Jason Schreier: Sony's Obsession with Blockbusters is Stirring Unrest Within PS Empire

[DonFerrari]

IcaroRibeiro said:

DonFerrari said:

Not sure I understood your point.

Have you read my last comment? I explained why I think companies are boosting their games budget regardless if it will increase their sales and even if it makes their business far more risky, as a millionaire budget will need millionaire sales to break even 

Ow ok.

Doctor_MG said:

DonFerrari said:

I didn`t draw the conclusion that less software means greater sales, what I said is that even with less software released they achieved more sales, because they have sold much more SW even if less released. Sure we don`t know if they had released double the SW if they would have sold double the number, it is possible they wouldn`t but sure sales would likely grow. We do know that SW sales don`t scale linear or even near it. The higher the HW numbers the lower the attach ratios usually are. Although for the famous IPs someone posted earlier that the attach ratio increased.

Myself I wouldn`t mind if each of my favorite IPs would have year release if they were all of the quality they have done for the few releases (but that wouldn`t happen probably). My biggest point to Ludicrous was that Sony have been taking almost the same risk with new IPs as they were before (half their releases are new IPs), and that releasing less games but with higher cost can actually mean more risk.

We have received lower production type titles as well, and when I say as much as they can that is obviously with caveats like reason. They could open 10 studios tomorrow to make more games, but that isn`t within reason to demand. Sony have collaborations and deals. And not to forget that Sony plan from what they say is to compliment their platform with what is missing, so if they already receive a healthy number of Indies, A, AA and Japanese titles with several genres they don`t really need to make those titles as they don`t need to lose money on those titles as they are covered.

Bold 1: But you're defending less games because of higher software sales. So, if less games didn't cause higher software sales, why wouldn't you want more games?   

Bold 2: Even if half of their releases are new IP's their are still more IP's that Sony took a risk on during the PS3 generation. You can't just ignore a substantial number of new properties because it conveniently works out similarly proportionally. The fact of the matter is, more is more. They aren't making as much as they were in the PS3 era because they are focusing on higher budget AAA games which take longer to develop. 

Bold 3: By this logic they are covered in the AAA front too. It's not like there is a lack of AAA games out there. In addition, stating that they "don't need to lose money" suggests that they would lose money, but this isn't necessarily the case. 

1: Nope, I`m not defending less games, myself I would prefer more games. I was just explaining that even though Sony made less games it wasn`t a real issue to them.

2: Again, the amount of risk wouldn`t really change considerably with more or less games total since they are still proportionally making the same amount of new titles. And making less releases but with bigger budgets would likely increase the risk whenever some of those failed. Eggs and baskets know. Sony could even take less risk and still make more games, let`s say for each AAA game with a budget of 50M+ they make 10 new IPs with budget of 1M, so from every 60M invested 50M would be with certain profit made (83% of their money safely invested). The way I see right now is like 70M for certain hits and 30M for new IPs (so 70% safe investment, which would mean increase in risk). Just look at the IPs in PS3 versus PS4 and I would say that the new IPs there were with less budget than now.

3: Sure they are covered in AAA to, same as MS, their system would sell well even without they making AAA. But not all genres are equally covered. That is the reason you don`t see Sony going to much after FPS games but go for 3rd party action games, because on the first they weren`t able to really have success (they needed to have those in PS3, Resistance, Killzone, etc), but on PS4 that wasn`t needed anymore. Sure that isn`t necessarily the case, but it is potentially, when you aren`t the best on those but release anyway the potential to lose money is higher. So the only aspect that I see Sony taking less risk is because they are releasing games were they can be among the best.