How many Playstation 1st party games even sell that much?
The marque ones that everyone uses in list wars? The ones that fanboys undoubtedly salivate at the idea of making it to Xbox or PC?
10-20+ million, more often in the mid-upper teens. Buy you already know this. Even the lower selling half still breaks the 8-9 million range handidly. Again, not something a lot of 3rd parties can claim. Pretty sure Spider-Man 2 has already outsold Arkham Knight and maybe even City already. Why do you think so many of them have pivoted away from single player fare?
First off. You'd most definitely support people buying the PS5 as their only gaming platform.
I'm fine with it, I guess? Also, if you only want to play on PC, and Sony accommodates that by putting their games on there, that's fine too. In fact, I would encourage more people to do it if that's what they want to, in large part because I think it's a bad idea for the long term, and that Sony needs to learn its lesson.
But also it isnt about expense.
Genuinely glad we cleared that up.
It's about convenience. I prefer playing Playstation games on PC. I can buy a ps5 or ps4 if given enough time but why would I want to do that? There's nothing the PlayStation does hardware wise that can't be replicated on PC.
Sure thing.
I don't care about corporate profits, though I can argue that with Helldivers 2, I can point out how a simultaneous PC PS5 release helped boost the games popularity and got them a lot more cash.
Respectfully, I think you know that that argument doesn't work.
Here's something I've hardly seen anyone say, even though it's absolutely true: Outside of a select number of (mostly) 1st person RPGs from studios or IP that have a history of being PC exclusive/vastly superior to the point of almost being a different game, single player games do not do as well on PC - proportionally or absolute. This is especially true of the type of 3rd person wide-linear action adventure game PlayStation is defined by.
There's no way of knowing just how many of the SP releases on PC were double dips, but common sense, anecdotal information and the relatively low sales indicate that it's probably a lot.
Given how much we hear and see about PC gamers being willing and able to wait for ports and price drops therein, I think the idea that releasing them on day one as opposed to year 2 or whatever is going to magically increase sales is untenable. The scores of games that do release on day one, being 3rd party multiplats, certainly do not benefit from that. Xbox 1st parties, before Gamepass, did not get a sales boosts in this way either.
Also, you not caring about corporate profits is cool and all, but we're literally in here talking about the business side of this. Fact is that profits are the only reason we get games at all, and incentive structures seriously impact the types of games we get.
Many PC only players on Twitter I see enjoying the fuck out of helldivers 2, those people would not have bought a ps5 for the game.
Probably not. So I think it's realistic to say that live service/primarily online titles, which increasingly live off playerbase and player count hype, are well placed on PC. After all, multiplayer is PC's main thing. In a roundabout way, it's not even really new behavior for Sony. Remember Planetside?
Single player fare does not work the same way.
And I think you need to realize how little profit Sony would make from a PC gamer buying a PS anyways. 0 multiplat sales or ps plus sub money which is where Sony gets the majority of their revenue. Probably buying used games for deals. Especislly considering how frugal PC gamers tend to be. What fucking money is to be made from people who treat the Ps5 as an exclusives box only? A couple dozen dollars? Sony is getting a better deal porting these games to PC then trying and failing to convince happy PC gamers with 2k dollar rigs to make PS their primary platform.
I tend to have a good sense of the weight of the numbers, and I would disagree with you here. There's no way to track this, but I can tell you anecdotally I know multiple people online and off who have beefy PCs and a console in the household, and still buy some number of multiplats on said console, and even pay (if not perpetually) for online. Between 3rd party exclusives (or really rare cases where 3rd party multiplats don't show up on PC anywhere near day one) and shoddy ports, it's not like there's never a reason to use a console in comparison to the PC.
But even disregarding that, think about what you've said.
As opposed to buying the console (which is often a profitable result for console manufacturers by this point in a generation; sans production issues, rhe PS4 was profitable 8 months after release), and buying the 1st party game where 100% of the revenue goes to Sony, they instead don't buy the console, (
definitely not buying any multiplats or subscriptions ever btw) and purchase the game on Steam where PS games have to compete with generally lower Steam prices, and where 30% of whatever price is paid goes to Valve. I find it hard to envision a scenario where there's enough sales from people who would have never bought a PlayStation for its games before that makes up the difference.
At best, revenues increase marginally. Not to the point where it changes the situation from slim margins to super profits. In fact, profits might stay the same depending on porting costs (which would probably see a marginal increase the closer in parallel development of the console and PC versions are). Much more likely, you cut into profits in the long run.
They used to. Things are quite different now though, with the exception of Nintendo. Most people want a cod or fortnite box now.
This is a rather silly proposition. They used to back in the PS3 and PS2 era where they'd be lucky to break past 5 million copies lifetime sales for anything that wasn't post Uncharted 2 Naughty Dog, but they're not now when PS first parties are touching 20 million on PS4 alone lifetime and 10+ million on PS5 alone after 4-5 months, and when differences in hardware features both for development and use are slimmer than ever? How does that make sense? How is Nintendo distinct from PlayStation or Xbox here?