| Pemalite said:
No. You are missing the point. There is no guarantee those gamers would buy a console in the first place anyway. There is no evidence they are going to "lose money". In-fact the evidence showcases the opposite. - Sony has consecutively posted higher profits and revenues with every console generation. Considering the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series is "more of the same" but at a higher price? Yes and no. |
Stop trying to misrepresent the argument by saying that PC gamers wouldn't have bought a PS5 anyway. There seems to be some confusion on your part so let me lay it out for you.
Let's say there are 400 million potential PS5 customers. Now let's say that 100 million of those customers are PC-Only gamers with a rig powerful enough to run current gen games on par or better than a PS5. The other 300 million are not PC-Only-Gamers. You seem to think that I'm arguing that by putting Sony exclusives on PC that Sony is missing out on getting some of those PC-Only gamers to become PC Gamers with a PS5 as a secondary game device. You then attempt to counter this strawman argument by saying "Those PC gamers wouldn't have bought a PS5 anyway, so Sony isn't losing any money".
But that's not at all what I'm saying and you are either very confused or being obtuse to make a strawman argument. I'm saying that by putting PS5 exclusives on PC Sony is pushing console customers to become PC-Only-Gamers. This means losing out both potential former Xbox customers and on people who were PS Console gamers up until the PS5 launch.
Trying to argue that Sony won't lose money with an inductive appeal is wrongheaded. It's like saying it snowed every Christmas the last ten years therefore it will definitely snow this Christmas. Meanwhile meteorologists with accurate climate models and deductive reasoning are predicting a warm dry winter due to climate change. Or to use another analogy, "We were able to mine 2 tons of gold from our mine the last 5 years therefore we will get 2 tons this year as well." Meanwhile the gold vein is all tapped out and the mine is days away from being dry.
$700 million for 3 easy ports? Ok neat. Let's say by porting those three games they lose 5 million console buying customers. That means they lose out on the royalties from 3 games a year for $70 a pop that your average consumer buys. At a 30% cut Sony makes $21 per $70 game sold. After a seven year life cycle each customer would have bought 21 games on Playstation 5. Assuming that those are all 3rd party titles that's 2.2 billion in lost Royalty revenue, which is 90% profit BTW. We aren't even factoring in PS Plus fees or profit from 1st party games or microtransactions or accessory sales. If I were a company that could have made well over 2.2 billion and I only made 700 million I would not be happy. Now imagine what happens when they raise prices on consoles, port 6 or more games to PC, and slow down their 1st party game development. They wind up losing 10 to 20 million potential customers and that 2.2 billion loss turns into 8.8 billion. Again this isn't factoring in MTX, controller sales, or 1st party game sales.
Their profits can climb higher and higher than ever before but if the foundation of selling PS Consoles crumbles, the entire financial tower will fall no matter how tall it is.
It's funny that you should mention Switch dominating sales. Nintendo sold 155 million units mainly on the backs of 1st party exclusive software, indie games, and inferior ports from more powerful consoles. Seems to me that's a strong argument for 1st party exclusive games selling a console.
