Darc Requiem said:
Having this take after they lost hundreds of millions of dollars on Concord is wild. GaaS initiatives are extremely risky. Single player games aren't as high reward as a hit GaaS title but they are also far less risky. GaaS titles require are large development commitment in both manpower and dollars post launch. Plus due to the sunk cost fallacy, a GaaS title could be superior to an existing title in every way and still bomb because of players reluctancy to ditch the GaaS game they are currently playing. These players will sunk hundreds to thousands of hours and dollars into that game. That makes them reluctant to leave it to start the cycle over again in a new title. Plus the biggest issue that publishers seem to ignore is that GaaS games are time sinks. Players aren't able to play more couple seriously at one time. This leaves the players less time to play other titles. It's like none of these publishers remember the MMORPG bubble. All these studios were trying to tap into the success of Everquest thenWoW's subsequent massive success. The end result of that being a multitude of failed games and folded studios. |
Apart from what I've put in bold, I think everything you're saying is right. It is extremely risky but the PlayStation division is successful enough that they can afford to take those risks. This is not like the PS3 days where the division was genuinely struggling and at risk of closing if the PS4 wasn't successful. MS has released about four games already this year on PS5 and more are coming for the rest of the year, so if Marathon fails it's not disastrous for Sony because they've got so many games coming to their platform now anyway. So, thanks to MS and other third party publishers having a steady stream of games, it frees up Sony's first party to make those GaaS games and take those risks. Like i said, if you throw enough poo at a wall something will stick eventually so it's worth it to keep trying












