Mat Piscatella: "The biggest competitor to any new video game is Fortnite"

Who really cares about purchase frequency. The money is out there. What's the gaming pot? Something like $200 billion?

Comes down to if a game can get sales and ongoing mtx to max out revenue. And some go FTP which is technically zero paid game copies.

It's like saying adobe is destined to be dead when they haven't sold a copy of photoshop in maybe 10 years. But they get the cash via sub plan
 
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Elden ring selling 20 million copies, wukong selling 20 million copies, hell divers selling 10+ million , switch first party selling 20 + million. All say nah. It's really about quality and marketing.
 
This guy is an idiot. The only thing he gets right is the price fluctuations in Dunkin Donuts.
Good to see people are starting to wake up to the fact that Piscatella is a dumbass.
Nah, he's pretty clever and knows exactly what he's doing. His job is to paint a picture using statistics. It's not one designed for your appreciation or many here, but those who pay for his company's analysis. Here he's using his skills to lead thinking a certain way by being purposefully deceitful via omission. No idea why that might be, but it's usually an attention-seeking exercise, maybe to get invited to more podcast interviews and build his own personal brand.

30% of people who play video games will not buy a video game this year
Counter - between 31 & 35% of gamers play exclusively on mobile where the vast majority of games are F2P. F2P is big on every platform. 30% of all gamers not buying a game all year is not the shocker he want's to present it as.

18% purchase a new game every six months or less frequently.
So one in 5.5 gamers throughout all platforms only buy 1 or 2 games a year. Seems pretty obvious when you see that kinds of games people play and how often...

12% buy a game once a month
And one in 8 buy as many as 12 games a year. That's huge.

Seems like there might be quite a healthy balance between these two extremes.... but where are the figures?

4% buy a game more often than once a month
One is 25 gamers buys more than 1 game a month averaged over the whole year. That's pretty insane really, I have no idea where I'd begin playing 24+ games a year.

Most games only target those last two segments making up 16% of players
His stats only total 64% of all gamers - he's neglected to mention where the remaining 33% sit in this picture - obviously squarely in the middle somewhere between buying more than 1 game every 6 months and less than one every month. Maybe saying more than half of all gamers - including mobile exclusive gamers - buy more than 2 games a year is just a bit of a boring stat and not headline-grabby enough.
 
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Most games only target those last two segments making up 16% of players

With 700m pc+console players, it means most games are targeting ~95m people. Not so bad.
 
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Here he's using his skills to lead thinking a certain way by being purposefully deceitful via omission. No idea why that might be, but it's usually an attention-seeking exercise, maybe to get invited to more podcast interviews and build his own personal brand.
That is true.
I've always been under the impression that he legitimizes the wishcasting of some in the industry.
 
Fortnite is this decades WoW. Pulls in insane numbers and companies inevitably chase those dollars and mostly fail. I still haven't played either.

The games that cater to the enthusiast market still do well, see kingdom come.
 
I hate to break it to you MR Pisscatella. Outside the opium of the masses. Gaming aint that big. and he should know more than anyone. He has the data!!!

AFAIK on the NPDs for example, the sales distribution is exponential rather than linear.
 
Nah, he's pretty clever and knows exactly what he's doing. His job is to paint a picture using statistics. It's not one designed for your appreciation or many here, but those who pay for his company's analysis. Here he's using his skills to lead thinking a certain way by being purposefully deceitful via omission. No idea why that might be, but it's usually an attention-seeking exercise, maybe to get invited to more podcast interviews and build his own personal brand.

Kind of makes me wonder if this sort of analysis helped push so many companies into focusing on GaaS - even when it entailed going against their strengths in terms of IP and developers.
 
Hasn't this been the case for a long time? The vast majority of the market has always been casual players that only play a handful of games.
This is anecdotal but I remember back when I was in middle school and highschool basically all the boys played videogames, but 90% of them just played PES and would only occasionally venture into more traditional games when there was a really big release like GTA.

Those of us that actually liked stuff like DMC, Shadow fo the Colossus, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, etc where always in the minority.
Just a quick aside here, back in the PSX days I knew casuals who were into MGS 1 and FF7. PSX was a beast for mainstreaming those kinds of games.
 
For a specific game genre, sure, makes sense. But to say "any" is pretty damn idiotic, lmao. It's not like the entire gaming community is made up of Fortnite fans, lol.

I enjoy Fortnite for what it is, but I didn't care for it at all until Zero Build happened. But it's clearly not everyone's cup of tea.
 
He's not wrong, I'm the classical PC solo gamer, 2023 I bought Starfield, BG3 and JA3.
I've been playing First Descendant since last Sept and have not purchased any single player game since. I used to play games for the immersive and interesting story telling, but honestly, there haven't been a single game that has come out recently that has a story I'm interested in. So might as well just have some fun shooting at things while I fire up some interesting podcasts to listen to.
 
He's not wrong, I'm the classical PC solo gamer, 2023 I bought Starfield, BG3 and JA3.
I've been playing First Descendant since last Sept and have not purchased any single player game since. I used to play games for the immersive and interesting story telling, but honestly, there haven't been a single game that has come out recently that has a story I'm interested in. So might as well just have some fun shooting at things while I fire up some interesting podcasts to listen to.
Now you became a pleb gamer according to GAF... too bad!
 
Most people ITT don't get it that businesses need growth in this model of society. If new people, namely young people, aren't buying your game, then investment dries up and sequels become unlikely.

Either accept Fortnite is a competitor, start paying $250 for you niche single-player games or watch them die.
 
its pretty obvious there is a huge difference in numbers between gamers and casual gamers.

We are niche market afterall
 
I wish I could like Fortnite (some of my friends play it, I'm talking about 40-50 demographic, not teens), but I don't like the whole building mechanic.

UC3 MP is the closest to my MP taste:

Too bad Sony abandoned it...

I hate building so I avoided Fortnite for years, but the Zero Build mode is actually decent. I play it with my son.
 
It can't be just fortnite right? It's more the handful of big free to play games I'd think.

It's just a better way to monetize. One hit and your set for years. Look at rivals that's gonna feed netease for 4 or 5 years probably, if not more.
 
And most spend hundreds of million competing directly against that game, and only that game. This is a big mistake. There is only one Fortnite like there is only one GTA5.
The big difference is that GTAV charges users something up front while Fortnite lets them play for 'free' and wrings them dry over the long haul.
PlayStation could mitigate the damage that games like Fortnite do to their platform ecosystem by making the games sell at regular price like GTA and other games.
Getting rid of the F2P angle would put all games on a more level playing field and Fortnite could refund the entire purchase price back to the user via in-game currency.
 
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There's an awesome side to gaming and then there's the freemium side that sucks the fun out of everything because it affects everything else of quality. Not saying Fortnite sucks, but I'm looking forward to when it's less of a cultural meme. If I had to open up a time capsule to see Fortnite. I'd probably throw it in the trash and move on.
 
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Not really.

Persona 6, Death Stranding 2 or Judas won't be losing sales to Fortnite, since they aren't aimed at the same audience.

The kids/teens playing Fortnite, Roblox and the like would at most only buy GTA, COD and/or an EA Sports title to complement their F2P live-services, but they are not the target of traditional videogame releases.

Isn't this exactly what he's saying though.

16% of gamers, buy a new game. That 16% could be the percentage of gamers who aren't interested in fortnite and will buy death stranding 2?

If i am understanding correctly.
 
The big difference is that GTAV charges users something up front while Fortnite lets them play for 'free' and wrings them dry over the long haul.
PlayStation could mitigate the damage that games like Fortnite do to their platform ecosystem by making the games sell at regular price like GTA and other games.
Getting rid of the F2P angle would put all games on a more level playing field and Fortnite could refund the entire purchase price back to the user via in-game currency.
Fortnite doesn't operate like that though.
You could pay only $10 and get every battlepass until the end of time. What Fortnite takes is gaming time. The value offering is the best of any MP game ever made.
 
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Fortnite doesn't operate like that though.
You could pay only $10 and get every battlepass until the end of time. What Fortnite takes is gaming time. The value offering is the best of any MP game ever made.
This, you only have to buy one battlepass and then you could practically get them all for free from it. But then if you want all the battlepass skins and vbucks from it, it takes your gaming time. It hooks you in. There will NEVER be another fortnite, big corps chasing that unicorn are doomed.
 
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Fortnite doesn't operate like that though.
You could pay only $10 and get every battlepass until the end of time. What Fortnite takes is gaming time. The value offering is the best of any MP game ever made.
From the POV of both PS and studios, gaming time is the most precious commodity. Forcing users to pay for Fortnite will increase the odds that they buy some other game at the same price.
 
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