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Microsoft seemingly releasing everything in Spring on PlayStation; store saturation?

I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
 

Elbereth

Member
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
set it off GIF
 

SweetTooth

Gold Member
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?

Your worries are unwarranted. Bring everything at once to my dear Playstation.
 

Dorfdad

Gold Member
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
Silly rabbit it’s ok that’s when game pass for PlayStation launches no need to buy everything at once. :)
 

HogIsland

Member
If they staggered out the releases, they probably wouldn't market each one for a big impact. It would be more like how Sony under-markets their catalog games coming to PC. Maybe if they do a big drop and market it as Xbox launching on Playstation, that gets more attention.
 
The strategy seems pretty straight forward to me. Flood the market with games and pull in as much revenue as possible. I don't think they are worried about any 1 games individual sales. They just want as many revenue streams coming in as possible. Sure it wont all sell day 1 but over time it will start to add up and maybe 1 - 3 titles blow up and do really well. When you do this with both the Switch 2 and PS that's going to add up to a ton of revenue.

Square tried something similar except all their games were some form of an RPG so it was a horrible idea. I also don't think they released all those games everywhere so it was even worse because of that.
 
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Killjoy-NL

Member
If they staggered out the releases, they probably wouldn't market each one for a big impact. It would be more like how Sony under-markets their catalog games coming to PC. Maybe if they do a big drop and market it as Xbox launching on Playstation, that gets more attention.
Each of Xbox titles needs marketing, because most people won't buy their games anyway.
Staggered releases are the only way to have their titles have some impact.

Just take a look at SoT.
It's supposedly one the best Xbox titles and still going strong, yet it took 4 months to get 1M sales on PS5.

People are overestimating the demand for Xbox games on PS and if they throw everything at the PS installbase at once, it'll be counterproductive.
 
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damidu

Member
probably just classic xbox project mismanagement, they take a while to get their shit together by default, then postpone, then release half-baked games at the end anyway.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Pointless doing staggered releases when their 30 studios will continue releasing new games at a steady pace.

Someone that’s interested in an RTS will probably buy it even if they buy Indiana Jones.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
You'll notice that none of these games are all that similar.

There isn't much to the idea of saturation when they're all different genres of games. Microsoft desperately wants to up their revenue and quickly. Their post-holiday revenue is going to be REALLY bad. And now that the cat is out of the bag, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to hold back on releases. People have held off buying these games for months, years, and decades... putting them all out at once won't make a difference.
 
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
You also didn't mention marketing.
 
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
I mean what else does PS have to look forward to here in the next couple of months?

Deutschland 83 Running GIF by SundanceTV
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?

Fixed it for you in bold.

Most players who are interested in Age of Empires probably aren't the target audience for Doom and Forza...

We don't know when Halo will release, but I think it's safe to say, it's going to sell well regardless of when it comes out and independently of what Doom does.
 

Zacfoldor

Member
Yeah, which means we also have jobs/careers = no time to play multiple new releases.
Never stopped me from buying before.

Hey MS, my Switch 2 could use some love. I'll be VERY interested in pretty much all native Switch 2 games in a few months, just saying.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
These are mainly catalog titles - they will sell slowly over time. It's like Sony releasing 3 spiderman games in the space of just over 2 years. No-one needs 3 very similar spiderman games that close together but they will continue to sell over time.
 

Three

Member
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
It is a bit strange, one possibility is that they're going to milk sales quickly and then launch a MS publisher subscription, or possibly new subsidised hardware that they're trying to fund with this and they're doing it in a hurry.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

They're not all coming out on the same day. Plenty of spacing between games. Also, nobody needs to buy these day one. They'll always be on the PS Store.

Also, you listed Halo as a spring release. Unless I've missed something, that's not even been confirmed for other platforms yet, let alone a Spring release.
 

Hudo

Gold Member
I mean, I do hope that some Playstationists will try out the Age games, at least. One of the best games ever made and deserve to be played.
I don't expect a lot of new players for the franchise since I doubt the audience is for RTS games is on Playstation but hey, every new fan is a new fan.
 

Humdinger

Gold Member
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?

I'm not following your thought process. Indiana Jones and Doom would have come to the PS regardless, prior to the acquisitions. The only big one there is Forza. AoE will only appeal to a niche audience on console, and Halo hasn't been announced yet.
 

CLW

Member
You MIGHT be on to something Phil’s GENIUS plan to DESTROY PS…… fill it with his own garbage games for sale
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
Kind of crazy how many of us pointed out that Phil Spencer's oddly timed interview was going to have pretty immediate ramifications.

It was only 10 days ago that Phil had his interview and since then Microsoft has announced 3 games (Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empire, and Age of Mythology) for PS5; and this was after the developer direct where 4 of the 5 games shown were coming to PS5, including Doom and Ninja Gaiden 4 which are published by Microsoft.

I think we can expect we're going to hear a lot more in the coming days and weeks.
 
It's Microsoft's view of gaming. When a port is ready, it gets released. They see any holdback on shipping products to be wasteful. I think they're foolish, but it is what it is.
 

DavJay

Member
Was a great trade for Sony. MLB the show for everything Xbox had. PlayStation is Xbox but Xbox is not PlayStation.
 
I’m a bit puzzled by this. We’ve never seen such a high number of major IPs flooding the market in such a short time. What’s especially unusual is that Microsoft’s goal—to expand their audience and maximise revenue—could actually backfire with this approach.

Most players won’t buy Age of Empires, Halo, Indiana Jones, Doom, and Forza all at once; there’s simply not enough time to play them, so they won’t pay full price upfront. On top of that, releasing everything so close together could split the PlayStation userbase, making it harder for these games to build a strong community.

How can any of this work if all these games are launching at the same time?
Outside of Halo and Doom those games don't really have all that much in common and it's not super likely that many people are going to be buying all of them.
 
Indy needs to come out ASAP to help its sales

Doom is just a day and date lunch

Forza is different enough to attract a certain audience

Don’t see the issue

Halo/Gears in the summertime lull is a good release window
 
Kind of crazy how many of us pointed out that Phil Spencer's oddly timed interview was going to have pretty immediate ramifications.

It was only 10 days ago that Phil had his interview and since then Microsoft has announced 3 games (Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empire, and Age of Mythology) for PS5; and this was after the developer direct where 4 of the 5 games shown were coming to PS5, including Doom and Ninja Gaiden 4 which are published by Microsoft.

I think we can expect we're going to hear a lot more in the coming days and weeks.

Pretty sure S SneakersSO said to expect way more Xbox games coming to PS5 in 2025. Looks like he was right.
 
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