Will Sony become third party publisher?

Spyxos

Spyxos

Member
Since some Sony first party games now cost 200 to 300 million to develop and most Live Service games from Sony have failed (Except for Helldivers 2) Does it still make sense for Sony to produce consoles at all? Especially since they are getting even more expensive over time. I don't even want to see the Ps6 launch price.

They are also slowly making themselves comfortable on the PC. Live service games should probably cushion the immense costs of the single player games. But now that most of that has been dropped, does it make any sense for Sony to continue like this?
 
Mike Myers No GIF
 
Maybe if they go the Capcom route of 'WE'LL ONLY PUBLISH ONE SINGLE NEW [broken mess] PER YEAR AND YOU WILL LIKE IT' that still manages to sell >10M units.
 
For me it depends how many hardware gens we have left before they all become streaming services you subscribe to.

If its like 4 or 5 gens then 100% they will start putting games on other hardware (they already are with PC), unless devs find new graphic techniques that significantly reduce dev costs.

If we only have a couple of hardware gens left then probably not.

I do hope it happens though just to see how the narrative changes into it being a 'good' thing to put games on other consoles, and 100% 'understandable'.
 
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It already is. The better question is:
Is Sony going to publish their games on Xbox, just like Microsoft is doing on PlayStation?

Rumor has it that Phil is still waiting for Sony's call to finalize the release of Helldivers 2 on Xbox and Game Pass.
 
If Xbox wouldn't have failed at extending the user-base of software buying costumes PlayStation would be selling games on Xbox right now.

But Xbox created a situation where it's actually not a good idea to put games on Xbox ( And that goes for 3rd party & even Xbox themselves 😭) I'm being nice about it
 
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They don't need to go third party when xbox have already done so, which means that sony gets to profit off of all the xbox games that they otherwise wouldn't have before in forza, gears, etc etc etc.
 
onQ123 said:
If Xbox wouldn't have failed at extending the user-base of software buying costumes PlayStation would be selling games on Xbox right now.

But Xbox created a situation where it's actually not a good idea to put games on Xbox ( And that goes for 3rd party & even Xbox themselves 😭) I'm being nice about it
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Do you think Microsoft made Gamepass while secretly hoping no one actually used it?.
 
Sony has been a 3rd party publisher in computers since the early 80s, and already is in Switch (Lego Horizon) or Xbox (Destiny 2).

But if you mean releasing all their PS Studios IPs in rival consoles I highly doubt it would ever happen, specially day one. Same goes releasing them day one on Steam.

What could happen -specially for PS6 games- is that, when releasing their own PC PSN store, specially if they release a PS branded handheld PC, to release them day one in that store (but not day one in Steam).

ChorizoPicozo said:
Is Sony going to publish their games on Xbox, just like Microsoft is doing on PlayStation?

Rumor has it that Phil is still waiting for Sony's call to finalize the release of Helldivers 2 on Xbox and Game Pass.
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The Xbox consoles keep dying, so there wouldn't be any point to release anything there. Phil will be able to play Helldivers 2 on their (Asus Rog Ally) Xbox, but not in Gamepass.
 
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Sebastian1295 said:
They don't need to go third party when xbox have already done so, which means that sony gets to profit off of all the xbox games that they otherwise wouldn't have before in forza, gears, etc etc etc.
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People are buying Xbox games instead of first party Playstation games. They're getting 30% instead of 100% and it's killing their profit margins because of all their live service failures. Astro Bot hasn't even sold 3 million yet. Forza sold 1.4 million in a month and will pass Astro Bot by Christmas. It's dire at PlayStation studios, hence why they kicked Ryan and Hulst to the curb and out of the decision making chair.
 
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They already release stuff on other hardware and been doing so for decades.
The better question is when will the name Playstation lose it's meaning and value.
 
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Loomy said:
Better question. Does it actually matter?
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1000% yes.
We are already seeing the deleterious impact just doing years late ports has had on Sony's pipeline, their mentality, and the games themselves, and we've already seen it play out in full on Xbox. It's not up for debate at this point, and it never should've needed to be.

Everybody's giving MS props for Oblivion Reeemake and Doom when these are just games from a third party publisher that would've existed with or without them. Unless you like the idea of renting mediocrity via Gamepass, it's been all downside - actual first party games and studios that made the Xbox DNA have been deteriorating since the moment they stopped focusing 100% of their efforts on being a first party games company.
 
MoreJRPG said:
People are buying Xbox games instead of first party Playstation games. They're getting 30% instead of 100% and it's killing their profit margins because of all their live service failures. Astro Bot hasn't even sold 3 million yet. Forza sold 1.4 million in a month.
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You're losing me tbh. And astrobot was never expected to be a gigantic seller when it launched. Astrobot is a win in sony's cap because it got a crap ton of awards, great publicity, and won GOTY which brings prestige to the playstation brand. And the developers said themselves that they're impressed with the sales from what i've seen.



And forza has always been a massive massive franchise and those 1.4 million sales are just dollars into sony's bank account that they didn't have before because forza was never on the playstation platform before. Forza or any of these xbox games aren't going to stop people from buying playstation 1st or 2nd party games, because otherwise doom wouldn't of bombed in ur scenario, or pentiment, hi-fi rush etc.
 
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MoreJRPG said:
People are buying Xbox games instead of first party Playstation games. They're getting 30% instead of 100% and it's killing their profit margins because of all their live service failures. Astro Bot hasn't even sold 3 million yet. Forza sold 1.4 million in a month and will pass Astro Bot by Christmas. It's dire at PlayStation studios, hence why they kicked Ryan and Hulst to the curb and out of the decision making chair.
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>COD
>oblivion
>xbox games
Drink Reaction GIF by Laff

Forza Horizon 5 in an impressive feat, sure, but I don't think anyone denied Forza (Horizon)'s popularity, at all. Same with Sea of Thieves, yet you can't say that it outsold Helldivers 2 in the same year. Funny how that works.
 
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Stuart360 said:
Do you think Microsoft made Gamepass while secretly hoping no one actually used it?.
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Nope but they didn't expect Nintendo, PlayStation & third-party games to sale 10 , 15 , 20 & even 30 million units in the coming years after they planned their approach.

Subs work by snatching up the customers & once you become the go to place for the content you control the content & prices.

Even the Call of Duty devs are thankful for PlayStation right now .
 
MoreJRPG said:
People are buying Xbox games instead of first party Playstation games. They're getting 30% instead of 100% and it's killing their profit margins because of all their live service failures. Astro Bot hasn't even sold 3 million yet. Forza sold 1.4 million in a month and will pass Astro Bot by Christmas. It's dire at PlayStation studios, hence why they kicked Ryan and Hulst to the curb and out of the decision making chair.
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You're having a breakdown, get some help.
 
Might be clever to do so. They're certainly already making the right moves with the Portal. Doing that homework now will pay off in the future. PS7 will look a lot more like the Portal than it will a PS5. The prices and stagnation in affordable APUs are going to force the market into cloud computing.
 
MoreJRPG said:
People are buying Xbox games instead of first party Playstation games. They're getting 30% instead of 100% and it's killing their profit margins because of all their live service failures. Astro Bot hasn't even sold 3 million yet. Forza sold 1.4 million in a month and will pass Astro Bot by Christmas. It's dire at PlayStation studios, hence why they kicked Ryan and Hulst to the curb and out of the decision making chair.
Click to expand...

Man, Xbox going 3rd party and selling you out as customers really did a trick on many of you, it's literally projection after projection.

#sonytoo
 
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MoreJRPG said:
People are buying Xbox games instead of first party Playstation games. They're getting 30% instead of 100% and it's killing their profit margins because of all their live service failures. Astro Bot hasn't even sold 3 million yet. Forza sold 1.4 million in a month and will pass Astro Bot by Christmas. It's dire at PlayStation studios, hence why they kicked Ryan and Hulst to the curb and out of the decision making chair.
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Tom Cruise What GIF
 
People really need to get better at asking clear questions and defining terms.

The answer is yes, or no, and/or sort of - depending on what the question actually is.
 
Only really Nintendo remains, but they have significantly lower budgets + their IP sells more machines than the other 2.

Even if they dump the live-service stuff, Sony still needs to contend with their first-party games taking longer to make and increasing in budget. Spider-man 1 was around 100 million, but the sequel was 3x that.

Only way they stop porting to other platforms is if they drop budgets, otherwise they're likely to port to even more platforms.
 
No. They will sooner cut back on first party development if it becomes too expensive than throw away the free money printer that is the PlayStation platform.
 
No. Sony only lives through the PS brand now, the TV, home cinema, box-office, etc only live because the PS section carries them all. They will always have PS ecosystem at the core of their business, cause they don't have much else nowadays. So they need to sell the consoles, the controllers, the headsets, the headphones, etc, and the games, to make as much money as possible. PC releases brings them additional income, but the leaks showed it's not much. And we saw that the must recent releases flopped (Until Dawn remake and Days Gone Remastered), so it will never be their main business.
 
The current trajectory of software development expenses growing, console userbases shrinking, and hardware prices climbing all point to a change eventually. All the untapped growth globally and in Asia will mostly be on PC also.

Sony already has published most of their current gen games on PC and even tried one for Switch.

The biggest red flag for me is that the number 1 pillar of their strategy from PS1 through PS5 has been buying 3rd party exclusives, and I don't really see many 3rd parties wanting to do that anymore. 3rd parties are looking to PC and Switch 2 as the first options.
 
Seems they are sort of doing it already depending on the title. Lego Horizon came to Switch right? Seems like most of their GAAS (attempts) will be on PC Day 1 and maybe sometimes Xbox? Seems like Marathon was going to get an Xbox release too right?

EDIT: If they keep up the blunders with their GAAS, they might be forced to start releasing even their SP games Day 1 on PC to help cut their losses and regain more positive momentum. A lot of the success of PS5 is riding on 3rd parties right now as is. They are a publicly traded company, they will do whatever it takes to make the numbers go up. Forget whatever "loyalty" you think they have to their own hardware.
 
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They're already third party from a PC gamer perspective and Xbox will go away or will be a PC with Steam access.
So, yes.
 
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