS4? Did the positive changes to PS4, like a lower, more reasonable, affordable price lead to it's success? Would cheaper online have made it even more successful? If you don't have any evidence better than historical data you go with historical data. Well you said people don't typically budget for gaming, so why couldn't they decide to take 3 or 4 years of online savings, plus non gaming related savings over that time period, and use them to purchase a PS product they may not have otherwise? If they only have a gaming budget, which you have to take into account will have money added to the pool each year, not just from the savings from online, it could be put into many different things. PSVR was just one possibility, considering it's going to get cheaper as time goes on. Again if they saved money by paying less on PS+ and used that money to buy another PS product that would just mean Sony had to do more to get the same revenue (so more cost and less profit). The biggest reasons were that there was little reason at the time not to charge for online, or to charge less. With how poorly the PS3 gen went, charging the same price as XB Live made a tonne of sense at the time. It was becoming the norm, it helped to cover the crappy PS3 gen, PS4 was cheap enough that even with $50 going to online it was still $50 cheaper then the competition without paying for Live, and it helped tie or even lock to some degree many people into the PS4 ecosystem and PS brand in general. X1 was 100 more than PS4 and that didn't made MS do XBL online free or anything of the sort. Who was forcing PS to sell PS4 for $399? They could have sold it for the same price as XB1 and it still would have outsold it. Not nearly in the same manner as they did with the lower price, but regardless. PS could certainly have gotten away with less first party titles, maybe not lesser quality titles though. PS is doing this to bring more people into the ecosystem. They likely kept Plus at the same price as XB though because they assumed that was one of the things MS wasn't likely to budge on. That would make it even easier for PS to gain online market share now because Live is unlikely to follow a Plus reduced package as XB is headed in a more service based direction than PS. PS4 launching at 499 would probably sell much slower, sure it would still outsell X1 not sure the point in it. But just look at historical data and current gen data and instead of 100M PS4 would probably be 60-70M at this point. If you want to bring people in who won't come easily for whatever reason, it means more work and options. If you don't bring them in, it means either charging more to your existing customers or stagnating. Both of these are more likely to keep those harder to get consumers away, while also losing some of your existing customers. There is a balance though. Here you are right, but offering MP by half price wouldn't improve profits as I put the numbers so no point in working more to get the same or less

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Last gen PS3 sold 87M units, and PS4 has already sold 100M and is likely going to end up selling 20M-30M more than that. So out of those 10M extra players right now, none of them are buying into Plus? What if there were different tiers? What about the other 10M-20M or more in the future? Will PS5 sell less, the same, or more units?

In April 2003 XB Live had 350,000 users. In April 2004 XB Live was now at 750,000 users. In July 2005 Live had 2M users. E3 2007 Live had 7M users. March 2008 10M users. Jan 2009 17M users. Today it has 64M. I don't see why PS offering different options and packages couldn't lead to a significant increase in users.

Not games that released for half price, games that dropped to half price which increased or kept sales going so instead of the game stagnating or fading away, it continues on. Whether it be PS first party or third party, it's a way to keep bringing people in. If you look at Ubisoft for example, games like AC Origins or R6 Siege came down in price fairly quickly which kept sales going and increased overall sales by a considerable amount. I myself wouldn't have bought Origins at $80, but I did for $40 like a month after the launch, and it's led me to spend more money on all the DLC. The basic Plus package wouldn't be a new launch really, it would be an additional offering to an existing service, just a more affordable one. Like how you can buy Origins or Siege in different editions for different prices.

I agree you should use historical data to guide you to a certain degree, but unless the historical data and what it's tied to match up exactly with what you're comparing it to, you have to interpret how things may differ now. The PS3 gen compared to the PS4 gen is very different, also taking into account the competition.

When PS gives games away with PS Plus, those games aren't free for them. Even if they give their own first party games away that's some lost profit. One way or another PS has to work for your dollar. They don't profit 100%.

MS had bigger problems, and like I said, they are heading for a service based platform and have been before it became obviously apparent more recently, so the last thing they want to budge on is online pricing. That's their gravy train. PS isn't focused and relying on that so much.

Correct, and your point is that PS/SNY aren't going to do more work, especially for less or the same money. Why sell 30% more consoles for 20% less when they could sell 30% less for 20% more? Market share and mind share. The opportunity to get you into the ecosystem and possibly lock you into it with everything else they offer.

If your numbers are right then yes it would be worse. How do you know for certainty that would be the case though? Even if it ended up so that PS made the exact same amount of money in the end, what's wrong with that if they can please more consumers while getting them into their ecosystem?