Will Sony Copy Microsoft and Make Playstation a 3rd Party Publisher?

[EricHiggin]

Hardstuck-Platinum said:

EricHiggin said:

If XB sales keep declining into next gen, and PS6 can pick up a nice chunk of those, it would give SNY all the more reason to keep and grow their walled garden, while trying to expand it into others ecosystems at the same time.
Why give up a safe bet, especially when you've got little to no direct competition?

The thing is, they don't really need the walled garden approach anymore. Phil Spencer has been very clear that it is no longer MS's goal to compete with PS5 and the Switch 2 has technical shortcomings that won't allow it to compete with the PS5 in a way that concerns Sony. CPU being only a bit more powerful than PS4 for example (according to Virtuos studios developer)

EricHiggin said:

I think before going hard at porting some games to SW2, SNY might just take one more crack at a PS handheld (hybrid) and see how it goes. If it sells well enough, fantastic, but if it fails, then focus on porting to SW2,SW3,etc, going forward.

It will be more like the Steam Deck as in they won't develop games for it, it will just run the games on the PS store. So, not really a competitor device to Switch 2 where the games are specifically developed for it around the hardware. If it's not a competitor device they may as as well just put their games on there. 

They don't need the walled garden because XB is much too weak at the moment, and has been for some time. The thing is, it's not impossible for MS to pull a 180 and seriously attempt another comeback. Yes, this is quite unlikely, I admit, but not impossible. That also doesn't take into consideration, any other company that decides to enter the market in the future. Who really saw MS jumping in before Sega died out? If SNY removed the walls, they open themselves up and add a bunch of risk. There's no need for that, as long as they can continue to expand outside the "main wall" or "main gate".

This was basically my initial thought process as well about the handheld device. I'd assume x86 based just like PS6 will be, so that it's directly compatible. Whether it's locked down to only PS Store game purchases, or will play PC games as well, who knows, but I'd guess this is the most likely route.

The other option I wonder about, is would SNY contract with Nvidia and make a very similar SW2 like device instead? Hardware that would be closely compatible with SW2 anyway. That way the PS handheld hybrid doesn't have to sell in massive numbers to remain viable. Even if it were to sell borderline poorly, you could justify keeping the product because the PS games are already basically ported for SW2 at that point, so also sell them on SW2, 3rd party SW2 games would be a piece of cake to port to the PS handheld, and the PS handheld would still allow direct sales from the PS Store and PS Plus Subs. In this case, worst case, if the PS handheld hybrid clearly failed, SNY could discontinue the hardware, then immediately move to just putting games on SW2 because it would be a simple shift.