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Soundwave on 21 May 2024
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zeldaring said:
Soundwave said:

Sony is no longer the plularity of the core gaming demographic, even though the Playstation still sells well and outsells the XBox easily, I think they are the minority of that market.

The PC + Switch + XBox combined is a larger market than the Playstation today (sorry Sony). Beyond that there are also other notable changes, the PS1 + PS2 dominated in Japan as the defacto market leader for game sales there, today Playstation is a shadow of what they used to be, lets face it Nintendo retook Japan. 

The other thing is the hardware reality back then was just different. PC ports of console games was a niche market, there was no Steam store, PC gaming centered largely around Western FPS shooters and strategy games and "console style" gaming was kind of a PC novelty. That's not so today at all. Even like controllers on PC, there was no real agreed upon PC controller standard, today you can just literally use XBox and Playstation and even Switch controllers on your PC. 

Even more to the point in the late 90s/mid 2000s, the Game Boy and DS sure as heck could not run any kind of version of Final Fantasy VII or Final Fantasy X or anything. Today, the Switch 1/2 can plausibly run a lot/all of Square's higher end games. Sure you may have to compromise a couple of things, but it's nothing like trying to figure out how FFX could run on a DS or FF7 on a GBA. 

To say 1997-2006 for example wasn't hugely different from today is just not true at all. 

Now ... is Square-Enix just gonna show up on Switch 2/PC/XBox and start selling gangbusters over night? Probably not. It's going to probably take a little while to build up audiences there because Square has been negligent in fostering their IP on those platforms. But in the long term, I do believe yes absolutely going multiplatform is going to lead to higher sales. It can't get much worse than where they are at now, how in the world does a FF7 Remake (well Rebirth) with lots of GOTY rave reviews, a decent marketing budget, etc. etc. not even sell as well as like a Pikmin game (lol). 

I'm confused where the switch fits into this.  I would say pc,Xbox and Playstation are the same market and switch just does it's own thing with most big games not even showing up on the system. 

It fits in as the no.1 selling platform in the world, no.1 in Japan by 10 country miles, and a lot of those ports on Switch leg out to have higher sales in the end than people think. 

The Switch moves a shit-ton of software and it's not all Nintendo, things like The Witcher 3, Hogwarts Legacy, DQXI, Mortal Kombat 11, FC/FIFA soccer I believe are selling over 1 million copies on the low end and perhaps more than 2 million copies in some cases which is a decent chunk of change. 

Monster Hunter Rise sold nearly 8 million copies on the Switch alone, Minecraft is probably up there, Fortnite is probably north of 3 million also. 

The more 3rd party content it gets the bigger the market for that is going to be. 

XBox is going to be the odd man out IMO, they are going 3rd party. Switch 2 is gonna gain, PC too, Playstation and XBox are kinda both losers because the status quo they held is falling apart. Sony is not going to be able to convince 3rd parties to give them massive exclusives as third parties all pivot to wanting their content on all major platforms to maximize revenue, and even Sony themselves is going to put more and more of their games on PC. Playstation will still sell it's 100 mill units but it's not growing and the days of like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, exclusives are coming to an end for them, even their 1st party IP are likely going to be pushed on PC closer to day and date because of their business suits. For Playstation and XBox, 10 years ago was better, for Nintendo and PC where the market is going now is better. 

And before anyone posts the 1st/3rd party revenue split on Nintendo systems, understand when Nintendo posts that data they only count the $10 licensing fee from 3rd party games that they take home versus counting the full $60-$70 for their own games (Sony reports it differently), because I know probably some idiot is going to bring this up without understanding the context. It's honestly misleading how Sony/Playstation report software revenue because they count the full sale of every 3rd party game as "Playstation revenue" when really it's not, they only get their licensing fee cut, the rest is revenue for the retailer (if physical) + 3rd party itself. Some Sony shareholders were complaining about this type of reporting actually. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 21 May 2024