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[Bumblebeetuna]

He makes some good points. The market isn’t really growing anymore, so when you’re making big budget exclusives, you’re catering to a smaller player base. We’re already seeing shifts from Sony. They’re making less games than ever and now are pivoting to a stronger GaaS focus. And now there’s talk from them of a stronger PC focus, too. They’ve realized they need to branch out.

A lot of people are saying “but Nintendo is doing fine!” but Nintendo is not Sony. Nintendo is basically their own market. For the most part they aren’t competing with the same gamers with their first party software. Also if you want Sony to follow the Nintendo route, goodbye cutting edge graphics and modern hardware. Sony doesn’t even have the software power to be Nintendo. Just look at how long Nintendo games can remain full MSRP and still sell tons, while Sony game prices are slashed all the time to spur sales. This isn’t a Sony thing though, that’s an “everyone but Nintendo” thing.

Sold more than CoD on all platforms ? Because this how you count sales for multiplat games.

Probably just the PS4 first party games that were massively bundled last gen. HZD, U4, GoW, Spider-Mang

 

[ReBurn]

I want AA games, but AAA games helped Playstation reach there highest profits ever on PS4. A mix of both would be good

I would like to think we could still get some really high quality games for $100 million. They probably wouldn't be 40 hour interactive movies, but I think they could still be really good.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I'd rather you stop suggesting retarded ideas.

Must be scary times for you.

 

[drganon]

Must be scary times for you.

Scared of what? Sony implementing your terrible ideas? I know since Xbox isn't doing so hot you guys are coping pretty heavily, but c'mon.

 

[daninthemix]

Scared of what?

Scared of what is happening already, and will continue to happen even more.

 

[drganon]

Scared of what is happening already, and will continue to happen even more.

Didn't bother to read his post did you.

 

[Aces High]

SIE low margin strategy is the only way to run an asset-light business and drive competitors out of the market.

SIE has made more money over the past 4 years than the previous 26 years combined.

Excluding the massive increases in R&D and D&A and costs related to acquisitions, SIE operating income in FY23 would be 500 billion yen.

Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst are just choosing to reinvest profits into growth.

Does it make sense? The answer is YES.

Asset-light businesses focus on reducing capital expenditures by owning fewer physical assets, which often leads to lower fixed costs.

This strategy allows for more flexibility and potentially higher margins, but it doesn't necessitate a low margin approach.

A low margin strategy makes sense in highly competitive markets.

Reducing prices (thus accepting lower margins) can be a way to attract customers and gain market share, assuming the company can maintain operational efficiency and control other costs.

PlayStation, however, has increased prices for both games and their subscription service during this gen, and they missed their sales target for hardware.

The fact that PlayStation has made more money in the past 4 years than in the previous 26 years combined is significant.

But the layoffs and leadership changes show that Sony is looking to streamline operations, reduce costs, and realign its strategic direction.

They're acting now because the strategy that has served them well for decades might be no longer suited for long-term sustainability and competitiveness, especially in a rapidly evolving industry like gaming.

I think your view is a little bit too optimistic given the leadership transitions and workforce reductions.

 

[Shodai]

I expect a far larger PC presence in the next couple years as well as a massive reduction in headcount on the West Coast of USA (Seeing a ton of this at my company as well).

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

I think an alternate pitch could be

“TLOU3 - Get ready for our biggest and most ambitious game to date.

Play day 1 on Steam / Series XS / Switch 2 / PS5 for $70.

Get expansion pass and get 10% off on 3 planned expansions.

Engage in Factions 2, our groundbreaking multiplayer mode included with purchase.”

I mean, if you are spending $200-300 million, might as well go all out and allow it to be one of biggest game out there.

That sounds awful. lol. People buy those games for the immersive, narrative experience. Not to be nickel-and-dimed to death. And not to play a live-service multiplayer game. Yuck!

 

[ProtoByte]

If we accept that the market isn't growing past this 250 million number as Layden says (and i think he's generally right), then we should also understand that multiplatform releases doesn't expand the audience either. All it does is segment the sales share on different platforms.

Even the least successful of major PS4 titles were doing in the high 7 figures, touching 10 million. That is on par with or better than most multiplatform titles. Scraping off a little extra from PC releases only marginally increases the revenue in the balance sheet in the short term. Exclusivity is not an Achilles heel unless you're targeting the completely wrong platform for your game.

 

[mckmas8808]

"Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in."

"For single-player games it’s not the same exigency. But if you’re spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if it’s just 10% more."

Other quotes I think are of interest.....

"We’re not doing enough to get heretofore non-console people into console gaming. We’re not going to attract them by doing more of the shit we’re doing now. If 95% of the world doesn’t want to play Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto, is the industry just going to make more Call of Duty, Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto? That’s not going to get you anybody else."

"It’s crazy how you can lay off 900 people and have 300 open recs on your website. There’s a mismatch between what companies think they need and what they actually have. What did they say, 12,000 or 13,000 last year and we’re already up to 7,000 just in February of this year?"

"I don’t want to sound like a broken record, because I’ve been saying this for five years, but it’s the rising cost of development. That’s the existential threat. It’s not “live service gaming is tricky” or anything else. When we’re in the $250-300 million to make a game world…I’m giving a talk about this tomorrow at Stanford. Gaming is reaching its cathedral moment. There was a world hundreds of years ago where they built cathedrals, massive edifices to God, throughout Europe and around the world. Eventually, indentured labor only takes you so far. Then it stopped. It became prohibitively time-consuming and expensive. They were wonderful and beautiful. You can look at any of them across Europe and think, “That’s a marvel.” But we don’t make them anymore. We don’t make them because the math doesn’t work. If you have four walls and a roof, you can call it a church, and God will come visit. You don’t need the cathedral anymore."

"I’m afraid that we’ve bought into the triple-A, 80 hours of gameplay, 50 gigabytes of game, and if we can’t reach that then we can’t do anything. I’m hoping for a return of double-A gaming. I’m all for that."

I think one of the issues I have with a lot of these Executives is that none of them seem to talk about the money that's being generated outside of the games themselves. Back during the PS1 and PS2 days nobody was making money on things like PlayStation Plus, DLC, PlayStation Plus premium, and other micro transactions.

Please for the love of God why do they never bring up these revenues? Why don't they talk about how this ads to Sony and Microsoft bottom line and their profits? Why are we acting like many of these games sell for $60 or $70 but also have a battle pass for an additional 20 bucks?

 

[mckmas8808]

I think an alternate pitch could be

“TLOU3 - Get ready for our biggest and most ambitious game to date.

Play day 1 on Steam / Series XS / Switch 2 / PS5 for $70.

Get expansion pass and get 10% off on 3 planned expansions.

Engage in Factions 2, our groundbreaking multiplayer mode included with purchase.”

I mean, if you are spending $200-300 million, might as well go all out and allow it to be one of biggest game out there.

And people like this or why the industry will crash. You speak as if making a game on four different platforms on at least 12 different Hardware configurations isn't also going to drive up developer cost and development time.

We've gotten to the point where we've all lost our minds. All of these Executives have lost the plot. I would rather Sony make remakes and more remasters of their games then make them for every single Hardware configuration on Earth which means they will need to water down the game for the end user who is actually interested in the game.

If a person on a Nintendo console or an Xbox truly cares about playing The Last of Us 3, they will buy a PlayStation or build a PC and wait for the game to come out later. Full stop. Let's stop with this silliness.

All this stupidity about a one platform future or getting rid of first party games started with Phil and Microsoft and then you have Peter Moore doing the same thing. And now Sean Layton also playing a role in this ridiculousness. It's all getting really stupid and I'm sick and tired of it.

 

[balls of snow]

I expect we will see AAA games cut in half and sold to us twice.

A very simple trick to pull with the next Last of Us would be to develop a 30 hour game and then sell it in two parts, each at full price.

People will moan.

But they will still buy it.

And it's two more games to remaster/remake, rather than one.

LIke Square wanted to do with Deus Ex. All you end up with is a cliffhanger and angry fans. What sony should have done is produce more smaller titles like Uncharted Lost Legacy, Miles Morales to fill in the gaps while their studios work on the full fat sequels. Miles Morales roi was through the roof if I recall.

 

[Truthtellers]

shut up shawn

 

[mrabott]

Is it just me or do these production numbers make no sense?

Programmers all receive a salary, whether weekly or monthly. I doubt developers pay much more than $100,000 a year to most programmers.

 

[bender]

How many others would, though?

“Our next installment in this beloved series is shorter than the previous two games, and made on a smaller budget in order to control costs, and increase our corporate operating margins. To bring as much value as possible to our shareholders. Please continue to enjoy this smaller-scale entry for the full price of $70.”

Needs to be work-shopped a little, but that’s essentially where things would be going if “game budgets started to get smaller”. I guess I don’t see the upside to us as players.

I don't think it needs to be an all or none scenario. Some games will go beyond that budgetary number, others could go below it. The upside to us as players is games that are willing to take risks. It's probably healthy for developers to get away from the status quo as well.

 

[ArtHands]

I think an alternate pitch could be

“TLOU3 - Get ready for our biggest and most ambitious game to date.

Play day 1 on Steam / Series XS / Switch 2 / PS5 for $70.

Get expansion pass and get 10% off on 3 planned expansions.

Engage in Factions 2, our groundbreaking multiplayer mode included with purchase.”

I mean, if you are spending $200-300 million, might as well go all out and allow it to be one of biggest game out there.

This is probably the best compromise to maximize the profit. Folks who don’t want gaas can check out the core game, but people can also go deeper with Faction 2 and the Expansion Pass.

 

[drganon]

This is probably the best compromise to maximize the profit. Folks who don’t want gaas can check out the core game, but people can also go deeper with Faction 2 and the Expansion Pass.

More like an absolutely stupid idea only someone like you would think work.

 

[ArtHands]

Is it just me or do these production numbers make no sense?

Programmers all receive a salary, whether weekly or monthly. I doubt developers pay much more than $100,000 a year to most programmers.

Money for software, hardware, offices, bills, R&D, licensing, disc manufacturing, marketing and possibly more

 

[mckmas8808]

He literally did nothing of note at Sony when he was an executive. I don't know why he's given any attention. The only thing he did was turn E3 into a shitfest for Sony, and now it's gone. So we have him to thank for that. I still remember the awful E3 where they went around to different live events with TLOU and Flute Guy for GoT.

Hold on.. that was him? Oh heck nah

 

[ArtHands]

Former EA exec Peter Moore has "serious questions" about the future of video game consoles

Former EA and Microsoft exec, Peter Moore, says there are "serious questions" to be asked about video game hardware and…

www.eurogamer.net

Former EA exec Peter Moore speaks out on his thought regarding the future of video game consoles, which is somewhat related to this article regarding the development costs.

"I think it's a real serious question that's being asked I'm sure in Tokyo, in Redmond, Washington, in Kyoto," Moore told the delightful Wes Yin-Poole at IGN. "That's what everybody's working on right now, because when you start off that next generation, you've got to be ready to absorb billions of dollars in losses.


"And is the industry, given all the layoffs and everything we're going through right now, is the industry ready for that? Look at Sony laying off 900 people – a lot there in the UK."


After reflecting on the impact of AI, Moore added: "Are these companies willing to go another round of multi-billion? And at the same time, you're gearing up for another cycle where gamers may not embrace the console and just say, you know what? I don't need this, times are tough. I've got my phone, I'm enjoying what I've got on my phone. There's plenty of games I can play. Failing that, of course I have my PC or my Mac, I can go do whatever I need to do there. And do I really need to be spending what could be five, $600 on a bespoke piece of hardware just to play games? So both the companies and gamers themselves are asking this question."

 

[mckmas8808]

I can see Gran Turismo benefiting on PC. It might coincide with PSVR2 launching PC support. It depends on the game really but if a Sony AAA single player game sells 3M on PS5 at launch and 1M on PC that's worthwhile. It's an extra 70 million revenue or so day 1. Could be 30% of the budget covered at launch.

With all these Xbox and Bethesda games coming to playstation it's gonna become a pretty crowded space.

They don't need to put all Sony 1st party games on PC day one. That'll be dumb. Maybe after 6-12 months at a minimum.

Something that is not doing the industry any favors is how we treat kids. I see parents giving kids an ipad to shut them up, and letting them play shitty free games from app stores. When I was 5 my dad introduced me to his NES and let me play Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. He never ended up getting into video games, but he got me started. I understand putting a PS5 in front of a 5 year old is not the same thing, it's a lot more complicated now. Instead all these kids know are free, shitty iOS games - so why do we wonder why there is a growth problem in the console business?

This is why I bought my 4 year old daughter a Switch this year. I couldn't stand seeing her play those tablet crappy games anymore.

 

[Deerock71]

I'd file this under 'N' for 'No Shit, Sherlock'.

 

[mckmas8808]

Is it just me or do these production numbers make no sense?

Programmers all receive a salary, whether weekly or monthly. I doubt developers pay much more than $100,000 a year to most programmers.

Don't forget about the work done by 3rd parties all over the world.