How much money is Sony losing over these GaaS failures?

[Mummelmann]

pokoko said:

Mummelmann said:

Bolded: Absolutely, but as mentioned above; this isn't an argument for why GaaS in general is a positive trend. FIFA, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed are also massive sellers, can you tell me what positive influence they have on current gaming? Some gamers want GaaS, and even some developers. But most don't. Some GaaS titles selling and making money is not a good argument, it's not an argument at all. It's overall not a positive for the industry, or for gamers. I understand that a lot of people enjoy some of these titles, that still doesn't change the argument. Again, I feel like throwing in the lootbox argument; plenty of people liked that too, especially in FUT, and it made EA billions on top, but it was widely regarded as a shit idea for the industry as a whole.

As for Concord; I agree, Sony should have axed it long ago. Even without the GaaS aspect, it's riding a dying trend where only a select few behemoths reign.

My argument is that a massive amount of people play GaaS titles every single day, at least as much as plays single player games and probably more, which indicates to me that millions of gamers want to play these games. 

Your argument is that that most gamers want GaaS to die but I haven't seen anything at all that validates that position.

The main issue here is that people are pretending Concord represents all GaaS titles when obviously it does not.  It's a copycat game with poor character designs and a terrible economic model that took far too long and far too much money to develop.  It's like using Forespoken to represent all single player games.

A select few huge titles are being played by a lot of players, that's true. And for every monster-hit, there are several utter failures, the type that closes studios. The model simply isn't viable long-term, it will only exasperate the issue with huge publishers and developers owning the market, consumers also have a finite amount of money, just like developers. If a growing tally of releases cost players constantly, they are less likely, and less capable of, spending their funds on other titles. One 60$ title a few times a year, or one title that costs the equal amount during the course of the year. Yes, single-player games and the few giant GaaS titles that make it do coexist now, but this is about to change as more studios rev up to release GaaS titles. Like I said; GaaS as a concept, should it take over the entire industry, is the shortcut to a more intermittent and risky developers landscape and industry. Higher cost for the gamer, less breadth, less creativity, this is not the direction I want the industry to take. Giants will remain giants, and even more mid-sized or smaller studios will perish.

And not to mention the creative issues, ownership issues, gambling aspects directed at children, early-access conundrums, and a host of other problems with the rising model. I would direct your attention to the above-posted link, where a recent poll suggests that about 70% of the involved developers saw issues with the GaaS model. Studio heads and publishers are seeing the rare mega-hits and want some of that sweet pie, but developers aren't really feeling it. About 25% of the polled developers were positive towards GaaS, as it stands.

To me, it all seems to boil down to "this is the future, accept it".

PS: Concord is just the latest in a long string of GaaS failures, it's not unique in any way. And it won't be the last.