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[Fabieter]

Case by case

Seems I have heard that somewhere else recently

Gaas day one and sp games the same day as pc might be a good guess.

I mean xbox consoles are gonna support steam anyway so whats the point of not doing it if you keep supporting steam.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

What a clown, you have no idea. 8 and 16 bit computers sold more or less this:

• PC-98: around 18M (but had many models until the 2000s) *
• Commodore 64: around 12-17M
• MSX: around 4-9M
• Apple II: around 5M (plus >1M of Apple IIGS)
• Spectrum: around 5M
• Amstrad CPC: around 3M
• Commodore Amiga: around 5M
• Atari ST: around 2M
• FM Towns: around 500K *
• X68000: unknown, pretty likely some hundred thousands *

* = Japan only

Stop with the Wiki copypastas. I never said the MSX didn't sell or was a failure. You're contriving an argument that never existed just to have an excuse for yet another Wiki copypasta.

And no, MSX wasn't made for the Japanese market. It was made for the global market to have a global computer standard like the VHS was for video, and was made by Microsoft (USA) and ASCII (JP). Many companies from all around the world made their own MSX computers and games for it, being Sony just one of them. Many key manufacturers were Japanese and ASCII was the one mainly moving it, so the main manufacturers were Japanese.

No, MSX was designed to address what several companies considered issues with the Japanese (and other Asian countries) computer market specifically in the early '80s. Companies like Microsoft wanted their products like MS-DOS in Japan, and others like IBM wanted their PCs there too. However, almost all Western computer companies failed to gain serious penetration in Japan because they lacked support for Japanese character limits due to limitations in display technologies and standards of the time, when it came to displaying special characters or a range of characters in general. This was also because memory sizes were puny at the time and compression technologies weren't sufficient for fitting a sea of ROMs with both English and Japanese character sets in reasonably priced systems.

You're pulling some nonsense trying to argue the MSX line was intended as a global standard, and that is simply not true. Here, if you're going to Wiki copypasta, at least copypasta the actual facts:

MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#cite_note-1"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#cite_note-2"><span>[</span>2<span>]</span></a> It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, the director at ASCII Corporation.

Sounds like Asian markets such as Japan to me

MSX systems were popular in Japan and several other countries. There are differing accounts of MSX sales. One source claims 9 million MSX units were sold worldwide, including 7 million in Japan alone,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#cite_note-7"><span>[</span>7<span>]</span></a> whereas ASCII Corporation founder Kazuhiko Nishi claims that 3 million were sold in Japan, and 1 million overseas.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX#cite_note-8"><span>[</span>8<span>]</span></a> Despite Microsoft's involvement, few MSX-based machines were released in the United States.

The thing is that the computers market was a very fragmented one, with different computars working better in different countries, and being incompatible between them. MSX tried to solve that problem, but wasn't very successful.

Yes, IN ASIA!! That was the intended region the MSX standard was focused on, and of them, Japan specifically. The proof is in the sales, it's in the words of people from ASCII and Microsoft at the time. Hell, it's in the Wiki article where you conveniently skipped over all that just to copypasta things ignoring the obvious!

The king of the 8 bits in USA and EU was Commodore 64, and in Japan the PC-88 (and later PC-98, which lasted until the 2000s) and maybe later X68000. In the west there was the 16 bits war between Amiga and Atari ST, and Commodore won but later all these microcomputers got replaced by IBM-PC.

The IBM-PC stantard was mostly used for offices (in the early 80s they did cost around $1500 and were worse to play than most of these other home computers) and started to become popular to play at home aprox. in the late 80s/early 90s as they became cheaper and more powerful. By aprox. the mid 90s or so it already dominated the computers market.

None of this needed to be stated. Again, you're spiraling into a history lesson no one in this very specific conversation asked for, and one I'm already aware of. It has nothing to do with the specific topic of MSX being popular in the West, which you've tried arguing, and never existed.

I didn't say that Sony MSX games weren't released in Japan. I said many of them, not all. Back then there were developers making MSX games in America, Europe or Asia, and generally most of them weren't sell worldwide, many of them were limited to the region where they were made.

Golly gee, a computer standard heavily popular in Japan, would by association have attracted mainly Japanese software developers. You keep mentioning America & European studios as if they were a monumental part of the MSX software scene, when game-wise and application-wise, that was not true. Only in very specific cases, like Microsoft, may that have been true, but definitely not for gaming purposes.

As an example, some Japanese made games (by Sony or any other publisher) never left Japan while other ones were published in many countries by them or by other publishers who wanted to localize and distribute them elsewhere.

This in no way proves the MSX was meant as a global standard to compete directly against Amiga, Amstrad, Commodore, or IBM PC-compatibles in global markets to usurp them.

Same happened in many other regions. As an example, here we had Sony España (Sony Spain), who published MSX games, educative software or productivity apps (stock manager, spreadsheets, videoclub manager etc) in Spain. Many of them were developed by local dev teams, were only sold in Spain, had texts only in Spanish or in some cases a few nearby countries, in many cases localized by somebody because most of them were in Spanish.

That sounds like an anecdotal experience, but also know those Spanish devs were not major software contributors to the MSX platform line in markets where MSX computers sold the most. Logically speaking, that just would not have made sense. Spanish software devs would not have had the cultural knowledge or experience to develop products which'd appeal to Japanese computer gamers or businesses at scale, in the 1980s or early 1990s.

I don't even know why I have to say this, it should be common sense.

In MSX Sony wasn't only making MSX games, they were also making MSX computers, or MSX accesories including innovative gamepads like wireless one. Sony was with MSX since 1983 until I think it was 1988 with Family Boxing:

I ALREADY KNOW THIS!!! You really have to stop writing history lessons where that's not being asked.

Months later in 1989 Sony founded the American publisher CSG Imagesoft Inc, later renamed to Sony Imagesoft, who published in the west games for NES, Master System, Game Boy, Game Gear, Super Nintendo, Mega Drive, Mega CD, MS DOS, Windows or Macintosh. As an example, one of these games was developed by Game Freak and had music from Akira Yamaoka.

Meanwhile in Japan in late 80s/early 90s they also published games for platforms like Windows, Mac, Super Famicom, Sega CD, PC-Engine, etc. under the publishing labels Epic (A.K.A. "Epic/Sony Record - A Division of CBS/Sony Group") or Sony Music Entertainment Japan publishing labels. This later label did continue working until the PS2 days separated from SCE (similar to what happens today with Aniplex).

Reciting things that happened historically doesn't actually prove a point you were trying to make, unless you tie everything together convincingly. You aren't doing that here whatsoever.

Relates to see that Sony has always been publishing games for computers and non-Sony consoles since the 80s until today. And since they didn't get doomed for doing so before, they won't get doomed now for making a late port for Xbox.

Yes, because the computer, console and electronics market of the 1980s and 1990s is exactly the same as the computer, console & electronics market we now have in 2025.

What even is this sentence

Sony wants to grow their gaming business worldwide in every possible way.

There are good and bad ways to do that; let's just say IMO, SIE have had a rather suboptimal approach that involves too many compromises which never had to be made.

In countries where they already are big (like west and Japan), but specially where they have more room to grow: top countries (like China or Korea) or the fastest growing countries or regions (India, MENA) where Sony/PS has a small market share.

Right, which is why instead of making region-specific and region-locked versions of their PC ports for those markets, they're making global PC ports for all markets including those where the console brand is established and thus said ports can help eat away at that market, such as Japan.

Oops o.0

Same goes with platforms: they want to continue growing PS but its growth and the home console market is limited. Specially considering PC is a much bigger market, and mobile even more.

Well when you're making multiplatform decisions which compromise and chip away at the value of your own home console, not to mention other business decisions which contribute similar (price hikes, expensive add-ons quickly abandoned, etc.), yeah your home console market growth is going to stagnate.

That isn't the same as saying the home console market itself has stagnated. Also, that's a Microsoft talking point you're hawking unironically, despite claiming being against Microsoft's business ethos in gaming in the past. Just interesting to note that, maybe an oversight on your part?

Back in the early 80s, in the MSX days, publishers mostly only shipped to their country or some other nearby ones not to protect any country, but instead because of logistics, back then the world wasn't as globalized as today: distant shipments were more relatively way more expensive than are today, there was more paperwork, there was the language barrier (English wasn't as common worldwide as today), they didn't have internet, and even phone calls to other countries were very expensive. And distribution and sales were way more complex: the market wasn't dominated by a few huge retailer/store franchises, but instead games were sold mostly in small local stores that weren't part of any global franshise.

In most of the world there wasn't even big malls, ore there were just a few and there weren't videogame specific stores: you bought games instead mostly in small local stores that also sold tvs, radios or washing machines, or in small local stores where they sold computers, or small local videoclubs, or in toy stores. So publishers and distributors had to go city by city selling individually to small family businesses separatedly.

Nowadays with global digital stores is way easier, both the ones of the gaming platforms or retail ones like Amazon. And there are huge retailers with huge presence in many countries, or at least having many stores in the same country, simplifying the process a lot.

Companies make nowadays global releases because they are companies and are not stupid: they try to make as much money as possible by selling as much as possible and now they can afford global releases, which obviously provides way more money than being limited to one or a few countries, or to want to block on purpose top selling markets or regions.

Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing here, added anything to what I assumed was your main point in responding. It's just another Wiki-style historical copypasta dump.

I know people have accused my posts of being long-winded at times, but I hope it never came off as this level of meandering. Maybe my posts get into extremely autistic levels of detail, but at least hopefully unique in spite of that.

Nah, this is just a nonsensical madeup theory out of your ass. Psygnosis continued publishing games during many years in non-PlayStation consoles and computers after their full acquisition by Sony because Sony wanted to do so, to make more money.

Money was a part of it but pre-existing contracts and needing their console gaming division to scale up in size large enough for full integration were also major contributors to that decision with Psygnosis. And during early PS1 gen, yes the chance the PS1 could've bombed did justify keeping Psygonsis multiplatform to some degree. As the PS1's success over SEGA & Nintendo solidified itself, that multiplatform support began to heavily scale back.

It's almost as if old Sony had a better sense of balance between pursuing profits and ensuring a strong unique market identity for their marquee gaming product. Hmm....

In the same way that Sony wanted Bungie to continue releasing their stuff multiplatform, to make more money not being limited to their own platform. In this case, because one of the reasons they acquired Bungie was because Sony wanted to be more multiplatform and expand beyond their PS consoles.

A bullshit revisionists take, because SIE themselves stated the main purpose for acquiring Bungie was to bring onboard industry experience in designing successful GAAS titles. That can be interpreted as wanting multiplatform titles out of it, but that intent is not explicitly specified in those words.

Games back in the 90s were made in a some months or barely above a year, it's nonsensical to think they had a pre-acquisition contract to release Rollcage 2 for Windows (I still own that copy today btw) more than 7 years before its release (Sony acquired Psygnosis in 1993 and this release was in 2000). Specially when back then they selfpublished their games and there was no Steam or anything to sign: they manufactured their games and sold them.

Maybe you should do some real research for a change: if you bothered to read through the Wiki article on Psygnosis as just one example (or just Google some appropriate stuff), you'd know that Psygnosis wasn't fully absorbed into SCE until 2000. You'll also see that after 2000, their ports to PC abruptly stopped, and that coincided with the restructuring into Sony Liverpool.

Just go look it up. Look at the Wiki entry, and look for PC ports after 2000. You won't find any. Funny how that works.

And well, Psygnosis wasn't a huge publisher like let's say Activision Blizzard King today at all. They had their niche of fans specially in the Amiga, but weren't top sellers. After acquired, a few years later their output decreased because they kept shifting to focus in their internal development part than in publishing externally developed games, also because as always the next generation required more budget/time/devs for the games, and was a particularly difficult generation transition because of the jump from 2D to 3D, a jump many devs weren't able to make and because of that many people left the industry. And well, obviously now being part of Sony they prioritized their own platform, PlayStation.

Psygonsis was basically analogous to an ABK of today for their time, by the sheer volume of games they developed and published as a 3P and then as a subsidiary under Sony until getting fully absorbed. Very few other publishers in the '90s matched their frequency of output, and only SEGA released/published more games in such a highly concentrated frequency as them.

I'm not justifying anything, I'm just describing the truth: Sony kept releasing games in non-PS platforms via Psygnosis up to 7 years after having fully acquired it.

No, Psygnosis wasn't fully absorbed into SCE until 2000, and right after that, the multiplat support ended. You should've done more research.

In the same way they were also doing at the same time with several other subsidiaries like the ones I mentioned in these posts and keep doing it today with Bungie, Aniplex, Lasengle, PS Studios and so on.

And no, if Sony keeps updating Fate/Grand Order 10 years after release on mobile, or released this year a Japanese focused game as Switch console exclusive game with Aniplex, or will release on Xbox Marathon or Helldivers 2 isn't because any pre-existing contract,: Sony does so because they think it's good for their business and want to make more money. Nobody is forcing them, they see their numbers and to what they think it's the best option for their business.

Yes, modern Sony would do those types of ports for those reasons, but that isn't exactly analogous to why they had Psygnosis release across multiple platforms back in the '90s. And even in terms of modern Sony, we're not talking about Aniplex or the other subsidiaries: we're talking about Sony Interactive Entertainment, SIE.

You know, the PlayStation people?

They haven't been compromised and nobody at Sony ever said consoles are coming to an end, and even less SIE or PlayStation.

Consoles don't have to cease in order for a console to run into market problems due to questionable business decisions that negatively impact its value perception.

SIE & PlayStation are posting their best numbers ever and are growing in all areas. And they have been working to grow beyond that both with PlayStation and beyond it.

Here we go, more cheerleading. Where are the charts?

I won't move any goalpost.

One minute late...

I think that as part of to continue expanding their gaming business and PlayStation, they'll eventually release their PC PSN store and at some point will end releasing their SP games too day one on PC, using their own PC store/launcher as an extention of PlayStation, to play you your PlayStation games in your laptop or PC handheld (not only the Sony one) if you want to do so. And to make more appealing for PC players to buy a PS5 after having build a PSN library if there's crossbuy between that store and its console version.

Ah, the infamous PlayStation PC handheld has made its appearance yet again. That PlayStation handheld for next gen running Windows for some reason instead of SIE's own PlayStation OS, prioritizing a mythical storefront that'd lack almost all of the 3P software the console currently has access to.

What a great buy that'd be huh?

I think they'll do it after seeing that releasing GaaS day one everywhere day one doesn't negatively affect their console business, and that same goes with releasing the SP games around a year or less later. I think they may keep timed exclusivity for PC in non-PSN PC stores.

I think that PC PSN store could release at the same time than their portable (which I think will be a PC handheld using that PC PSN store) and PS6.

You can keep hoping and praying for this, but it won't come to fruition the way you think it will.

Even if they get a PC PSN store up and running, without 3P software support comparable to Steam or even the console PSN, plus knowing they'll still bring their PC games to Steam anyway, that PC PSN store is as good as dead.

I posted it partly to correct you and show a few sources, since you had no idea you were talking about or were simply lying.

Says the person who omitted relevant parts of the MSX from their Wiki copypasta simply to argue a point based on something that never existed :/

Both cases are Sony publishing games outside PlayStation, something they always have been doing since the early 80s. It didn't doom any of the other PS consoles, so won't doom this or the next one.

And yes, was needed to highlight that this dooming and drama is nonsensical, specially because doomers like you had no idea about Sony's gaming history.

Stating the obvious that a multiplat strategy which inevitably gives way to further porting efforts decreasing the value proposition of their own console hardware on the market, is not the same thing as dooming. I never said these decisions would "kill PlayStation hardware", nor do I want that.

But to act like they'll have no adverse effect is simply ridiculous.

The point was to talk about this announcement explaining that isn't something new, showing the tons of similar previous cases where Sony published games outside their consoles.

If you get butthurted by related factual data like their related history, metrics of graphs because don't match your doom and gloom anti-Sony narrative and fantasies it's your fault, not mine.

Have a glass of milk.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

They should be judged only by the amount of paragraphs their supports are willing to write on online forums.

We should all be blessed. I think we got the two best essay writers from Fiverr on GAF. And they are doing it for free.

 

[Topher]

This thread broke my mouse wheel

 

[StreetsofBeige]

This thread broke my mouse wheel

That's because you bought an imported mouse from Spain, which actually originated from the Japanese market. Your USA branded mousepad made in Taiwan isnt compatible with it due to low sales, so no CSR support. But if you were living in Japan, you got a lifetime warranty.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Getting back to the actual game, I dont play MP much anymore. Maybe occasionally with some friends and fam. But pretty rare now.

I'll probably get H2 and go solo. Reading up on it, it's supposed to be a challenge as they dont adjust enemy count. So googling it, people say pick an easy difficulty setting.

 

[adamsapple]

This thread broke my mouse wheel

Age catches up to all of us.

 

[ReBurn]

This thread broke my mouse wheel

 

[StreetsofBeige]

In MSX Sony wasn't only making MSX games, they were also making MSX computers, or MSX accesories including innovative gamepads like wireless one. Sony was with MSX since 1983 until I think it was 1988 with Family Boxing:

That's the old ass Ring King arcade game, which had a NES port. I played that in the arcade back in the mid 80s.

Googling it, looks like MSX got the Ring King port and got renamed for 1988. Unless someone was as MSX gamer or follower in Japan, very few people would know MSX is a thing or even had a Ring King port.

 

[adamsapple]

"Why Do I Need A PS Console?": Not Every Helldivers 2 Fans Is Happy That The Game Is Coming To Xbox

PlayStation fans are worried Helldivers 2's Xbox port is going to "devalue" the platform's brand.

www.thegamer.com

 

[StreetsofBeige]

"Why Do I Need A PS Console?": Not Every Helldivers 2 Fans Is Happy That The Game Is Coming To Xbox

PlayStation fans are worried Helldivers 2's Xbox port is going to "devalue" the platform's brand.

www.thegamer.com

I dont think even Nintendo diehards would care this much if Mario and Zelda came out on other platforms. They'd just keep gaming on their Switch and be happy.

But let me get this straight. A company makes games exclusive for their console. But then changes their mind and makes some of their games multiplatform either day one or like a giant 3 year delay for some other platforms. The original console still gets all the games day one, and all of them too since there's definitely no guarantee all those games will even come to other platforms.

And they still get mad. And people think 5 year old Timmy not sharing his toys with Tommy and Tina is the childish one.

LOL.

 

[BennyBlanco]

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

This thread broke my mouse wheel

 

[StreetsofBeige]

It must had hit 1,000 PSI under her feet with that heave ho.

 

[Danny22]

Have a glass of milk.

This might be the longest comment I have seen on NeoGaf

 

[nial]

Eh "far more" is probably a stretch but at least you do care about that side of their output. And I do respect that, because a lot of other people simply don't care at all.

I mean, I had to explain to you like three times that Tomba! is not a Sony game, so...

Well, define "quickly". I'm sure Sony weren't necessarily expecting things like Parappa to be evergreen properties like Mario, and claiming Parappa became irrelevant because of Konami series like DDR or Beatmania is an unfair comparison. There are different types of rhythm games; Nana-on-sha maybe just wanted to keep their series character-driven and more story-centric, to compliment the visual style they had developed early on. That doesn't mean the character-driven approach suddenly became outdated when styles like DDR got popular; the two styles can coexist.

They pretty much appealed to the same demographic, weird to make that distinction when the genre was on its early days and under constant evolution. Fact is, Beatmania quickly became an arcade phenomenon that has managed to keep itself relevant for close to 30 years. PaRappa the Rapper? I don't think it's weird that the first game sold like 1.2M units in Japan alone, while the sequel on PS2 couldn't even sell 10% of that over there, even with McDonald's Happy Set tie-ins (though PS2 being kind of a dud with younger demographics is an interesting topic in itself).

Also worth considering, the rate game genres and the industry as a whole were advancing during the '90s was unprecedented, so even if a franchise started falling off by a latter installment, that doesn't invalidate the performance of the earlier installments. Which with Arc the Lad, that clearly was the case with 1 & 2. Otherwise it's like saying Tomb Raider was irrelevant because the IP lost a lot of steam by the 4th installment, when saying such kind of invalidates the impact the first two installments clearly had for the market & the platform.

No one is invalidating whatever early entries did, though? It's more of a reflection on the lost potential over little interest on producing more stuff on that same line of quality; there was a clear interest of doing this with Gran Turismo, not with Arc the Lad after III underperformed.

Well if the metric of IP that mattered (in the sense of sales for the market) is based on whether that IP persisted onto the PS2, again I think that's a bad argument and not a good way of judging an IP's worth. Sony IP that were on PS1, that didn't make the jump to PS2, weren't necessarily "failed" IP or IP that brought little to the market. And trying to judge their worth by measuring their sales or impact relative to other IP, kind of strips away understanding the specific niche & role the IP may have been intended to serve in the first place.

I mean, we surely need to establish what specific role did Jumping Flash! exactly provide with its antiquated gameplay (by the late 90s) and SCE producing similar stuff of higher values internally like Ape Escape (another series that quickly fade out into irrelevancy as well). I don't think Robbit Mon Dieu ever sold over 10K units LTD.
I'm pretty sure that Jumping Flash! as an IP would have been valued higher had it not opted for tired sequels that not only brought nothing new to the formula, but were also subpar compared to what the competition was offering.

It's also worth stating that sometimes market tastes just change. 2D beat 'em ups had some amazing entries on 16-bit consoles, but the jump to 3D left many behind. Streets of Rage is an excellent example of that (not Sony, yes, but just to illustrate a point). A lot of the Sony IP from PS1 that didn't move on to PS2, either simply served their purpose on the PS1 and weren't "needed" anymore, or the creative teams wanted to move onto new projects, or 3P franchises stepped in to fulfill a similar role anyway. And yes, in some cases it was also because IP (Jet Moto, for example) just declined heavily in quality, but well that's something more about 989 Studios itself and is a whole topic onto itself.

I'm fully aware of that, which is why I decided to mention series that were still going but clearly suffered from lack of quality or innovation, and were more and more rejected by the market at large.

It's actually easy to understand why S2 could negatively impact sales for TLOU2 going forward; S1 was very well-received by 'normies' and casuals who generally don't even play games, but likely went and picked up a copy of TLOU1 due to liking the show at the time. A lot of those same types will likely not do the same for Part 2 after having gone through Season 2 of the show.

I also think the recent decision by Neil Druckmann and Hailey Gross to depart the show altogether (or in any major capacity beyond maybe consultation) will potentially hurt Season 3 of the show. That depends on how much they've already provided for Craig Mazin to work with, because he's shown he doesn't get the source material, when left to his own devices. So the problems with Season 2 could be exacerbated with Season 3 (in terms of characterization and writing, and certain creative choices), which in turn could lead to lower interest still by 'normies' and casuals to buy the games.

Lol, it's funny that you brought up publisher's expectations early on and are now suddenly concerned as for what the future holds for the tail of a 5 years old PS4 game. No, thicc, I was talking about how the backlash against the game itself impacted on its actual relevant sales period of 2020.

GOW 2018 did cause some contention, I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But it'd seem Ragnarok caused even more, both among fans of the "traditional" Jaffe-style games, but also among some who in fact loved GOW 2018. And there were some creative choices we can all agree were too obtrusive, like the constant "hints" for puzzles that basically told you the solutions more often than not.

None of the contention was with a majority in either game's case; I never said that and never insinuated it either. But it was there.

It was there, just like it was there on the previous game as well. Not that I dismiss the idea of developers having to look at harsh criticisms, but we need to draw a line here over how much these complaints can realistically impact on the game's long tail in the long run. I don't sales have remotely proved it to be the case.

I have considered that, yes. But the price going up isn't the only issue, because software B2P sales in Japan were rather weak even when the system was at a normal price. The software situation has been long-term an issue there, and sure the first year or two would be due to the install base still building up. But it's persisted long afterwards.

PS5 software sales have been a dud in Japan for a variety of reasons, from supply constraints on hardware and scalpers (a HUGE issue), userbase pivoting to F2P games (which Sony has indeed confirmed that it's been a huge market in Japan), and just an extremely price for the consoles nowadays. All which hold more weight than just going "people moved to PC!", especially without actual hard data on software for most cases.

What were the things you saw speculated in 2019/2020? Because I'm sure there were some wild takes, but I'll give some things I've seen in support for the PC strategy others have said over the years, and how those talking points haven't materialized:

All the typical hysteria you expected to see when the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn was first rumored (plus Death Stranding getting confirmed for PC at the time as well). Something akin to the guy I saw expecting 40M sales for the PS6 when it was all said and done.

-IDEA: PC ports won't disrupt the studios

-TRUTH: Studios like Naughty Dog already had to set aside time & manpower to retool their engine & pipelines for hosting PC development

We need to determine the weight of 'disrupt' here and how much exactly impacted on their total workflow, but I don't think there's any such indicative.

-IDEA: GAAS won't come at the expense of single-player

-TRUTH: Studios like Bend & Bluepoint were sidelined this gen due to GAAS that go cancelled

Fair with Bend Studio, but we don't know with Bluepoint. They did a similar amount of work going from Demon's Souls (directed by Japan Studio, btw) to God of War Ragnarok, so we have to see if they were involved or not on Santa Monica Studio's next project that determine if they weren't allowed to do what they do best anymore.

-IDEA: SIE won't put any non-GAAS on PC Day 1

-TRUTH: LEGO Horizon was Day 1 on Steam AND Switch

yup.

-IDEA: PC ports will help fund more single-player games for console

-TRUTH: SIE is only putting out one tentpole single-player AAA a year (if that); most of the profits from PC ports has either been pocketed or used to fund more ports & GAAS

Not only they are putting two of them this year, but also not everything needs to be 'tentpole' to count as a single-player game. I don't think I ever saw this narrative, though, unlike another that I'm surprised you didn't use.

-IDEA: SIE will never focus on MAU

-TRUTH: SIE literally announced a shift in focus to MAU at the recent fiscal call

They already announced that like two years ago, but you also need to look at the context of it as a whole. The reason people mocked what Xbox was doing was because it was a way to hide bad numbers like hardware and software sales (there goes the meme of 77 billion players), and it also reflected their strategy pivoting to cross-platform (PC, mobile, XCloud) subscriptions as its core focus, which were ostensibly against what we usually relate with traditional metrics.
SIE shited to a focus to MAU mostly due to the way the player-console interactions changed from the result of players embracing 'infinite' games and how they can keep spending money on PSN from their old consoles like the PS4, even way after the generation ended. The moment the PS4 launched, PS3 was completely sidelined by SIE as hardware sales were no more, and with that, software sales were put to and end. The moment the PS5 launched, though? Tons of players still played on the PS4 through GaaS that was still going to be supported for years to come, and in turn kept spending money on those games, it doesn't make any sense for SIE to ignore all those players even if hardware sales basically ended, because people were still spending money on PSN. And with that, you can even realize that the MAU focus in inherent to the PSN ecosystem within hardware that is still sold. It's not like SIE pulled a MS here, they still report on quarterly hardware shipments, they still reveal sales of their games, I don't get it.

Also, (if it ever happens again) SIE isn't exactly alien when it comes to hiding bad numbers, you DO know why they only reported home console and handheld console sales starting FY 2012, right?

 

[DenchDeckard]

Would go a step further, and say the people who say exclusives are anti-consumer or bad, either don't know gaming history, don't appreciate it, or don't really care about video games.

I wouldn't worry about Nintendo; even in the event they stop making hardware, they'd sooner make an app exclusively for their own games to be available through, than put their games on other companies' storefronts. And they'd probably lock that in with subscription models of some type, plus required online connections (all-time for GAAS, periodic for non-GAAS).



Millions of Xbox users this gen didn't get the memo.



It's almost like different games have different budgets and different sales targets.

Also, Astro Bot's certainly sold closer to 3 or 3.5 million by this point. The 2 million was prior to the TGA GOTY stuff, unless you think the game's sold zero copies in six months.



You can't expect bean counters at SIE to care about things like this.

Do you think that a game like astro bot should only sell 3 to 3.5 million copies in 2024 to 2025?

We all know if it was on switch it would have sold 10 to 15 million now.

A 94 meta and goty deserves more sales imo.

 

[Kvally]

Buying timed exclusives while porting their most popular live service game to Xbox. I've said it before.....this is the kind of shit that happens when your platform is run by accountants. Sorry Kvally

No apology necessary. It pays the bills

 

[ProtoByte]

I dont think even Nintendo diehards would care this much if Mario and Zelda came out on other platforms. They'd just keep gaming on their Switch and be happy.

"I don't even think Xbox diehards care this much if Gears and Halo go to PC. They'd just keep gaming on their XBO and be happy."
Domino effect. I can't be bothered to explain it again.

Do you think that a game like astro bot should only sell 3 to 3.5 million copies in 2024 to 2025?

We all know if it was on switch it would have sold 10 to 15 million now.

Zero evidence of that. If you think Astro Bot is on the same level of actual or perceived quality as 3D Mario, or in the same stratosphere of IP, you're insane.

If you think the likes of Astro Bot would even get made if Sony was intent on being multiplat this gen, you're insane.

 

[Fess]

"I don't even think Xbox diehards care this much if Gears and Halo go to PC. They'd just keep gaming on their XBO and be happy."
Domino effect. I can't be bothered to explain it again.

The most hilarious thing in all this is that we've already had these exact discussions for Xbox. First late ports on PC, then day 1 ports, then ports to competitors consoles. Started roughly 10 years ago. If you would go back to threads from 2015-2017 then you'd see the same reactions and anger and concerns and trolling.


Here I am in 2016, talking like O onQ123 Nostradamus himself:

Xbox will essentially turn into a cheap Windows 10 set top box from now on, as an alternative if you don't like to spend $1000+ on a gaming rig, and Windows 10 on PC will be their premium solution for those that aren't satisfied with the lower framerates and resolutions on console games.

Regarding the consequence of Sony doing the same thing:

Microsoft could start saying that Windows 10 is the best gaming platform, XB1 exclusives, PS4 exclusives, multiplats, all at one place and all at 60+ fps with the right hardware. If PC gamers could play Uncharted 4, Driveclub and Bloodborne at 60+fps on Windows 10 then why would they need a PS4?

B

Thread 'With Quantum Break going PC who is ditching the X1 in favor of a new rig?'

Feb 11, 2016

Now that Quantum Break is coming to PC day one I'm selling my X1 and finally building a new PC. I've wanted an excuse to do so for a long time and MS has finally given it to me. I love Microsofts new strategy and ironically enough when all is said and done I'll probably spend even more money in their new ecosystem. I'm definitely getting the Elite controller as well.

Is this impacting anyone else similarly?

• BruceLeeRoy
• Replies: 673
• Forum: Gaming Discussion

It's all going in a circle. Now Sony is actually doing similar things. Makes me wonder if we'll eventually see Nintendo take their exclusives off their console too. I no longer dare to say that it will never happen.

 

[DenchDeckard]

"I don't even think Xbox diehards care this much if Gears and Halo go to PC. They'd just keep gaming on their XBO and be happy."
Domino effect. I can't be bothered to explain it again.


Zero evidence of that. If you think Astro Bot is on the same level of actual or perceived quality as 3D Mario, or in the same stratosphere of IP, you're insane.

If you think the likes of Astro Bot would even get made if Sony was intent on being multiplat this gen, you're insane.

So, why did it get a 94 on metacritic?

I agree with you, by the way. On the quality.

 

[Topher]

So, why did it get a 94 on metacritic?

I agree with you, by the way. On the quality.

Because Astro Bot is a kick ass game. That doesn't make it on the same level IP as Mario as far as popularity and sales potential. Astro Bot has a hell of a long way to go to get to that level.

Personally I'm playing Mario Odyssey on Switch 2 right now and my early opinion is Astro Bot is a hell of a lot more fun. Subjective though. BTW, Super Mario Odyssey has a 97 metacritic.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

So, why did it get a 94 on metacritic?

I agree with you, by the way. On the quality.

While I agree I think Astro would do huge numbers on Switch I think its not really fair to compare MC scores of different IPs on different platforms

The implosions of Astro being full 3rd party might be worth the laughs though

 

[Topher]

While I agree I think Astro would do huge numbers on Switch I think its not really fair to compare MC scores of different IPs on different platforms

The implosions of Astro being full 3rd party might be worth the laughs though

I would laugh my ass off playing an Astro Bot game that celebrates all things PlayStation on a Switch 2. Free revenue to advertise.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I would laugh my ass off playing an Astro Bot game that celebrates all things PlayStation on a Switch 2. Free revenue to advertise.

Live look at other place with the PS fanboys landed during that time

 

[Topher]

Live look at other place with the PS fanboys landed during that time

 

[DenchDeckard]

Live look at other place with the PS fanboys landed during that time

 

[DenchDeckard]

Because Astro Bot is a kick ass game. That doesn't make it on the same level IP as Mario as far as popularity and sales potential. Astro Bot has a hell of a long way to go to get to that level.

Personally I'm playing Mario Odyssey on Switch 2 right now and my early opinion is Astro Bot is a hell of a lot more fun. Subjective though. BTW, Super Mario Odyssey has a 97 metacritic.

Just to be clear. I love astro bot too. Amazing game and I agree its not on the same level as Mario as a worldwide brand and popularity. So yeah, while a Mario game would hit 30 million copies id like to think astro could do 10 to 12 or so mill just because I think it deserves it.

 

[Ebrietas]

Just to be clear. I love astro bot too. Amazing game and I agree its not on the same level as Mario as a worldwide brand and popularity. So yeah, while a Mario game would hit 30 million copies id like to think astro could do 10 to 12 or so mill just because I think it deserves it.

If there are that many Nintendo gamers dying to play Astro bot, all the more reason to keep it exclusive and force more of them to buy a ps5. This is console business 101.

 

[DenchDeckard]

If there are that many Nintendo gamers dying to play Astro bot, all the more reason to keep it exclusive and force more of them to buy a ps5. This is console business 101.

Its such a complicated statement though. The odd person might buy the console but who is spending 400 pounds to play one, or a few games, outside of users like ourselves of course haha

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

If there are that many Nintendo gamers dying to play Astro bot, all the more reason to keep it exclusive and force more of them to buy a ps5. This is console business 101.

The billion dollar question

Would they make more money selling a lot of copies of Astro on the Switch or hope to entice Switch users to buy a console?

Just my 2 cents I think there is more money to be made selling to all platforms

 

[bbw_lover87]

The billion dollar question

Would they make more money selling a lot of copies of Astro on the Switch or hope to entice Switch users to buy a console?

Just my 2 cents I think there is more money to be made selling to all platforms

thats why everybody is releasing everywhere they can, capcom, square, xbox, pc, why limit yourself they have to be everywhere lets go

 

[yurinka]

That's the old ass Ring King arcade game, which had a NES port. I played that in the arcade back in the mid 80s.

Googling it, looks like MSX got the Ring King port and got renamed for 1988. Unless someone was as MSX gamer or follower in Japan, very few people would know MSX is a thing or even had a Ring King port.

Yes, it is this game previously released in arcade and NES. Sony only published (only in Japan as far as I know) the MSX port, renamed to Family Boxing.

The billion dollar question

Would they make more money selling a lot of copies of Astro on the Switch or hope to entice Switch users to buy a console?

Just my 2 cents I think there is more money to be made selling to all platforms

I think their idea is to keep a balance releasing some stuff outside PS to ensure their big ass first party games business remains sustainable/profitable compensating the huge budget increase they have every generation, but at the same time to keep some games exclusive -at least during some time, or at least in console- to use them as USP.

Hermen mentioned they were developing over 25 games at the same time. Considering the budgets they have in AAA games today, they need as much money as possible from anywhere and use games to lure players from other platforms, specially when around a couple dozen games are the ones who take a huge percent of the game revenue made in a platform like PS.

But well, at the same time they have to keep some stuff for PS. In case of Nintendo, specially if they plan to release a handheld to compete again more directly against there.

 

[adamsapple]

Live look at other place with the PS fanboys landed during that time

 

[digoutyoursoul]

The billion dollar question

Would they make more money selling a lot of copies of Astro on the Switch or hope to entice Switch users to buy a console?

Just my 2 cents I think there is more money to be made selling to all platforms

Surprised Microsoft didn't port Rare Replay to Switch tbh, might of performed ok there

Also I would have loved to have played Astral Chain again on a Xbox or PlayStation , so come on Nintendo, join the fun….

 

[Meowtor]

so uh - is there cross account logins or do i need a login seperate on xbox if i played on PC before?

 

[ProtoByte]

The most hilarious thing in all this is that we've already had these exact discussions for Xbox. First late ports on PC, then day 1 ports, then ports to competitors consoles. Started roughly 10 years ago. If you would go back to threads from 2015-2017 then you'd see the same reactions and anger and concerns and trolling.


Here I am in 2016, talking like O onQ123 Nostradamus himself:


Regarding the consequence of Sony doing the same thing:

B

Thread 'With Quantum Break going PC who is ditching the X1 in favor of a new rig?'

Feb 11, 2016

Now that Quantum Break is coming to PC day one I'm selling my X1 and finally building a new PC. I've wanted an excuse to do so for a long time and MS has finally given it to me. I love Microsofts new strategy and ironically enough when all is said and done I'll probably spend even more money in their new ecosystem. I'm definitely getting the Elite controller as well.

Is this impacting anyone else similarly?

• BruceLeeRoy
• Replies: 673
• Forum: Gaming Discussion

It's all going in a circle. Now Sony is actually doing similar things. Makes me wonder if we'll eventually see Nintendo take their exclusives off their console too. I no longer dare to say that it will never happen.

I really don't think Nintendo will ever do it. They really do not have any plausible excuse. Sony doesn't either, but Nintendo really doesn't. Their biggest exclusives sell 25-40 million copies where 25 is really the max where Sony 1st party is now (oh, how impoverished they are). When it's something like Mario Kart, you're talking well over 50-60 million. Their unique tech also makes the idea of focusing on other platforms a serious non-starter.

They have a total autarchy and would be beyond foolish to compromise it in any way. Sony could've been very close to creating something similar for themselves, but that old hackjob bat Totoki and his lackey Hulst are too enamoured with play acting as Nadella and Spencer for that.

So, why did it get a 94 on metacritic?

I agree with you, by the way. On the quality.

Score inflation. Scores are generally inflated now compared to last gen and definitely Gen 6-7; but Astro Bot gets an extra boost above that for being a "quirky" game. The games media lets the metanarrative around certain titles color their perception of actual quality. It can happen with any game. Imo, it happened with Cyberpunk, which deserved and still deserves much lower scores. It also happened with Expedition 33, TLOU Part II and, as ironic as it is for me to say, Tears of The Kingdom to a lesser extent and for different reasons.

 

[yurinka]

Stop with the Wiki copypastas. I never said the MSX didn't sell or was a failure. You're contriving an argument that never existed just to have an excuse for yet another Wiki copypasta.

I simply shared factual data that show that your made up fantasies were wrong when you said stuff like "MSX computers were only popular in Japan and isolated parts of Asia. The ENTIRE standard was designed with the Japanese market in mind. People in places like the US knew about MSX, but IBM PC-compatibles and Apple machines, even stuff like the Atari ST, obliterated MSX sales in America. In Europe, Atari, Amiga and other microcomputers decimated MSX offerings there."

If you can't accept reality isn't my issue.

Sounds like Asian markets such as Japan to me

Yes, IN ASIA!!

Western and Asian companies came together because wanted to have a global standard, because the computer market was very fragamented between many brands and models incompatible with each other.

That included hardware manufacturers from all around the world also including areas that never had a lot of them like Europe, Latin America, the USSR or Middle East making versions for their markets.

Back then a few western manufacturers (mostly from USA) already had their own good business as Commodore, Atari, Apple or IBM so didn't join it, while most Japan and Korean companies supported it because until then their computer business wasn't huge.

Regarding software, Microsoft was in the early stages creating the standard, but later decided to move away and focus instead in another global focused standard more dominated by American companies: IBM PC.

MSX got many software developers from all the regions (I assume except Africa and mabe Oceania) supporting it in their regions with dedicaded games and apps, localizations of titles released elsewhere or ports of games or apps previously released in other platforms. As mentioned, in USA they already had some other manufactures being pretty successful, so the MSX was pretty minor compared to EU, Asia or Latin America and more relegated to professional use.

Hell, it's in the Wiki article where you conveniently skipped over all that just to copypasta things ignoring the obvious!

I skipped because it's obviously wrong, in addition to Microsoft there was many non-Asian manufacturers involved like Phillips, Olivetti, Talent, Gradiente, CCE, Electronika or Al Alamiah plus hundreds of software developers across all regions where it was sold making local MSX sfuff for them.

In USA they already had a few brands pretty much dominating their local computers market, and back then Japan even if it was the main electronics country with tons of popular brands, none of their computers were big sellers. That combined with the main promoter ASCII being from there, did help that Japan was the country with the largest amount of MSX manufacturers.

But again, there was a lot of non Japanese manufacturers and developers.

None of this needed to be stated. Again, you're spiraling into a history lesson no one in this very specific conversation asked for

Yes, it was needed to explain why your lies or guesses are wrong and how it was in reality.

This in no way proves the MSX was meant as a global standard to compete directly against Amiga, Amstrad, Commodore, or IBM PC-compatibles in global markets to usurp them.

It is a fact that it did compete globally in North America, Europe, Middle East, Latin America and Asia (not sure about Africa and Oceania) against the 8 bit computers they had there. And in games it was appreciated because they had the best versions of some games, like the Konami ones. But others did suck because were cheap Spectrum ports.

That sounds like an anecdotal experience, but also know those Spanish devs were not major software contributors to the MSX platform line in markets where MSX computers sold the most. Logically speaking, that just would not have made sense. Spanish software devs would not have had the cultural knowledge or experience to develop products which'd appeal to Japanese computer gamers or businesses at scale, in the 1980s or early 1990s.

Well, the second game console was Spanish (released early 1974 as I remember), devs started making local versions or hacked copies of foreign arcade games (one had the first "continue?") in the second half of the 70s and in 1980 they released the first full Spanish game for arcade, and in 1983 the first for computers (released for MSX and other platforms).

Even if they didn't make top global hits, there were many Spanish devs and games that were several exported to NA, other European countries or Japan in the 80s and 90s, including games released in MSX.

As an example, the European market leader in the arcades starting the mid 80s was an Spanish one, Tecfri (later Gaelco). Tech wise were a global powerhouse since their early days, and in the later days they were the only ones competing with 3D hardware -with better tech specs- against Sega or Namco in the days of Ridge Racer or Daytona USA (obviously were less successful than them).

Going back to MSX, there were also devs all around many European countries, in the USSR, some middle east country, South America, North America, several East Asian countries outside Japan, etc. I explained that case because it's the one I know the best, but I know the same happened in many other countries.

Reciting things that happened historically doesn't actually prove a point you were trying to make, unless you tie everything together convincingly. You aren't doing that here whatsoever.

Explaining the history of Sony publishing games in computers and non-PS consoles since forever (something can be verified with a quick Google search) proves Sony published games in computers and non-PS console since forever, yes.

Yes, because the computer, console and electronics market of the 1980s and 1990s is exactly the same as the computer, console & electronics market we now have in 2025.

I never said that.

I said Sony published games for computers and non-PS consoles since the 80s and didn't stop since then, which is true.

There are good and bad ways to do that; let's just say IMO, SIE have had a rather suboptimal approach that involves too many compromises which never had to be made.

Yes, there are good and bad ways. MS took one approach that involved to kill their own console.

SIE took another one that made their own console increase their results in all fronts to all time records and destroyed their direct competitor basically getting now a home console monopoly for the future, and will allow them to be able to continue making big AAA games in the future in a sustainable way.

Right, which is why instead of making region-specific and region-locked versions of their PC ports for those markets, they're making global PC ports for all markets including those where the console brand is established and thus said ports can help eat away at that market, such as Japan.

They are making global PC ports (with the exception of a few countries blocked by USA, others that censor some stuff, etc) because want to grow in the PC market all around the world, not only in China or Korea.

To sell in the whole world makes more money than to sell only in China and Korea.

You think their growth in PC in markets where they are established in console would negatively affect their console business, but what we're seeing instead is the opposite: PS has record active userbase and around a third of PS5 hardware sales coming from people new to PS.

Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing here, added anything to what I assumed was your main point in responding. It's just another Wiki-style historical copypasta dump.

It's just another Wiki-style historical copypasta dump.

It's just listing some facts to explain why something it's true and your lies and guesses are wrong.

Money was a part of it but pre-existing contracts and needing their console gaming division to scale up in size large enough for full integration were also major contributors to that decision with Psygnosis.

Companies like Sony/Psygnosis didn't make contract with anyone to release PC games, they just sold them to retailers.

If Sony released games like Rollcage 2 on PC seven years after acquiring Psygnosis was just because Sony wanted to do so, not because any preexisting contract.

Regarding games for other consoles, pre-existing contracts could have been there for games they had under development during the acquisition and got released in 1993 or maybe 1994 specially in cases where Psygnosis was publishing externally developed games. But not beyond that, games didn't take 5-9 years to be made back then.

And during early PS1 gen, yes the chance the PS1 could've bombed did justify keeping Psygonsis multiplatform to some degree. As the PS1's success over SEGA & Nintendo solidified itself, that multiplatform support began to heavily scale back.

This theory makes sense.

A bullshit revisionists take, because SIE themselves stated the main purpose for acquiring Bungie was to bring onboard industry experience in designing successful GAAS titles. That can be interpreted as wanting multiplatform titles out of it, but that intent is not explicitly specified in those words.

It isn't a revisionist take, the announcement press release of the acquisition mentioned:

• "furthering SIE's vision to reach billions of players"
• "reach players wherever they choose to play"
• "This is an important step in our strategy to expand the reach of PlayStation to a much wider audience"
• "value our community and meet them wherever and however they choose to play"

In Bungie's blog they specificed that day that after the acquisition all their future DLCs and games will continue to be released in PC and Xbox.

Maybe you should do some real research for a change:

You're the one who mades up stuff and lies and rejects the properly researched stuff I posted.

if you bothered to read through the Wiki article on Psygnosis as just one example (or just Google some appropriate stuff), you'd know that Psygnosis wasn't fully absorbed into SCE until 2000. You'll also see that after 2000, their ports to PC abruptly stopped, and that coincided with the restructuring into Sony Liverpool.

Just go look it up. Look at the Wiki entry, and look for PC ports after 2000. You won't find any. Funny how that works.

No, Psygnosis wasn't fully absorbed into SCE until 2000, and right after that, the multiplat support ended. You should've done more research.

Lol, I'm the one who said Psygnosis did stop releasing stuff outside PS in 2000 when they got renamed to SCEE Liverpool, not you.

And no, SCE didn't absorb them in 2000. Since 1993 they were a fully acquired subsidiary of SCE (known as Sony Electronic Publishing until aprox. the release of the PS1).

In 2000 they did a studio rebranding after a big restructure they had the year before, that's all.

Psygonsis was basically analogous to an ABK of today for their time, by the sheer volume of games they developed and published as a 3P and then as a subsidiary under Sony until getting fully absorbed.

Lol, no.

ABK was the top grossing 3rd party publisher in the world when acquired for $70B.

Psygnosis was a small publisher and developer that barely had a couple offices that was acquired for under $30M.

That difference in valuation is because of something.

Yes, modern Sony would do those types of ports for those reasons, but that isn't exactly analogous to why they had Psygnosis release across multiple platforms back in the '90s. And even in terms of modern Sony, we're not talking about Aniplex or the other subsidiaries: we're talking about Sony Interactive Entertainment, SIE.

Despite being way less successful and more focused on externally developed games, Psygnosis perfectly is analogous to Bungie: they're both a publisher and developer with a single main development studio, fully acquired by SIE but left to continue publishing multiplatform after acquiring them.

Like them, Aniplex is also Sony multiplatform game publisher, but is under SMEJ instead of under SIE/SCE/SEP.

Consoles don't have to cease in order for a console to run into market problems due to questionable business decisions that negatively impact its value perception.

Maybe, but this is not the case of PlayStation.

They're now the market leader and after 30 years they're now defeating the last direct competitor standing in the home console market. Meaning going forward they'll have a 'monopoly' home consoles as Switch had the previous gen in portables, and on top of that they are growing in PC, off-gaming and in some rare cases in other consoles too.

Sony does so with most metrics at all time high records including record revenue and profit, and in a multi year growth pattern growing in all their main areas both traditional and new ones. And regarding their first party games they make like almost twice the money they did around half a decade ago and almost every year they are the company or platform with more GOTY awards or candidates.

These are the important things to analize their business decisions or for value perception, not getting butthurted because they ported a game.

Here we go, more cheerleading. Where are the charts?

They are facts that prove that your doomer childish nonsense fanfic is wrong.

Ah, the infamous PlayStation PC handheld has made its appearance yet again. That PlayStation handheld for next gen running Windows for some reason instead of SIE's own PlayStation OS, prioritizing a mythical storefront that'd lack almost all of the 3P software the console currently has access to.

What a great buy that'd be huh?

Their PlayStation OS is just a custom Unix/Linux variant, like Steam OS. If Sony wants, they can run Windows games there (or in the PS5) by using Proton in their own PlayStation OS in the same way SteamOS does it. To use Proton is free.

We saw job offers and a leaked Insomniac document talking about a PC PSN store. They're definetively working on it.

Regarding the portable, Nishino and Hermen made clear hints about it and there are credible supposed leaks about its prototype hardware.

You can keep hoping and praying for this, but it won't come to fruition the way you think it will.

Even if they get a PC PSN store up and running, without 3P software support comparable to Steam or even the console PSN, plus knowing they'll still bring their PC games to Steam anyway, that PC PSN store is as good as dead.

Sony has a long and very successful at partnering with 3rd parties to sell there.

Make sure they'll PC store will feature a great 3rd party support, but obviously won't have a catalog comparable to Steam day one. Pretty likely will take many years to have numbers comparable in PC to Steam.

The thing is that pretty likely they won't compare "PC PSN vs Steam", they'll compare instead PSN (including here console+portable+PC+in the future mobile) vs Steam.

I think if they want to expand their home console business to PC and portable, maybe the best for them (but something I think they may not do at least day one) would be to approach it as a single platform that allows you to play your games where you want, bringing seamlessly the PS experience to your laptop or handheld, with seamless crossbuy, crossplay, etc between every game included in all these PSN clients.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I mean, I had to explain to you like three times that Tomba! is not a Sony game, so...

Technically speaking, Sony published it :/

They pretty much appealed to the same demographic, weird to make that distinction when the genre was on its early days and under constant evolution. Fact is, Beatmania quickly became an arcade phenomenon that has managed to keep itself relevant for close to 30 years. PaRappa the Rapper? I don't think it's weird that the first game sold like 1.2M units in Japan alone, while the sequel on PS2 couldn't even sell 10% of that over there, even with McDonald's Happy Set tie-ins (though PS2 being kind of a dud with younger demographics is an interesting topic in itself).

FWIW, Parappa 2 was a huge step back from the first game and especially UmJammer Lammy, so it's not surprising that it didn't perform that well and basically contributed to the franchise petering out. But Sony could have certainly given it another go; basically killing the franchise by throwing it into the vault after a single mediocre entry is just brash.

No one is invalidating whatever early entries did, though? It's more of a reflection on the lost potential over little interest on producing more stuff on that same line of quality; there was a clear interest of doing this with Gran Turismo, not with Arc the Lad after III underperformed.

Well, they didn't need to push Arc anymore when they had Wild ARMS, as well as Squaresoft & Enix JRPGs as exclusives on lock.

Aside from occasional ports like FF VII to Windows PC back in the day. But that was extremely rare.

I mean, we surely need to establish what specific role did Jumping Flash! exactly provide with its antiquated gameplay (by the late 90s) and SCE producing similar stuff of higher values internally like Ape Escape (another series that quickly fade out into irrelevancy as well). I don't think Robbit Mon Dieu ever sold over 10K units LTD.
I'm pretty sure that Jumping Flash! as an IP would have been valued higher had it not opted for tired sequels that not only brought nothing new to the formula, but were also subpar compared to what the competition was offering.

How as Jumping Flash's gameplay antiquated by the late '90s? It was basically a first-person platformer, which was a rarity, and FPS games started integrating platforming as an evolution of their blueprint by the late '90s too. Not only that, stuff like Jumping Flash helped lay a foundation for first-person platforming-centric games we'd see years later like Mirror's Edge.

What other 3D platformer was offering a first-person POV when Jumping Flash was on the market? I don't think directly comparing it to a Mario 64 is warranted, or enough to say it was subpar. It's a different type of platformer. If anything, a 3rd Jumping Flash game should've considered adding more action/shooting elements into it while increasing the complexity of the platforming. Taking the IP into a spinoff with Robbit Mon Dieu was not a smart decision for its time.

I'm fully aware of that, which is why I decided to mention series that were still going but clearly suffered from lack of quality or innovation, and were more and more rejected by the market at large.

My larger point, then, is that those games still offered unique value proposition for the platform by being exclusive, and even when those select IP were phased out, there were equivalents from 3P (usually also exclusive) that took up their spots.

Lol, it's funny that you brought up publisher's expectations early on and are now suddenly concerned as for what the future holds for the tail of a 5 years old PS4 game. No, thicc, I was talking about how the backlash against the game itself impacted on its actual relevant sales period of 2020.

So you're saying SIE's continued support for TLOU as an IP in no way reflects them having expectations for future performance of things tied to that IP (including previously released and re-released/remastered games) going forward? Then why have they put such a sustained, focused effort on TLOU for the past few years?

If SIE's expectations with TLOU2 in 2020 were isolated to just their time frame, there never would've been a TLOU HBO show produced, or a remake for the first game, or a remaster for the second. And, if the point of the show was to create a synergy to bolster the profile of the games, then yes I think SIE would like to ensure reception to said show is positive so as to benefit sales of that game in the franchise.

If the show takes a sharp decline in quality, that hurts future sales of the current releases and any future re-releases/remakes etc. too, and in a way we can gauge that transmedia project a bit of a failure since expected synergy between the show/movie and game couldn't be established and/or maintained in line with reasonable assumptions.

It was there, just like it was there on the previous game as well. Not that I dismiss the idea of developers having to look at harsh criticisms, but we need to draw a line here over how much these complaints can realistically impact on the game's long tail in the long run. I don't sales have remotely proved it to be the case.

PS5 software sales have been a dud in Japan for a variety of reasons, from supply constraints on hardware and scalpers (a HUGE issue), userbase pivoting to F2P games (which Sony has indeed confirmed that it's been a huge market in Japan), and just an extremely price for the consoles nowadays. All which hold more weight than just going "people moved to PC!", especially without actual hard data on software for most cases.

PS5 hardware hasn't been supply-constrained in Japan since late 2022, so that's not a factor into B2P software sales still generally being weak or underwhelming, even for the biggest titles. Whatever portion of the Japanese userbase that's turned to F2P isn't that good an excuse either, because those same F2P are here in the West, yet PS5 B2P sales are significantly better in areas outside of Japan.

Even the high price isn't that much a factor, because again, prices are similar in markets where both hardware and software sales are much better. So that basically leaves only one major reason why such sales are low in Japan: the software simply isn't appealing enough to that sector of the market. But, how can that be when a lot of the same software is on Steam and in some cases even the Switch, which have both seen massive growth (Steam) and sustained huge market share (Switch) during same time frame? Because PS5 simply having the same games isn't enough when other aspects of the product itself aren't as appealing.

However, that wouldn't be such an issue if the PS5 had enough software differentiation (i.e actual exclusives) that were appealing to the market and only on PS5. Which, well, it doesn't have this gen, and in the few (time-limited) instances it does, not anywhere near long enough to cause people maining other platforms to get stressed out waiting (or just skipping the game altogether).

All the typical hysteria you expected to see when the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn was first rumored (plus Death Stranding getting confirmed for PC at the time as well). Something akin to the guy I saw expecting 40M sales for the PS6 when it was all said and done.

When did I have any of that hysteria? Because personally speaking, I wasn't even really paying attention to when HZD went to Steam, or when DS got its PC port. May've been some other people dooming even at that point, but not me.

We need to determine the weight of 'disrupt' here and how much exactly impacted on their total workflow, but I don't think there's any such indicative.

Fair with Bend Studio, but we don't know with Bluepoint. They did a similar amount of work going from Demon's Souls (directed by Japan Studio, btw) to God of War Ragnarok, so we have to see if they were involved or not on Santa Monica Studio's next project that determine if they weren't allowed to do what they do best anymore.

Thing is whether Demon's Souls or GOWR, those were still single-player games. The GOW GAAS was, well, a GAAS, and completely outside of Bluepoint's wheelhouse.

Just too much circumstantial evidence to suggest they were at least "goaded" into that direction by SIE higher-ups to contribute to their GAAS initiative.

Not only they are putting two of them this year, but also not everything needs to be 'tentpole' to count as a single-player game. I don't think I ever saw this narrative, though, unlike another that I'm surprised you didn't use.

Which one would that be?

They already announced that like two years ago, but you also need to look at the context of it as a whole. The reason people mocked what Xbox was doing was because it was a way to hide bad numbers like hardware and software sales (there goes the meme of 77 billion players), and it also reflected their strategy pivoting to cross-platform (PC, mobile, XCloud) subscriptions as its core focus, which were ostensibly against what we usually relate with traditional metrics.
SIE shited to a focus to MAU mostly due to the way the player-console interactions changed from the result of players embracing 'infinite' games and how they can keep spending money on PSN from their old consoles like the PS4, even way after the generation ended. The moment the PS4 launched, PS3 was completely sidelined by SIE as hardware sales were no more, and with that, software sales were put to and end. The moment the PS5 launched, though? Tons of players still played on the PS4 through GaaS that was still going to be supported for years to come, and in turn kept spending money on those games, it doesn't make any sense for SIE to ignore all those players even if hardware sales basically ended, because people were still spending money on PSN. And with that, you can even realize that the MAU focus in inherent to the PSN ecosystem within hardware that is still sold. It's not like SIE pulled a MS here, they still report on quarterly hardware shipments, they still reveal sales of their games, I don't get it.

Okay, a few things. One, PS3 wasn't "completely" sidelined by SIE once PS4 launched, because they still kept manufacturing it until early 2017, though in very low quantities. Very similar to what they did with PS4 after PS5 launched, actually, though in that case chip shortages were the main reason for the significantly cut-back PS4 production.

I'll agree that GAAS is a major component keeping PS4 alive even today, that PS3 simply didn't have during it's time. But FWIW, PS3's online was also free, so there would've been a financial incentive for SIE even in 2013 to cut PS3 support short simply because that'd be a platform with free online at a time when PS4 was switching to a paid online model. And, ultimately, I do agree with a through-line that the shift to MAU could in part be monetary.

However, that shift should also cause some concern, because it means the proverbial hell SIE created for themselves with the GAAS gambit might not be completely over. They could simply be restructuring the effort to relaunch it in a year or two with another round of multiple GAAS releases. Meanwhile, they've already publicly committed to "at least" one tentpole release a year, be it AAA or AA non-GAAS, but what's to say it won't remain at simply the one? So we could still be in a timeline where SIE puts out that one tentpole AA or AAA single-player game, and maybe 2-3 3-6 month 3P timed exclusives, while pushing out 2-3 GAAS in the same year.

Again, a switch in priority metric focus to MAU, to me, would suggest that. And it also suggests more multiplatform support, because GAAS and multiplatform are the two easiest, path-of-least-resistance ways to pursue MAU. That's where my worry resides, but we shall see what way things are leaning over the course of this and next year.

Also, (if it ever happens again) SIE isn't exactly alien when it comes to hiding bad numbers, you DO know why they only reported home console and handheld console sales starting FY 2012, right?

Sure thing, exactly why they've obfuscated PC software sales revenue in recent fiscal reports by lumping them in with other non-PS platform sales revenue .

And yes, I know me saying that opens me up to being asked "If PC sales are so low then where's the evidence those ports are hurting the console?". Welp, that's not something I can completely give an answer to (yet), but apparently neither can SIE. So we share something in common there.

 

[adamsapple]

holy moly folks, use less words.

so uh - is there cross account logins or do i need a login seperate on xbox if i played on PC before?

So far they've said cross play, I don't think they've gone into much detail beyond that. We don't even know if Xbox owners will need to make a PS Services account or anything like that.

 

[ProtoByte]

Would they make more money selling a lot of copies of Astro on the Switch or hope to entice Switch users to buy a console?

I think making Astro is not primarily about making maximal amounts of money. Again, it wouldn't even exist if Sony was intent on multiplatformism from the beginning. Mario is the exception that proves the rule for 3D platformers: They do not sell that much. As iconic as Sonic is, it tops out a 5 million copies. Checkered history or not, that's insane. Josef Fares has gotten himself a stellar record, but it's Josef Fares. And really, until It Takes Two, his many years old titles were hovering in that 2-5 million range for years on end. How many deep sales it's taken to get to the numbers his games have, I don't know.

Mario is going on 40 years of unrivalled platforming quality in an ecosystem that has been totally isolated from 3rd party offerings for 3 full generations. The idea that slapping Astro Bot on the Switch suddenly means it makes enough money to justify the long term damage to the PlayStation brand is nuts.

thats why everybody is releasing everywhere they can, capcom, square, xbox, pc, why limit yourself they have to be everywhere lets go

There's only one problem with this: It isn't working. Capcom's health right now primarily stems from re-releases. Not even remakes or remasters, just ports. Of course, when most of your year is filled with back catalogue, back catalogue devices like PC and Switch (the latter by way of a lesser library of true games due to anemic hardware) are where a disproportionate amount of sales will come from.

For the likes of Square, they're finding out in slow motion that people who like SE games generally have PlayStations. Nobody buys their shit on Xbox, as evidenced by going on 3 generations up to and including the dud that was FF16 and what already was a dud with FF7R, and the PC performance, much of which are likely double dips, is also very poor.

The leaked Sega sales indicate to me that multiplatformism has not substantially helped any of their franchises. Persona 5 sales are high, but I think the audience capped out by the time Royal released on PS4. They benefit from recycling P5, but I can practically guarantee that P6 will not sell anywhere near the total 10 million that P5 has.

Xbox game sales have actually decreased. Yes, it's primarily sunken to sub-7 figure levels because of Gamepass, but I would argue that the numbers we've seen for the ports on PS and Nintendo inspire zero confidence that it will be even close to enough to save them. The PC ports didn't do it either, and when the word is out that you don't need an Xbox to play Xbox games, the novelty of playing an Xbox game on a PS5 or Switch wears off, and when the game quality goes down in the future due to accommodating other platforms, you see what happens. Fewer consoles sold AND fewer games.

When you're just porting games that were exclusive to one platform before to others, the numbers will go up, but it's not because of audience expansion so much as audience fragmentation. Does anyone really think Mario Kart or Zelda or any one of these exclusive titles isn't reaching 95+% of the max people it could possibly sell to? Why don't most multiplatform games from 3rd parties sell 15-20 million easily?

Hermen mentioned they were developing over 25 games at the same time. Considering the budgets they have in AAA games today, they need as much money as possible from anywhere and use games to lure players from other platforms, specially when around a couple dozen games are the ones who take a huge percent of the game revenue made in a platform like PS.

That's nonsensical.

1, it kinda flies in the whole "this PS gen is the most profitable and Sony's totally happy" if they have to death spiral their own platform.

2, the problem isn't that they were developing 25 games at once, it's not even a very high number. The problem is that they wasted 5-6 years worth of money on bad bets. Poor decisions by Hulst to delve into this live service nonsense and compromise key first party studios that were offering something special before.

3. Now he wants to paper over those decisions by deracinating the platform. The PC ports were already a bad sign, and the PS5 will sell less than the PS4 despite having every reason to sell significantly more. That reduces the potential they had this gen, and seriously does damage the next time a new gen comes around and people are considering what to invest in and why.

Exclusive games have more than direct monetary value. These idiots just don't understand that.

 

[Zathalus]

Score inflation. Scores are generally inflated now compared to last gen and definitely Gen 6-7; but Astro Bot gets an extra boost above that for being a "quirky" game. The games media lets the metanarrative around certain titles color their perception of actual quality. It can happen with any game. Imo, it happened with Cyberpunk, which deserved and still deserves much lower scores. It also happened with Expedition 33, TLOU Part II and, as ironic as it is for me to say, Tears of The Kingdom to a lesser extent and for different reasons.

Personally I just played Mario Galaxy again and Astro Bot compares very well, it does some things better and others worse. Nothing about the 95% Opencritic scores feels inflated in my opinion. Expedition 33 critic scores are also actually lower than the general audience reception to the game, so if anything the game is critically under appreciated.

It's fine to say that you don't personally enjoy a game, instead of making up some reason as to why your own opinion and others differ.

 

[MonkD]

Expected morons to be whining about the pre-order bonuses coming back(even though it happens more often than not). Not a full blown console war.

Just play games on the console with your prefered controller or UI. It's all subjective. Can't imagine grown men fighting over with piece of shit hardware is better, unless they're coping about not affording all of them.

I think this is better for the consumers. And it's an obvious that sign that development costs are game pricing are forcing their hands.

 

[splattered]

Holy fuck this has really broken some people's brains, this thread is 100% like the Xbox going third party threads lmao.

Just chill out people and enjoy the ride, we're all about to be one big happy family of sheep consumers.

 

[yurinka]

That's nonsensical.

1, it kinda flies in the whole "this PS gen is the most profitable and Sony's totally happy" if they have to death spiral their own platform.

2, the problem isn't that they were developing 25 games at once, it's not even a very high number. The problem is that they wasted 5-6 years worth of money on bad bets. Poor decisions by Hulst to delve into this live service nonsense and compromise key first party studios that were offering something special before.

3. Now he wants to paper over those decisions by deracinating the platform. The PC ports were already a bad sign, and the PS5 will sell less than the PS4 despite having every reason to sell significantly more. That reduces the potential they had this gen, and seriously does damage the next time a new gen comes around and people are considering what to invest in and why.

Exclusive games have more than direct monetary value. These idiots just don't understand that.

1. The profitability is of the whole division, also including hardware, accesories, the 30% from 3rd party games, game subs, PC ports etc. They never specified profitability of the first party games specifically, and even less the console ones (they only highlighted that PC has a great ROI for them). And there's no death spiral.

2. He never said to be working in 25. He always said "more than" 25 games. I remember that one of the times he said it we counted the announcement, leaked and ones guessed but pretty sure that were in the work and were 35-40. But if its let's say 30 games with a budget at over handfull millions budget each on average that's a lot of money they have to recover.

3. He isn't decimating the platform, the factual data says the opposite: it's at record numbers and growing.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Some are really struggling with it

That's hilarious. Some folk are just way too invested with companies that actively shit on them, and ask for more. These companies don't care about you. Just your "engagement" and or wallet.

I like and hate all the console makers. They're all the worst and best at providing the things I want from them.

The sooner Sony and Xbox go fully third party will be an interesting one. Or go full streaming for that matter.

 

[Bernardougf]

Stop with the Wiki copypastas. I never said the MSX didn't sell or was a failure. You're contriving an argument that never existed just to have an excuse for yet another Wiki copypasta.



No, MSX was designed to address what several companies considered issues with the Japanese (and other Asian countries) computer market specifically in the early '80s. Companies like Microsoft wanted their products like MS-DOS in Japan, and others like IBM wanted their PCs there too. However, almost all Western computer companies failed to gain serious penetration in Japan because they lacked support for Japanese character limits due to limitations in display technologies and standards of the time, when it came to displaying special characters or a range of characters in general. This was also because memory sizes were puny at the time and compression technologies weren't sufficient for fitting a sea of ROMs with both English and Japanese character sets in reasonably priced systems.

You're pulling some nonsense trying to argue the MSX line was intended as a global standard, and that is simply not true. Here, if you're going to Wiki copypasta, at least copypasta the actual facts:



Sounds like Asian markets such as Japan to me





Yes, IN ASIA!! That was the intended region the MSX standard was focused on, and of them, Japan specifically. The proof is in the sales, it's in the words of people from ASCII and Microsoft at the time. Hell, it's in the Wiki article where you conveniently skipped over all that just to copypasta things ignoring the obvious!



None of this needed to be stated. Again, you're spiraling into a history lesson no one in this very specific conversation asked for, and one I'm already aware of. It has nothing to do with the specific topic of MSX being popular in the West, which you've tried arguing, and never existed.



Golly gee, a computer standard heavily popular in Japan, would by association have attracted mainly Japanese software developers. You keep mentioning America & European studios as if they were a monumental part of the MSX software scene, when game-wise and application-wise, that was not true. Only in very specific cases, like Microsoft, may that have been true, but definitely not for gaming purposes.



This in no way proves the MSX was meant as a global standard to compete directly against Amiga, Amstrad, Commodore, or IBM PC-compatibles in global markets to usurp them.



That sounds like an anecdotal experience, but also know those Spanish devs were not major software contributors to the MSX platform line in markets where MSX computers sold the most. Logically speaking, that just would not have made sense. Spanish software devs would not have had the cultural knowledge or experience to develop products which'd appeal to Japanese computer gamers or businesses at scale, in the 1980s or early 1990s.

I don't even know why I have to say this, it should be common sense.



I ALREADY KNOW THIS!!! You really have to stop writing history lessons where that's not being asked.



Reciting things that happened historically doesn't actually prove a point you were trying to make, unless you tie everything together convincingly. You aren't doing that here whatsoever.



Yes, because the computer, console and electronics market of the 1980s and 1990s is exactly the same as the computer, console & electronics market we now have in 2025.

What even is this sentence



There are good and bad ways to do that; let's just say IMO, SIE have had a rather suboptimal approach that involves too many compromises which never had to be made.



Right, which is why instead of making region-specific and region-locked versions of their PC ports for those markets, they're making global PC ports for all markets including those where the console brand is established and thus said ports can help eat away at that market, such as Japan.

Oops o.0



Well when you're making multiplatform decisions which compromise and chip away at the value of your own home console, not to mention other business decisions which contribute similar (price hikes, expensive add-ons quickly abandoned, etc.), yeah your home console market growth is going to stagnate.

That isn't the same as saying the home console market itself has stagnated. Also, that's a Microsoft talking point you're hawking unironically, despite claiming being against Microsoft's business ethos in gaming in the past. Just interesting to note that, maybe an oversight on your part?



Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing here, added anything to what I assumed was your main point in responding. It's just another Wiki-style historical copypasta dump.

I know people have accused my posts of being long-winded at times, but I hope it never came off as this level of meandering. Maybe my posts get into extremely autistic levels of detail, but at least hopefully unique in spite of that.



Money was a part of it but pre-existing contracts and needing their console gaming division to scale up in size large enough for full integration were also major contributors to that decision with Psygnosis. And during early PS1 gen, yes the chance the PS1 could've bombed did justify keeping Psygonsis multiplatform to some degree. As the PS1's success over SEGA & Nintendo solidified itself, that multiplatform support began to heavily scale back.

It's almost as if old Sony had a better sense of balance between pursuing profits and ensuring a strong unique market identity for their marquee gaming product. Hmm....



A bullshit revisionists take, because SIE themselves stated the main purpose for acquiring Bungie was to bring onboard industry experience in designing successful GAAS titles. That can be interpreted as wanting multiplatform titles out of it, but that intent is not explicitly specified in those words.



Maybe you should do some real research for a change: if you bothered to read through the Wiki article on Psygnosis as just one example (or just Google some appropriate stuff), you'd know that Psygnosis wasn't fully absorbed into SCE until 2000. You'll also see that after 2000, their ports to PC abruptly stopped, and that coincided with the restructuring into Sony Liverpool.

Just go look it up. Look at the Wiki entry, and look for PC ports after 2000. You won't find any. Funny how that works.



Psygonsis was basically analogous to an ABK of today for their time, by the sheer volume of games they developed and published as a 3P and then as a subsidiary under Sony until getting fully absorbed. Very few other publishers in the '90s matched their frequency of output, and only SEGA released/published more games in such a highly concentrated frequency as them.



No, Psygnosis wasn't fully absorbed into SCE until 2000, and right after that, the multiplat support ended. You should've done more research.



Yes, modern Sony would do those types of ports for those reasons, but that isn't exactly analogous to why they had Psygnosis release across multiple platforms back in the '90s. And even in terms of modern Sony, we're not talking about Aniplex or the other subsidiaries: we're talking about Sony Interactive Entertainment, SIE.

You know, the PlayStation people?



Consoles don't have to cease in order for a console to run into market problems due to questionable business decisions that negatively impact its value perception.



Here we go, more cheerleading. Where are the charts?



One minute late...



Ah, the infamous PlayStation PC handheld has made its appearance yet again. That PlayStation handheld for next gen running Windows for some reason instead of SIE's own PlayStation OS, prioritizing a mythical storefront that'd lack almost all of the 3P software the console currently has access to.

What a great buy that'd be huh?



You can keep hoping and praying for this, but it won't come to fruition the way you think it will.

Even if they get a PC PSN store up and running, without 3P software support comparable to Steam or even the console PSN, plus knowing they'll still bring their PC games to Steam anyway, that PC PSN store is as good as dead.



Says the person who omitted relevant parts of the MSX from their Wiki copypasta simply to argue a point based on something that never existed :/



Stating the obvious that a multiplat strategy which inevitably gives way to further porting efforts decreasing the value proposition of their own console hardware on the market, is not the same thing as dooming. I never said these decisions would "kill PlayStation hardware", nor do I want that.

But to act like they'll have no adverse effect is simply ridiculous.



Have a glass of milk.

Holy shit you have patience.. this shill is insufferable

 

[lifa-cobex]