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G2ThaUNiT on 14 February 2024
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PotentHerbs said:
G2ThaUNiT said:

Nah, there is no going back once the rug has been pulled lol. That would just be bad business and would sour the PC playerbase that they worked on a nearly a decade at that point to build up. 

He saying in general first party. He's not referring to only live service. 

Would it though?

Sony has already started day and date PC releases with Helldivers 2. Concord is going to be their next first party title to launch Day One on PC. Having select single player games go day one but still have PS6 exclusives doesn't seem like the end of the world to me lol. It would definitely be more of a PR nightmare for PlayStation fans. Still a very unlikely scenario for this generation though.

The question was also about improving profit margins going forward. That very well could be Helldivers 2 releasing Day One on PC. The launch of that game wouldn't be accounted for in this report, but would line up with what Hiroki Totoki is saying. 

The second Sony decides to release a major single-player AAA first-party title day in date on PC, there won't be any going back. The expectation of the playerbase will have been set at that point. 

Totoki specifically pointing out, "In the past, we wanted to popularize console and the first-party titles' main purpose was to make the console popular. It is true, but there is a synergy to it. So if you have strong first-party content, not only with our console but also other platforms like computers, first-party can be grown with multiplatform and that can help operating profit to improve. So that is another one we want to proactively work on."

I don't really see much wiggle room on how to interpret this as anything other than he's referring to all first-party games. Especially when he's talking about the purpose of first-party titles being to popularize your console. Helldivers 2 does not meet that criteria. The God of War, Spider-Man, and Horizon titles do. Helldivers 2 certainly does help some with the profit margins, but when every single major single-player release is costing in the range from $200-$300 million to make, a AA release like Helldivers 2, even being the massive success that it is, doesn't really move the needle as much as someone in Totoki's position would like. 

I have no doubt this was a major reason for Sony's GAAS push. Sony's console sales peaked with the PS2 and hasn't reached that milestone ever since. And with the massive increase in costs of games to make these days while the console playerbase not growing overall, it's really just natural to start having the bigger push outside of Sony's walled garden. 

I'm really interested to see how Sony's mobile plans turn out as we still don't know anything in that aspect lol. Which would be MASSIVE for Sony to make a splash in the mobile space.