| EpicRandy said: RoI might be lower, that's not an excuse to cut development staff. Well, it is for Sony / MS and pretty much all of the industry with few notable exceptions. For Microtransaction, I do agree it looks to become an unavoidable asset going forward, Sony is late but they are adjusting to it with their multiple GAAS projects. They are hoping to cut staff, lower budgets, and keep all the actual profit. I'm reading it more like the industry saw the issue coming, then Covid made them think the problem would go away and provide them with very high ROI, invested a hell lot, Then the Covid effect was a dud, and now they go from "invest as much as you can, don't think twice" to a "Trim the fat and recoup as much you can, think your move 10 times over". I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying Sony is thinking of it wrong, and of course they are since investors care about immediate gains and not the long term. I have the same perspective as you as a consumer, this conversation is just me putting myself into CEO/shareholder's shoes and making sense of a recent decision. The only way I can make sense of the current action is if they are currently way under what was forecasted during 2020-2021 and that the next few years have been revised with way lower expectations. |
Just because Sony and MS are doing something doesn't mean it's a good reason. People and companies do things all the time that have reasons that aren't good, or the reasons seemed good but it clearly didn't work out. I mean, the bloated budgets of videogames is something Sony did for a reason and it clearly wasn't a good one in the long run.
Just to make it clear, I'm not trying to be combative. I understand WHY Sony is doing this. I just don't think it's the best way to do things. It's not helpful to the employees or the consumers, and it's just another way that greed is getting in the way of a passion of mine. I do appreciate what you're saying overall in that I don't think you're incorrect or anything. I know that money is what makes the world go round. But I don't think short term gains is the best way to get it. I mean, Nintendo hasn't been doing the short term gains the way the others have and theyve made more profit in the Switch era than almost all other eras combined. That shows us that the model these publishers are going through is not the only way to do it. While Nintendo has their own issues and I have my own complaints (full priced ports, poor ability to acknowledge mistakes such as joy con drift, etc) as a company I respect them more because they seem to have more concern over their employees well being than any of the others. We should really value that more.
