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What could Sony do to win back the mob?

Topher said:
The mob just wants games like Fortnite and Sony wants prefer a mob that only likes games like Fortnite
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Kinda true
But it's reality of life. Sony is commercial company so it's work for money, and money long said that digital+gaas mob are overwhelming majority
You cant expect market leader prioritizing niche minority over mass market

Sohurmk833 said:
It hasn´t gone down this gen. Quite the opposite.
The alternative is to just keep playing on your old hardware. Not like it makes a big difference. CoD, FIFA and Madden will all look fine on PS5 even 10 years from now.
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If it would not be a RAM crisis, PS6 price would be more affordable

PS5 haven't dropped price, though it was regularly available at heavily discounted prices, because component prices haven't go down for various reasons - MLID, inflation etc

PS6 price reduction heavily depends on whether rampocalypse will die faster than next wave of inflation hits. Anyway, inflation adjusted price will go down, probably, PS5 managed to drop ~20%, even more on sales, before RAM crisis hit

Anyway - playstation will be best value/money gaming with nextgen capabilities, so at least on enthusiasts level it'll have some sales
 
Minimum: start selling activation keys for your 1st party games to 3rd party stores.
Maximum: reverse the decision on physical distribution.
 
yurinka said:
Purchase of physical games generated only under 2% of Sony's revenue last quarter, and an important portion of that were old games.

And if we limit the comparision to game units sold (ignoring F2P or subs), it was 85% digital vs 15% physical.

The potential userbase interested in physical isn't "over half" at all.
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U are vastly mistaken here, 2 things can be true at the same time, the physical disc buyers arent ppl who buy some tinyAA or indie games, which basically is 100% digital, we usually only buy AAA games, coz those got disc versions, on top if u looking at it from the lense of US(which is richest and has biggest alldigital customers) u fail to realise worldwide situation, where most of customers are much poorer and prefer discs, it is how it is :)

There is sizeable chunk of ps5/pr0 users who dont even buy games at launch, we buy either hugely discounted( usually at below 50% price) new or even used phys disc, ofc that huge segment of ppl(budget concious ones) isnt even accounted for, think for urself all those top50 bestselling games, do majority of their sales comes durning launchwindow(3-4months after launch) or rather years later? I dont mind profits for platform holder/pub, i mean amount of copies(aka amount of users who buy those copies).

So 2 things actually happen at the same time, sony gets huge majority of the profits from early sales(mostly digital too) but in terms of sold copies, even tho they bring minimal(heavy discounted phys disc) or even 0 profit(used copies) to sony, they still sell to more ppl than those alldigital launchwindow numbers :)

Lets just check japanese ps5/pr0 sales since they are most accurate data, and japanese market isnt skewed into alldigital like US is(coz they are simply much poorer):
Witchilich

News  Thread 'Switch 2 has not yet sold more than PS5 in Japan'


Hardware Sales (followed by lifetime sales)

  1. Switch 2 – 26,435 (5,940,500)
  2. PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 8,024 (1,324,185)
  3. Switch OLED Model – 2,619 (9,593,258)
  4. Switch Lite – 2,446 (6,981,943)
  5. PlayStation 5 Pro – 1,165 (364,374)
  6. Switch – 402 (20,302,138)
  7. PlayStation 5 – 260 (5,920,682)
  8. Xbox Series X – 217 (327,837)
  9. Xbox Series X Digital Edition – 217 (32,455)
  10. Xbox Series S – 29 (342,474)
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data from 25th june 2026 so very recent
1,3m ps5 digital units, ,364k ps5pr0, and still 5,9m ps5 with discdrive :)
 
They lost me, for the most part, years ago. The past year or so basically fully confirmed I'm not their target customer so whatever. PC and Nintendo it is!
 
More investment into first-party and more diversity in first-party games. Lower prices for PS5 (old shit should get cheaper, not more expensive. A PS5 shouldn't be more than 400€ in 2026. It's not my problem as a consumer that the component market is fucked. That's Sony's problem to solve.). Online play and cloud saves should not be paywalled. PSN security needs to be entirely reworked it just shouldn't be the case that Sony still suffers from hacks that get user data. Digital games shouldn't be more than 60€. And keep physical games.

So basically exactly the opposite of what they're doing and have been doing for years now. They won't change (and have no reason to) and I will just continue to not buy Sony's shit.
 
Felessan said:
Kinda true
But it's reality of life. Sony is commercial company so it's work for money, and money long said that digital+gaas mob are overwhelming majority
You cant expect market leader prioritizing niche minority over mass market
Click to expand...

Accommodating both casual and hardcore isn't mutually exclusive.
 
Funny thing is that if they just would have released PS6 with no disc drives at all it would have gone better than doing the announcement. Especially if they timed it with GTA6.
 
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Probably just announce games that are coming. Just show a bunch of games as the reason to buy the console and it would bring a lot of people back. Maybe fund some companies to make some exclusives as well. I doubt this will happen though since they seem to have already everything announced for the most part or have been leaked to be announced.
DavidGzz said:
Funny thing is that if they just would have released PS6 with no disc drives at all it would have gone better than doing the announcement. Especially if they timed it with GTA6.
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Yep, I totally agree with this but at the same time with cross gen you are going to have PS5 games getting released for like at least 4 years after the PS6 releases and they probably want all the money starting in 2028. They really should have waited for the PS7. Have a digital ps6 console that you can buy an add on for physicals and then just slowly drop the physical releases during the ps6 starting with first party and then go full digital with the PS7. Most folks would have been mostly digital or streaming by the end of the ps6.
 
I don't think they can do much to win me back. Playstation is pretty much dead to me. Sony literally killed all my interest in PS and their future hardware with all of their bullshit they pulled during this gen. It's astonishing really, that they were willing to spit in the face of their most enthusiast hardcore fans like this. I also have much better alternatives now with Switch 2 and Steam. Switch 2 offers me portability, physical games and Nintendo exclusives. Steam offers a trusted and secure platform for digital purchases, competitive prices, no pay paywall for online multiplayer or cloud saves, emulation of old games, mods and great customer service and refund options. I have absolutely no reason to stick with Playstation anymore.
 
Sony should go fuck themselves. I'm still not getting a PS6 and nothing they can do will win me back. Sony is a cunt company and so is everyone that works there. Hope they rot in piss

Been a die hard PlayStation fan since I got my PlayStation 1 back in the day. It was a good run, but the PlayStation we knew for its amazing games and experiences no longer exist.

We've gone from being a customer that was served with amazing games to just a thing that can be monetised. That's all we are now. Fuck you Sony
 
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VitoNotVito said:
There are 172,000 members on GAF. This is roughly 0.2% of the PS5 install base.

Let's just assume - for the sake of this conversation - that every single GAF member loves PlayStation and physical games. Let's also assume every single GAF user will leave PlayStation for PC/whatever else. It is 0.2% of their install base. Even if the average GAF user spends 5 times as much on games, you guys would make 1% of their business. Probably not even that, given the lower margins. They really do not care.

It's this noisy tiny minority on GAF/era/Twitter that might do some damage to the brand, but will do very little to their market dominance or market share, considering Xbox is dead (and I bet it will be digital too).

It's very different times now, we are not in 2013 with Xbox One.

ZBeEF2mDojN6hNLN.gif
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Sadly, I agree with you. But bad marketing is still bad marketing, even if the criticism comes from a small minority. At the very least, Sony should have clarified how we'll be able to access our physical game libraries on future PlayStation consoles.

We also won't be able to see the full consequences of this decision until around 2030. Eliminating physical games could change the buying habits of many consumers, especially in smaller markets where physical media is still more important. I can easily see day-one sales being severely affected in Brazil once discs are gone.
 
CentralScrutinizer said:
I don't know, when it comes to $70 games, reporting 100% of that revenue from digital sales vs only 15% from physical sales sounds like a gaslighting campaign to me.
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Even if physical normalized to 100%, it still less than 10%

dgrdsv said:
Minimum: start selling activation keys for your 1st party games to 3rd party stores.
Maximum: reverse the decision on physical distribution.
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What's the point for Sony economically?
Whose share, Sonys or Publishers will go to reseller?
In closed ecosystem there is no way you miss PS store and you can only redeem through it so there is no point for Sony to giveup on it's share, so it should be publisher who given some of it's revenue to reseller and they seems not to be ready

PS. Actually code in a box will give rise to resellers

PeteBull said:
u fail to realise worldwide situation, where most of customers are much poorer and prefer discs, it is how it is :)
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It keep shrinking, otherwise Sony wouldn't close their plants for discs
Sony currently produce ~70mio of Playstation discs per year, ~30mio of them are new games. By the "end of physical" DADC expect latter drop to ~15mio (and backcatalog reprints will drop even more) - that less than what CoD alone sells in an year

Topher said:
Accommodating both casual and hardcore isn't mutually exclusive.
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It's not hardcore, it's niche
 
consoul said:
It's hard to know at this point whether Sony are exploring some kind of Operation Winback where they offer a better digital future to address disgruntled players' concerns or if they're just gonna double down on the current shitty digital situation and say fuck y'all.

What could be a mutually acceptable solution?
How about this:

PS6 games are digital only and the PS6 console ships with no optical drive.

An optional disc drive (sold separately) can be added for backward compatibility only. Existing discs (PS1 thru PS5) can be played via the add-on disc drive.

A purchased digital game license grants usage in perpetuity, such that the game cannot be revoked, deactivated or removed from your account, for as long as you hold the license. Redownloads of purchased digital games are available to the license holder account for as long as Sony shall live.

Your account is secure. No more social engineering PlayStation support center account theft business. Effective security must be implemented.

Your digital license to a game can be transferred ...at a cost. From one month after the launch of a game, you can opt to sell your game license. You choose the price (above a set minimum price floor). When bought by another user, the game is deactivated from your account and activated on the buyers account. 50% of the sale price goes to Sony. The other 50% goes into your PSN wallet.

Digital game licenses cannot be transferred for free. This prevents used game sales from happening outside PSN.

It goes without saying that the consumer would still be losing a lot here, but let's be real: the only way a used game market can work in an all digital future is if Sony take a solid cut on every sale. They'll have to pass on a portion of it to the publisher of the game you sold and the publishers of whatever games you buy with the credit.

Could you live with this? What other ideas could work? There has to be a way forward that is better than the current mess.
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A significant amount of fixing the PSN + an ungodly amount of PR and community outreach.

Like it or not, they spent basically all the social capital built up in the PS4 era on this gen. Literally cashed in all the cheques including sequels to nearly all the PS4 banger 1P games.
 
Felessan said:
Kinda true
But it's reality of life. Sony is commercial company so it's work for money, and money long said that digital+gaas mob are overwhelming majority
You cant expect market leader prioritizing niche minority over mass market
Click to expand...
They could satisfy both groups. In fact, Sony abandoning physical games doesn't strengthen its commitment to the digital/live-service crowd in any meaningful way.

But what happens if this more hardcore part of the community gradually leaves the platform? That segment of the player base contributes a lot to PlayStation's brand value in ways that are difficult to measure. They're the people who constantly talk about PlayStation on social media, forums, YouTube, and elsewhere. All of that helps create the perception that PlayStation is a strong and valuable brand. If a significant portion of those fans stops talking about PlayStation, or continues talking about it without the same enthusiasm as before, that could eventually influence how more casual consumers perceive the brand.

I'm not saying PlayStation's future is doomed, but alienating some of its most loyal fans isn't a good strategy. That's simply a fact. Sony should have phased out physical media much more gradually or offered stronger incentives for people to switch to digital. Simply removing the option is the worst approach.
 
Felessan said:
It keep shrinking, otherwise Sony wouldn't close their plants for discs
Sony currently produce ~70mio of Playstation discs per year, ~30mio of them are new games. By the "end of physical" DADC expect latter drop to ~15mio (and backcatalog reprints will drop even more) - that less than what CoD alone sells in an year
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%age of profit from physical disc keeps shrinking fast, %age of actual users who are physical only is still huge, 50% or so.
 
Felessan said:
Even if physical normalized to 100%, it still less than 10%
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Still no. Because the digital revenue includes microtransactions and digital only games. To get a true look at the REAL number you'd have to eliminate those. Also, Sony would have to be honest and say how many physical game purchases had dlc and transactions purchased tied to that physical purchase. They have that data and they won't report it for obvious reasons. Tying microtransactions and dlc purchase to a physical copy a person owns (in a fair comparison) would be tied to "physical" revenue because that disc has extra purchases tied to it.


The numbers don't lie. Sony intentionally obfuscating the actual revenue tied to physical games so they can gaslight the industry into accepting all digital.
 
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They need some games that target straight men again. If they didn't already have a bunch of those in development, they might be in a bit of a pinch.
 
Variety of Quality games, fairly priced hardware with convenience of features and options, lose the arrogance, never take consumer good will for granted. Keep it simple.
 
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Griffon said:
Nothing. Digital already won. The few people complaining are a minority and soon enough they'll move on.

Now, if Sony stopped making shitty DEI infested game, that would be much better. But that's another thing.
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This. They didn't lose the mob. The lost the butthurt nerds (who also LOVE Steam, a digital-only platform)

Those of you that really want things to be better would be far better served but getting Soony to adopt better digital storefront practices instead of trying to get them to reverse their decision. It's not happening.
 
RoboFu said:
how do you guys suggest they incorporate their handheld while using big bluray disks?
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If you have both systems, you can leave the disc in the console and do a server check on the system (like how remote play already works) to see if the disc is inserted and it gives you the right to boot up a digital copy on the handheld you don't technically own, but are permitted to play because you own the physical copy.

It can be done. Is it inconvenient? Yup, but if you want to own your game physically, that's just how it has to be.

If you own only the handheld, then obviously you will have to buy digitally.

Other alternative? Charge extra for physical and go the cartridge route like Switch 2 with GKCs and such. That would be hilarious if they left discs to go to carts. (This is a joke, they'd never do that)
 
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RoboFu said:
how do you guys suggest they incorporate their handheld while using big bluray disks?
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In fact, this just proves how poorly Sony has managed this situation. We all knew the handheld would be digital-only, and I think everyone was okay with that. It would have been an extra incentive for people to buy digital games. But no one was expecting Sony to suddenly take away the option of buying physical games.

This was an uncalculated move by Sony, and now they're in a difficult position. Maybe the PS6 will include a disc drive to properly support backward compatibility with physical games, but they can't start talking about the PS6 this early, especially if it's not launching until 2028.

No matter what anyone thinks about physical games or Sony, the way they communicated this was handled very poorly, and I'm not sure completely ignoring the backlash is the best approach.

Five years ago, they reversed their decision to shut down the PS3 Store because of community backlash. This time, the backlash is a thousand times bigger. We got five extra years of the PS3 Store because people spoke up. If this backlash gives us five more years of physical games, I'll be happy.
 
Literally nothing.

Whatever plan they had prior just keep going with it.

Anybody saying im boycotting PS because of no disks probably wasnt a PS person to begin with.
 
The_Mike said:
People will still buy it.
The alternatives are also high priced because that's what current tech just costs
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No they won't. Sony will lose 50% of PS5 buyers at that price, easily.

VitoNotVito said:
Higher margins on digital sales will allow them to subsidise the hardware. With physical still around, they would have to cater in lower average "profit-per-customer" compared with digital only marketplace.
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Sony isn't going to subsidize anything. It's all about milking the whales.
 
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bad guy said:
Anyone here abstaing from GTA6 because it's discless?
*chirping noises*
I thought so.
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Wasn't planning on getting it beforehand either to be fair, but you would be surprised there are those with principled stances out there.
 
Realistically, nothing. Without a real competitor in the space it doesn't matter how much people whine, they will keep coming back to play games. Xbox is fumbling, Switch 2 is a different demographic/market, and PC is still a long ways away from being the normie TV box.

However if they did have the desire to win consumer favor, then learn from how Valve pulls it off. I see very few people complain about Steam, and in fact most people hand wave a lot of crap that's not great for them as a consumer.
  • All digital since day one, no trading/selling/used market
  • Historically obnoxious DRM, try playing your offline games when power/internet goes out
  • Monopolized the PC market, and Steam Workshop has monopolized modding communities
  • By default, launches into a full page of ads (storefront) with additional popup ads
...but people just accept it all becuase they also do a lot of great things, and I believe they show that an all digital future doesn't have to be miserable
  • Constant sales, while not nearly as great as they were, are still the best in the gaming industry
  • Family sharing at a software license level
  • 3 hour return policy for every game, which is fantastic in a digital age without rentals or demos
  • Incredibly streamlined user experience, especially considering the nature of the platform
  • Key purchases from sources outside their own storefront
 
Disc are done quicker than I expected and they are not coming back on a mass scale.

IMO, what they should have done. Continue pressing disc for those that want physical even if they had to increase the price of the physical game by $5-$10. At least that gives me a choice and I think more people would gradually move to digital for the initial discounted price.

What they can do now? Bring back digital codes for games. That leaves a real retail/secondary market open.
 
tusharngf said:
Storefront discounts

Low priced hardware

U turn on disk fiasco

Better refund policy

More quality first party titles

More jrpgs
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We had a similar thread last weak, and I pretty sure someone made the exact comment lol. We can close the thread, just let me add another thing:

More games in general. Especially lower budget ones with shorter development cycles.
 
MacReady13 said:
How about just add the disc drive as an add on for PS6 and continue producing discs forever? It's not like no one is buying physical media. It still sells. Is it worth losing hundreds of thousands if not potentially millions of customers all for trying to remove something because you don't reap 100% of profits? Greedy fuckers. Lose physical and they lose me. Simple as that.
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WNyG3yTUOpR7qdio.jpg


Sony and the digital missionaries lie like they're the government.
 
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