PUBG sold 60+ million copies on PC/Console. Then it had healthy microtransaction sales. Then there's the whole mobile version too.
Overwatch had 35+ million players in 2017, one year after release. It also had an aggressive MTX model. It's probably done a little more since then.
Rocket League surpassed 40 million players in 2018. It's consistently grown more popular in terms of player count since 2018 according to Stramcharts.
Rainbow Six Siege earned 1.12 Billion according to Ubisoft earlier this year. To put that in context, TLoU2 sold 4 million copies at $60 dollars which earned Sony 240 million. The first time Siege saw a drop in players was in May of 2020. So it's still earning considerably.
Then there's that little indie game called Fortnite which may have broken even by now...
GTAV is essentially a multiplayer focused title at this point. Minecraft is still a monster. As is Roblox, League of Legends etc...
I'm not really seeing single player games being able to compete with that in terms of revenue/sales.
I don't think Sony can look at a supremely talented team like Naughty Dog, which took how many employees 5+ years on TLoU2, and be thrilled with the fact that their games die on the vine so quickly.
The multiplayer, social based gaming revolution is upon us. If Sony is still considered a single player focused company in 3 years, they'll have made a massive mistake.
There is no better marketing mechanic than having your friends talk about playing a multiplayer game in front of you...Sony needs to tap into that.
"Buy a PS5 bro! We could use a fourth."
Chasing trends doesn't necessarily pay off, especially if you arrive late to the party. You quoted a bunch of games that broke records, but how many very similar games just fell flat on their face at release and died in a ditch after reaching 2k players' peaks? Don't be fooled by survivorship bias.
The "it's famous therefore we should do it as well" is a fallacy of the gaming market that doesn't really pay off that big for most people, and this is not news. When World of Warcraft broke the bank back in the mid 2000's everybody and their grandma rushed to develop MMOs, 60% of which were pretty much dead on arrival and only bankrupted countless studios, and an additional 35% just did OK everything considered. Countless other games of completely different genres kept being profitable, successful and remembered.
The reason is actually pretty simple: the number of people playing games is finite, and their money and time are finite as well. Yes, there are a lot of people who play battle royale games right now; but they are
already playing battle royale games, be it PUBG, Fortnite or a bunch of others. If you want a share of that market you need to pull people away from existing games, and that is absolutely not a guarantee. Just as a very obvious example, Call of Duty broke through, while Battlefield tripped on the starting line.
Moreover, the more games in the genre are being produced the least likely each one of them is to strike thunder, because there is more competition overall. The first to come and capture an untapped market strike gold, since they have a huge potential playerbase to win over and basically no competition, but the more it goes on the more competition you have and the least available players that you can win "for free" there are. This usually goes on until the bubble deflates on its own over time, leaving countless corpses of opportunity games and cowboy companies on the ground.
Is it a good idea for Sony to invest a bit more on the multiplayer front? Probably, but only because right now they have pretty much nothing. Should multiplayer suddenly become one of their main focuses just because "a bunch of other multiplayer games are doing really well"? No, at that point you're basically gambling to strike jackpot or lose everything, which is absolutely unnecessary for Sony in particular. As long as people can play whatever they want on a PS5, they will be just fine.
Ok, I see. However, that's the 'nit picky' Rabbi talking (and crying every night). Has the 'normal' Quadrat Rabbi been enjoying gaming on his PS4 using a 43 inch tv?
