Sony's Senior VP: Moving Away from Hardware Centric Business Model To Platform Business That Expands Community and Increases Engagement
- Thread starter adamsapple
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Giallo Corsa
Member
Nostradamus was the xboxes we bought all along.
Also : You reek of bitterness /resentfulness, holy shit my man
Fabieter
Member
I think most PS6 games will also run on the PS5. They'll probably port a lot of their titles to other consoles, and almost everything to PC, maybe even with day an date releases next generation. We'll likely see more live-service games, more subscription services (probably more fragmented and more expensive), and much pricier hardware.
People say console players have nowhere else to go, and that they won't switch to PC. If that's true, Sony would be foolish not to set the console price very high.
You'll be paying more while getting less and less. Early generation PS3 is going to look like heaven by comparison. Classic console are done outside of Nintendo.
Loomy
Thinks Microaggressions are Real
Playstation is not dumping hardware in the next 2 or 3 years. But if they do not start investing in what the future of their business looks like today, they're going to find themselves in the shitty position of relying on other platforms or putting out half assed solutions.
Gaming has changed a bunch of times since the 80s, and there's another shift happening now. This sounds like they're getting ready for the next one.
This is coming from product people internally looking at where the industry is going and where Playstation needs to be to compete. They successfully pitched to SIE execs, who successfully pitched to Sony execs, who successfully pitched to Sony Board of Directors.
Gaming has changed a bunch of times since the 80s, and there's another shift happening now. This sounds like they're getting ready for the next one.
Shareholders are looking at record profit from the division, I doubt they're pushing for drastic changes.
This is coming from product people internally looking at where the industry is going and where Playstation needs to be to compete. They successfully pitched to SIE execs, who successfully pitched to Sony execs, who successfully pitched to Sony Board of Directors.
Unfortunatecookie
Member
Precisely.
Again, business illiterate people who yap about uniqueness not mattering are measurably wrong. These same people, by the way, are actively streaming and uploading to YouTube as opposed to Rumble/X/some other platform. Their cognitive cancer is such that they cannot spot how they are actively making decisions based on the uniqueness of platforms. They genuinely cannot process that, and they genuinely cannot understand that there are millions of people who bought PlayStations because of PlayStation games.
Without first-party exclusives, the PlayStation 6 will be the most useless PlayStation in history. That's not an old man talking; that's reality. I'm confident that when I do become an old man, reality won't do a 180 and oppose the nature of humanity. People buy things because of what the things can do.
If Sony -- the same company that released the biggest flop in the history of gaming in Concord, PSVR2, bought Bungie, killed Vaio, killed Sony Ericsson, killed Vegas, killed Sony Style, killed Bravia etc. -- cannot recognize that the value proposition of PlayStation is in exclusives, then PlayStation will suffer the same fate as other Sony products. It's so obvious that I have to question the cognition of anyone who doesn't see it.
Hero of Spielberg
Member
They'll still have exclusives, they'll just be timed exclusives… then once the initial honeymoon period is over they'll port everywhere. 2 bites at the cherry, more money for big budget games.
I don't get all the doom and gloom about this.
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Fabieter
Member
They need to drop the online and cloud save tax but they know outside of that they don't have alot of value for their shitty sub.
AND why would Xbox & PlayStation games be on this random competing platform? But even bigger question how can a platform that PlayStation games are being sold on kill it on the spot?
The money is in software & service so even if this new device sell 500 million it's not going to kill PlayStation that would only create a bigger user-base for PlayStation games to be sold on.
This reeks of delusions of grandeur. Sony is not some mega publisher like Nintendo, they don't have the default PC storefront like Valve, they don't have the word's most popular games like Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto, and they didn't buy one-third of the industry's revenue like Microsoft. Sony has the successful Playstation platform in this industry, and that's nearly all they have. Sony is not going to go multi-platform and dominate the top-10 sales charts everywhere with just one handful of semi-relevant franchises.
What Sony needs to do is find a way to make the Playstation 6 sell 200+ million units worldwide and regain industry-leading relevancy, rather than contributing to PC's seemingly inevitable overrun of the market.
What Sony needs to do is find a way to make the Playstation 6 sell 200+ million units worldwide and regain industry-leading relevancy, rather than contributing to PC's seemingly inevitable overrun of the market.
Loxus
Member
PS9 will be the Matrix itself, that PS9 Orb is just how you login.What does this mean? No PS9?
Pay attention to the codenames we got so far.
PSVR1 - Morpheus
PS4 Pro - Neo
PS5 Pro - Trinity
PS9 - Matrix
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Exactly. That's the situation Sony finds themselves in right now at this specific moment. The Switch 2 still doesn't have most third party games announced for it. PC continues to get more expensive. But that could all change in a few years. Maybe Switch 2 ends up getting most third party games as the generation moves forward and Sony loses that edge over Nintendo. And maybe there will be PS5-like Steam "consoles" from a variety of traditional manufactures like Samsung, LG, etc. that will also play every Sony game they decided to port to PC, plus everything else Steam has to offer. Then suddenly the PS5 or PS6 looks like the worst choice.
Unfortunatecookie
Member
It's not about timed or delayed releases.
It's a fundamental shift in thinking that was started by Shawn Layden who, hilariously enough, was kicked out of his CEO position. His thinking was 'We need to meet people where they're at, so PC players will buy a PlayStation if we port games to PC'. I cannot explain how unbelievably stupid that line of thinking is. It's so stupid that I truly believe he was either drunk or high when he came up with that multi-platform strategy.
More money does not necessarily equal more profit. If the PlayStation 5 console profits are bad, the solution isn't to kill the console business. The solution is to engineer the next console in such a way that from day one, each console sale is profitable. It's beyond ridiculous to think that giving people less reasons to buy your hardware will lead to more people buying your hardware.
Jigsaah
Gold Member
Ya'll better hurry up and get your PC before it's too late.
THE PLATFORM WARS HAVE BEGUN!!!!
THE PLATFORM WARS HAVE BEGUN!!!!
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HeisenbergFX4
Member
Even then how many consoles do they have to sell to make back the huge investment to design, market, package and ship a generation of consoles?
Fabieter
Member
It's 2025 and people still make this point.
The upfront costs are a little bit higher but a console like experience is easy to replicate on a similar priced hardware maybe a little bit higher though.
The problem with PC is all the fucking around and tickering. I have no problem with PC gaming but 99% of the people I know who play on consoles, would have no clue what to do if a game isn't running properly etc.. Maybe if PCs can keep developing a more user friendly experience but as of now, many people are not going to want to mess with that.
Personal Computers are more of a relic to most people than the traditional console boxes are going to be. Very few people are buying PCs anymore.
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Fabieter
Member
What's the problem nowadays. Steam is basically a console like experience.
You don't have to tinkle with mods. Most games will set the perfect settings themselves.
You have ai explaining every bit of little problem you might have with a PC.
Where is this fear coming from?
yurinka
Member
Welcome to the early 1980s, when after spending a few years at MSX computers Sony started to be a multiplatform game publisher and didn't stop doing so every generation/decade until now.
But yes, in addition to expand their business in PS and off-gaming, SIE also has been expanding and will continue expanding their off-PS first party gaming business, mostly in PC and mobile.
This doesn't mean they'll stop focusing their gaming business in PlayStation, that they'd stop making consoles like MS, or that they'd stop making exclusive games. It just means that multiplatform is one of their growth areas.
Regarding to what the Sony guy actually said, he wasn't talking about SIE business focus, he was asked instead about their investment in Bandai Namco in the context of Sony Group (not only gaming) shifting more to entertainment creation based investments. The Sony guy basically explained the shift the Sony group is making to focus more in entertainment and creation in different Sony areas with some shifts, and regarding gaming, they're moving from hardware centric business more to a community based engagement business (Sony and Bamco made a joint investment in a Japanese community website for otakus).
Regarding gaming itself, outside this investment, they meant that instead of focuing on just console units sold, they're focusing more instead in growing the active userbase and average revenue per user, because this is what makes their revenue growth specially in the current context where live service games and gamesubs generate the majority of the SIE revenue and these two game revenue sources are growing replacing the revenue from games sold. Since these two metrics are the key ones for them, unlike it is inactive consoles). Obviously to increase MAU and ARPU they also need to sell consoles and feed them with attractive content, so focusing more on MAU and ARPU (and secondarily playing hours) also means focus on wanting to sell more consoles and get more/better content.
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Topher
Identifies as young
PCs are more complicated, yes, but there are plenty of people buying gaming PCs. Sony and Microsoft are not publishing their games on Steam for nothing.
Unfortunatecookie
Member
If PlayStation -- a business that's been around for over 30 years -- are currently incapable of managing their R&D, marketing, and warehousing, then they've got the wrong people working for them. That's an unbelievable level of astronomical incompetence that leads to complete brand and product failure.
Demand planning and sales forecasting are a thing. Any massive investment needs to be backed by an expected return. If PlayStation are unable to successfully plan and forecast their console business, then they're in big fucking trouble. Biiiiiiig fucking trouble.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Also, all the crying about exclusives….. Neither Sony and Microsoft are makig anything
They port games over more so now than ever because consoles are nothing more than an entry level PCs nowadays. It costs them very little to put the game on PC. If these consoles still had unique architecture, I highly doubt you woulf see a lot of the games over on PC. In fact, the consoles going to off the shelf PC parts was a savior to PC gaming because virtually no PC exclusives exist anymore. No one is making a big budget game exclusive for PC in this day and age.
For sure but the amount of people out there who have gaming rigs compared to consoles is minuscule.
They port games over more so now than ever because consoles are nothing more than an entry level PCs nowadays. It costs them very little to put the game on PC. If these consoles still had unique architecture, I highly doubt you woulf see a lot of the games over on PC. In fact, the consoles going to off the shelf PC parts was a savior to PC gaming because virtually no PC exclusives exist anymore. No one is making a big budget game exclusive for PC in this day and age.
Fabieter
Member
ZehDon
Member
I think Sony's seen that consoles as they are have an expiry date now. They're going down Microsoft's route - multiple SKUs to target new demographics in an attempt to grow - but they'll likely have the same result: there's no more growth left in the console business. Without a major technological breakthrough, PS6 is likely gonna be the wall. Everyone who wants a console already has bought in, and newer demographics prefer phone, PC, or handhelds. It's an aging business. We've seen Microsoft's approach to this problem, so now I'm curious as to how Sony will approach the same issue.
StreetsofBeige
Member
It's obvious more Xbox games would come. Just like when Sony did Horizon ZD, it's not like that was going to be the only PC port ever. They even made some kind of PC PS Publishing dept or label for it, and bought out Nixxes for porting.
Now with heavy hitter Helldivers 2 coming out later this month (Hey, I'm going to get it myself), it simply comes down to the same unknowns as PC ports when Horizon came out..... which ones and when.
Is it going to be a slow roll out like PC the first year and then ramp up fast? Or is it a forever slow roll out?
Is it going to be similar to PC and release all their key games except GT (Xbox already has MLB for 4-5 years). Or will Sony be more selective like picking grittier games or best sellers only (on PC they shotgunned everything even Sackboy and R&C).
The exact same unknowns apply to Switch. The key difference is the targeted audience and system power are way different than Xbox which are basically the same as Sony. You can tell how interchangeable they are just by going off top selling or online played charts. Aside from the occasional first party game or exclusive third party game, all the common third party chart toppers are basically the same games and ranks.
Now with heavy hitter Helldivers 2 coming out later this month (Hey, I'm going to get it myself), it simply comes down to the same unknowns as PC ports when Horizon came out..... which ones and when.
Is it going to be a slow roll out like PC the first year and then ramp up fast? Or is it a forever slow roll out?
Is it going to be similar to PC and release all their key games except GT (Xbox already has MLB for 4-5 years). Or will Sony be more selective like picking grittier games or best sellers only (on PC they shotgunned everything even Sackboy and R&C).
The exact same unknowns apply to Switch. The key difference is the targeted audience and system power are way different than Xbox which are basically the same as Sony. You can tell how interchangeable they are just by going off top selling or online played charts. Aside from the occasional first party game or exclusive third party game, all the common third party chart toppers are basically the same games and ranks.
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willothedog
Member
Well apart from the $853m and climbing Star Citizen...
lh032
I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
i think this spook nintendo as well. To avoid going multiplatform Nintendo must try very hard to ensure the switch 2 transition well to switch 3.
Hitting that higher sales target for the shareholders while dev cost going up is going to be a very hard task even for Nintendo.
Hitting that higher sales target for the shareholders while dev cost going up is going to be a very hard task even for Nintendo.
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Punished Miku
Gaslighter Pro: 16.7 Fireflops
I predict they'll try putting games on Netflix streaming within 10 years.
Hero of Spielberg
Member
If those people buying on PC or wherever were never going to buy a PS5 in the first place, it is more profit, given how simple it is to port games to of apparently.
Maybe they have forecasting that indicates it we not be possible to increase the console user base by what they want to to meet growth targets, hence the shift.
Fabieter
Member
That might be true for their own games but thats like 2 or 3 games a year. They also want to control third party sales but they don't even have their own pc storefront.
Buggy Loop
Gold Member
Then a « custom » APU acting as a PC but with a steamOS like boot resolves most of the cons peoples would have with PC, you can make it act like a console 100% if the hardware maker wants. Even shader compilation is mostly a thing of the past as steam deck proved with Elden ring
Even current APUs are nothing but a PC, as showcased by the binned PS5 APU that were used for mining and fans made it run PC games with little effort.
Unknown?
Member
Done, period. Nintendo doesn't have a classic console. Last one they made flopped, Wii U.
StreetsofBeige
Member
I dont think console sales have gotten any better since the Wii/360/PS3 days. It just comes down to who steals the other team's market share.
You can tell consoles arent keeping up. Xbox has tanked, yet PS5 (the obvious direct competitor with similar power and games and price) has unit sales no better than PS4 trending. I think it's around the same rate. I dont get a sense the drop in Xbox gamers mean they are all dropping gaming forever. Most probably went PC. If they nicely correlated to going PS5, then PS5 sales would be shooting up like crazy picking up the slack.
It's not a price thing IMO. Ya, consoles have gotten more expensive. And so have PCs with their outrageous prices due to GPUs. But Steam users keep shooting up to record count. So it looks like people are going PC. I think the last time someone had data on mobile, it was actually shrinking lately. So gamers arent going there. Make sense, since the markets between console/PC gaming is much more close than someone going from console to smartphone gaming.
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Topher
Identifies as young
And that is based on what? How many gaming PCs are there in the world, do you think?
Eh....too much "what if" for me, but this whole thread is about exclusivity going the way of the dinosaur. Every single MS first party game is day one on PC and every new Sony first party game is a timed exclusive at best. The only remaining game that console can really hold over PCs head is GTA 6 (which is stupid) and that will be on PC eventually.
Fabieter
Member
It happens when you lose all unique selling points. There were more 3p and 1p exclusives last gen. I dont buy its just because of the price of the hardware.
Durin
Member
Eh, PC today is still light years more intuitive and easy to use than it ever was in the late 90s-2000s. It's so rare that a game doesn't work, every game supports every gamepad I have out of the box, drivers are automated, and if a game somehow doesn't work I'll just refund. Consoles are still easier to use being single-SKU devices, but the ease of use gap has only shrunk over time.
Steam though has never stopped growing, and PC sales are literally up this year. The only devices that will become relics to more people are going to be the specialized big ones like large desktop towers and larger consoles. They only exist for hardware brunt at cheaper prices, but the death of moore's law + graphic stagnation will move more people to flexible devices. Laptops, smartphones, tablets and handhelds that can just cast/plug-in to a TV have mattered more for years now than a PS5 or gaming desktop to the average normie...with the exception of those doing content creation or AI.
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LordOcidax
Member
People are going to buy the game twice (And probably for PS6 too), is not that stupid for Rockstar.
ZehDon
Member
Agreed 100%.
That's a good observation. If I recall, PS5 is slightly behind PS4, likely due to higher prices. So, yeah, I think you're right: Xbox users jumped to PC. I wonder if that shakes out in Microsoft's internals, which would be why they're looking at their "Xbox that can run Steam" thing for next generation. If so, they're ahead of Sony because they've grown their PC presence over the past decade. I regularly use the Xbox PC app, mostly for Game Pass.
I think it's been highlighted that new games today don't compete with other new games - they compete with older games. For me, that's true. Most new games aren't all that great, whereas my classics just get better and better on new hardware. That represents an ever-increasing PC market to consume a nearly infinite back catalogue, which would be part of why it's always growing - the content never goes away, and only gets bigger. I think that's a core pillar of why PC has grown so much, in addition to simply making PC gaming basically plug and play these days.
As for the cost, I think next generation consoles are going to be expensive. I think this for two reasons: firstly, because there's no new way to squeeze more power into the box cost effectively. More power just means more cost. Secondly, I think because Sony and Microsoft are done subsidising. The industry stopped growing and hardware isn't coming down in price. There's no need to try for USD$399.00 because you're not going to sell more consoles, you'll just sell them faster initially. And with everything being cross gen and platform agnostic, you don't need to push for a massive adoption of newer consoles because you'll still have the prior generation of console running your software. I'm curious if the high console prices push people to PC faster?
StreetsofBeige
Member
Ya, well said. The subsidy thing really affected things. And also way back, you'd get the companies dropping the price to $150 with a slew of pack in games hoping to get late adopters or someone to pick up a second console for another room. Those days are long gone. I always have one main TV and one console, but back then when I got a TV for my bedroom even I was thinking about getting a second 360. I didnt, but the price was so affordable. Not anymore. No way I'm even thinking about a second SX when it's like $700 CDN. It even went UP in price as it launched at $600.
I said it one of the next gen tech threads, but if the next Xbox console is more than $1,000-1,100 CDN I'm out. PS5 Pro is $950 here and if that's the latest benchmark for a new console it's getting out of hand. I get it that prices go up and you got to accept that for any industry, but it gets to a point the value equation gets out of whack even if I can still afford it. I'll just go PC on my decent gaming laptop.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
XGS is publishing 7 games this year, 5 developed by first party studios and 2 by external devs. This doesn't include late PS5 ports.
Whatever you're smoking bro, puff puff pass.
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ChorizoPicozo
Member
Nonsense. Xbox has been porting games to PC since 2016 and moved their success metrics to engagement and MAU (which, now with ABK, are twice PlayStation's, yet Xbox's revenue is smaller) and their IP has been declining since then.
PlayStation's issue was spending $5B on GaaS and unnecessarily increasing game development budgets and production times. This is the real core issue with the PlayStation business (under their control). It's not about "consoles are done, capitalism, Gen Z, lack of growth," etc., or any of the other common talking points around this topic. PlayStation's profit margins should be around 20%, but they're closer to 9%. They fucked up in this regard. At the same time, they are trying to grow in new markets like Korea and China. (Which is the smartest decision)
So, make no mistake: this current strategy will definitely hurt the PlayStation console business (beyond just selling consoles). But it will take like 10 years for Sony to figure out.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
You can say they've published 69 games, but if everything is trash, does it really matter?
PSN is tied to Playstation consoles. PC users don't want even login to PSN to play their games, they are not dropping Steam for PSN. Also PC users will not pay an online tax like console players. 90% profits from Sony can't be replicated on PC currently or another platforms. So making the hardware to get more or less profits is irrelevant for current Playstation market.