There's no real worry with that TBH. 

Even if 2024 has no major single player tentpole from Sony's first party, they still have an XDEV collaboration with Rise of the Ronin, and potentially Death Stranding 2, which is an IP that Sony owns. They won't be missing a beat to the average consumer. 

Then you have the sequel for Ghost lined up for 2025, and Sony could start showing off gameplay for Wolverine, reveal SMS next project, Bluepoint's project, etc. Forget about Sony cultivating another new IP into a 20M+ selling multimedia property, Wolverine is going to be absolutely hype. Its going to make all this talk of Sony abandoning single player games look silly.

Do people still belive that marketing bs?R&C came out on PC and didn't even need an SSD. From what I've seen it's slower then a normal SSD in a PC.

SSDs are a real thing, they're not marketing BS.  

Yeah Ratchet looking like a broken mess for a solid minute while the HDD catches up, is definitely proof that SSDs are just marketing BS.

Technically you can play Ratchet with a HDD, but SSDs go a long way to make it a smooth experience. That isn't marketing BS.  

Definitely a long shot, but nothing is off the table at this point. I actually think Bandai Namco is the most realistic option for Sony, with Valve being a distant second, with EA Entertainment/Take Two as an even more distant third and forth. 

I think an acquisition of Namco would diversify PlayStation's output, give them a massive IP like Elden Ring, valuable IP's like Dark Souls and Tekken, smaller titles like Ace Combat, Tales, and Soul Caliber, while strengthening PlayStation Plus. Not the best acquisition for SIE in particular, and perhaps not the most exciting in terms of big ticket acquisitions, but this would greatly elevate Sony overall which would benefit SIE at the end of the day. 

Yes but sonys SSD seems to be.Especially since SSDs have been a stable for most PCs since the early 2010s. In fact I'm pretty sure the Ps4 pro had one as does switch.

Sony wasn't marketing it as some brand new invention.

They marketed it as being faster than PC drives in 2019 (PCie 3.0, which were limited to 3.5 Gbps, whereas PS5 is ~5.5 Gbps). PCie 4.0 is 7.0 Gbps and came out the year after. 

You can put an SSD into the PS4 pro, but the one in the PS5 is about 10x faster than anything you can put in there. 

I'm not sure why you're conflating marketing with tech. Marketing is going to upsell the tech, that doesn't mean the tech doesn't exist or isn't otherwise impressive.

It was tested on the PC without a SSD and there was huge performance issues when moving from one portal to another.  We are not talking about just a half a sec, it was a pause of over 3 to 4 secs if not worse.  What the SSD gives the PS5 is the ability to stream in assets fast enough where it does not need to have a large amount of memory on hand to cache those assets ahead of time.  The reason why it really works so well for a system like the PS5 is that it does not have the same amount of memory the average PC has and thus it mitigate performance in getting huge assets into straight to the processor and display it to the user.  Yes, today, PC SSD speeds have exceeded the PS5 SSD but that was always going to happen for a fix system like a console.  

Honestly it's about time Sony had an off year they've been killing it for a while now and I've been wondering when will they eventually have an off year. Looks like this is it.

As far as PS6 why does it need to be noticeably different? Is that what you think gamers want? I think most people just want a more powerful system with better graphics and great games. The most important thing though is great games. People want that above all else. It's why we buy these consoles. You can put all the gimmicks you want on a console if the games are garbage it wont sell very well.

As far as what I think they are going to do. I honestly think they are going to focus on just making the console easier to develop for. Sony seems to understand that making it as easy as possible for devs to create games is the greatest thing you can do for your console. Making your console the easiest to create games for and having the largest userbase is just a combination that is working out well for Sony.

Absolutely correct. I admit that this is just speculation on my part, but contracts for multiple games are also possible. good chances of a contract establishing Bandai Nanco as publisher of future Elden Ring games.

Unfortunately, I must respectfully disagree with my colleague. Sony's main problem is getting successful Ip's and big talent, big names that guarantee an increase in sales.

Buying a large number of developers and simply making "more games" could end up putting Sony in a similar situation to the Embracer group, releasing games with low commercial and critical success. Furthermore, I do not believe that the solution of increasing productivity of existing PlayStation Studios by simply "buying small studios" to incorporate as support work for larger studios is sufficient.

It's a sad thing, and absolutely bad for the industry, but the best thing for Sony would be to buy famous developers who already have strong Ip's (not necessarily publishers) and close deals to guarantee quality exclusives for Playstation.

Buying small developers, without Ip's or with small Ip's, is something that Sony has done for almost 30 years in the market. Cultivating talent over the years is something that has brought great results for Playstation and the industry. Unfortunately, Microsoft bought a large part of the most successful IP's on the market, so the space to cultivate talent over the years has drastically decreased. Sony will probably need to respond in a similar way, buying some IP's and developers with established strength in the market. In my humble opinion, Sony should do this quickly, in the next 4 years, while it is the market leader, even if this generates debt and affects the Playstation's profitability.

This whole situation is horrible. No matter who Sony buys, it won't be a move to enrich the market and create something new. it will be a reaction to hurt Microsoft and defend the position that Playstation has in the market. Consumers are losing out.

Oh yeah, just what we needed. Another "Here's what 'insert publisher's name' should acquire in the next few years to monopolize part of the industry talents so they can win a winnie contest".