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Kyuu on 26 July 2025
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Sephiran said:
Kyuu said:

Nintendo will be ten times smarter about it than the current circus that is Sony. Ironically, Sony should have been the more careful one between the two, because they make so much more money from 3rd party content than Nintendo does.

If hypothetically Nintendo transform to a 3rd party publisher, they'll continue to sell a ton of software, probably quite a bit more than they do now. And the loss in Switch's subscription and 3rd party tax revenues will be minimal compared to Playstation.

I just can't fathom Sony's choices here. Microsoft made many dumb decisions, but their transition makes a lot more sense simply because Xbox is no longer a huge platform (it takes a lot of risk, hard work, commitment, and short to medium term losses to get the platform back to relevance), and they actually do have the software selling power to massively benefit from going 3rd party. Microsoft's software going full exclusive would be tiny in sales compared to going multiplatform. This is just not the case for Sony, who is risking too much for too little.

Its the opposite, the reason why Sony is fine with going third party is because they have hard data that the majority of people buy Playstation consoles to play CoD, EA sports games and other third party releases and live service forever games. They know PS5 have few exclusives, and releases their games on PC for years as well as PS5 price rising WW and this is still not impacting their hardware sales performances. What this shows is that Sony, unlike Nintendo doesn't need first party exclusives to be a behemoth in the console space. People who buy Playstation consoles to play EA sports games are not going to jump ship to PC just because Sony ports their first party games to Switch 2 and Xbox.

The Playstation brand is incredibly strong WW, and its seen as the default way to play games such as EA sports FC and Madden in Europe and the US, that has the benefit that it means Sony doesn't need to work to get people interested in buying PS in Europe and the US, while Nintendo really needs stuff like a new Zelda game or a new 3D Mario game to get many people to jump into getting a new Nintendo console.

That is the disconnect, many hard core gamers think Playstation consoles sell 100M+ because people want to play Ghost of Tsushima or Horizon Forbidden west, while the reality is that people get Playstation to play CoD, EA Sports FC, and even stuff like Genshin in Japan.

Nintendo's hybrids have more distinct features that will set them apart from other hardware even if they hypothetically lacked exclusives. People keep making the assumption that most Nintendo fans will skip the hardware entirely if Nintendo supports other platforms. Let me ask you this: what makes a Playstation 3rd party fan more loyal than a Nintendo 1st party fan? If there is little harm in Playstation games going multiplatform (1st or 3rd party), then why would it play out differently on Nintendo's side? This theory is completely baseless.

Nintendo's handhelds never failed, and their "hybrids" are handhelds on steroids that combine the entire Nintendo output. People should stop using "failed home consoles" as examples of things going horribly wrong for Nintendo. Hybrids are inherently >>> handhelds, and Nintendo's handhelds are historically >>> their home consoles.

A 30% decrease in Playstation's active playerbase over the next 7 years would be more devastating than the same decrease on Nintendo's platforms. Because Playstation gamers are bigger spenders, and if they transition to Steam, all of that spending will go into Valve's pockets instead. And I'm of the opinion that Nintendo's own software have a significantly greater growth potential than Sony's, so by expanding they stand to gain more and lose less in comparison.

Playstation's power primarily stems from the following:

1. Gaming growth across the industry.
2. The brand's glorious history (of which exclusives, 1st and 3rd party, played a huge role).
3. Competitors being morons.
4. PC and handhelds being "indirect" competitors.

At least two of these reasons are about to vaporize. Playstation's "true" exclusivity game is now decidedly weak. Steam and Nintendo are becoming more direct competitors. Sony fails to perceive this, but they will or should soon enough.


Tens of millions of future gamers will just go for the hardware with the best reputation. And if you can't see that Playstation's reputation is declining, I honestly don't know what to tell you! This thing is walking a fairly similar path to Xbox, and millions of people are taking notice. It's the new "no-games" platform. It might be doing more than fine now, but the long term consequences are disastrous.

Nintendo sticking with exclusives is obviously the right thing to do, I'm not at all suggesting that they should go full multiplatform. But Sony should take notes and stop taking their current numbers and fans for granted.

Last edited by Kyuu - on 26 July 2025