EGS would have been a success except they tried PAYING for 3rd party exclusivity. Not only does Sony have more games than Epic, but they have better access to leverage 3rd parties. They can do one of two things (among others actually). They can pay for exclusive titles that they used to pay for against Xbox that they no longer need to pay for OR they can simply offer publishers royalty free publishing on their PC launcher at least initially.
If Sony offered 3P royalty-free publishing on their PS PC launcher/storefront, those 3P would demand to get the same treatment on the console. And if not, they would just prioritize the PS PC storefront, assuming it grew.
In any case, 3P presence won't mean anything unless it were significant enough, and it would only get there with Sony leading by example. A big breakthrough 3P game on Sony's launcher that's somehow exclusive there in the PC space isn't going to magically help the launcher take off. Even with the royalty-free option, there is no guarantee 3P would consider it worth the time, and perhaps the only way they would is if the royalty-free option were tied to them having a console publishing license.
So again, Sony either reduce or eliminate the 30% cut on console publishing, or they keep it free on PC. There's no "initially", either: once it's set, it's
set. 3P would balk if Sony tried reintroducing the royalty cut and just go focus wholly back on Steam or whatever else. Even with these suggestions Sony would never have enough market share on PC to do away with royalties initially only to then reintroduce them later on.
As you can see, this idea you've got just doesn't work because either way Sony lose out on a significant profit stream.
If I'm Sony, I have my PC launcher ready to go 3-6 months ahead of GTA6 being ready on PC. I then tell T2 that they can publish on the launcher with zero royalties in exchange for the game being exclusive on that launcher for the first 12-18 months and GTA Online being exclusive on that launcher for some time period or in perpetuity.
This is how you build a successful launcher, by building out the base.
Someone else ITT already addressed why this wouldn't work, but in case they didn't say the following then I will: why would T2 give a new, small-market share PS PC launcher exclusivity on GTA6? Do you genuinely think getting rid of the royalty fee is enough for T2 to do such a thing? They would be giving up potentially 10+ million sales on Steam alone at launch just to push maybe 2-3 million on Sony's launcher? And that's assuming the launcher has a big enough install base by the time GTA6 launches, or that GTA6 can push that type of adoption.
The truth is, we don't know what GTA6's sales performance is going to look like. Everyone's just basing it off GTA5, but GTA5 is also the only GTA that's done 200 million, and that was over the course of three console generations/10 years. Also I'm sure GTA Online was a huge part of pushing those numbers, so the question is how much can GTA6 do in the span of a year? My number's on 25-35 million.
Now, would Sony's PC launcher be ready Day 1 alongside the console versions? There's no chance T2 are going to have GTA6 be 1+ years exclusive to console, then another 12-18 months exclusive to a super niche launcher. T2 would much rather prioritize a Switch 2 version ahead of giving Sony's PC launcher exclusivity. They aren't going to ignore Steam at the first moment the game finally comes to PC, plus I assume whatever new GTA Online is ready would coincide with a launch on Steam.
Sony could get T2 to put up a version for their launcher alongside Steam and try other incentives to get people to buy it on their storefront, but you can forget about them getting 1 year exclusivity on PC when they can't even get 1 year exclusivity of the game on PS5 (at least based on what we know right now).
Sony doesn't need to beat Valve on PC. They just need to generate more than 80% of their own PC revenue. Same with T2.
Over time, my guess is that you would see erosion in Steam or at least people using multiple launchers, which they're already doing.
How do you suppose any of this happens when:
1: The alternative launchers that get usage all either specialize in very specific niches (DRM-free old games with GOG) or brands mainly tuned to GAAS (Fortnite with EGS, VALORANT and League of Legends with Riot's. WOW, Diablo IV, Overwatch 2 etc. with Battle.NET), and...
2: The growing cross-proliferation of console gamers & PC gamers actually creates a self-competing problem for Sony in maximizing their PC launcher growth due to the popularity of PlayStation consoles?
So with point #2, you either see growth of the launcher at the expense of some erosion with the console install base, or the games SIE have that'd normally be of benefit in the PC space via the launcher, benefit the console instead and the launcher ends up struggling to survive?
You're acting like the console and the launcher are on an even playing field: they aren't. For Sony to get their PC launcher into a place where it could even be self-sufficient among options like Steam will require them to make
MANY choices and prioritizations that come at varying levels of expense to the PlayStation console. SIE is a division of finite resources, and finite manpower. Some of the things they'd have to do in order to catapult their PC launcher would cause blatant conflicts with their own console You even mentioned one here: GT6 launcher exclusivity for 12-18 months, as if that's anywhere near realistic of a thing. Otherwise if so, Sony'd have timed exclusivity for GTA6 on console .
You know...console...the thing that actually currently exists and has massive market share to leverage for such a deal. Any PS PC launcher exclusivity would be connected with PS5 console exclusivity, and I doubt Sony have a launcher ready to go by the time GTA6 launches on console, or six months after the fact.
You completely ignore the fact that this gen launched during a pandemic, there were shortages for 2-2.5 years and the current world-economy is shit, with PS5 being priced higher than at launch due to inflation, while people have less and less money to spend.
Coupled with the fact that the majority of games released so far have been cross-gen, there's a lot of people who are still on last-gen.
I'm not ignoring any of those things. SIE were well aware of them as well, and even with that, at ONE point, forecasted PS5 to be ahead of PS4 launch-aligned by the end of their last FY. That clearly did not happen.
We can talk about what factors contributed to them missing the 25 million target and then missing the down-revised 20 million target, but I'll tell you this much: that initial 25 million target was probably factoring in a lot of Xbox gamers leaving that platform and going to PS5, as well as some Nintendo gamers upgrading their secondary systems from PS4 to PS5.
Yeah, we can say that some portion of the PS4 owners > PS5 owners transition they banked on to hit the 25 million didn't happen due to things like extended cross-gen, or price increases (I'd have to see if SIE revised down the FY target
before or
after the first wave of PS5 price increases in FY '23). However, there is definitely some portion of Xbox and even Nintendo-primaries they were expecting to go to PS5 with the initial forecast that just did not end up happening.
Wasn't there even a report that a signifcant part of the PS5 userbase were completely new users?
Yes; I forgot the specifics but it was something like 40'ish percent. However, that was measured of a certain tracking period IIRC, and considering in totality PS5 has not been trending anywhere near 40% ahead of PS4 launch-aligned, we can safely assume those "new" customers are likely a mix of expats from Xbox, some Nintendo people and a few PC people.
This has pretty much always been the case and since you adressed the case of people owning both PC and PS5, that's what Sony is after when it comes to the PC installbase.
Okay but that's coming at some of the expense of their console. Look at Helldivers 2 for example: yeah Steam helped with it selling as much as it did, but people act as if Steam weren't a thing, the game would've sold everything but the Steam numbers.
This isn't true. A lot of PS5 owners went and got the Steam version of HD2 for reasons including higher peak performance, cheaper pricing and free online. Or in some cases, like with PS5/PC owners who primarily play on PC, Steam was just their preferred ecosystem and so they bought it there. However, those people would have very likely bought the game on PS5 if it was a full-on PS5 exclusive.
Would there have been a gargantuan surge of PS5 sales due to HD2 if it weren't on PC Day 1? That's harder to say; however safe to say when also combined with the other games on the platform, there would have been a stronger surge in PS5 console sales if the game were exclusive. Moreover, a delayed PC launch would've helped SIE and Arrowhead sort out the PSN issues so that they could be clearly communicated to buyers prior to the Steam launch, and therefore avoided that public debacle back in late Spring (which did seemingly hurt the game's community and sales on Steam).
Your last statement (bolded) is inevitable, because there will barely be a Xbox demographic left to move to any platform.
So that makes it okay for Sony to bleed customers over to PC? Because Microsoft's been doing it?
Microsoft have several major vested interests in PC, even if they don't own Steam (and never will unless Steam's market share just craters massively and Gabe does a panic sale). They have the Windows OS, DX12U, PC OEMs, Nvidia, AMD, Visual Basic, Office suite and various medical/military/business etc. licensing contracts.
Sony have
NONE of these vested interests; the only one they had was VAIO and they sold that off over a decade ago.
It's a different world.
Similar to the industry I work in, the days on gunning for endless truckloads of products to sell at bargain prices for sake of top line sales and marketing managers bragging about gaining 1.5 pts of share the past 6 months are over. At least for consumer goods. That started happening about 10 years ago. But really focused on the strategy about 6-7 years ago. That's actually not much different than console makers keeping console prices high starting with PS4/One generation. They never dumped off systems for $99, or even incurred $200+ losses per unit at launch for sake of user base. if this was the 360/PS3 days, the console prices went into the gutter, tons of bundle deals, buy a console and Best Buy was giving away 5 games etc... I remember buying a 360 Slim because of RROD around 2012 and the pack in bundle was 3 free MS games.... Gears, Alan Wake I think and Fable or Halo. I forget, but I gave away two codes. This 250gb system was way cheaper than my 20gb Pro system.
They've realized that keep console prices high helps their profitability best as possible right off the bat, maintains it with few price drops or sales, and the money comes from whales doing mtx, gamers doing sub plans and the like.
The last thing they want are gamers who buy a console for dirt cheap for a big loss, and all they do is play F2P games with no mtx. PS is in a worst spot for these low value gamers because I think you can do F2P games without PS+. While MS requires a sub plan to play F2P (I think, but maybe they changed that).
The company I work for has had profits and margins zoomed up nicely despite top line sales barely growing. And some years profits went up with LESS sales. Our focus changed cutting out bargain hunters only buying stuff for 99 cents or $1.99. If our market share tanked, we dont care anymore holistically. Of course you dont want a brand to drop from 30% to 5%. But if it dropped from 30% to 25% but our profits zoomed up, were all happy and our bonuses are great since market share % isnt even a worker objective for bonus payouts. It's all about Net Sales, Profits and Cash Flow metrics.
I just want to know, what market factors really took effect to change pricing trends with console hardware this gen, that are so radically different to even last gen. Because what you're describing is a very recent phenomenon; even with 8th gen we saw generally expected price drops, though yes $99 or $199 were out of the question in most cases. That said, we did generally see price cuts every few years; the only time there were price increases were with the Pro models and that was only returning to launch MSRPs.
Honestly, I don't think inflation is the only culprit to why prices are on the rise this gen vs. being reduced. There's a certain element of corporate greed with suits this gen that was absent the last gen, or better kept in check last gen. Maybe it's due to the influx of new investors when these companies started making shares specifically targeted at being sold on growth prospects? Or just the wrong people getting promoted to high positions wanting more pay bonuses? A combination of these things?
Or maybe the Apple model has just become too prevalent in the tech industry? There's always that too I suppose.
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