March Climber
Member
This thread went south the minute someone presented a meme image to use as a strong argument.
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Sony CFO insists AAA game quality ‘will deteriorate’ if it adopts Game Pass-style strategy
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
- Opinion Game Dev Platform
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I don't disagree overall; but I also don't think the PS3 did anything terrible. That gen was a gen of 2 good systems, w/ good exclusives and good features.
So if we have 2 good competitors this gen.. I don't think that's going to grow anything substantially, if at all. We'll just see a closer battle of companies fighting for the same ~150-170 million console unit ceiling between the 2 of them (if that.)
In the same token, Sony is going to have a battle to eclipse the ~50 million "number of users buying a sub service." They are just going to make more money off of those 50 million w/ more expensive tiers (IMO, but I don't think Sony expects a ton of overall userbase growth either). You'll note they LOST users this past quarter.. and you had the Sony CEO talking about "engagement" numbers staying the same w/ the new PS Plus tiers (a nudge nudge wink wink same engagement w/ much higher average sub price = more money.)
Nintendo as I was saying is just hard to include in the picture. They ditched home console gaming for a mobile device w/ a dock... it's a niche they've carved out and they are selling loads of units and games, but it's replacing a business that used to sell both a mobile console and a home console.. and we never considered "Gameboy"s as part of a console generation.. so IMO hard to consider Switch really a part of them... they also aren't releasing devices to compete w/ each other nearly launch aligned like MS/Sony are.
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nominedomine
Banned
xCloud has been out for some time already included with Gamepass Ultimate as well, all over the world. Works on any mobile, browser or PC and even on Xbox One. I'm surprised you don't know that, this reminds me of Stadia where the people that were most exited about it were the people that knew the least about the details of the service.
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mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
If the consumer doesn't want it, it can't be our only future. The future is truly in the hands of the people.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Wouldn't you think Sony would take parts of what makes Gamepass good and incorporate that into their business model before their user base is eroded?
nominedomine
Banned
They have to be afraid that Sony will expose the limitations of the Gamepass business model. That or they want to see Sony try it and fail miserably and ruin what they have going on right now.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Xcloud does not work world wide. It only works in select countries for now, like PS Now.
Mate, your posts are fast reaching parody levels with the amount of inaccurate game pass stuff you talk about
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Topher
Identifies as young
Not sure I'm following this. Neither Game Pass or xCloud require a dedicated console.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Do they ? I don't think anyone explicitly here asked or posted about wanting Sony to change their model.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
This is an exaggeration on multiple fronts.. xCloud is neither available worldwide nor is it truly a standalone service. It's still built around being tied to a sub someone buys because they own an Xbox (or maybe a PC, but it is more console centric.)
If you don't own an Xbox? You can't actually buy games (well you can.. via the web interface.. and then.. not play them if they aren't earmarked for the cloud and part of GPU).. if you buy MTX for a gamepass game, good luck w/ throwing that money down the drain once the game leaves gamepass.
Despite both Sony and MS having cloud services for years.. we are pretty far from them actually being a standalone offering that provides a "console in the cloud."
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mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Or PS Now for that matter. I was lost too.
Salty Popsicle
Banned
That's the point. Without a $500 barrier to entry, more people can try out and become fans of games that were previously only known to console players.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I don't think this is fair to do to Nintendo. It's kinda foul actually. Their business model should still be compared to the other big two. Just because they found a way to be a hybrid shouldn't mean we treat them like some 2nd class citizen.
nominedomine
Banned
How is xCloud not availaible world wide? 26 countries already, including all the major markets.
Why do people that don't know the most basic stuff keep quoting me?
You argument makes no sense, it's tied to a sub someone buy because they play on Xbox? So what you are saying is that xCloud ain't worth $15 to people yet it's somehow still so disruptive it will change everything?
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Salty Popsicle
Banned
I was more or less poking fun of the PlayStations fans saying that without hardware the Xbox brand has no meaning.
12Dannu123
Member
It's rumoured that within the next 12 months Microsoft will announce the ability for gamers to play games they've purchased. So I don't think 'console in the cloud' is far away at all.
The only major barrier is licensing agreements.
Salty Popsicle
Banned
At this stage it isn't disruptive because internet infrastructure is not a the point where streaming can replace dedicated hardware. Microsoft doesn't currently market cloud gaming as a replacement to console gaming, they market it as a supplemental feature. However, once latency becomes a none issue in the years to come, the way it's marketed will change.How is xCloud not availaible world wide?
Xbox Supported Countries & Regions | Xbox
Find a list of countries and regions where Xbox consoles, games, and services are supported.www.xbox.com
Why do people that don't know the most basic stuff keep quoting me?
You argument makes no sense, it's tied to a sub someone buy because they play on Xbox? So what you are saying is that xCloud ain't worth $15 to people yet it's somehow still so disruptive it will change everything?
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nominedomine
Banned
Come on... did you try it? It works already, well enough at least. Very few people care, usually people from places where hardware and game prices are fucked up like Brazil.
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
None of that is any sort of knock on Nintendo at all.. there is zero negativity in those statements... there is no second class citizen.. if anything they have a huge benefit w/ what they do.
My point is their userbase doesn't effect Sony/MS much because of the direction they went. Really they never went any other direction than their own, meanwhile MS/Sony started trading blows out-competing each other to sell devices for people to play Call of Duty/Ass Creed/FIFA/etc. on. Those are games maybe / maybe not releases on Switch but more as an "and lets also make a few bucks over here" kinda deal not "people greatly interested in our games are going to choose the Switch" deal. Rather than take MS/Sony head on, Nintendo just created their own little market nobody is touching but them.
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Salty Popsicle
Banned
Are you saying average internet speed and quality has not improved in the past 20 years? Do you believe progress in this regard will remain stagnant for the next 20 years?
ProgenitorCastle
Banned
Quality>Quantity, I dig this approach
yurinka
Member
Regarding to the costs of a AAA game, that money you mention of 150, 200, 300M or so is their development budget. You have also to double it because they typically spend around the same money on marketing, PR and communications. Plus post launch content and so on.Indeed they do cost more and take longer to make. But, then the cost is spread out. I saw a lot of "sonys games cost 150m to make". If said 150m game takes three years to make, then it is costing 50m per year, or just over 4m per month. It is not 150m plus the 3yrs of studio running costs on top. The studios running costs are included in the cost and probably account for north of 80% of the price of said 150m game. Even if we added 100m on top for marketing taking the price tag to 250m, then it becomes 83.3m per year or 6.9m per month.
PlayStation Studios | PlayStation
PlayStation Studios est à l'avant-garde de l'industrie des jeux vidéo depuis des générations. Notre collectif de studios et d'équipes s'étend à travers le monde. Ensemble, nous faisons progresser le domaine du jeu vidéo et nous impactons vos vies d'une manière positive.www.playstation.com
Looking at that link they have 18 studios, if we said that every studio was the same size and followed the example above (obviously that is not the case but for ease I will run with it), then we would get the following.
18 x 250m = 4.5bn. = 1.5bn per year or 125m per month. Not all studios or games are equal. Some games cost less to make and some more. Like I said, I went with the top end for every studio to get pretty big numbers. I have seen people writing that Sonys subs revenue (PS+ plus Now) was generating over 2bn per year. Even if they used half of that revenue to pay towards their content in this example, it would drastically cut their outlay (I'll let you or one of the laughing emojis do the maths on the rest). As they are still selling the games, then they would undoutedly be making bank from their games. With lost sales from subscribers being almost balanced out by said subcribers who have been helping to pay for these games to be made.
Halo infinite (lol I will use in this case) despite being game pass still debuted at #2 on NPD in December 2021 https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/18/...nfinite-has-strong-debut-on-the-sales-charts/
Sony has every right to do whatever the fuck they want and to defend their position with the wording of their choice. But I don't really believe that they would have to cut budgets if their games were available day one on their service if they had one premium priced tier.
Oh yeah, most of this post wasn't really directed at you or do I expect you to be my sparring partner here lol. You just got caught up in my take for this thread.
Nowyurinka I know that you have all of the revenue figures wrote down ready for your posts, so would you like to post them please? We know that you know just how succesful sonys sub services are.
Regarding the length of their development, they on average take from 4 to 6 years to be developed (add one more if they make a new engine for that game-as when it's the first game for a new generation-, it's a new IP, there's covid in the middle), and every generation gets longer.
You also have to remember that now at least many Sony games work in multiple games at the same time (Insomniac, ND, Guerrilla and Firesprite are working in minimum 3 games and pretty likely 4 at the same time). Remember Hermen said they had over 25 games under development at PS Studio, and that pretty likely didn't count games in preproduction, post launch support, PC ports or VR games.
I don't know what revenue figures are you talkin about, I'll post some for this FY:
-Sony game division: 2,739.8B Yen (doesn't include mobile) / $21,09B
-Sony game+addons sales: 1,424,459M Yen / $10,96B
-Sony PS subs: 409,355M Yen / $3,15B (if we divide this in 12 months would be $262.5M/month)
We also have to consider that there are also many additional costs involved, from the marketing, server and transaction/store/support related costs of the service, corportate costs, paying 3rd parties (MS recently said they paid indies $2B for that until now) for putting their games there and so on.
If they didn't have to pay cloud gaming, 3rd party games marketing for the service and their game & addon sales would drop to zero they could afford to fund around maybe 4 or 5 (6 being generous) average sized AAA games per year. PS Studios have over 25 games under development at PS Studios (not counting Bungie, they are working in Destiny 2 and minimum 2 new IPs), according to some who counted them well over 30 and if adding VR, ports/remasters/preproduction etc beyond 40.
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nominedomine
Banned
Dude do you understand this tech? The tech is here already for basic gaming streaming, it works even on under developed countries, it will be refined but that isn't what is keeping people from jumping in, the reason people don't start playing over the cloud is because the people that care about traditional video games prefer to play on their own hardware and the people that don't care won't start caring because it's on the cloud now.
Do you play over the cloud? I'm surprised by how many people are so into this cloud thing but don't actually game on it.
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Badlucktroll
Member
Sony needs to bring Metal Gear and Silent Hill into the fold and have the announcements be like the Final Fantasy 7 remake reveal.
Stooky
Banned
You have to pay to get quality devs/artist/talent. That’s how it works. It’s not magic.
00Magnum Gaming
Member
rofif
Can’t Git Gud
I prefer well done, creative, unique games like uc4, tlou2, gow, death stranding, last guardian and so on compared to gp shovelware.
Of course games that are ADOPTED to be added to gp are fine. But if game is made with GP exclusivity in mind, they don't have to worry about a lot of things because users are going "oh, there is no coop or forge but it's free so it's ok".
Nah.... I prefer qualtiy over quantity.
Of course games that are ADOPTED to be added to gp are fine. But if game is made with GP exclusivity in mind, they don't have to worry about a lot of things because users are going "oh, there is no coop or forge but it's free so it's ok".
Nah.... I prefer qualtiy over quantity.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Yeah MS is trying to go that route we'll see how far they get due to licensing. Of course MS will gladly also license their tech to a pub who doesn't want their games on xCloud and make money that way too lol
But it's still going to have limited availability even w/ MS expanding. With a home console if they sell it in your region.. well there it is, and it works, the same as everyone else. Even if xCloud is in your region there's going to be a high percentage of homes that would have an unplayable experience.. and don't get me started on how people bought the 5G Kool-aid.
It's going to be a long time before we can look at any numbers of cloud users and go "this is the market, based on the demand" because it'll be a long time before truly "anyone" can just get the service and have it work. As it stands... we don't have much evidence of demand in the first place either tho lol
The experiments are going.. OK.. but we absolutely aren't seeing people wanting to ditch a console for a cloud experience.. it's an add on feature for them playing a game while taking a shit basically.
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SLB1904
Banned
That's the point they aren't doing that
Guilty_AI
Member
It was doomed the moment it had "game pass" in the title.
Salty Popsicle
Banned
I personally don't game on the Cloud now because I don't like handheld gaming and at home nothing currently beats the quality of dedicated hardware. However, if 5 years from now streaming games was nearly imperceptible in quality to playing from a console, then I would forgo getting an Xbox or PlayStation altogether and just stream all my games.
nominedomine
Banned
Not happening in 5 years or anytime soon.
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
What in the world does streaming have to do with smaller projects with less bloat?
Salty Popsicle
Banned
That's fine, then I'll continue to game on console until it happens.
Leyasu
Banned
Of course my numbers were straight up rounded.
3, 4, 5 or 6 yrs, the costs are spread over them years. The bigger the studio, the more the game costs to make. Also, when you talk about some studios having 3 or 4 games in dev at the sametime. Would that mean that that Insomniac that accordiing to wiki has 400+ staff recruit massively to have three full teams or do they split their workforce depending on where they are in their projects? Because if they are just shifting people between projects then that doesn't increase the costs at the studio thus meaning that game costs are not increasing either.
Obviously there are additional costs.
Last thing, Sony are not funding the games, they are paying the running costs of their studios to make the games. Although even as I write that, I that people are going to miss my point... Going back to what I wrote above, say if insomniac is 450 employees (again rounded numbers) and the cost of everything included for running them worked out at 15k per employee per month, that would then be 6.75m per month everything in. So if they were just using their 450 employees to make their 3 games, the price still stays the same. The cost of the game goes up when they bring in extra staff or support studios. Meaning that with just half of that 262.5m per month that sonys subs make, they could run nearly 20 Insomniacs. Each one working on 3 games... They have most probably been doing just that for a few years already.
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azertydu91
Hard to Kill
And how current investments in AAA mean smaller and less bloated games?What indicates this?
nominedomine
Banned
You and everyone else.
yurinka
Member
It's true it covers the main major (console) markets, but there are almost 200 countries. 26 isn't what I'd call a worldwide coverage. If other than console you also include mobile and PC there are some big markets missing there like China, Russia or India.
Both xCloud and PS Now (they cover 30 as of now) are still far from offering worldwide support.
nominedomine
Banned
It should be more than enough to prove it's the future of gaming, it barely had any effect on Gamepass growth once it was released.
People are so adamant about cloud gaming being the future and are so skeptical about VR. Even with VR being a lot more expensive and less mature, yet having better numbers than cloud gaming already. VR is also a lot more appealing to the general public than cloud gaming.
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IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
You serious w/ this shit? 26 countries isn't what "worldwide" means.. and either way, you can be in 26 countries all you want, you don't actually cover effectively the population of those 26 countries due to latency/distance from DCs.
Not even sure what the rest of your post is trying to say.. I never said xCloud was a disruptor, I suggested Gamepass was. Why are you combining my unrelated posts to make some weird point? This thread is about Gamepass, not xCloud.
xCloud is not available to everyone who can buy a console.. it really isn't.. it is available to people in 26 countries w/ a good enough internet connection to make it feasible. And it's not a product offering meant for non-console owners at this point.
We agree that cloud gaming doesn't have a ton of demand.. so drop the childish routine. I am not ignorant on this topic.
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nominedomine
Banned
It just happened to be released first in the 26 countries where people don't care about cloud gaming?
There is no shortage of excuses of why people never jump into cloud gaming. The reason is pretty obvious, people don't care about it.
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EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.001
Sony will maintain their exclusive games, last time I checked there has been a steady flow of AAA games dating back to the ps1.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I guess at the end of the day, I want us to keep including Nintendo in all of these conversations because they matter. We can't have a "will streaming be the only future in gaming" without bringing up good ol' Nintendo. They matter more than most want to credit.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
And luckily at the moment, the far majority of gamers do NOT agree with you on this. Who knows how long it'll take before the majority will be willing to do this.
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
xCloud offering a beta for a year and a half locked behind GPUw/ a product offering best suited for people who already own consoles is not enough to determine whether it's failure to make Gamepass subs skyrocket is an indication of a lack of demand for cloud, particularly since we aren't really there yet from a network infrastrucute.
I can both recognize that, as well as share your opinion that cloud gaming is not going to be something that takes over the market. I don't think it will and actually think it's possible the business model w/ fail completely.
It's still way too early to tell that.
nominedomine
Banned
How much you think xCloud is going to cost? Isn't $15 cheap enough?
After PSNow, Stadia and xCloud all failing to be disruptive I don't think it's too early to tell that cloud ain't it.
Do you want to play games over the cloud? Do you know anyone that does? Do you know anyone that is waiting for cloud gaming to start playing games?
I tried it, it was ok, I moved on 5 min later and never used it again.
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SportsFan581
Member
They should get this guy some new material. LOL
Basically Sony doesn't have the confidence to think that they can maintain monthly subscribers on a GP competitor, that's all the guy is really saying with this. There would be no limits to budgets on projects with a successful subscription. Using the tired Netflix example, they have billions to spend on content and can allocate that as they see fit. They have movie projects with budgets that rival Hollywood. A successful $10mo. sub can quickly generate quite a bit of revenue to work with on a yearly basis. They've already announced a catalog service that is being offered for basically $40 a year, that would leave quite a bit of that $120 sub revenue for first-party development.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Look at this tweet below, made today. Some of these people are in the loony bin.