Sony: We Are Moving Away From A Hardware Centric Model

[Kyuu]

RolStoppable said:

Kyuu said:

Sony copying Microsoft would go down as the dumbest gaming decision of all time. This is just not gonna happen anytime time soon. I give Sony's management shit all the time but they aren't that stupid.

My interpretation to this is that "new hardware" sales are of little significance to Sony compared to the combined active playerbase. They just won't care whether you're playing on PS4, 5, or 6 as long as you remain engaged in their platform, which makes perfect sense. I was expecting PS6 to significantly decrease in annual sales compared to PS5, and I think Sony shares that expectation.

The Playstation platform remains hardware/console based. I'm sure Sony would love to transition their existing playerbase to a Steam-like storefront on PC and somehow retain them, but they just can't do that. The last thing you wanna do as a major platform holder is to remove more entry barriers to Steam.

Normally I'd agree that Sony can't possibly be that stupid, but they happened to copy Microsoft's rush to the GaaS well, including a similar overall lackluster result.

What I see in Sony's business decisions for PS is that Sony believes that Microsoft has the right ideas at the core, but has not executed them well, coupled with the belief that Sony themselves can pull it all off. For example, Microsoft moved to day and date releases for all of their games on Xbox, PC and Game Pass whereas Sony will take a more careful approach by still releasing first on PS. But even then, this will make PS consoles a lot less attractive over time which Sony doesn't quite seem to understand. As for the PS6's hardware price, we'll likely see Sony go high just like we've already seen it with the PS5 Pro.

Microsoft made a variety of decisions that made Xbox less appealing over time and then used the results they got as a justification to further scale back their intent to sell consoles, kinda like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sony's approach will make it a more drawn out decline in hardware sales as opposed to Microsoft's abrupt one, but ever since Shawn Layden left, Sony's decisions have been questionable at best. For Microsoft we could at least say that they are struggling with profitability, so they have to do something different; but Sony has been at their best in history at the time when they made boneheaded choices, so it's baffling that they were even considering to follow in Microsoft's footsteps in one way or another.

I kind of understand why they're trying to expand, and time will tell whether their GaaS initiative was worth it. But they need to hit the brakes and take this much slower. Their misleading financial results are making them too comfortable, that they think they can push further towards expanding without any consequences on their core model.

I think the PS6 will be reasonably priced by 2027/2028 standards. Rumours suggest the GPU will only be around 3 times more powerful than the base PS5's (not taking into account machine learning and RT improvement) which is a small leap. Remember... the $300 Series S was more powerful than the $500 Xbox One X. PS5 Pro vs PS6 could go similarly, but even at a hypothetical $500 alongside a handheld version, I expect it to sell much worse than the PS5. Sony doesn't seem so interested in getting people excited about new hardware anymore. They seem happy with their "124~ million active users" and hope to retain them without the need for true exclusivity or exciting hardware. They're playing with fire...

A handheld PS6 (weaker than PS5) implies an even longer cross-generational period than the current one. I don't know if the PS6 will get a single generational exclusive from Sony. Most if not all first party titles on PS6 could be crossgen with either PS5 or PS7, and all of them will be ported to at least PC.

Still, I don't see Sony going day 1 PC with all their major titles. They can't possibly be that naive.