| Ryuu96 said:
Pretty much. PlayStation said "their pillars were outdated" compared to Microsoft's. You're right that the console market has stagnated for 3 generations now, it hit its ceiling long ago, meanwhile AAA development is rapidly increasing. Those internal Sony documents had concerns about how much their games were costing, even an Insomniac employee IIRC was asking if anyone even notices why Spider-Man 2 costs hundreds of millions. Meanwhile PC market and mobile exploded and mobiles are getting more powerful. Not to be morbid but I think when us console heads die off, the new generations will care less about consoles and will be all about mobile, it surprised me how good kids are today at playing games on touch screen devices and actually better than they are with a controller, as mobiles become even more powerful, they'll be more of that in the future and as for PC, it's already getting everything from Sony and Xbox, Lol. PlayStation has won the console race and hey it's a lot of players but there's little room for growth there anymore and they will have to expand their horizons eventually, I don't think they particularly care much about this move from Microsoft, they'll get more money from Microsoft but they still have issues to sort out in terms of other areas of growth. I think it's fair to exclude Nintendo because their hardware varies so much because it tends to be more unique than the other two and if we're talking Switch, that's a combination of a handheld and a console, it appeals to a different userbase. So I agree with Xbox completely out of the picture, the PlayStation ceiling is roughly 180m...Maybe less if Xbox players migrate to PC instead. Sony's growth in PC is small, they don't have the sorts of games that mass appeal to PC gamers but Xbox does, I'm talking things like Sea of Thieves, Survival Titles, GAAS, etc. Xbox consistently has multiple titles in the Bronze, Silver and Gold Steam rankings every year. As you said, Sony is a non-factor in Mobile as well. Microsoft had to brute force their way in, Lol. Streaming I'm less convinced on but we'll see, a lot depends on ISPs. Sony is winning hardware, no doubt, but Xbox will almost certainly overtake them in both revenue and profit margins, of which, profit margins is something everyone needs to improve, hence why Sony will be investing heavily in GAAS, they want sources of recurring revenue, not just a "one and done" thing, something that sticks around and helps recoup those investments into hardware. The issue with that is, they're late to that as well, the biggest challenge to GAAS today isn't direct competition, it's time. Roblox can be completely different to GAAS #2 but nobody plays GAAS #2 because they're too busy playing Roblox, they don't have time to play anything else. This problem will increase when Microsoft drops a bunch of their own GAAS on PS before Sony does. Now I'm not saying Sony is doomed or anything, nothing of the sort, I'm simply saying, Sony is probably indifferent to this move because they have things of their own that they need to focus on irrespective of whatever Xbox does. Xbox's moves won't change all the challenges that Sony has to face in the future. |
Exactly.
Sony won the console race just like T-rex won the evolution race and then... Adapt or die.
Just look a this leak.
Spiderman 2
Expected budget 315m (I assume it includes marketing)
expected copy sold 10.5m (I think it is at 7m or so as of now)
Expected profits $75m
Some of that $ 75m must be reinvested to support the subsidized hardware and then divided by the number of years the game was in dev to get an average/year.
Meanwhile, Sony shareholders can expect better ROI from their smaller movie division.
With such a number, you see why it's simply impossible to just transit from gen to gen without supporting the last gen for a few years even at the expense of being criticized for holding back the next gen by consumers. Game sales are just cannibalized by the low number of installed next-gen early on shareholders must wait mid to end-gen before seeing a good ROI just to then be tasked to invest to architect the next next-gen.
This model made sense in the past when the dev cost was way lower and dev time way shorter but now it's just silly and MS is just exposing this fact IMO. And with that in mind, it's kinda funny. MS in the console wasn't treated fairly, they are the mega-corporation that tried to "take down" the established and loved player. So what do they do, shift the rules of the game, and act as the meteor that ended the very context in which T-Rex can be considered to have won the evolution game. IMO, MS is set to achieve numbers impossible to achieve in a console-focused exclusive business model and will make any shareholder in such a model question its validity.
This, for me, is the reason Jim Ryan left, not because he failed to stop the ABK transaction. but because this transaction being allowed just made the, anchor the status quo, strategy he was using predictably unsuccessful and even silly making PlayStation unprepared for the next context in which success will be measured. He knew instantly that whatever his strategy was set to benefit the shareholders it would never be enough to satisfy them when they'll see what MS would achieve.
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 06 February 2024
