Making a ton of money =/= customer satisfaction.
They're in for a world of hurt if they fail to recognize that.
They have record levels of money, user engagement, user satisfaction and brand image. But opinions are like asses, each one has their own one. Meaning even if most people is happy and they have more happy people they ever had, independently of thatever they do there will be somebody not happy.
Like those who expect Sony to release 12 GOTYs per year and obviously all of them single player and PS5 only, with no PC port and not being crossgen. Something not realistic and not sustainable considering the market conditions.
I mean, in theory at least, after the cancelled GAAS push all of the first parties should be working on late gen PS5 games or PS6 games at this point.
They didn't cancel the GaaS push, their plan to release GaaS of a dozen IPs continues. They already did put in the market since then GaaS of MLB, GT, Firewall, Destiny, Concord, Helldivers, Midnight Murder Club, and soonish Marathon, Convallaria and Marvel Tokon. Plus later Fairgame$, Horizon Online,
gummy bears and who knows if some other one more.
Last quarter 40% of their first party revenue was made by GaaS. Which will increase with releases like Destiny Rising, Marathon or Marvel Tokon.
But yes, all first parties are working on PS5 -both new or supporting already released ones- or PS6 (I assume all of them crossgen) games.
I've had a PS5 since 2021 and played a lot of great games though.
Yes less of them came from Sony than on PS4 but that's not really the way people enjoy their consoles, or even the PC, only based on exclusives.
Yep, like every generation AAA games take longer and more expensive to be made, so each time required more time to release their games. This means, even if Sony (or any other AAA publisher/dev team) has now more teams and way more workers, still released less games and had to focus more in having better average quality than in quantity.
Even beyond exclusives (independently if crossgen or not, or if console or full exclusives), or also great multiplatform games, I had a way better experience with PS5 than with PS4 due to unexpected reason: loading and downloading times.
PSN store and menus in general are blazing fast now when they were very sluggish. Same goes when downloading, installing, updating or loading times. In many cases it was a pain in the ass in PS4, while now in PS5 is super quick.
It seems a small detail but when you have many games and switch from one to another frequently it's very helpful.
I think PS6 will do worst than PS5 if they don't deliver a decent amount of AAA PS6 exclusive games out the gate.
People got burned by the cross gen stuff with the PS5 so if they try that again the sells will tank out the gate.
PS5 AAA games cost on average around $300M, and the PS6 ones will be more expensive because every generation they get more expensive. And they want to have a profitable business. In addition to this, exclusives are a very small part of the console game sales.
Meaning, they aren't stupid and won't make a >$300M game exclusive for a console with 0 installbase. Very likely they'll make all PS6 games crossgen with PS5 and sooneer or (less likely) later they'll release all of them in PC and (to play them on PC or smart tvs) cloud.
But aside from this, Xbox consoles will be extinct soon. Which means many games that before were Xbox console exclusives or were only available for Xbox and PS at least in consoles, now will be either full PS exclusives or PS console exclusives.
And well, in addition to consider that most game revenue doesn't come from exclusives in any platform other than Nintendo (basically because 3rd party sales are weaker there than in the other platforms), we also have to consider that Sony will continue growing their brand outside PS, which means new fans will continue joining PS as they are doing in the PS generation.
Sony will release way more off-gaming adaptations than they do now, both in existing formats (movies, tv shows, anime) and new ones. They will continue investing more in deals plus PC and mobile releases to grow specially fastest growing markets like China, Korea, India, Middle East and in the future Latin America and some regions of Africa.
And after their GaaS + PC push is complete once I assume when they release their PC PSN store, they'll start a similar push to grow in mobile gaming and portables.
They'll reach new users through all these areas and primarly will monetize them there, but a part of them will also end buying a PS home console. Like the Xbox refugees that already didn't do it and won't want to move to PC, consolized PCs or portables.
Meaning, very likely PS6 will perform better than PS5, specially if there isn't something like covid that heavily damage its sales during a long period.
Yea, Sony ain't going back. PlayStation gamers have proved they don't buy enough games anymore to justify the size and scope of the projects they produce. If you want your games to be exclusive, you need to recalibrate your expectations for first party games so the budgets can be more manageable to account for exclusivity again.
PlayStation gamers on average buy more games, spend more money in games, and spend more time playing than in any previous generation. And most Sony teams sold more than ever with their most recent game.
But the increase in AAA costs has been way bigger than that. So they need to do stuff like crossgen and PC ports. Even with the very successful ones, because they also subsidize a % of games that -as always happened in all game companies since the 70s- either get cancelled or tank in sales, risk that keeps getting higher as game budgets and dev times keep heavily increasing every generation.