| curl-6 said: As I said in other threads about this, I think people are catastrophising a bit if they think this means PS is about to go off the rails. Sony will probably be more cautious in their multiplatform approach than Microsoft, they're not dumb enough to just dump their biggest games on PC/Xbox/Switch 2 day and date, at least not in the short term. What we'll probably see is older, smaller, and live service games make their way across first, probably with a timed exclusivity period on PS5. Playstation will be fine, they're still the go-to brand for AAA console gaming, so I think fears about this being their doom are jumping the gun. |
Sony is facing a shrinking console gaming market just like MS and Nintendo.
The market for console gaming will still be there but efforts need to be made to get the younger generations off their phones and off ftp gaas games into more traditional games or those will slowly vanish.
Just go 3rd party, publish on more platforms isn't a long term solution. The pie is still shrinking even though you make your games available to more of the pie. And it's a fact GAAS is dominating "free-to-play titles generated 85% of all game revenue".
So no wonder Sony wants to chase that to prop up their revenue. Nintendo has the handheld market swooped up (will be interesting to see where Switch 2 lands after Switch 1, Switch 1 is already smaller than Nintendo console+handheld audience was before), MS is propping up revenue with acquisitions (also combined revenue is smaller than before the acquisitions) and gamepass + games on PC.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sony-cfo-says-its-live-service-shift-is-not-entirely-going-smoothly-but-pledges-to-carry-on-and-learn-from-mistakes/
Tao had earlier noted during Sony’s results presentation that live service games accounted for around 40% of first-party software revenue for the past quarter, and cited this again in her reply.
“For Q1 the live service ratio was about 40%, for the full year it’s a little less, probably between 20-30%,” she said. “So in terms of the transformation, it’s not entirely going smoothly, but from a longer-term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years you see that there’s definitely been a change.
That seems to be the transformation they're talking about for gaming. Not ditching the console, but trying to follow the younger generations with ftp / gaas games, aka community based engagement business. Play hours that translate into buying MTX... And yeah for those multiplatform is key to reach more player hours and thus more MTX sales.
Our beloved story driven RPGs, action adventures etc will still be made, but don't expect any leap next generation. With the user bases shrinking for those kind of games, budgets will also shrink and thus won't be able to keep up with tech advancements. Removing the 'need' to buy expensive new hardware, which will lead to an even longer cross gen period next gen with PS5 staying on the market.
Maybe AI can help reduce the costs enough to keep chasing the graphical/fidelity edge, but otherwise PS6 will the higher fps machine with just a few rare juggernaut releases that make full use of the system.
