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[Zeroing]

Oh look something that has a credible sources. Finally!
I was starting to believe that we only discussed rumors

 

[Nezzeroth]

Not gonna lie, I only subscribed because I was too lazy to move my PS4 saves to my PS5 with a USB stick instead of using the cloud.

 

[Wizz-Art]

Well yer, is there a subscription system that allows you to keep them when you stop?

Yes, it's called Games With Gold and is a perk for Xbox Live Gold. They give you all the OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games they offer and they are yours to keep even if you stop the Xbox Live Gold subscription.

 

[sircaw]

Yes, it's called Games With Gold and is a perk for Xbox Live Gold. They give you all the OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games they offer and they are yours to keep even if you stop the Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Are you seriously comparing that to the quality of what sony offers, sweet Jesus, go outside and get some fresh air?

I get Xbox diehards to need to attack everything positive that sony does but your reasoning is a bridge too far.

 

[Wizz-Art]

Are you seriously comparing that to the quality of what sony offers, sweet Jesus, go outside and get some fresh air?

I get Xbox diehards to need to attack everything positive that sony does but your reasoning is a bridge too far.

Are you foaming?

Don't ask the question if you're not going to like the answer...

 

[LordBlodgett]

Amazon actually made no profits for almost 2 decades. Their stock kept going higher and higher though because capitalisms a fucking joke. Netflix is the same way. Some companies like Tesla are propped by Wallstreet based on what they COULD become in the future while other successful companies that post profits on a regular basis are treated like aids.

Amazon was allowed to invest and invest and invest because investors saw the future of online shopping, but Amazon did far more than just online shopping. Now Sony on the other hand couldnt really invest much in anything because they were held to a different standard; make profits nao! No one at Wallstreet looked at how fast gaming was growing. they are still not doing it. I remember reading an article on how gaming industry revenue is now bigger than the global movie revenue and ALL of American sports revenue combined. And yet, no investors bank on Sony like they do Amazon when they allowed them to go from an online book seller to a $380 BILLION global conglomerate spending billions on tv shows, movies, games, cloud services, and everything else they can get their hands on.

It's an unfair game. Who knows where Sony would be now if investors had the foresight to see the potential of the gaming industry ten or even five years ago.

I can sort of agree with this, but there is one major difference. Amazon was the "future" of shopping, Netflix the "future" of TV, and Tesla is seen as the "future" of cars. Sony is not doing anything earthshaking. They are presently hugely successful, but what are they doing that is anything different than video games as usual?

Microsoft's stock has been rewarded for going subscription everything
Disney's stock was rewarded heavily for Disney+
CBS Viacom's stock has been on a tear since they announced Paramount+ and re-iterated that they saw streaming as the future
Volkswagen's stock has massively increased once they announced that they were betting their future on electric cars

Investors are always looking for future growth, and even though every unit inside Sony is successful right now only Playstation is growing faster than average......

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I think the number buy now would have passed 50M. PS+ on PS5 is just elusive, and with 7.4M out there it should push at least 50% of them.

 

[spawn]

Covid has been good business for video games companies

 

[megreotsugua]

47 million. Wow.

I hope Sony continue to improve the service. This will be Sony's counter-punch with at a much lower price.

Perhaps the return of game demos.

 

[kungfuian]

47 million. Wow.

I hope Sony continue to improve the service. This will be Sony's counter-punch with at a much lower price.

Perhaps the return of game demos.

I agree. IMO Sony's 'answer' to Gamepass should be to flesh out PlayStation Plus, or maybe make it tiered in some way. If for example they were to add PS 1-3 first party games via streaming or emulator, increase the number of new game offerings each month, and add movies/anime, they could easily justify incremental price increases for new customers. Lock in all existing subscribers at the current rate and voila. All of a sudden Plus becomes Sony's direct 'answer' to Gamepass; STARTING WITH 50 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!

 

[yurinka]

I agree. IMO Sony's 'answer' to Gamepass should be to flesh out PlayStation Plus, or maybe make it tiered in some way. If for example they were to add PS 1-3 first party games via streaming or emulator, increase the number of new game offerings each month, and add movies/anime, they could easily justify incremental price increases for new customers. Lock in all existing subscribers at the current rate and voila. All of a sudden Plus becomes Sony's direct 'answer' to Gamepass; STARTING WITH 50 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!

Something better, I think Sony should rework Plus and Now by merging Plus, Plus Collection and Now into a single subscription with 3 tiers:

-PS Now Entry: only includes online multi, discounts, online storage. No games.
-PS Now Standard: download all games you previously had in PS Plus, Collection and PS Now.
-PS Now Premium: includes Entry and Standard tiers and also allows you to stream all your previous Plus, Collection and PS Now games on PS4, PS5, PC, smartphones, tablets and smart tvs.

Entry and Standard tiers available worldwide, Premium tier would expand from the current 22 PS Now countries to 40 countries or so, covering the countries where PS makes above 90-95% of its money.

All existing Plus and Now subscribers would receive the combined remaining months of PS Now Premium subscription. This means, if you had 9 remaining months of Plus and 5 of Now, they'd give you 14 months of PS Now Premium.

The games added every month now would combine the ones they were adding to Plus, Plus Collection and Now. If you have Standard tier you'll be able to download all of them, if you have Premium tier you'll be able to download or stream all of them.

They'd commit to include all their future big 1st and 2nd party games 1 year after release. Some of their future smaller games, plus some 3rd party AAA or indies would be included there before that 1 year mark, a few of them at launch. And for their previous games, they commit to include in PS Now most of their previous PS2, PS3, PS4 games during the next 2-3 years.

In the future they'd emulate PS Vita TV on PS5, which would bring many digital Vita, PSP, PS One and Minis to the PS5 PSN store to buy (no need to buy again if you already bought them on PSP, PS3 or PS Vita) and they would be added to Standard and Premium tiers at launch.

 

[longdi]

to be fair, this is what a successful generation run gives you. buyers jumping on the train

however we know from history, console generation to generation, have change hands time and again.

imo sony needs to be more aggressive to challenge GPU and xCloud.

 

[Markio128]

Imagine how many subs there would be if you could get PS+ for a dollar haha

 

[mckmas8808]

47 million. Wow.

I hope Sony continue to improve the service. This will be Sony's counter-punch with at a much lower price.

Perhaps the return of game demos.

It's insane to me how people forget that PS+ is way cheaper than GamePass Ultimate.

Something better, I think Sony should rework Plus and Now by merging Plus, Plus Collection and Now into a single subscription with 3 tiers:

-PS Now Entry: only includes online multi, discounts, online storage. No games.
-PS Now Standard: download all games you previously had in PS Plus, Collection and PS Now.
-PS Now Premium: includes Entry and Standard tiers and also allows you to stream all your previous Plus, Collection and PS Now games on PS4, PS5, PC, smartphones, tablets and smart tvs.

Entry and Standard tiers available worldwide, Premium tier would expand from the current 22 PS Now countries to 40 countries or so, covering the countries where PS makes above 90-95% of its money.

All existing Plus and Now subscribers would receive the combined remaining months of PS Now Premium subscription. This means, if you had 9 remaining months of Plus and 5 of Now, they'd give you 14 months of PS Now Premium.

The games added every month now would combine the ones they were adding to Plus, Plus Collection and Now. If you have Standard tier you'll be able to download all of them, if you have Premium tier you'll be able to download or stream all of them.

They'd commit to include all their future big 1st and 2nd party games 1 year after release. Some of their future smaller games, plus some 3rd party AAA or indies would be included there before that 1 year mark, a few of them at launch. And for their previous games, they commit to include in PS Now most of their previous PS2, PS3, PS4 games during the next 2-3 years.

In the future they'd emulate PS Vita TV on PS5, which would bring many digital Vita, PSP, PS One and Minis to the PS5 PSN store to buy (no need to buy again if you already bought them on PSP, PS3 or PS Vita) and they would be added to Standard and Premium tiers at launch.

What are your hypothetical price points for those three options?

to be fair, this is what a successful generation run gives you. buyers jumping on the train

however we know from history, console generation to generation, have change hands time and again.

imo sony needs to be more aggressive to challenge GPU and xCloud.

MS doesn't even really have xCloud out yet. So no worries there. And if Sony does what yurinka said, then they'll be fine.

 

[megreotsugua]

They'd commit to include all their future big 1st and 2nd party games 1 year after release. Some of their future smaller games, plus some 3rd party AAA or indies would be included there before that 1 year mark, a few of them at launch. And for their previous games, they commit to include in PS Now most of their previous PS2, PS3, PS4 games during the next 2-3 years.

Sounds expensive. That will affect sales of games though I would say, so it has to be factored in the potential price of that kind of service.

When games become so easy to pick-up through services like that, many devs will have to depend on Sony or MS for a guaranteed inclusion and guaranteed pay before they can commit to make a game specially for AA games. It will be hard for games to sell when gamers have a lot of options to play.

You think inclusion within 1 year after release is the right call?

 

[yurinka]

What are your hypothetical price points for those three options?

I don't know, how about this:

-Entry: $4.99 for 3 months, $14.99 for a year
-Standard: $9.99 for 1 month, $19.99 for 3 months, $59.99 for 1 year
-Premium: $14.99 for 1 month, $39.99 for 3 months, $99.99 for 1 year

1 month trial of Premium with new consoles, 2 week trial of Premium for new users. But remember, all this I say it's just a fan wish guess.

Very likely to merge Plus and Now would be a nightmare because the deals they signed with the companies who put their games there may not cover it, and in this case they would need to sign new deals with them (something not possible for already closed companies or have licensing deals), or I assume they would need to sign again new licensing deals with the publishers to put PS1, PSP and PS Vita games on PS5 so again it would mean a ton of work and money and since it would mean little extra revenue for them probably they'd skip it for not sounding profitable.

But well, it's what I'd like to have, that I think many players would support, that would be future proof and that would help them to continue dominating MS on the game subscriptions business by offering something MS, Luna or Stadia can't offer: an insanely huge catalog that covers many generations with many highly acclaimed classic exclusives.

Sounds expensive. That will affect sales of games though I would say, so it has to be factored in the potential price of that kind of service.

When games become so easy to pick-up through services like that, many devs will have to depend on Sony or MS for a guaranteed inclusion and guaranteed pay before they can commit to make a game specially for AA games. It will be hard for games to sell when gamers have a lot of options to play.

You think inclusion within 1 year after release is the right call?

I think it would make more sense to wait more than a year, probably two matching the PC release. The key for them would be to include them in PS Now once the game already made almost all their sales after the main 3 months launch window, got extra visibility from GOTY awards a few time limited discounts and at least one price drop.

But the 1 year strategy seems to work fine with EA Play making the service appealing while not having a visible impact on new and catalog game sales. It isn't a suicide strategy like putting them there day one, and I think it's the most reasonable thing they could do to 'counter' Gamepass.

Sony already makes a fuckton of money from 3rd party games and subscriptions, and their AAA games sell better than ever. So I think they won't care if they lose a part of these late 1st party sales (which after the 1st year are only minor sales and since normally are heavily discounted they don't generate a lot of revenue), specially if as an investment helps them to dominate the game subscription business not only on console, but also in PC and mobile.

For 3rd party devs, subscription services sucks unless Sony/MS/Amazon/etc pays them upfront a fair amount of money for including it there for some time. But since these companies only include a few games every month and hundreds of games are released every month, most devs who aren't the cool kid in the block never will be included there, or at least not with a fair deal.

So for devs it's better to keep these services as something secondary for the gaming market that doesn't keep a lot of player time, and that in terms of business is something to earn some small extra revenue once the game stops selling after its complete sales life cycle.

Going back to Sony, they need to secure their leading position in this strategic market, because right now is pretty small and let's say maybe not pretty profitable, but after 10 years or so it will be a very important part of the gaming market and will start replacing a least a part of the console and PC business.

 

[comshoplesce]

US PS+ 25€ or less.