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Forums - Sony - Will Sony Copy Microsoft and Make Playstation a 3rd Party Publisher?

 

Will Playstation also go 3rd party?

Yes 30 35.71%
 
No 54 64.29%
 
Total:84
xboxgreen on 27 July 2025
Kyuu said:
xboxgreen said:

You are forgetting retailers like game stop takes a cut as well and I'm sure there are other things we are not factoring like bundles and discounts.
Oh, all of that profit was wiped away with Concord alone. Not including all of the Sony failed GAAS attempts they poured billions of dollars into.

Sony first party studios isn't doing as well as you think it is. That is why they are remastering and now porting their games to other platforms. They have no choice or else share holders will get involve and start forcing Sony to close their studios down and take less risk.

PS Studios digital ratios and revenues both went up considerably over PS4's era, which more than make up for the rising development costs. Playstation's games are more expensive and also hold their value much better these days, ranging from 2-3 times the price on average (25-$35 for PS4 era 1st party games vs $60+ for PS5 era). This means that past the breaking even point, Sony is more than doubling profitability per copy sold.

You're exaggerating how much Sony wasted on GaaS. Concord bombing and GaaS cancellations didn't stop Playstation from increasing their profitability. Had it not been for these failures and short term losses from acquisitions and other investments, the profitability would've have been higher. This indicates the core console business is currently healthy, and adjustment can be made elsewhere to improve efficiency.

I wouldn't penalize Spider-Man 2, Ragnarok, and Gran Turismo 7 for the failure of another game. Instead of porting every game to PC and other platforms to mask the problem, they can solve the problem directly by betting and spending less on inexperienced or newly formed studios. Concord in particular was a once in a decade disaster. It's not the kind of mistake that Sony or anyone can easily repeat lol.

A big part of why PS5 is barely keeping up with PS4 (despite Xbox's apparent death) is the lack of exclusivity. Had Sony never supported PC (which is easily the fastest growing platform) and now other platforms, not as many people would be trolling the PS5, and the brand's reputation would have held up better.

Digital ratio does not make up the 2x - 4x cost increase in their games. I see Playstation games drop in price all the time. They are not Nintendo in this regard.

Sony profits came mostly from third party games, PSN subscription and PC ports. Their first party game profits keep getting destroyed by Sony GAAS mistakes. Sony spent 5 BILLION dollars on GAAS initiative and has almost nothing to show for it. Marathon looks like another flop and they already cancel their other live service games. Investors are not please in this regard and wants Sony studios to make more money or else they will question why it even exists.

Sony exclusives doesn't do much for their console sales and they have the data to back it up. Just look at the top 20 playstation games and you can see it is all multiplatform games.

https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-ps5-games






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curl-6 on 27 July 2025

It will be interesting to see what the first titles to come after this will be; we've already had stuff like LEGO Horizon, licensed IPs like Patapon/Everybody's Golf, and Helldivers coming to Xbox next month; the next logical step you'd think would be digging through their back catalogue for things that can be easily ported and would resonate with the Switch 2/Xbox crowd, like Xbox did when it started with ports like Grounded/Sea of Thieves/Hifi Rush/Pentiment last year.

They're already remastering a lot of their PS4 library for PS5 with games like Zero Dawn, Days Gone, TLOU1, etc so perhaps the next step is for those titles to go multiplat.



Sogreblute on 27 July 2025
curl-6 said:

It will be interesting to see what the first titles to come after this will be; we've already had stuff like LEGO Horizon, licensed IPs like Patapon/Everybody's Golf, and Helldivers coming to Xbox next month; the next logical step you'd think would be digging through their back catalogue for things that can be easily ported and would resonate with the Switch 2/Xbox crowd, like Xbox did when it started with ports like Grounded/Sea of Thieves/Hifi Rush/Pentiment last year.

They're already remastering a lot of their PS4 library for PS5 with games like Zero Dawn, Days Gone, TLOU1, etc so perhaps the next step is for those titles to go multiplat.

You can only keep selling the same game to the same audience for so long. At some point you have to expand to other platforms to gather a new audience. I think those games would have sold more on Xbox and Switch than PS5 especially since those gamers already had access to them from PS4 and had a $10 upgrade, whereas the other platforms would have to pay full price. Those games reached their max potential on PS and PC, so the next step is Xbox and Switch.

I've always wondered this. Sony said they were expanding their games to PC initially because they wanted to expose the PC audience to their games to get them to buy a PS (obviously didn't work and are now doing it just to make more money), so why not apply that same logic to Xbox and Switch?



kazuyamishima on 27 July 2025

If they decide to go multiplatform with most of the bestselling PS titles, that will accelerate their Studio Acquistion strategy.



BraLoD on 27 July 2025
xboxgreen said:
BraLoD said:

Pretty much.

Just to point: Playstation already has their games on all those platforms listed, so it is in fact nothing new, but even so, if the plan is to have most if not every game everywhere, they are the ones that have the most to lose... which makes no sense, long term risk massively outclasses the short term profit increase.

I only quoted this post but in yout next ones you cover the difference to Nintendo, and it is pretty much what I think as well.

Nintendo IPs, specially Pokemon, could grow so much outside their systems that it could have been worth a try before the Switch, as I said back way then, but since its success, it would be far too risky for them now. Why do it while you make so much money with your own games there? Sure, Pokemon could go from selling 25M to selling 75M being available everywhere, but letting go of 100M+ potential sellers at 100% profit nowdays sure sounds stupid. Plus, they also don't even needed to ramp up their game developement budget as much as other companies because their hardware was weaker and couldn't benefit or be judged far too much for it.

Microsoft was forced to do it, the quality of their games has always been hit and miss and has been way more miss than hit since the Xbox One, everybody moved to PC or Playstation, the brand is in ruins, so letting go of Xbox now for more profit at least starts making sense.

Playstation is a way different case from Xbox, they have always been successful, like Nintendo on the handheld market, but they have been successful as the go to place to play NEARLY ANY GAME on your home, since they started with the PS1, on top of their own games. Owning a Playstation always meant you would have access to some of the best exclusive games + pretty much any relevant game. Why would they let it go for like 2M or 3M more sales for their own games? They get 30% profit from every single major game release out there, and they just forced out their biggest competition on that front too making it an even more easier choice to go for a Playstation.

The thing is, if people move out, they will have a very hard time to make even a small part come back, so if it fails, it REALLY fails and it's game over, and if it succeeds... cool? Not really a big change.

They have been doing great, made more profit on PS5 than the other 4 consoles combined up until now, so... just why would you even think about it?

Again, it might mean nothing, Helldivers is on Xbox, Patapon on Switch, had games on mobile, a lot of games on PC, so it is already the case, but if major franchises start moving to other dedicated gaming systems... so will the players.

The development cost of AAA video games that Sony wants to make went up 2 to 4 times as much. Yet their install base isn't growing and can be argued it is slightly shrinking compare to the PS4. They have no choice but to put their exclusives on PC and Xbox. Switch 2 if the console can handle it.

They are making a lot more money with the PS5 than they did with the PS4, so no, they are not even close to be forced to do it. It may be greed, it may be stupidity, it may be many other things, but certainly not a "they have no choice" scenario.



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xboxgreen on 27 July 2025
kazuyamishima said:

If they decide to go multiplatform with most of the bestselling PS titles, that will accelerate their Studio Acquistion strategy.

Exactly, they need to raise the capital to purchase more studios. The future isn't consoles but cloud streaming.



xboxgreen on 27 July 2025
BraLoD said:
xboxgreen said:

The development cost of AAA video games that Sony wants to make went up 2 to 4 times as much. Yet their install base isn't growing and can be argued it is slightly shrinking compare to the PS4. They have no choice but to put their exclusives on PC and Xbox. Switch 2 if the console can handle it.

They are making a lot more money with the PS5 than they did with the PS4, so no, they are not even close to be forced to do it. It may be greed, it may be stupidity, it may be many other things, but certainly not a "they have no choice" scenario.

Their profits increase because of PC ports, third party sales, and PSN.



curl-6 on 27 July 2025
Sogreblute said:
curl-6 said:

It will be interesting to see what the first titles to come after this will be; we've already had stuff like LEGO Horizon, licensed IPs like Patapon/Everybody's Golf, and Helldivers coming to Xbox next month; the next logical step you'd think would be digging through their back catalogue for things that can be easily ported and would resonate with the Switch 2/Xbox crowd, like Xbox did when it started with ports like Grounded/Sea of Thieves/Hifi Rush/Pentiment last year.

They're already remastering a lot of their PS4 library for PS5 with games like Zero Dawn, Days Gone, TLOU1, etc so perhaps the next step is for those titles to go multiplat.

You can only keep selling the same game to the same audience for so long. At some point you have to expand to other platforms to gather a new audience. I think those games would have sold more on Xbox and Switch than PS5 especially since those gamers already had access to them from PS4 and had a $10 upgrade, whereas the other platforms would have to pay full price. Those games reached their max potential on PS and PC, so the next step is Xbox and Switch.

I've always wondered this. Sony said they were expanding their games to PC initially because they wanted to expose the PC audience to their games to get them to buy a PS (obviously didn't work and are now doing it just to make more money), so why not apply that same logic to Xbox and Switch?

There's also the fact that AAA budgets are ballooning; Horizon Zero Dawn's budget was apparently around $50 million, but Forbidden West's was over $200 million. Spiderman 2 also cost over $300 million.

If your budgets are getting bigger and bigger but your install base isn't, then those sweet third party sales must start to look mighty tempting, especially when they see the success of ports like Forza Horizon 5 on PS5.



Cerebralbore101 on 27 July 2025
xboxgreen said:
BraLoD said:

They are making a lot more money with the PS5 than they did with the PS4, so no, they are not even close to be forced to do it. It may be greed, it may be stupidity, it may be many other things, but certainly not a "they have no choice" scenario.

Their profits increase because of PC ports, third party sales, and PSN.

So their profits increase because of PSN and the 30% revenue tax they get from 3rd party sales? That means their profits increase from increasing the number of PS5 users. And guess what increases the number of PS5 users? Exclusives. 



Cerebralbore101 on 27 July 2025

What's going to happen here is that Sony will slowly shrink and then close their 1st party studios since some part of Sony's leadership has deemed them "unnecessary". Sony's corporate leadership has taken the same braindead position as Phil Spencer by thinking "I could make the greatest game of all time and it wouldn't move console sales one bit". Once you start thinking that way 1st party games take a backseat to whatever other nonsense you are doing. It's already started happening. Bend Studio got its game canceled. Insomniac had layoffs despite Spiderman 2 selling insanely well. The Gravityrush team was let go. Naughty Dog hasn't made a game since 2019. Media Molecule is pretty much dead.

It's so frustrating to see such non-competition between Sony and MS. It's a two horse race and there's no penalty for coming in second anymore. Anything Xbox does to make their brand worse Sony will copy because where else are high-end console players going to go? It's similar to how the Republican and Democratic parties work in the USA. Republicans plan to increase the national debt by 100%. Democrats counter by saying they will only increase the national debt by 95%. A few years later Republicans say they will increase the national debt by 180%. Democrats then decide that they will only increase it by 175%. So you have this non-competitive two man race to the bottom.

Thank God for Nintendo, Indies, and quirky Japanese 3rd party devs. That's where creativity will come from in this industry.