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[megreotsugua]

Sony to spend 2 trln yen on strategic investments over next three years

Sony Group (6758.T) said on Wednesday it will spend 2 trillion yen ($18.39 billion) over the next three years on strategic investments, including a push to expand subscribers to its gaming and entertainment services.

www.reuters.com

Sony probably saw this thread.

Spoiler

jk

I wonder how they plan to connect 1 billion people to Sony services. Are they building a Netflix and Disney+ competitor?

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Sony to spend 2 trln yen on strategic investments over next three years

Sony Group (6758.T) said on Wednesday it will spend 2 trillion yen ($18.39 billion) over the next three years on strategic investments, including a push to expand subscribers to its gaming and entertainment services.

www.reuters.com

Sony probably saw this thread.

Spoiler

jk

I wonder how they plan to connect 1 billion people to Sony services. Are they building a Netflix and Disney+ competitor?

Sony Group (6758.T) said on Wednesday it will spend 2 trillion yen ($18.39 billion) over the next three years on strategic investments, including a push to expand subscribers to its gaming and entertainment services. Sony said in a statement it would accelerate investments in mobile and online services with the aim of expanding the number of consumers directly connected to its services to 1 billion people from 160 million.

That's pretty huge! I think they'll go hard on mobile gaming mostly to reach that 1 billion people goal on Androids and iOS.

 

[MMaRsu]

"

Funimation/Crunchyroll+Sony Movies&Shows"

All this is crap I dont give a shit about.

 

[megreotsugua]

Sony Group (6758.T) said on Wednesday it will spend 2 trillion yen ($18.39 billion) over the next three years on strategic investments, including a push to expand subscribers to its gaming and entertainment services. Sony said in a statement it would accelerate investments in mobile and online services with the aim of expanding the number of consumers directly connected to its services to 1 billion people from 160 million.

That's pretty huge! I think they'll go hard on mobile gaming mostly to reach that 1 billion people goal on Androids and iOS.

Sony has to be careful with this. If they implement something like what is suggested in this thread, the videogame aspect should only be an additional value and not the focus. If they plan to entice the casual crowd, they have to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, and not xbox gamepass. The streaming of videogames will definitely add a lot of value though.

It wouldn't matter if the games are not day 1 releases. Hardcore gamers would want to buy a console anyway.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Sony has to be careful with this. If they implement something like what is suggested in this thread, the videogame aspect should only be an additional value and not the focus. If they plan to entice the casual crowd, they have to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, and not xbox gamepass. The streaming of videogames will definitely add a lot of value though.

It wouldn't matter if the games are not day 1 releases. Hardcore gamers would want to buy a console anyway.

I see it more investment in Bravia Core, Crunchyroll, Funimation. If Crunchyroll deal settles they'll have a monopoly with anime streaming. I doubt they'll ever go after Gamepass concept, nor upgrading PS Now with PS5 HW for the cloud when demand is extremely high.

I can see PS Now dropping the cloud service and going full-download-only in the near future, saves a lot of money.

 

[megreotsugua]

"

Funimation/Crunchyroll+Sony Movies&Shows"

All this is crap I dont give a shit about.

Streaming of Movies+Shows+Anime+Games will cater to the casual crowd. This is essentially a Netflix and Amazon Prime competitor.

I hope Sony understand that this will not appeal much to gamers. Gamers don't care for streaming. This will have to be catered to the casuals. The casuals don't care for hardware.

I hope Sony has other plans for a more gamer-centric service ( separate from the more casual-centric service). I propose a more robust PS+ building on top of its 50 million subscribers.

 

[CeeJay]

I don't see Sony combining everything they have into one big monolithic subscription service. It could end up being something meant to appeal to everyone that ends up appealing to nobody because it has to be quite high in price. At some point in makes sense to limit the offering of a combined service in favour of having a variety of smaller more targeted subscription services.

Maybe have something similar to what NowTV do in the UK where they have a sports pass, entertainment pass, movie pass and kids pass. Each one is a separate sub...

Sony could have Entertainment Pass, Anime Pass and Gaming Pass (not to be confused with GamePass!) and Music pass. A clever thing to do to increase adoption of multi-subs would be to include a little bit of each in the other passes so, if you have the Entertaiment pass you might get to play some older games that are part of a series but if you want to play the sequels you need the gaming pass. And similarly on the Gaming pass you could have access to the first season or first few episodes of a series that encourages you to get the Entertainment pass as well to carry on watching. Sony have a ridiculous amount of media that they could really exploit if they execute the plan well and should have really established themselves already as a top tier service provider instead of sitting on their hands while the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney have been steadily growing.

 

[megreotsugua]

I don't see Sony combining everything they have into one big monolithic subscription service. It could end up being something meant to appeal to everyone that ends up appealing to nobody because it has to be quite high in price.

The strategy is to appeal to casuals*. Therefore the games will not be day 1. The games will earn its profit through traditional release and then it will be release on the service for the casuals. The gaming aspect is only an added value. This is basically a way to trickle down the value of gaming to casuals.

Since the target are the casuals, the movies, shows and anime are the main appeal. This will have to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime.

*Casuals defined. I define it here as someone who wouldn't naturally invest in a gaming hardware whether it be PC or console, but wouldn't say no to a chance play videogames occasionally.

 

[CeeJay]

The strategy is to appeal to casuals*. Therefore the games will not be day 1. The games will earn its profit through traditional release and then it will be release on the service for the casuals. The gaming aspect is only an added value. This is basically a way to trickle down the value of gaming to casuals.

Since the target are the casuals, the movies, shows and anime are the main appeal. This will have to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime.

*Casuals defined. I define it here as someone who wouldn't naturally invest in a gaming hardware whether it be PC or console, but wouldn't say no to a chance play videogames occasionally.

I would say that anime is equally if not more niche than gaming and someone who wants an anime streaming service is probably not going to want the increased cost of included movies, shows and music that they are not interested in. Having maybe one main spotlight sub that includes a lot of popular mainstream stuff from each of the sub-subs and then the individual specialist subs that are bolt on could be the way to go. Yes they want to appeal to the casual mainstream but also use it as a gateway into the more hardcore fandom. Just going off the rationale that every hardcore fan of something started off with a casual interest in it that developed into something more dedicated.

 

[megreotsugua]

I would say that anime is equally if not more niche than gaming and someone who wants an anime streaming service is probably not going to want the increased cost of included movies, shows and music that they are not interested in. Having maybe one main spotlight sub that includes a lot of popular mainstream stuff from each of the sub-subs and then the individual specialist subs that are bolt on could be the way to go. Yes they want to appeal to the casual mainstream but also use it as a gateway into the more hardcore fandom. Just going off the rationale that every hardcore fan of something started off with a casual interest in it that developed into something more dedicated.

Well Crunchyroll I believe is $8 per month already. It's not much if they increase it to $10.

I've read some post here in gaf about a study that people would have to propensity to sub if the price is within $10-15. I'd say they have to target $10 or less. The price has to compete against Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime.

 

[megreotsugua]

Having maybe one main spotlight sub that includes a lot of popular mainstream stuff from each of the sub-subs and then the individual specialist subs that are bolt on could be the way to go.

Could you expound on this?

 

[Ev1L AuRoN]

I live in Brazil and here I much rather download animes from fansubbers, I find the subtitles better adapted my region, I subscribe to Crunchyroll for a while but didn't like it very much.
As for movies I think I got it covered with Amazon Prime and Netflix, if I really want to watch something more recent I just rent on Apple TV.
As for games I would subscribe from time to time, but I don't think I'll have a good latency given where I live.

 

[CeeJay]

Could you expound on this?

So, they could have a main sub service (I called spotlight) that gives Access to a curated selection of quality content taken from all of Sonys different media arms including movies, TV series, games, music etc. But have it on a rolling in/out basis where content is regularly cycled. If you are casual then there will always be fresh stuff to consume but, if you want the sequel to a movie for example then you have to bolt on the movie pass to get access to the full catalogue. Say you get invested in a series you have to get the entertainment pass to watch the next season. If someone starts playing a game that then cycles out they might sub to the gaming pass to carry on playing it. They could offer the spotlight sub fairly cheaply knowing that sooner or later people will generally bolt on further subs, hell they may even be able to go f2p with this model.

 

[ergem]

I think this is a sure thing, but how they price it will be interesting.

It's probably happening. But Sony is using the playstation branding instead of creating a new movie streaming brand with game streaming as an added value.

I think it's wiser to target the casuals or the Netflix crowd with their own streaming app and add game streaming simply as an added value.

Game streaming is niche. Movie streaming is mass market.

 

[ergem]

Sony buying WB streaming and studios?

Would be huge for them if true.

Netflix, in probably 10 years, will add game streaming to their portfolio. Imagine generation beta kids growing up playing games through netflix.

Mod Edit: Don't bump 4 year old threads. There's already a topic for this news here.

 

[The Pleasure]

Sony buying WB streaming and studios?



Netflix, in probably 10 years, will add game streaming to their portfolio. Imagine generation beta kids growing up playing games through netflix.

Reported for Extreme Terrible Futury.

 

[omegasc]

Look at the amount of banned users on this thread

 

[Magic Carpet]

Look at the amount of banned users on this thread

Sony Subscription Services Sybolizes Serious Subjects.
Stopped Subscribing, Still Surviving.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Look at the amount of banned users on this thread

This thread is a graveyard lol

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

I'd just like to say . . . banned!

 

[nordique]

Edit - whoa. This thread was resurrected.

I'd do it but I'd probably never buy another PS game…similar with how I am with gamepass currently