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[ProtoByte]

This has been discussed to death. DS2 is outselling Doom. DS2 only had 1.7 weeks of sales data here in Q2 (and even less if you use the real release date and not deluxe early copies).

Neither game is putting out particularly good numbers. DS2 will drop pretty hard methinks, and the multiplatform releases won't really help.

 

[Three]

Neither game is putting out particularly good numbers. DS2 will drop pretty hard methinks, and the multiplatform releases won't really help.

True. DS2 will drop hard but not in 1.7 weeks hard. It's not an evergreen title but it continued to sell decent numbers for at least a month. It might even possibly chart in July but I think it will be near the bottom side if it does at all.

 

[DenchDeckard]

This has been discussed to death. DS2 is outselling Doom. DS2 only had 1.7 weeks of sales data here in Q2 (and even less if you use the real release date and not deluxe early copies).

Outselling all platforms or just on PS5?

 

[PendekarRajawali]

If MS doesn't fuck it up this gen, Sony will be in trouble with its GaaS shit.

 

[Elios83]

If MS doesn't fuck it up this gen, Sony will be in trouble with its GaaS shit.

In trouble by getting all their games?
Some people still can't cope with the reality there's no more console war between Sony and Microsoft.
Microsoft is a Playstation publisher and Sony will get a 30% take of whatever Microsoft sells on PS.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

In trouble by getting all their games?
Some people still can't cope with the reality there's no more console war between Sony and Microsoft.
Microsoft is a Playstation publisher and Sony will get a 30% take of whatever Microsoft sells on PS.

MS should be compared to EA and Ubisoft at this point, not to Sony.

Xbox can basically be disregarded completely as a platform-holder.

 

[Elios83]

MS should be compared to EA and Ubisoft at this point, not to Sony.

Xbox can basically be disregarded completely as a platform-holder.

This should be obvious but reading certain threads
It's truly a denial and inability to cope with reality.
How can Sony be in trouble if Microsoft releases great games on PS5??!!
The other frequent distortion from the same people is that PlayStation is or should be a first party console when the brand was built on the association with third party games. PS1 and PS2 made their success as third party consoles.

Again it's truly a mental detachment syndrome from a disliked reality.
Console war between Sony and Microsoft is over, Sony has won that.

 

[yurinka]

While overall situation you describe is happening, this part is giving them way too much credit.
Minecraft was acquired 12 years ago, and they (aggresively) burned money trying to make hw work for a full decade since.
Hell MS published games on PlayStation as far back as 2002, and I don't think anyone will argue they are were 'slowly killing' their console back then, at least not on purpose.

They bought Minecraft and decided to keep the game exclusive, like all the other Minecraft DLC and spinoff standalone games. MS could have decided to make them console exclusive instead, but prefered to get the money from the other platforms.

Same goes with the other acquisitions, bought them and with a few rare cases of Xbox (mostly timed console) exclusives they continued multiplatform.

When bought Bethesda their CFO said that their plan wasn't to make them exclusive, but instead to have them better or first on GP platforms.

When bought ABK mentioned to workers and investors Minecraft as example of what they wanted to do with ABK: to bring it to more platforms instead of less. Phil also mentnioned that the ABK acquisition was more about growing in mobile thanks to King or CoD than in console.

MS also decided to release all their games (including the non-acquired ones) day one in PC.

Later decided to start releasing formerly exclusive games on PS, and that future Xbox consoles were going to be PCs running Windows.

I think they realized a while ago that weren't able to compete against Sony and Nintendo as console makers, so as gaming company it was better for them to slowly switch to become a full multiplatform publisher using Windows as home platform, with the idea of to end becoming the number 1 publisher and hopefully the top grossing gaming company too. To achieve so they basically just had to acquire a few top multiplatform publishers, by spending an amount of money that Sony or Nintendo pretty likely couldn't afford.

Just a side note: wasn't it Herman Hulst who said that nonsense about making PC players buy a PlayStation? I'm not sure if Shawn Layden ever said the same thing at any point.

Anyway, Hulst made that statement directly in response to an investor, so technically it's a real strategy (something they actually believe, even if it makes no sense).

I wonder if that idea has changed in any way.

What Hermen (and Nishino) said was, as reply to an investor who was asking about if to releasing games was going to cannibalize consoles sales, was that their research and metrics shown that instead of cannibalization what it produced for them is a synnergy: some players get the game because of the popularity they got in console, and that (despite not being the main purpose of PC ports) some players buy a PS after playing Sony games on PC, and that resulted on increasing the amount of new PS players (understanting as new player the PSN accounts that previously weren't used in PS3, PS4, PSP, PSVita) and also to grow their console active userbase to an all time high new record.

Separated from this, some time later they shown -I think it was this last quarter, or two quarters ago- a graph mentioning that around a third of PS5 sold that quarter are to "new" players. A percentage that more or less matched the numbers we saw in a leaked Insomniac document that listed that percentage for PS5 a few years ago.

The main idea of releasing stuff isn't to make them want buy a PS5: it's to grow by extending their PlayStation business outside their console to reach more players, so to get more users in general (not only in console) and generate more revenue and profit not only by growing their market share of the console market (something they also have been working on as goal and have been achieving it), a market that didn't considerably grew during decade, but with additional players from other markets like PC or mobile to help them reach the volume of players and revenue new AAA games will need.

As an example, China is the top grossing country for gaming, and regions like India, South East Asia, Middle East or Latin America are the fastest growing ones. Like in the 'western countries' (including Japan here), mobile and PC have more users and generate more revenue than consoles, but with a bigger difference: in many countries of these regions consoles are pretty small, so try to directly sell a console is hard. And even more than in the 'western countries', the main gaming business model there is GaaS. So in order to approach these countries, they plan to approach them mostly with PC and mobile games, making partnerships with local devs (China/India/MEA Hero Project etc), and also making their first party game IPs more popular in the mainstream with movies, tv shows, etc., in addition to grow their first party GaaS offerings.

Every generation AAA games are getting more expensive, and in the current non-GaaS ones without DLCs need to sell an average of around $8-10M copies to be profitable (so will be more in the next gen), while a PC port only needs less than a couple dozen thousand units to be sold to start generating profits because ports cost them around $2-3M.

This is something only a few top sellers achieve in a single console, so needed to find some ways to get extra revenue to continue having most of them profitable: they invested more in DLC/GaaS, focused in better selling series and studios, increased the amount of off-gaming adaptations and are also expanting their multiplatform side in addition to expand every single PS area (investment in first party teams, record budget for 2nd party, record amount of 3rd party exclusivity deals for a generation, extra efforts in accesories -PSVR2, PS Portal, several controllers, several headsets/earbuds....-, extra efforts to improve their game sub, extra efforts to improve their cloud gaming...

So far their progress is very good: in recent years they've been growing considerably and set new all time records not only in off-PS first party revenue, but also record numbers in PS hardware, game revenue, addons revenue, gamesub revenue, accesories revenues, and their first party game almost every year have a new fastest selling game record and receive many awards. And in Steam Sony became the top 8 publisher in Steam history (extrapolating from user reviews) in just 5-6 years of PC push.

And seems that in the near future they'll grow beyond this: there are at least 6 GaaS to be released soonish, created new teams in new or existing first party studios that soon they'll release their first game, some acquired studios years ago will release their first new big game as Sony soonish, they're working in their own PC PSN store, they partnered with several top mobile gaming publishers/dev teams to license them to use SIE IPs in mobile gaming focused games or anime/movie adaptations of PS games of these companies, should release PS cloud gaming client in smartphones, tablets and smart tvs soonish, are adapting at least 10 SIE IPs to movies/anime/tv shows, this month will release the first China Hero Project game published by Sony, recently started India Hero Project and Middle East Hero Project, seem to be working in a PS Player successor that will run games natively, have been working to extend PS Plus to PC and mobile in the future, this month they'll start having playable their first proper fighting game in the EVO they acquired soon will have expanded their relationship with Marvel from Spider-Man to other IPs like Tokon or Wolverine, etc...

 

[Vlodril]

Sony destroyed MS so badly that their fans are now celebrating that their games do well on ps5 (forget that they actually started releasing everything they have on ps5 since their own console is dead).

 

[tTHANOSs]

They bought Minecraft and decided to keep the game exclusive, like all the other Minecraft DLC and spinoff standalone games. MS could have decided to make them console exclusive instead, but prefered to get the money from the other platforms.

Minecraft is everywhere because of Mojang. Phil definitely wanted it exclusive but they had no choice when they bought it.

 

[PendekarRajawali]

In trouble by getting all their games?
Some people still can't cope with the reality there's no more console war between Sony and Microsoft.
Microsoft is a Playstation publisher and Sony will get a 30% take of whatever Microsoft sells on PS.

If Sony fails this gen, will MS be going third party? I don't think so. Remember, Microsoft was ready to 'go spend Sony out of business'. But MS failed miserably.

 

[Three]

Outselling all platforms or just on PS5?

on PlayStation alone.