I think if they go back like early 360 years they maybe sell more consoles but probably only lose money.

Good post, and I mostly agree with what you said. Though I will address the first line. While yes there's many single player games that don't achieve success, I think there's a reason that can allow more Single Player games to achieve large success than multiplayer ones.

Multiplayer games is all about pulling as many users into your grasp as possible, and holding them hostage, keeping them playing your game for as long as possible, instead of going to someone elses. Making them spend as much money on whatever additional content you provide.

Whereas singleplayer games are just fired out into the mix, purchased and played from anywhere to 20-100 hours, then they move on to another title, rather than literally thousands some people spend with multiplayer titles.

The very nature of Multiplayer Games as an ongoing service makes it harder for them to succeed. While Singleplayer games, you really only have to worry about competing titles for the month of their release, multiplayer titles are constantly competing for attention for as long as they exist.

Overwatch is going to be consuming peoples time for years to come, stopping them from spending that time with other games. But GoW for example isn't going to be detracting from other games sales for very long at all.

I’m surprised he said this, with how touchy this topic is for MS. This doesn’t give me much confidence that the exclusive landscape will change in a direction I’ll like.

MS does have a point, however. Games are expensive, and only a fraction of the $60 (physical copy) cost goes to the publisher. GoW has likely become my favorite game of all time, but with its likely $100mil+ production budget, it took several million copies sold just for GoW to break even. So without a revenue option other than the $60 purchase cost, GoW will be less profitable I think than many would expect. Tho digital purchases have a very positive effect on profitability, so hopefully GoW has a high digital purchase percentage.

Sony will get roughly $45 per $60 game sold at a retailer, so considering it sold 3.1m in it's first 3 days...

~1m Digital - $60m
~2.1m Physical - $94m
Total - $154m

So yeah, they easily made there money back and then some in 3 days, everything here on out is profit.

BOTW was said to need around 2m sales to break even. 

I don't know if $100m+ is accurate, it may be. Horizon was said to be "over $52m" as it was the "largest dutch media production"

Nothing we didn't know about MS focus and their 1st party strategy.

Rule of thumbs, 10k per dev per month.

GoW took 5 years with 200 dev team. That is 200*60*10000 = 120M on production. That is without considering VA, capture motion actors, marketing, etc. So even if some of that dev time was used on other things, it is safe to assume GoW costed over 100M to make.

You agree with needing to sell 10M+ to be a success?

That way no MS game have been successful this gen.

And you agree with Sony playing safe on game development? Because that would put MS in even safer position as not even releasing games.

Frankly, I'm glad they are doubling down (or so it sounds) - I have the One but never play it - knowing what they are planning for going forward it makes it an easier decision for me to not feel bad about not buying their next console. For those that like this type of thing - hope you enjoy it.

I'm pretty sure I've read this news in the past. The 'Booty' last name sounds familiar.

I swear I read "lame name"