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[Men_in_Boxes]

Awesome hour and ten minute long podcast with Ben Feder (former CEO of Take Two) and Ken Wee (former CSO of Activision Blizzard King) about the future of the gaming industry. They basically discuss the platform advantages and disadvantages of the four platforms listed in the title (Sony, Microsoft, Valve, Roblox). Refreshing to hear from people who don't think or say "Xbox dead!" Put your headphones on and go mow the lawn NeoGAF, you can thank me later.





"Do you think subscription services work for the modern market and the way players play games today?" (timestamp)




"Is there anything you think Xbox should be doing differently?" (timestamp)




"How can Sony navigate their continually rising production costs? Is GAAS their solve?"

 

[Thanati]

Steam.

Monthly active users: Steam has 132 million monthly active users.

Daily users: 69 million people use Steam every day.

Concurrent players: In January 2023, Steam had 33 million peak concurrent players.

That’s pretty definitive?

 

[Davevil]

roblox ?

 

[Mr Moose]

Roblox is a platform?

 

[Sgt.Asher]

Roblox? I guess if you squint

 

[Jesb]

The f is roblox.

 

[IFireflyl]

The f is roblox.

A pedophile's playground.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

 

[ManaByte]

Fortnite.

Everything will be Fortnite eventually. Xbox and PlayStation will just be a box to play Fortnite on.

 

[Big Baller]

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Fortnite.

Everything will be Fortnite eventually. Xbox and PlayStation will just be a box to play Fortnite on.

Roblox should be afraid of Fortnite. Epic Games literally said "Let's do Roblox but way better."

 

[PanzerCute]

Roblox should be afraid of Fortnite. Epic Games literally said "Let's do Roblox but way better."

Damn, what a time to be alive.

 

[Wildebeest]

With game development cycles pushing ten years, the "irrelevant kids" playing Roblox will be in their 20s and the prime market for your game by the time it comes out.

 

[Kdad]

With EPIC starting to get free reign on Android and Apple, you can count on Tencent to start rolling out western versions of their apps layered in and on Fortnite, which Tim said years ago was a platform.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

With game development cycles pushing ten years, the "irrelevant kids" playing Roblox will be in their 20s and the prime market for your game by the time it comes out.

Game development is actually longer than that. They now resemble amusement parks that are being worked on in perpetuity.

 

[recursive]

Steam.

Monthly active users: Steam has 132 million monthly active users.

Daily users: 69 million people use Steam every day.

Concurrent players: In January 2023, Steam had 33 million peak concurrent players.

That’s pretty definitive?

Whatever you posted is unreadable on dark theme on my phone.

 

[Black_Stride]

Steam.

Monthly active users: Steam has 132 million monthly active users.

Daily users: 69 million people use Steam every day.

Concurrent players: In January 2023, Steam had 33 million peak concurrent players.

That’s pretty definitive?

Mate I dont think thats more than Playstation monthly active users.
They were at 123M in December.

Roblox dwarfs both Playstation and Steam.

You really think Steam is a threat to Roblox at this point.

 

[Holammer]

Roblox is a platform?

It is, you can code and distribute games in the Roblox eco system, there is some really impressive stuff there. But, as an adult getting on Roblox? No fecking way, the place is only for children.




Average adult Roblox user.

 

[March Climber]

You really think Steam is a threat to Roblox at this point.

People here don't know because they are out of touch. Same with the mobile markets. They will simply be blindsided when it's too late.

 

[Fabieter]

It will be steam going forward. Or if a Chinese company is really pushing it they might compete with valve as they do in every industry.

 

[Black_Stride]

People here don't know because they are out of touch. Same with the mobile markets. They will simply be blindsided when it's too late.

Im always amused how out of touch some GAF members can be.
The other day someone was shocked people still play COD.......wait what?
Call of Duty?
Ive had discussions with people who seem reasonable who tell me Ubisoft is going under........Ubisoft?

Roblox is huge and you can make legit money developing for Roblox.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Nutaku

 

[Black_Stride]

It will be steam going forward. Or if a Chinese company is really pushing it they might compete with valve as they do in every industry.

Steam only has like 130 million monthly users.
Playstation has atleast 120 million.
Roblox has over 200 million.


Steam is small fry compared to Roblox.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

People here don't know because they are out of touch. Same with the mobile markets. They will simply be blindsided when it's too late.

The people who want to play 10 different games a year are shrinking. The people who want to play one or two games a year are booming.

It's crazy that people still don't see this.

 

[Guilty_AI]

The people who want to play 10 different games a year are shrinking. The people who want to play one or two games a year are booming.

It's crazy that people still don't see this.

I don't fully disagree with this notion but i don't think you understand the reason behind it.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I don't fully disagree with this notion but i don't think you understand the reason behind it.

What do you think the reason is?

 

[Guilty_AI]

What do you think the reason is?

Money, people are poorer today in general and try to spend less. So they either buy very few big games a year or go for cheaper ones.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Money, people are poorer today in general and try to spend less. So they either buy very few big games a year or go for cheaper ones.

That's definitely wrong.

We know this because the single game gamers are now spending more money than the multi game gamers. Has more to do with game design advancementing than anything else.

 

[tusharngf]

Steam only has like 130 million monthly users.
Playstation has atleast 120 million.
Roblox has over 200 million.


Steam is small fry compared to Roblox.

Depends on how much everyone is buying from the store

 

[Guilty_AI]

That's definitely wrong.

We know this because the single game gamers are now spending more money than the multi game gamers. Has more to do with game design advancementing than anything else.

There is absolutely no way to prove what you said about spending, and its hard to attribute things to game design advances when the most popular games aren't exactly the most original.

 

[owandeseis]

Mate I dont think thats more than Playstation monthly active users.
They were at 123M in December.




You really think Steam is a threat to Roblox at this point.

To be fair, that 132M users from Steam is data from 2021.

Back in 2021 the CCU peak was 27M, today it peaked at almost 38M, same goes for the in-game players peak, from 7,8M in 2021 to 12,5M this months.

That's a near 40% growth in CCU and a 60% growth in ingame players. If you add a 40% to that 132M number it'd be over 180M monthly users, a 60% would be over 200M already.

Not sure about Roblox' growth numbers yearly, i assume they are very big too, as for PS ones they are quite stagnant since 2020, last number was 116M , down from 123M in December as you said.

 

[killatopak]

Soulja Boy

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

sowrry men in boxes I will politely reject your propaganda

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

There is absolutely no way to prove what you said about spending, and its hard to attribute things to game design advances when the most popular games aren't exactly the most original.

We know MTX spending...

A) ...has surpassed traditional game spending.

B)....is still growing, unlike the traditional games market.

We also know that no one on planet earth (except for you) thinks the rise of GAAS is connected to the world's economy.

These are three knowables.

 

[GametimeUK]

Valve.

 

[Guilty_AI]

We know MTX spending...

A) ...has surpassed traditional game spending.

B)....is still growing, unlike the traditional games market.

We also know that no one on planet earth (except for you) thinks the rise of GAAS is connected to the world's economy.

These are three knowables.

Wait, you're saying SP players are spending more or less than MP players? You're contradicting yourself.

And if you think the world economy doesn't affect people's buying habits, i don't think you're qualified for this kind of discussion.

 

[owandeseis]

We know MTX spending...

A) ...has surpassed traditional game spending.

B)....is still growing, unlike the traditional games market.

We also know that no one on planet earth (except for you) thinks the rise of GAAS is connected to the world's economy.

These are three knowables.

I agree on A, but how are traditional games market not growing exactly?

Hogwarts selling 24M in a year
BG3 selling 15M in 6-9 months
Wukong selling 18M in a couple weeks
Cyberpunk with over 25M sales
Palworld with 20M sales in a month
Even Helldivers 2 with 12M in 3 months.

I'm sure outside of the Rockstar games, there aren't many examples of games selling this quickly back in the 2000s or 2010s

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I agree on A, but how are traditional games market not growing exactly?

Hogwarts selling 24M in a year
BG3 selling 15M in 6-9 months
Wukong selling 18M in a couple weeks
Cyberpunk with over 25M sales
Palworld with 20M sales in a month
Even Helldivers 2 with 12M in 3 months.

I'm sure outside of the Rockstar games, there aren't many examples of games selling this quickly back in the 2000s or 2010s

No one calculates markets by cherry picking a small number of successes in the market. You compare overall dollars spent in the market year by year. PlayStation did this and showed the market has plateaued.

What you're identifying is the king rat effect. The market is capped so the big games are getting better and better at chewing up more marketshare within the market. That's why the mid budget game has cratered over the last 20 years.

 

[Trelane]

Dreamcast 2, outta nowhere, make it happen Sega!!!

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Steam.

Monthly active users: Steam has 132 million monthly active users.

Daily users: 69 million people use Steam every day.

Concurrent players: In January 2023, Steam had 33 million peak concurrent players.

That’s pretty definitive?

In the video, they do mention that Steams Wishlist conversion rate has dropped pretty drastically over the last few years. That could be a cause for concern.

 

[Sooner]

Awesome hour and ten minute long podcast with Ben Feder (former CEO of Take Two) and Ken Wee (former CSO of Activision Blizzard King) about the future of the gaming industry. They basically discuss the platform advantages and disadvantages of the four platforms listed in the title (Sony, Microsoft, Valve, Roblox). Refreshing to hear from people who don't think or say "Xbox dead!" Put your headphones on and go mow the lawn NeoGAF, you can thank me later.





"Do you think subscription services work for the modern market and the way players play games today?" (timestamp)




"Is there anything you think Xbox should be doing differently?" (timestamp)




"How can Sony navigate their continually rising production costs? Is GAAS their solve?"

No thank you.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This podcast is great. I know a few people here were talking about the Chinese market after the success of Wukong. Here's a great discussion on it from a few weeks before Wukong released.

 

[poppabk]

Roblox should be afraid of Fortnite. Epic Games literally said "Let's do Roblox but way better."

Yeah not having fortnite in the discussion seems a bit short sighted.

 

[Barakov]

Awesome hour and ten minute long podcast with Ben Feder (former CEO of Take Two) and Ken Wee (former CSO of Activision Blizzard King) about the future of the gaming industry. They basically discuss the platform advantages and disadvantages of the four platforms listed in the title (Sony, Microsoft, Valve, Roblox). Refreshing to hear from people who don't think or say "Xbox dead!" Put your headphones on and go mow the lawn NeoGAF, you can thank me later.





"Do you think subscription services work for the modern market and the way players play games today?" (timestamp)




"Is there anything you think Xbox should be doing differently?" (timestamp)




"How can Sony navigate their continually rising production costs? Is GAAS their solve?"

Anybody but Roblox.

 

[GigaBowser]

switch 150 millions xbox series 20 millions king

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I think what we're seeing is a poor analysis of the market and maybe more importantly the timing of the market.

Cloud is really important and Microsoft in theory has advantage there, but by most measures Sony's cloud strategy is actually further along than Microsoft's at the moment and when the Portal becomes Cloud enabled, Sony will surely have beaten Microsoft to the punch on a cloud based player, which will be a precursor to a cloud based console.

A cloud based console may actually make more sense than a cloud based handheld.

Moving forward, Sony uniquely has better position than Microsoft and Valve to enter several sectors of gaming.

Company	Strong in Hardware	Strong in Original Content	Strong in Platform
Sony	Yes	Yes	Yes
Microsoft	No	No*	Yes*
Nintendo	Yes	Yes	No
Valve	No	No	Yes

Sony is the only company that can presently put out a console, a handheld, a cloud player, a cloud console, a successful array of first party content, and is backed by a strong platform for online sales. They can extend their platform to handheld and PC.

Microsoft will largely lose their platform advantage when they move to PC. They'll be starting from scratch almost. And they're still entirely behind Nvidia when it comes to Cloud.

Nintendo is strong when it comes to hardware, but their ability to draw core gamers at the numbers that even Microsoft has accomplished is completely suspect and their platform is largely non-existent beyond a basic storefront.

Valve has a monopoly in the PC space, but that's essentially all it has. It doesn't make enough of its own games to drive hardware or its platform, let alone extend it to other forms of hardware.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I think what we're seeing is a poor analysis of the market and maybe more importantly the timing of the market.

Cloud is really important and Microsoft in theory has advantage there, but by most measures Sony's cloud strategy is actually further along than Microsoft's at the moment and when the Portal becomes Cloud enabled, Sony will surely have beaten Microsoft to the punch on a cloud based player, which will be a precursor to a cloud based console.

A cloud based console may actually make more sense than a cloud based handheld.

Moving forward, Sony uniquely has better position than Microsoft and Valve to enter several sectors of gaming.

Company	Strong in Hardware	Strong in Original Content	Strong in Platform
Sony	Yes	Yes	Yes
Microsoft	No	No*	Yes*
Nintendo	Yes	Yes	No
Valve	No	No	Yes

Sony is the only company that can presently put out a console, a handheld, a cloud player, a cloud console, a successful array of first party content, and is backed by a strong platform for online sales. They can extend their platform to handheld and PC.

Microsoft will largely lose their platform advantage when they move to PC. They'll be starting from scratch almost. And they're still entirely behind Nvidia when it comes to Cloud.

Nintendo is strong when it comes to hardware, but their ability to draw core gamers at the numbers that even Microsoft has accomplished is completely suspect and their platform is largely non-existent beyond a basic storefront.

Valve has a monopoly in the PC space, but that's essentially all it has. It doesn't make enough of its own games to drive hardware or its platform, let alone extend it to other forms of hardware.

Stahp!

Acting like Microsoft doesn't have insanely strong "original content" going forward is base fanboy drivel. Both former CEO's in the original video reference how strong Microsoft is in this area. We must fight against this low level nonsense that only exists in the gutters of games discussion.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fthe-new-xbox-first-party-organisation-v0-ql6nneb35ztb1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D89d220472a06010cb98840eb791ef035b27caec0

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Stahp!

Acting like Microsoft doesn't have insanely strong "original content" going forward is base fanboy drivel. Both former CEO's in the original video reference how strong Microsoft is in this area. We must fight against this low level nonsense that only exists in the gutters of games discussion.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fthe-new-xbox-first-party-organisation-v0-ql6nneb35ztb1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D89d220472a06010cb98840eb791ef035b27caec0

This is simply not true.

Microsoft has essentially no IP of value outside of ABK and Zenimax, and the combination of ABK and Zenimax does not put Microsoft on the same level as Sony, Nintendo, or even T2.

The most valuable IP for Zenimax is Elder's Scrolls and Fallout. Both franchises take them an extremely long time to produce and the quality is already deeply in question after Starfield.

There is this idea that quantity is the same as quality, but it just isn't true.

Look at the output from Microsoft in the last year with Hellblade that was hyped up just as much as Indiana Jones. Does MachineGames have this massive track record of putting out hits? Does an Indiana Jones game in 1st person make a lot of sense? No. This game is going to be mid.

Outside of CoD which they can't make exclusive on any platform for a decade, they don't have a single killer app on the horizon. Not a single one.

Put a list together of Microsoft's top 10 upcoming games and tell me how many of those games are likely to sell more than 10 million units.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This is simply not true.

Microsoft has essentially no IP of value outside of ABK and Zenimax, and the combination of ABK and Zenimax does not put Microsoft on the same level as Sony, Nintendo, or even T2.

The most valuable IP for Zenimax is Elder's Scrolls and Fallout. Both franchises take them an extremely long time to produce and the quality is already deeply in question after Starfield.

There is this idea that quantity is the same as quality, but it just isn't true.

Look at the output from Microsoft in the last year with Hellblade that was hyped up just as much as Indiana Jones. Does MachineGames have this massive track record of putting out hits? Does an Indiana Jones game in 1st person make a lot of sense? No. This game is going to be mid.

Outside of CoD which they can't make exclusive on any platform for a decade, they don't have a single killer app on the horizon. Not a single one.

Put a list together of Microsoft's top 10 upcoming games and tell me how many of those games are likely to sell more than 10 million units.

Stop. My brother in Christ, just stop.

Minecraft is bigger than PlayStations biggest IP.
Call of Duty is bigger than PlayStation 2nd biggest IP.
World of Warcraft is bigger than PlayStations 3rd biggest IP.
Elder Scrolls is bigger than PlayStations 4th biggest IP.

Overwatch, Diablo, Fallout, Doom, Gears of War, Halo...I'm sorry my dude, Microsoft doesn't have an IP or game production disadvantage anymore. If you're going to attack them, attack the hardware.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Stop. My brother in Christ, just stop.

Minecraft is bigger than PlayStations biggest IP.

Minecraft does not sell hardware or boost platforms.

Call of Duty is bigger than PlayStation 2nd biggest IP.

CoD is multiplatform for at least a decade since signing the contract.

World of Warcraft is bigger than PlayStations 3rd biggest IP.

WoW does not sell hardware or boost platforms.

Elder Scrolls is bigger than PlayStations 4th biggest IP.

No clue how well a modern Elder's Scrolls will play and it isn't likely to drop for another 5+ years...

Overwatch, Diablo, Fallout, Doom, Gears of War, Halo...I'm sorry my dude, Microsoft doesn't have an IP or game production disadvantage anymore. If you're going to attack them, attack the hardware.

None of these games push hardware or platforms. You know this, but you're ignoring that reality for... reasons...

Halo Infinite was not a success. Doom hasn't been a major FPS in decades even with Doom Eternal. Gears of War hasn't been relevant since Epic left the franchise. Diablo isn't going to come out with a new game in 5+ years. Overwatch is already dying... Fallout is also YEARS away...