Sony Q3 earnings call: Plan to release 10 live service games by 2026
Kagey K
Banned
I agree the ship now, patch later design philosophy is a problem and being used as a crutch for too many devs, but that is not exclusive to GAAS games.
iHaunter
Member
Not exclusive, but far more predominant in GAAS games. Straight up SP not GAAS games like GoW, Returnal, R&C, etc. did not have this problem.
But if you look at Halo Infinite, it's clear the game is not even remotely complete. Would this still be the case if it was not a GAAS that's going to have paid content patches later? Would they have delayed it another year to get more content out?
Leyasu
Banned
They will. Single player experiences fit just fine on a sub service
Kagey K
Banned
There are plenty of single player games that have this problem. Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, R&C, Red Dead Redemption all had bugs and needed patched.
There are very few games that ship and never get patched, doesn't matter if they are single player or multiplayer.
There are far more things that can go wrong or are overlooked in QA that players find in multiplayer games than single player ones though.
iHaunter
Member
I'm not talking about bugs, I'm talking about incomplete content that was taken out to be brought back in later. Cyberpunk is the only one in recent memory I can think that had this problem. Again I'm talking about "Content" not "Bugs."
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
GAAS: Planting a seed and watching the gardener care for it as it grows into a mighty Oak.
Traditional AAA:
Traditional AAA:
lastmessiah
Member
Heh? MP games are much harder to make than SP.
Kagey K
Banned
That's a silly argument, single player games are meant to be played through and left behind, multiplayer is meant to keep you on the treadmill, so it needs new content constantly.
This is like comparing a movie and a tv show, one of them has a set story to tell in the time allotted, the other has to tell the story over the course of the season.
We also have no way to quantify if the content being released as DLC for single player games is cut content, to be brought in later or not.
We will have to wait and see what the first Single Player GAAS is before we can draw any conclusions.
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Yes.
I think they said $5 mil a day
StreetsofBeige
Member
Every game studio knows where the money is. GAAS. Thats why Sony paid a lot of money for Bungie, whose only work the past 8 years is Destiny.
Sony's mobile game Fate Grand Order (which they bought out the dev) makes around $1B per year I think. I remember a chart posted on GAF way back and this game had made something like $3B since it came out. That blows past any Spiderman or LoU. Even if these 20 million copy sellers all sold at full price and all digital copies where Sony gets 100% of revenue, you're talking just over $1B. That mobile game has made tons more and its dev cost is a fraction of a ND game.
It looks like Sony is trying their luck again like the PS3 days shotgunning a ton of MP focused games and hoping something sticks.
They dont need all of them succeeding. Just a couple of them being a giant GAAS game will be success.
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lastmessiah
Member
I don't know why people here worship SP games so much. What was the last SP game that moved the medium forward in any way? It is always the same shit - move through some environment and easily dispatch enemies with primitive AI scripting, follow the marker on your map to the next location, trigger cut scene, rinse and repeat. If you "accomplish" something in a SP game, did it even actually happen? Or was it all in your head? What difference does it make?
These games simply can't match the dynamics of real human intelligence competing against each other. And I suspect that's why GAF hates them so much - they just suck at competing so run to games that ask nothing of them.
These games simply can't match the dynamics of real human intelligence competing against each other. And I suspect that's why GAF hates them so much - they just suck at competing so run to games that ask nothing of them.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
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AmuroChan
Member
It surpassed $4 Billion as of January 2020. That's a full 2 years ago. So more likely it's close to $5 billion now.
Fate/Grand Order just passed $4 billion in revenue
Fate/Grand Order was one of the highest-grossing free-to-play games of 2019, though it may be a less familiar title if …
www.gamesindustry.biz
Kokoloko85
Member
Sometimes its about story or gaming mechanics. I cant remember the last time a MP moved the medium forward. Or did something different to shooting each other….? Now you build things to climb up to shoot each other…. Wow!
Id rather play something like Bloodborne and Pikmin than Fortnite or COD
People just prefer different things
lastmessiah
Member
Just as one example, Among Us is a MP game with unique mechanics that could never be delivered in a SP game.
ZywyPL
Banned
You must have missed the entire PS3 gen where most of their games had robust MP, and some liek Res2 were literally a poor CoD copy-paste. Sony already wanted to jump on the bandwagon looong time ago, but they failed to establish any meaningful community and ultimately settled for SP-only games, but as they said again and again, this kind of model doesn't work anymore, the cost to profit ratio is simply way too high, so they want to yet again try to join the MP party, and Fortnite has nothing to do with it. It has a large userbase sure, but it also followed suit the already established market trends, which as I said, started with CoD, specifically with MW2 which not only single-handedly raised the games price to 60$ for the rest of the gen and broke all possible records while doing so, but also showed that you can sell people just a few maps for 15$, that single game, that moment was when all the gaming world took notice and publishers realized that MP and post-launch content is where you can make absurd money for little to no input, and they started doing exactly that. In a similar way, Sony realized that MS has been charging money for P2P online for entire two generations, getting free money for nothing, and Sony decided to do exactly the same with PS4. So long story short, Sony is just yet again seriously late to the party and is playing the catch-up game.
And no offence, but Sony would be foolish to even dream about Fortnite's numbers, first baby step into the MP/GaaS business would be IMO something like 2-3M playerbase year after launch, because there's no GaaS if there's no community just months afer launch. UC4 sold in 15M copies, and how many people were still playing the game by the end of the same year? Exactly, barely anyone remembered the game anymore. Granted, some games may seem dead shortly after launch, only to make an outstanding comeback and skyrocket in popularity, we saw that multiple of times times already, but that needs patience, time, and faith, and I don't think Sony has any of it, not under Ryan who after one or two quarterly reports will most likely cut the game off and move the whole dev team onto something new, and you just can't establish any long-lasting MP franchise with such approach, and buying Bungie won't fix that. The other issue is that Sony's devs simply lack the expertise in MP field, which again, they openly admitted recently when acquiring Bungie - all of the devs who got into this whole MP/GaaS model during PS360 gen have learned the hard way, years after years how to be really good at it, for example back in the PS360 days just a simple patch took at least a week to implement because the patches had to go through Sony's/MS' QA processes, and again, it was IW and CoD who figured out how to deploy hotfixes on the fly, the very same day, without the need to send anything to Sony and MS, and again, everyone else copied this solution. Whereas Sony's approach? Delay. Just... delay everything. Bugs? Delay. Matchmaking issues? Delay. Party crashes? Delay. Now, at the end of the day, after those 5-6 years or so you do get this perfectly polished game that doesn't even need a day one patch, but that's just not how a live service works, you have to be be able to act right here, right, otherwise gamers will eat you alive and move onto the competition's product and won't give you a second chance when the sequel arrives. That's why BF is able to stay afloat after its disastrous launches - DICE just constantly keeps working on them no matter how much people on the internet shit on them, and at the end of the day the results do the talking. Post-launch content isn't the greatest on Sony's side either, they basically drop a single DLC for their games and that's it, feels like they never really have any plans for long lasting support for their games to begin with, just this one add-on soon after launch while the game is still hot.
So all in all, I think this generation will be a really tough test for Sony and their studios, like yeah their consoles will sell, yeah their SP games will sell, but if they want to expand into multiplatform publishing, MP games, GaaS model, online services, they have a lot to learn, while the time to learn was 15 years ago already... Many more experienced teams in the online field have tried to chase the online/GaaS craze but have fallen, and Sony that's been stuck in SP, TPP melee-based story-driven games is so far behind everyone else I honestly cannot wait for their first MP-oriented game to show up, to see how it does. Seems like Factions2 will be that game.
Dick Jones
Banned
World of Knackcraft bay-bee.
Here comes the money.
Obligatory: Knack is not as bad and people claim and Knack 2 is legitimately a good game.
What sort of condescending post is this? You make it sound like the people on CoD are out there playing chess. Ironically computers are just as competitive as humans at chess too. Most people play these games because they ask nothing of them. They play Dark souls and single player games on difficult settings for the challenge.Seriously, I kinda enjoyed knack 1 and 2 and the simple button masher kid friendly games they are.
Sarcastically, GIVE ME MY $25 RAINBOW UNICORN GOD OF WAR NFT SKIN NOW DAMNIT
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
I suspect Sony views Fortnite as a paradigm shift in game design. I don't think they viewed Call of Duty the same way. A lot of BR haters just view it as a multiplayer fad that's like all of the other multiplayer games they don't like. In reality, it's a completely different animal than Call of Duty, which is essentially a highly polished, twitch based arena shooter. The market has been congested with those since the original Quake.
Brenden Greene, the father of BR, was asked what makes BR so popular and his answer was telling.
"It allows players to play how they want."
Fortnite, Battle Royale, and survival games represent a Eureka moment for design. These games and genres attract a much wider audience than people who just want to arena shoot eachother to death...which is why Fortnite is so much bigger, and has much better legs than any traditional CoD multiplayer ever released.
So the whole "Sony tried multiplayer with the PS3 therefore they can't do it" doesn't hold any water. Especially when you consider how many left field hits by small developers show up in the multiplayer space every year.
Kokoloko85
Member
Tbh your right, theres probably lots of MP with unique and good gameplay. Just personally I love SP games, It works both ways I guess.
I put about 1k hours in destiny, loads of hours into zombies cod, stardew valley, minecraft online etc. I have probably missed loads more MP games but overall I liked SP games more and I cant get an experience like fire emblems 3houses, dark souls, zelda as a MP. I like coop in Bloodborne tho
ZywyPL
Banned
CoD also has Warzone, which is also one of the most popular BR games out there. But the genre was basically created solely thanks to PUBG, which started as a DayZ mod to Arma 2, then as H1Z1 mod to DayZ, and then its final incarnation we all know, the game skyrocket with tens of millions of players, Epic then copied the idea into Fortnite (which PUBG sued them for) and it also saw an immense playerbase growth, and the rest is just history, ever since everyone desperately tries to jump onto the BR bandwagon, which honestly, doesn't work out at all, aside the mentioned two giants there's also just Apex and Warzone that got into the game, everything else dies pretty much immediately.
I think there's this whole misconception of BR being a separate genre, while in reality it's just a single game mode, just like like TDM, CTD, S&D, except offered as a standalone game. So as oppose to standard model where a game has multiple modes so that everyone will find something for themselves, with BR you have just one shot, and if you don't hit the mark it's over, the game instantly dies, like Ubisoft's Hyper Scape - one would've thought that a company like Ubisoft that's been doing GaaS since forever, that has one of the most popular FPS currently that is R6 will easily tap into BR space, but it couldn't be any further from the truth as we saw.
So while yes, Sony obviously wants to get into GaaS, to have as many people subbed to PS+ as possible, to sell a new DLC every few months and MTX every single day, but I don't think BR is what they're looking forward to, being LTTP has this advantage that you already saw others trials and errors, and the results pretty much speak for themselves - people don't really want to play BR, they want to play Fortnite, there's just something in it that makes it fun and attracts this many people. And even aside that, it's not about BR even to begin with, but about games being F2P, THAT's what attracts tens of millions of people in the first place, the ability to try it out for free and continue playing it for free if you like it. LoL is even bigger than Fortnite, by tens of millions, and it wouldn't be the case if the game wasn't free in the first place. And if CoD was F2P it'd surpass every other shooter out there within a week, 100M players just like that, then even more and more, it would be the biggest game of all times easily, but that's exactly the point - it doesn't have to, because tens of millions still buy it every single year regardless, that's just how strong the franchise is, it makes a fortune on pre-orders alone before the game even launches, then there are physical copies, and then all those people still keep spending money on DLC and MTX.
So like I said, Factions 2 will most likely be the first game to show where Sony is going with their online/GaaS plans - will the game be F2P for everyone, will it be put behind PS+ sub, will it be a free add-on for those who bought TLoU2, or will they charge 70$ for it because why not.
Dry_Kill_Logic_87
Member
this is the news I've been waiting since ps4 days. good thing is they said 10 games. so we know a lot of mp games are coming to us Playstation players.
Warhawk and Battlefield BC2 are my favorite multiplayer games but I also loved Resistance 3 and Killzone SF multiplayer.
Sony studios have learned a lot since ps3 days so it's exiting to me that Insomniac and GG have multiplayer games in development.
also, I love car combat games so new Twisted Metal is great for me. guys at Deviation Games sound confident and exited and they
are veterans so I doubt they can make a bad mp game
Warhawk and Battlefield BC2 are my favorite multiplayer games but I also loved Resistance 3 and Killzone SF multiplayer.
Sony studios have learned a lot since ps3 days so it's exiting to me that Insomniac and GG have multiplayer games in development.
also, I love car combat games so new Twisted Metal is great for me. guys at Deviation Games sound confident and exited and they
are veterans so I doubt they can make a bad mp game
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
What BR games have failed? PUBG followed H1Z1 and turned into a hit. Fortnite followed PUBG and turned into a hit. Apex Legends followed Fortnite and turned into a hit. Blackout followed Apex Legends and turned into a hit. Warzone followed Blackout and turned into a hit.
The only BR flop was HyperScape and maybe that Battlefield BR.
Can you name another genre where 6 out of 8 entries become booming successes? This whole "HyperScape died so BR is over" sentiment doesn't make any sense. HyperScape more likely died because it tried to arena shooterfy a genre that was the antidote to arena shooters.
This always puzzled me. Why is BR now "late to the party" despite having a consistent hit rate, while older genres can elude this label despite miss after miss?
Almost all multiplayer games are "one shot" games...in fact almost all games are like this. If you don't find a sizeable audience at release it's near impossible to climb back from. That's a hurdle every game has to deal with.
I will say, the longer I play BR the more interested in the survival genre I get. If I had to bet, the next big multiplayer game has a good chance at being a AAA survival game.
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SoloKingRobert
Banned
So here we are... the part where "gaas trash" becomes good now.
I know someone is going to crack out all the quotes soon enough lol
KingGhidorah
Banned
Admit it, sometimes you just gotta be thankful that Nintendo 7-8 years behind everyone else
kingfey
Banned
Nintendo would follow the suite soon. They wont stay behind these money printing machines.
3liteDragon
Member
As long as this doesn't affect their SP output, I'm fine with it.
KingGhidorah
Banned
Put it this way, PS3 still had better online service than the Switch
JimRyanGOAT
Member
Warzone started off great
But Activision's greed got in the way and they fucked it up
But the core gameplay is still great, thats why its so popular
Hitchyhero
Banned
But they are all good now!So Sony is now doing everything that GAF hates like Multiplatform release & GAAS & Game Pass competitor
In all seriousness I don't mind GAAS games but that would be overload. I get why Sony needed Bungie expertise in GAAS now.
I prefer MS way of making money. I think gamepass allows traditional games to still be made with good profits if the numbers are surprising. Sony seems to be chasing the money of GAAS but I rarely buy DLC/Addons or cosmetics. I don't like to continually buy things for one game.
kingfey
Banned
They dont have the infrastructure like Sony and MS do. That is what makes those 2 online service great.
HundredThousandTrillion
Member
Sounds like a company that's finally seen the future of gaming is multiplayer and streamed. Microsoft has know this for years now.
Scrambling.
And they are doing it with Azure without the in house expertise Microsoft has with Azure (beyond what they are willing to share).
Good luck.
Scrambling.
And they are doing it with Azure without the in house expertise Microsoft has with Azure (beyond what they are willing to share).
Good luck.
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lastmessiah
Member
That and a company about to lose their primary revenue source.
kingfey
Banned
You are on time limit with those MP games. If you are late by 1 year, you lose the money.
Alot of hero shooter games died. Now its BR mode. Soon, it will be destiny type of game.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I was thinking they'll probably have 2 or 3 that are decent hits, but no MEGA hit.
Dolomite
Member
*Reactively
yurinka
Member
Yes. GaaS are those who ,F2P or not, get many updates with new paid, unlockable or free content, features, tweaks and fixes post launch for a long period of time where they keep evolving and expanding. Typically all F2P games are GaaS. Games that get only a handlful of DLCs aren't GaaS.
Fortnite, Rocket League, Apex Legends, Destiny, League of Legends, Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Grand Theft Auto Online, Gran Turismo Sport, Minecraft, CoD Warzone, Halo Infinite, Sea of Thieves, Killer Instinct, Street Fighter V or the upcoming Forza Motorsport are examples of GaaS.
Like games as a product, the ones designed to don't have a post launch support and that don't receive big changes other the addition of maybe a handful dlcs, they may be released in a very polished, fullfeatured and complete state, or as a half baked incomplete bugfest.
Well, there will be part of the top staff from Destiny, Halo (the best ones), Call of Dutty Black Ops, Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin's Creed, Apex Legends, Naughty Dog or Guerrilla to name a few working on them, and with SIE funding, marketing, backing and supporting them all.
I'd say at least two thirds of them will be decent hits and at least 2 or 3 will be MEGA hits.
Azure has nothing to do with this. It's like saying Sony uses Windows, or that MS surely have Sony tvs or that their phones use Sony cameras, or something like that. Azure is only one of many tools/services they use, and they could use the same product from another brand. In this case it's only a website to manage their servers. In the same way that Photoshop is anotther tool, in this case for drawing or editing 2D images. They may use Photoshop if they decide so, or they could use another one or to make their own if desired. Same goes with hundreds of tools, apps, hardware and services they use to do their work.
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yurinka
Member
Because Sony doesn't have the knowledge, expertise, tools, data and specially success Bungie has on GaaS.
Killer Instinct, Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, Fallout 76, Elder Scrolls Online, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Heartstone, Heroes of the Storm, CoD Warzone, Halo Infinite, or the upcoming Forza Motorsport are examples of GaaS. Most active top MS IPs are GaaS.
The main revenue source for SIE is the PS software, and the big portion of it itt's the3rd party revenue sold in PS. And the majority of it is from DLC/MTX/season passes from GaaS games. So GaaS is one of the main reasons of why Sony is the top 2 company in gaming revenue only after Tencent and the biggest console platform holder in revenue and active userbase.
Sony will continue focusing on their traditional non-GaaS games, remember that before Bungie they had over 25 games under development, and after adding Bungie (so Destiny 2 and their multiple upcoming new IP) only 10 of these upcoming games seem to be GaaS. So non GaaS games will continue being the majority of Sony games. They simply are growing and trying to improve in new types of games (like MP or GaaS) on top of the ones they already were frequently making (they already had MP or GaaS).
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mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
What GaaS games would you consider a mega hit today?
yurinka
Member
Some examples using recent rankings:
From the list of 2021 top grossing games on Steam:
-Apex Legends
-PUBG
-CS GO
-Destiny 2
-New World
-DOTA 2
-GTA Online
-Dead by Deadlight
Adding non-Steam top grossing (more than any Steam game) PC games:
-League of Legends
-Dungeon Fighter Online
-Roblox
Adding more from the list of top PSN 2021 games (top F2P):
-Fortnite
-CoD Warzone
-Rocket League
-Genshin Impact
Adding some more from the list of top selling PSN 2021 games:
-FIFA
-NBA 2K
-CoD
-AC
-RDR2
-Minecraft
-MK 11
And adding obviously some top grossing mobile games that if we don't count previously mentioned ones or their mobile adaptations:
-Honor of Kings
-Candy Crush Saga
-Pokemon Go
-Lineage W
-Fate/Grand Order
-Garena Free Fire
-Pokemon Go
-Some other top ones that this month weren't in this chart like the ones from Supercell
As a reference for these mobile games, consider that Fate/Order almost is out of the rankings but is generating $1B+/year to Sony, so pretty likely all the other ones on these top grossing mobile games ranking must be generating more.
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