You need to take into account inflation and financing costs (over the duration of the development time). Usually what we hear are the raw investment costs as development costs. Money which could have been used differently to make money a lot faster, than game development does.

We also need to take into account for every game Playstation releases it cancels projects as well. Those projects have costed money and that money needs to come from somewhere. So if PS made only 325 million on SM3 and SM3 costs 330 million to make, it's not a good thing for PS as a whole. Even though it made 10% more revenue than initial dev costs.

If we look at total costs of a game we need to take into account that selling games also costs money, you need advertisements down the line, keep printing discs, stores take their shares and bring out a lot patches as well.

You mentioned retailer fees without factoring in digital ratios which greatly favor the PS5 gen. Game prices being around 2-3 times higher isn't me speculating, it's a fact based on the leak from Insomniac which showed PS5 generation games (including their cheaper PS4 versions) averaging at about $65. Over time, this average will probably go slightly down because older games will get more deals and permanent price drops. But GT7 is already close to 15 million copies sold... when all is said and done, GT7 will make over 3 times more money that GT Sport did, this is without factoring in a potential PC version. GT7 remains a platform exclusive so far!

A $70 game with a development budget of $200 million only needs to sell 2 extra million copies over a $60 game with a $100 million budget. Factoring in higher digital ratios and prices mean that profitability will be much higher over the years. High development cost is too minor a problem for games that can sell 10 million+, but it's another problem that can be mitigated by choices that won't devalue the Playstation brand. Sony's "exclusives" will sell less and less over the years because people know they're coming to their preferred platforms. Consoles aren't inherently "weak".

Before their PC initiative, they managed to sell 50+~ million first party console games for 3 consecutive years. That number dwindled over last 4 years (despite Sony's acquisitions) for multiple obvious reasons that can be addressed without devaluing the brand.

Not every penny they put on GaaS is "wasted". Only time will tell whether their Bungie investment (which is an acquisition) was a good or bad choice. The list you provided is about MAU as opposed to sales. And it's precisely the reason why Sony is trying too hard with live service games. Sony's own two most successful games of all time are GaaS after all (Fate Grand Order and Helldivers 2), and yes, I agree that putting GaaS on PC/Mobile is a decent strategy. I actually suggested it long before Sony did it. I'd go so far as to argue that any AA/AAA exclusive that performs poorly should be ported to other platforms as an attempt to give the IP another chance. But established high sellers should be treated differently. God of War, Spider-Man, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and Horizon should have never been ported, and instead used to help bolster the Playstation brand. Any singleplayer game selling close to 10 million shouldn't be ported. Nintendo doesn't even bother porting tiny sellers like Bayonetta. Nintendo is more careful and protective with 1 million sellers than Sony is with 20 million sellers, and this is what will keep their consoles healthy for a very long time. The brand is tied with experiences that you will never have without their consoles.

Exclusives are incredibly important for reputation and identity. Xbox literally died for the lack of exclusives. The money Sony makes from 3rd party taxes are directly tied to their exclusives. Copying Xbox's day and date PC strategy would mark the end of Playstation. Their current strategy is bad enough.

Can see the Marvel stuff going multiplat if platforms allow for it. The Marvel license is expensive so the more they can sell of those the better. Of course they will still keep a period of exclusivity for Playstation platforms, but that's about it I think.

No!  Having exclusives is something that consoles do to make themselves more valuable to consumers.  The only reason why they would not want to have exclusives is the cost of having them published.  Why would'nt they want to pay this cost?  Only if the console is on its way out.  It looks like both will be around for a while so i don't see any giving up on this.  

Usually you want to differentiate yourself and offer things that nobody else does.  That's why they offer exclusives.  

I agree. 

Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales are no-brainers on Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2. Spider-Man 2? Maybe. It did come to PC quickly, but I think it would be the Spider-Man title Sony is still most hesitant to release on other platforms due to it being newer. 

I don't see IPs like God of War, Ratchet & Clank, Gran Turismo, The Last of Us, or Uncharted coming to other platforms until at least early to midlife of PS6. 

Xbox has no red lines anymore, as demonstrated by Forza and the possibility of Halo and Gears coming to other platforms.

I feel like PlayStation still has some red lines for now as I mentioned.

And while they're not the main subject of this conversation, I feel like we are 10 or more years away from Nintendo titles coming to PC. And that would happen before they go on PlayStation or Xbox. 

Tapping into the large 34 million Series user base and the new, growing Switch 2 base will generate billions of new dollars for Sony. I don't see them being very selective in which titles to make multi-plat once that gate is opened.

Sony may be selling a lot of hardware (5:1 over currently over its competitor), but if they're still subsidizing their consoles, that 1 Xbox sale may be making an equivalent profit of multiple PS5 consoles combined. So with no profit being made in Sony hardware sales, it doesn't matter how many units they sale, it is the size of the player base that you are able to reach.

The size of the new Xbox player base now consists of the PC player base, mobile player base, Nintendo, and Playstation. Even though Xbox will continue to make consoles, they no longer have to convince players to migrate over to buying an Xbox.

With everything now being an Xbox, Xbox has successfully created the largest player base ever for their games, without ever having to worry again about how much hardware it is moving. It does make sense for Playstation to chase the Xbox strategy, but I don't think they were prepared to do so, so soon.

That's like saying everything is an EA box, Square-Enix box, Capcom box etc. Sounds ridiculous because it is.

As for the topic, Sony is definitely making decisions that follow in Microsoft's footsteps, although at a slower and more careful rate. It doesn't make sense though. For Microsoft it did because they suck as a console manufacturer and can't sell an adequate amount of hardware at an adequate price to make it all profitable. But Sony was and is in a position where they can clear the 100 million threshold for hardware sales which is a huge base for a closed ecosystem. Even when the hardware itself is rarely sold at a profit at any point in the lifecycle and even when the first party output has a dry spell, the large installed base generates sufficient profits with third party royalties from game sales and microtransactions as well as Sony's own subscription tiers. It's right there in the financial reports, after all.

The move towards third party publishing is a very risky one for Sony because it threatens their console business and therefore the profits it generates from it. The gains from third party publishing may very well be offset by shrinking console sales and a diminished ecosystem, so Sony's management is acting shortsighted. But they already did when they issued their GaaS strategy, so it's not shocking that they would make another mistake. They are once again chasing a higher risk, higher reward scheme while giving up on a winning formula that has lower theoretical profits but is much safer to accomplish and sustain.

Lol, yep.  Their messaging has always sucked.

For sure... I mean it's just describing what sony has already been doing. Like they've literally published on all of those platforms already and will continue to do so, but just selectively. Nothing is changing lol 

Beyond the big names like Horizon or Spiderman, there's a lot of smaller Sony IP that I can see finding an audience on Switch 2, such as Gravity Rush 1/2, Concrete Genie, and Tearaway. These already run on PS4 so porting shouldn't be difficult, and the Nintendo crowd tends to like these sort of quirky adventures.