PlayStation is absolutely necessary lol. That's anywhere from 100M - 150M players who actually buy games.

Day and date on PC is a short term fix for a long term problem.

None of Sony's big first party blockbusters have flopped so far, but with how budgets keep on increasing, the amount needed to break even is getting riskier for even established IP's. I feel like this won't be rectified until the launch of the PS6, when the hardware jump is more conservative, and development cycles get shortened because of it.

If budgets continue to grow as they are, to the point of Spider-Man 2 costing $315 million, we'll be looking at $400 million budgets by the time the PS6 releases. 

Day and date on PC would then become a long-term fix to a long-term problem. But, I imagine that may be why the CFO is taking over. He'll be asking the tough questions of "why does this game need to cost this much and where can we minimize costs?" and keeping studios accountable on the money they spend. 

Because honestly, single player games on PC a year after launch and GAAS titles being on PC day and date is a good strategy. Gets the money flowing from the titles that need a larger playerbase, while bringing extra money from their more expensive titles without over devaluing their console. 

I don't see how PC is a long term fix if budgets keep on ballooning. 

There's not enough growth from PC Day One sales that will keep up with development costs that go beyond 500M+ and keep on increasing. That's even before considering the loss of their userbase, and subsequently the loss of subscription, accessory, and game sales, ending up with Sony making less profit despite launching on more platforms. 

For now, I think what Sony is doing development wise is the right course of action, despite how many people loathe remasters or live service games. They can shorten the port times between PS5 launch and PC release, increase their mobile presence, and open up PSVR2 to PC, among other things, but they won't really be able to tackle these growing budgets until the PS6 IMO, so they have to minimize the risk in various other ways before then.

Well, the most immediate sense in seeing PC as a long term fix is that Sony's best selling console ever released nearly a quarter century ago and has never come close to reaching that high ever since while simultaneously, the cost to making the games they release have quadrupled, if not more.

On PC, you're always going to have hundreds of millions of potential buyers rather than regrowing your playerbase from scratch whenever a new gen console is released. 

If Sony was selling upwards of 200 million+ consoles a generation, then development costs would practically be a non-issue, but that's not the case. The console space has stagnated. Every generation sells nearly the exact same amount of the total number of consoles with very little overall growth from the previous generation, and we're now arriving at a time where a generation of people grew up with mobile devices, which will naturally cause the console ecosystem to start declining with time. 

Hopefully like you said though, they're course correcting as best they can now till they're able to tackle the larger issue of insane budgets. Going by Herman Hulst's quote though, they are looking to speed up their PC output, which I wonder if one day we will get a PC launcher of some sort of integration with PS's ecosystem, which would be pretty interesting. It's definitely taking them a long time to establish their mobile presence. 

I don't think people would have as much of an issue with remasters if they weren't literally just a few years old at most lol. Like the rumored God of War trilogy remaster I imagine would be better received than a Last of Us Part 2 remaster lol

PC day 1 is a great fix. AI could lower development costs. Most of the point with ray tracing is having lighting and reflections being generated by the gpu and not by the developers.

I mean the ps5 has 55 million total sales....  steam has 62 million daily users....  time for Sony to wholly support PC.

Despite the lack of console growth since the PS2, the PS4 is still Sony's most profitable console, and can be monetized in ways that you can't do on PC, or on previous PlayStation hardware. 

Sony also doesn't really start from scratch anymore with cross generation releases. Ragnarok for instance, launched on over 140M+ units, and sold millions of consoles via bundles. Sony having 200M+ console sales wouldn't really be a non - issue for development costs though. They would inherently make more money with more subscriptions, game sales, etc, but the potential ROI on software releases will still be a major issue. Third party developers have a larger base to sell their games to, but many fail to sell as much as God of War and SpiderMan 2 did in just a few months. Even Elden Ring only sold 5M+ more than Ragnarok in one year launch aligned despite over 150M+ more users to sell to. I'd expect a bigger gap in software sales if PC was truly a long term solution in terms of rising development costs. I don't think that's likely. 

In terms of course correcting, Sony identified the issues of ballooning budgets back in 2019, when the PS5 was around the corner, and a lot of games got greenlit, so it really won't be until the PS6 to see how they navigate this issue.

Really anything is possible in terms of monetizing on PC. From PlayStation's operating system to game development, it was all made on PC, which is a big reason why I think we will one day see either a PC launcher or PSN integration. We've already partially seen that with Helldivers 2. 

That is true about not starting from scratch, which I know was a big sticking point in Jim Ryan's tenure of "We believe in generations" which I know did upset some, but it was a smart business decision. I definitely agree with you that PC titles are unlikely to elevate PlayStation's tentpole titles. There would certainly be a sizeable playerbase there, but probably wouldn't raise it to RDR2 or The Witcher 3 levels. At the same time though, I wouldn't be surprised if someone in PlayStation leadership is wondering "what if" they did. Helldivers 2, while being a multiplayer game, may have someone wonder what if they tested the waters and put one of their tentpole releases on PC same day as console. Only time will tell, but I woud be shocked if it's not at least being considered. 

I wasn't aware of Sony recognizing the issue of the ballooning budgets, but after 5 years, why would that only be coming to a head now? Games like Spider-Man 2 would've been very early in development. They couldn't have recognized beforehand what kind of budget would be needed?

I'm sure PC can be monetized, but that's really only if you have a storefront, and if its anything like the Epic Games Store, its going to take nearly a decade to even be profitable. 

Shawn Layden mentioned ballooning budgets back in 2019, so I'm sure it was known among PlayStation leadership at that time, but I would attribute the budgets getting out of hand with Sony giving their developers a lot of freedom. Totoki did mention something like this during the financial report, and how creatives didn't understand the financial side of things. Perhaps some things can't be helped with how long development cycles are as well. IIRC, developer salaries are a major reason why game development is as high as it is. 

Yeah that's a good point. Sony may go the way of a dedicated launcher so they can have 100% of all PC sales. I'm looking forward to seeing how their future PC plans play out. 

That's kind of ironic considering Layden would've been the one to greenlight the projects lol. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy of his when he played a part in the industry getting to this point. Totoki is right though. Creatives want to be creative and leadership needs to be the ones to reign them when ambition is getting too great. I have a feeling AI will start to have a greater part in game development as time goes on to help shorten development cycles. Which, of course, is a double edged sword.