By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
G2ThaUNiT on 14 February 2024
Edit Thread
PotentHerbs said:
G2ThaUNiT said:

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. 

There's wiggle room because its an open ended question. The sentence after that, "I personally think there are opportunities out there for improvement of margins, so I would like to go aggressive in improving our margin performance." 

To me, that's more than just software releases, it could entail layoffs, easing M&A cost for the upcoming FY, no price cuts/discounts, shipping more disc models, it could even mean greenlighting/funding more AA games with shorter development cycles.

Another thing to note is that Sony's profits from PlayStation 5 aren't actually bad. Launch aligned its doing much better than the PS4. Their operating income for FY22 was 1.8B with Bungie on the books, and Sony attributed just under 400M in costs to integrating them in that FY. Their M&A costs are also peaking in this current FY. Their margins improve significantly just from finishing off their payments for Bungie. 

I get why Sony is doing Day and Date for their live service games, but they still make more money pushing their console, and they are even starting to take Xbox slice of the pie. In my opinion, the biggest issue right now is reducing the price of the PS5, and whether Sony can do that in a timely manner. 

That's a completely fair assessment! Totaki already is coming off as a very no-nonsense numbers guy, and he'll do whatever it takes to ensure he likes the numbers PlayStation is bringing in. I think he's only supposed to succeed Jim Ryan for a year, so we'll have to see what kind of changes he makes during his tenure.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like reducing the price of the PS5 is on the table. Totaki pointed out that in previous gens as time went on, it became cheaper to produce consoles. But with the PS5, the parts are becoming more expensive as the life cycle goes on. Which is really weird. While most industries go up in price with time, tech was always an exception to that rule where the price would go down. 

But I would love for Sony to start greenlighting more AA games with smaller budgets and shorter dev cycles. To start the year, there's already been quite a few insanely successful AA games, Helldivers 2 being the most recent example that shows there's a huge market for that level of game.