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Sony's plan to compete with Xbox: Stay the course

Klayzer

Member
PS Now has a way bigger catalog for both download and stream, streams on console and the PC streaming works better (maybe because xCloud is still on beta). This week PS Now should start supporting 1080p and already had 60fps support.

Other than getting day one games, the $1 deal, PS Now still not available on mobile, including EA Play, 360 gen downloads on console and downloads on PC (which are important cool things), all the other things are better on PS Now.


Like Microsoft, Sony also has 2 game rental services.

Combined they have more subscribers and generate more money than the MS ones, and very likely unlike the MS service they are profitable because even if MS signed several hundreds of games less, they include more and bigger day one games there, which is way, way more expensive. And because the % of subscribers paying a full subscription must be way higher on Sony side.


No, it was a good decision. Now their games sell more, get better reviews and win more awards. They focus their resources where they shine, so their games are better and they are more productive and profitable.

Regarding MP they made strategic partnerships with the top MP devs (Fortnite, CoD, GTA, FIFA, Destiny, Rocket League, Fall Guys...) to make sure PS secures their marketing, make sure their PS version doesn't suck and in some of them they get some kind of exclusive stuff even if it's a minor thing.

And well, Sony miks 30% of every game/DLC/IAP sale they make. We saw almost half of Fornite revenue is made on PS, which means this 30% is a ton of money with no work required from Sony 1st party teams.

So as of now Sony is making a ton of money from MP games (pretty likely more than ever), and Sony is making more money than ever from their 1st party games. So they don't need to make MP games or to include MP games on their games.

If they do it, it may be a good plus but before doing it they must make sure that to include MP on their games doesn't mean the single player games will be half assed because they have to include a MP nobody asked for and nobody is going to play 3 months after release, and they also must make sure that if they make MP only games they are good enough to make sure enough people buys and plays them during a long enough period, or at least that the game doesn't suffers if only a tiny amount of passionate fans keep playing it.


For sure Sony will continue to be competitive. They are the clear market leader in all metrics: selling consoles, selling games, amount of exclusives, amount of awards these exclusive earn, sales of these exclusives, selling game subscriptions, selling VR on console and more importantly: making money both for the overall division and from every one of these areas. They are even breaking gaming history records in many of these areas.

And they plan to increase the amount exclusives they have, to basically double the 1st party development staff this year, to make huge investments on 2nd party and are working to get even more support from Japanese 3rd party companies even if basically of them had some exclusive on PS4.

Microsoft is behind them in all the areas. Microsoft is the one who should improve their business strategy to catch up Sony, not the opposite. This is why they spent over $10B purchasing studios, publish all their games on PC day one and even almost give away all their games day one trying to get some attention. They seem to be improving, but still are way behind Sony, who is in a growing trend.
An absolute thesis on whats actually going on. Respect
 
You know nothing about the game but your telling me it will be great?
Well, yes because it is Bethesda's game. It is like expecting Creation Engine and modding:messenger_bicep:

The fun thing is that those "concerns" about the game started to appear only when MS bought Bethesda. Before, nobody doubted possible success of Starfield. Now suddenly - don't know what to expect, Bethesda's games are not good etc.
 
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Bergoglio

Member
Cool story. I'm missing aliens and dinosaurs, though.


If you think XBOX is gonna produce 5-6 AAA games per year for Gamepass, keep dreaming.


Nintendo and Sony are well off with their current strategies. Microsoft can only bring down prices to a ridiculous extent before getting sued for dumping. There exists something called anti-monopoly laws.


Microsoft DOESNT EVEN HAVE THE BEST F2P GAME today. Geshin Impact, in case you don't know.


The industry is never led by the third horse in the race. Never ever. No matter how much effort these troll business articles put into it.
I can’t understand why Sony fanboy are frightened of new ideas and perspective. Change is hard, but sometimes it’s necessary.
 

yurinka

Member
But in two different sectors. Microsoft isn't competing in straight sales/profits with their software. They are competing in growth market. Sony is going for quality of titles over having a giant list/library to play a bunch of games that range all over the place in quality.

Until they start putting out bangers, thats are selling ton on PC, xbox they will always be competing in different sectors.

Playstation's goal for their software at this time, is based on purely on the quality of their output. XBox even with their purchased studios even when they launch a 90+ metacritic darling, their goal is not the notoriety, it's how many subs does that game garner and active users.
PlayStation has a bigger size and is growing more. Regarding the quantity, PS4 had a bigger library of games, and is the console that sold more games in gaming history. PS Now has around 900 games. If you go to check the list of exclusives in Gematsu, PS4 had way more than XBO, and PS5 has way more released and announced than Series X|S. And Jimbo said they will have even more exclusives than before.

I mean, PlayStation also has more quantity, and will continue having more quantity. Regarding the amount of subs or active users, they don't mean anything if you don't monetize them because what it's really important is the total amount of money you generate with them and Sony generates way more than MS and is in a multi year long growing trend. Don't forget PlayStation has over 100 MAU and almost half of them (more if you remove secondary accounts on each console) are subscribed to Plus or Now.
 

Interfectum

Member
Your putting too much faith into unproven teams. It took Sony years to generations upon generations to have the kind of synergy that they currently have. And the road wasn't smooth, we lost some great developers in the process. Some of which didn't deserve to be closed in my opinion.

But currently their teams are firing on all cylinders. And their long standing relationships with people like Bluepoint and Housemarque are bearing amazing fruit. Time will tell with Xbox. They are in much better position for sure and software wise the future looks crazy bright. But to write off the market leader who consistently is now the Nintendo of big AAA games is really the dumbest thing I've read.
This is something too nuanced to discuss on a forum like this but you are totally right.

I mean MS can't even get Halo out on time and had to pull in extra help for a developer who has had years of experience and Halo games under their belt. People are assuming these 23 studios are at the some level as Sony's studios but they are years away from this, perhaps a generation away. And it's not like Sony's studios will simply stop evolving as MS is trying to play catchup. I have a feeling the next God of War and Naughty Dog game are going to raise the bar massively.
 
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Dabaus

Banned
I don’t know how easy or hard it would be from a technical side but if Sony really felt like game pass was a threat to their business model they could just combine PS now and PS plus and then have a user base of 50 million right there. Not only that but they could start to package anime and movies as well and they are is a market leader as far as consuls are sold. We’ll just have to see what gets announced this coming summer.
 
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Tg89

Member
I can’t understand why Sony fanboy are frightened of new ideas and perspective. Change is hard, but sometimes it’s necessary.

I think Gamepass is absolutely fantastic.

I love having access to it on PC. It gives me a chance to subscribe cheap a couple months out of the year when there's a lull in other games and I can catch up on a bunch of games that I otherwise wouldn't buy at full price.

That said, I've yet to see a release on Gamepass that rivals the heavy hitter/peak quality games that Sony/Nintendo/other 3rd parties put out. Nothing that (imo) compares to a Bloodborne/BotW/God of War/TLOU2/Witcher 3/Persona 5/Divinity OS2/Resident Evil 2/Dark Souls, etc.

Now, correlation != causation. And I'm not saying those games don't exist on Gamepass because of Gamepass and its business model. But Microsoft is very much not getting that type of output right now. Maybe it's coming, I sure hope so. But maybe it's not. Again, Gamepass is super dope because I can subscribe for cheap and play some games to fill a void, but ultimately the types of games that I look forward to generally aren't there.

Until I see those types of heavy hitters working on a gamepass model, I'm not going to fault anyone else for not following suit. Ultimately I care far more about the handful of heavy hitters than I do the hundreds of middling games. There's also plenty of incredible F2P model games (Counter Strike, Valorant, Dota, Path of Exile, etc) to fill in gaps and that are frankly better value than Gamepass.
 
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Neff

Member
The enormous success and brand loyalty of PS4 (in essence, having an entire generation all to itself), and the pedigree of PlayStation's 'exclusive' IPs are what's carrying PS5 right now.

However they don't have the luxury of MS throwing in the towel like they did last gen. Xbox is baring its fangs and playing hard, half a year into the lifespan of these new consoles. Sony can't afford to simply assume things are going to go the same way they did with PS4. Staying the course would be unwise.
 
Microsoft wasn't really giving the game division their "full" support? What the heck was Microsoft doing throughout the last 20 years, then?
Playing around? Do you really think that that millionaires owning baseball clubs care about the game that much?

You should understand the scale of MS - even in 2000 when the decided to join the market - the question has never been about staying afloat but who's gonna fired if Xbox failed. It was mentioned in the interview that MS would just write off some division, but for the game publisher it would be a death sentence.
Before Azure they were already big enough to throw Xbox under Windows division in Xbox One era. They are that huge.



It seems that you're saying that they were just lollygagging all of this time, and are only now starting to get "serious". We've also heard this talk about 4 years ago, when Microsoft started their developer shopping spree. The narrative at the time was that Microsoft acknowledged that they blew it on software support on the Xbox One, but they would make up for it by having a fabulous slate of launch games ready for their next-generation system. Clearly, they failed at achieving that goal.
Nobody expected COVID. And games take years to make. Since 2017 or (whenever Phil was promoted) it is been like 3-4 years only.

It is like with backwards compatibility - it takes time to see the results of that.

So, when do you suppose Microsoft is really going to take the video game market seriously?
When the start to rollout XCloud with updates blades across the world. There are already deals with some mobile vendors regarding streaming an gaming (in UK and Korea for example).

In general it really feels - according to the rumours - that Sony was prepared to launch Playstation earlier than Xbox. And it feels.
 
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Topher

Identifies as young
LOL@ thread title

It is the same as the article title.

Come On What GIF by MOODMAN
 

Rikkori

Member
NVidia doesn't say a) 10 million subscribers and b) 10 million monthly active users.

Some people really need to learn how to read PR.

You say don't stay stuck in the past, I say don't keep waiting for the future... broheim.
Demand is still demand, whether they pay for the sub or not.

So you guys dont read the things you post?
Of course an headset that release in 2020 will outsell the one that came out in 2016 in 2020
That says 'share'. Guess what that means.

So Geforce had ~10 million PC gamers that tried the Now service for free and a new VR headset takes a big chunk of the 2020 VR marketshare. Nothing you said contradicts my post. I guess the reading comprehension falls back on you now broheim.
Last I checked 10 million is 10 million more than 0 broheim. I accept your surrender though. Don't worry, I'm merciful.
 

Interfectum

Member
Demand is still demand, whether they pay for the sub or not.


That says 'share'. Guess what that means.


Last I checked 10 million is 10 million more than 0 broheim. I accept your surrender though. Don't worry, I'm merciful.

It says 2020 'share' not overall VR marketshare. A new piece of VR hardware sold more in 2020 than an old piece of VR hardware. I mean, cool story?
 

NickFire

Member
The fun thing is that those "concerns" about the game started to appear only when MS bought Bethesda. Before, nobody doubted possible success of Starfield. Now suddenly - don't know what to expect, Bethesda's games are not good etc.
I hope Starfield will be a 95+ average scored game, but that doesn't mean someone is concern trolling if they remember the lessons learned from Anthem and the Avengers. And both lessons were learned far before the acquisition.
 

Tg89

Member
The enormous success and brand loyalty of PS4 (in essence, having an entire generation all to itself), and the pedigree of PlayStation's 'exclusive' IPs are what's carrying PS5 right now.

However they don't have the luxury of MS throwing in the towel like they did last gen. Xbox is baring its fangs and playing hard, half a year into the lifespan of these new consoles. Sony can't afford to simply assume things are going to go the same way they did with PS4. Staying the course would be unwise.

Why is staying the course unwise?

They're the market leader and like you said, they got there with the pedigree of their exclusives.

Nothing so far has indicated that people would rather have a Netflix style package with a lot of okay games as opposed to buy a handful of heavy hitters.

Until that changes, I don't see why Sony should. History has shown that above all else people want high quality games. It's worked for Nintendo, it's working for Sony, it worked for Microsoft during the 360 era.
 
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Ten_Fold

Member
They not even doing the same thing tbh. Xbox seems more all in on Netflix style gaming that’s why they doing Xbox/PC release and trying to make a xcloud firestick.

Sony is doing BIG AAA cannot fail movie type of games, an sell them for $70, yeah they got PSN+ games but mostly those are older games that you can find for like $20 in retail. They are putting ps games on PC but like I said it’s older games, you won’t see day one god of war on ps5/PC like you would halo.

I do think the ps5 will sell much more than the series X, like 100m vs 80m.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
The enormous success and brand loyalty of PS4 (in essence, having an entire generation all to itself), and the pedigree of PlayStation's 'exclusive' IPs are what's carrying PS5 right now.

However they don't have the luxury of MS throwing in the towel like they did last gen. Xbox is baring its fangs and playing hard, half a year into the lifespan of these new consoles. Sony can't afford to simply assume things are going to go the same way they did with PS4. Staying the course would be unwise.

Thing is, Miles morales, and demon souls are charting every time there's more available consoles? Returnal is like #1 on amazon uk/us or top 5 most bought. Ratchet and clank has had the biggest response socially the series has ever seen.

To say that at somepoint going into 2022-2023 it's going to subside or decrease is not what the data we have suggests.
 

yurinka

Member
This is something too nuanced to discuss on a forum like this but you are totally right.

I mean MS can't even get Halo out on time and had to pull in extra help for a developer who has had years of experience and Halo games under their belt. People are assuming these 23 studios are at the some level as Sony's studios but they are years away from this, perhaps a generation away. And it's not like Sony's studios will simply stop evolving as MS is trying to play catchup. I have a feeling the next God of War and Naughty Dog game are going to raise the bar massively.
We also have to consider the new IP thing.

Every generation Sony delivers many 1st/2nd party new IP hits with great sales, reviews or awards. In PS4 we got Horizon, Tsushima, Bloodborne, The Last Guardian, Days Gone, Dreams, Astro, Detroit or even Spider-Man (it isn't a new IP, but it's a new series for them). Even the ones who weren't a big hit have a passionate fan base and are a good base to build super successful sequels just by ironing some flaws they had, or at least have potential to milk these IPs with pc port, movies, tv shows and so on.

To drop many successful new IPs consistently every generation makes them to rely less in old IPs that may fade away and get stagnant. MS adresses it by purchasing studios who own powerful IPs to stuck them milking these IPs. Until now they didn't manage to create a fair amount of iconic new IPs every generation. I think this may change with the acquisition of Zenimax, but let's wait and see because Starfield may be the first one, but also may be a multiplatform game or may be a mess like Fallout 76 was.

They not even doing the same thing tbh. Xbox seems more all in on Netflix style gaming that’s why they doing Xbox/PC release and trying to make a xcloud firestick.

Sony is doing BIG AAA cannot fail movie type of games, an sell them for $70, yeah they got PSN+ games but mostly those are older games that you can find for like $20 in retail. They are putting ps games on PC but like I said it’s older games, you won’t see day one god of war on ps5/PC like you would halo.

I do think the ps5 will sell much more than the series X, like 100m vs 80m.
Sony also has two Netflix style gaming subscriptions like MS. The difference is the Sony ones make more money and are more profitable than the MS ones.

Sony releases way more exclusives and are way more varied and creative than the MS ones. In PS5 in the last half a year or so Sony released stuff like Returnal, Destruction All Stars, Astro, Morales, Demon's Souls, Sackboy and a ton of indies. They are the guys who made big bets not a long time ago on games like Dreams or Death Stranding. MS mostly has on Series X|S The Medium and some indies.

For the remaining 2021 and early 2022 they have announced Ratchet, Guilty Gear Strive, Horizon 2, Ghostwire Tokyo, Deathloop, Kena, Sifu, Stray, GoW, Project Athia/Forspoken, GT7 plus a ton of indies, and very likely will announce a few more in their summer event. MS mostly has Halo and many indies and very likely will announce a few more (I bet Starfield and Horizon 5) in their summer event.

Sony releases more AAA blockbuster exclusive (both published by the or not) games, but also more smaller (and cheaper) exclusive games (published by them or not). In PS4 they already have way more exclusives than Xbox, and Jimbo said that in PS5 they will have more exclusives than ever.

PS4 sold way above 100 consoles and is still selling and PS5 is outselling it, so very likely PS5 will end selling way above 100M. MS moved away their focus from Xbox, now since the start of the generation they are publishing all their games day one on PC and including them on Gamepass, so many former Xbox players will play this games on PC, they won't need an Xbox. That didn't happen at the start of XBO, which must be under 80M because PS4 has been consistently outselling it for 2:1 or more. So I'd bet Series X|S will sell less than XBO, so less than 80M.
 
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For people that think Sony can just stay the course. Do you think the following things could be problematic for Sony in the future?

1) Sony opting to make limited time exclusive deals with third parties rather than acquisitions. Every third party multiplat game that is successful on PS is basically a trojan horse for MS in the future. IE Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls were huge hits on PS now those games will not be on PS and its likely people that want those games and only play on console will get an xbox. MS can outbid Sony for the most important third party devs that have huge IP's.

2) The value proposition of Games Day 1 on Gamepass vs $70 on PS. Just look at how much attention MLB the Show got. If the rumors of Battlefield 6 are true then that is going to bring in a ton of positive PR to Xbox/Gamepass and lots of negative PR for PSNow. The more that Gamepass subscriber base grows then MS makes more money and we will see more "Subscription exclusive Day 1" deals.

3) Gamepass vs PSnow. People are going to start considering which service has the best games when making their console purchase. A simple internet search will tell you that Gamepass is highly regarded and PSnow is not. When a Best Buy employee is asked if PS has anything like Gamepass that employee is going to say no.

I think this is all fascinating and Sony is going to pivot eventually. Competition is good and we are already seeing it. The quality of PS Plus games has really increased IMO in part because of all the heat MS is bringing with Gamepass.
 

Loope

Member
They don't have to do anything other than they're doing, i suppose. Their marketshare is massive. But seing people compare PSNow to GP is just confusing, especially for someone that plays on PC.

GP you can download the games and play without any problem, PSnow is just streaming and it's awful, i tried it for a week because i wanted to play Bloodborne without buying a console and it's just not doable.
 

Tg89

Member
For people that think Sony can just stay the course. Do you think the following things could be problematic for Sony in the future?

1) Sony opting to make limited time exclusive deals with third parties rather than acquisitions. Every third party multiplat game that is successful on PS is basically a trojan horse for MS in the future. IE Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls were huge hits on PS now those games will not be on PS and its likely people that want those games and only play on console will get an xbox. MS can outbid Sony for the most important third party devs that have huge IP's.

2) The value proposition of Games Day 1 on Gamepass vs $70 on PS. Just look at how much attention MLB the Show got. If the rumors of Battlefield 6 are true then that is going to bring in a ton of positive PR to Xbox/Gamepass and lots of negative PR for PSNow. The more that Gamepass subscriber base grows then MS makes more money and we will see more "Subscription exclusive Day 1" deals.

3) Gamepass vs PSnow. People are going to start considering which service has the best games when making their console purchase. A simple internet search will tell you that Gamepass is highly regarded and PSnow is not. When a Best Buy employee is asked if PS has anything like Gamepass that employee is going to say no.

I think this is all fascinating and Sony is going to pivot eventually. Competition is good and we are already seeing it. The quality of PS Plus games has really increased IMO in part because of all the heat MS is bringing with Gamepass.
1) Not really. Ultimately you can only acquire so many studios/fund so many games if you're sticking to the gamepass model. Again, we still have yet to see heavy hitters/premier titles come to gamepass. The marquee third party games don't come to Gamepass in any large quantity.

2) I think there's room for both. Lots of people out there who are happy to have Gamepass supplementary to the full priced $70 games they want. People have shown that they want games like TLOU2/God of War/RDR/Witcher/Cyberpunk/BotW/etc. Those types of games aren't coming to gamepass at the moment.

3) Again, I think for a lot of people having one of these subscriptions in addition to the games they buy at full price makes sense. Gamepass probably is best in that case, but I don't think either of them replace full priced games, yet.
 
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Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
But how can they as the market leader with zero signs of slowing down, compete with the non market leader?
Simple, they compete with themselves. God thats why I love first party sony devs. When I was watching an interview of neil and herman hulst they were talking about the games they were making and having friendly competition with each other. I think Neil said "we saw what you guys did with the open world of horizon and how you did the grass for instance and we thought wow that looks amazing but you know what I think we can top that and make it look even better with tloup2"
 
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Raekwon26

Member
Well, yes because it is Bethesda's game. It is like expecting Creation Engine and modding:messenger_bicep:

The fun thing is that those "concerns" about the game started to appear only when MS bought Bethesda. Before, nobody doubted possible success of Starfield. Now suddenly - don't know what to expect, Bethesda's games are not good etc.
What the hell are you talking about?

How can you proclaim or doubt the success of a game you know NOTHING about?
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
Lots of ppl putting MS in a lead position are talking about the future, not right now. Amazing how this seems to be a recurring theme.

By nearly every conceivable metric Playstation is stomping Xbox competitively besides Game Pass vs PS Now.

Armchair analysts in this thread think Sony should throw away their winning strategy and get into a spending arms race with a trillion dollar company because we *think* people will give a shit about xcloud in 10 years? Huh.
The market has changed? Cloud streaming literally has zero demand, even less than VR. Xbox is still in third place and selling less than Xbox One. $70 Returnal and Ratchet and Clank are going to sell very well.

You are drinking your own koolaid and thinking world has changed when it hasn't. Where is this massive uptick of demand for cloud streaming and Xbox outside of gaming forums and influencers on Twitter? The actual sales and revenue data do not back up this massive sea change you are talking about.
This. Its always the future. Once upon a time Win Phone fans talked about a similar future where Android was in trouble.... Maybe some folks need to wait and see vs wishful thinking.

The market is changing, not changed. And we dont even know how much it will change. If anything...it looks like all digital will take off before streaming. And Sony doesnt need to copy Game Pass 1:1 to take advantage of this.

WB going back to releasing in theatres first before streaming in 2022, Disney still releasing in theatres and charging $30 for day one access to new movies on Plus should tell some ppl traditional ways arent dead yet.

If I'm remembering this correctly Playstation's earnings showed that their Profit equalled XBOX total revenue.

I'm not sure why they even consider taking the XBOX route. Their games continue to capture mindshare and create momentum. Their metrics suggest Playstation is dominating.
E0DD-VzXoAE_ztm

E0DEAcTWQAEo9FA
Whats funny about this....I kept seeing articles and threads about the Xbox hardware revenue up 232% from last year...and Sony outdid them in damn near every like for like metric for gaming.

Like someone said, Sony is beating them in damn near every conceivable metric except Game Pass vs PSNow. So...why should Sony change anything?
 
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Papacheeks

Banned
This is something too nuanced to discuss on a forum like this but you are totally right.

I mean MS can't even get Halo out on time and had to pull in extra help for a developer who has had years of experience and Halo games under their belt. People are assuming these 23 studios are at the some level as Sony's studios but they are years away from this, perhaps a generation away. And it's not like Sony's studios will simply stop evolving as MS is trying to play catchup. I have a feeling the next God of War and Naughty Dog game are going to raise the bar massively.

I would argue I think Naughty Dog is the studio that needs help to be honest. I think Santa Monica, Gureilla, Insomniac are the premier studios at this point in terms of original IP's and execution. And I mean execution in actual development timeline. I think studios to watch are sucker punch, bend in terms of new IP's and possible changes to what we are use to them making.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Simple, they compete with themselves. God thats why I love first party sony devs. When I was watching an interview of neil and herman hulst they were talking about the games they were making and having friendly competition with each other. I think Neil said "we saw what you guys did with the open world of horizon and how you did the grass for instance and we thought wow that looks amazing but you know what I think we can top that with tloup2"
That reminds me. Back in the PS2 era, both Naughty Dog and Insomniac were housed in the same studio. They would constantly have that friendly rivalry of trying to one up each other, as well as sharing tech, etc.. Just cool how now it's full circle where they are both "back in the fold," and we may just see those rivalry fruits return again.
 
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McCarth

Member
What is MS doing different exactly? Buying a large company? Who gives a shit?

Gamepass has already been a thing for them, but until they can consistently release high-quality titles it just doesn't matter to me. XGS output in the last 3-4 years has been incredibly weak.

Until they show a consistent ability to change that, it's silly to say they've "changed" just because they spent a chunk of cash.
 
I want to see aggressive internal growth and aquistions

They might be doing it behind the scenes but I want to see it. The $180 million YoY investment is a good start

But that's a problem for another day. Right now it's all sunshines and rainbows for me. Returnal is 🔥 and Ratchet and Clank not long after
 

Zeroing

Banned
Since I’m inspired today
Just because MS seems to be “moving” recently, doesn’t mean they are “moving fast “ or in a “good direction” it just means they finally decided to wake up… they might go back to sleep or maybe not!
That’s the thing with MS, they don’t plan things, they are reactionary, they are so unpredictable that the only thing we gamers can expect from them is to continue not having much impact in gaming… it’s been like this for the last 20 years.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
What is MS doing different exactly? Buying a large company? Who gives a shit?

Gamepass has already been a thing for them, but until they can consistently release high-quality titles it just doesn't matter to me. XGS output in the last 3-4 years has been incredibly weak.

Until they show a consistent ability to change that, it's silly to say they've "changed" just because they spent a chunk of cash.

if you play on PC I think their output has been pretty shit. Even my love for gears and halo I'm not as excited for what they have been putting out. Outriders to me is the better gears type experience once everything is fixed. If People can fly execute their plans for expansions like they want, that game is going to erode into gears fanbase.

So to me Microsoft needs fresh IP's and they need to be bangers. Already getting Returnal regardless if it's externally developed, is a committment to Sony signing deals for quality developers and giving them the freedom. MS literally has The initiative making a perfect dark game. I'm all for those older IP's coming back, but when you show it off, it needs to hit big. And a cgi trailer that literally has close to nothing resembling anything we remember from that universe is not super exciting.

I hope I eat crow. But people leaving that studio and going back to Insomniac along with Main director leaving doesnt bode well for that project. Unless it is episodic and the first episode is completed at this time?
 

Tomeru

Member
Let’s be real. If Sony were to replicate PS4 successes they would make most of us incredibly happy. I expect some rounding of rough edges more than some attempt at shape shifting. You only do that when you are losing.
Or when you are good at you job.
 

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
That reminds me. Back in the PS2 era, both Naughty Dog and Insomniac were housed in the same studio. They would constantly have that friendly rivalry of trying to one up each other, as well as sharing tech, etc.. Just cool how now it's full circle where they are both "back in the fold," and we may just see those rivalry fruits return again.
love the inner competition between their first party devs, if no one else to compete with compete with each other and push each others boundaries when it comes to bangers
 

Tg89

Member
I would argue I think Naughty Dog is the studio that needs help to be honest. I think Santa Monica, Gureilla, Insomniac are the premier studios at this point in terms of original IP's and execution. And I mean execution in actual development timeline. I think studios to watch are sucker punch, bend in terms of new IP's and possible changes to what we are use to them making.
I mean you can hate on TLOU2, it's not my favourite game.

But I'd imagine internally Naughty Dog is still very much the bar. In terms of sales, critical acclaim (reviews, GOTY, etc) it's hard to deny.
 

Tutomos

Member
Some people want to paint a rosy picture for Xbox's future, but never consider the downside. Look at Mixer, it was shut down after substantial investment was made to get Ninja but couldn't overcome the more popular brand with Twitch.

It was telling that in Microsoft's earnings report just a few days ago, they didn't even update the number of subscribers for Game Pass, it was only rumoured by an Xbox fan like Jez. If it was doing so well, why not tell us like the last time you put it in the report?

As a fan of video games I like what MS is doing, but looking at the future, I don't think it's going to work out in their favour that easily just because some people love Game Pass on internet forums.
 
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Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
I would argue I think Naughty Dog is the studio that needs help to be honest. I think Santa Monica, Gureilla, Insomniac are the premier studios at this point in terms of original IP's and execution. And I mean execution in actual development timeline. I think studios to watch are sucker punch, bend in terms of new IP's and possible changes to what we are use to them making.
https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-2-game-of-the-year-record/

Last year, when as many as 576 total awards were doled out, The Last of Us 2 managed to nab 300. Again, for 2020, The Last of Us 2 destroyed the competition even in the eyes of fans, winning a total of 108 Reader's Choice polls. The runner-up for Reader's Choice was Cyberpunk 2077, which netted only 24.

Yea they are in desperate need of help.......
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Your putting too much faith into unproven teams...

I think this is largely overrated by a lot of gamers.

The industry is littered with examples of no name studios that release breakout hits. Once the hit comes, proper funding + time seem to keep those studios at a certain status.

Proper funding and time is what Microsoft can give it's developers in spades now. They couldn't do that during the XBox One generation.

We hear time and time again how developers like working with Sony because of their hands off approach. A hands off approach in combination with resources doesn't seem like much of a hurdle for MS.
 

Krizalidx11

Banned
Yes 2028 will great for Beteshda fans. Meanwhile, i'll be playing on PS6.

Why are you trolling Nintendo hardwares?

Nintendo will have a 4k console by 2028, meanwhile PS5/XSX will keep the dynamic 4k stuff around to push 60fps since 120fps will be quite hard on the new consoles, see the draw distance in Returnal on PS5
 

Zghia

Member
Sony corp should invest more $ into the PlayStation division, imagine raking in a huge amount of $ only to spend them all for sony pictures lol
 
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