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[RetroGamingUK]

All the talk about Sony woke and Sony live service is meaningless.

In reality, outside of NeoGaf, over 117 million people worldwide chose PS4 over Xbone largely to play the likes of GTA, COD, FIFA, Madden and Fortnite with their mates.

When current gen rolled around Microsoft tried everything, acquisitions, Gamepass, good hardware, but none of it mattered. People had built up huge digital libraries and friends lists on PS4 so when PS5 came out they just stitched to that without even considering an Xbox.

Phil Spencer even admitted it, they lost the worst console war to lose in history when people built their digital libraries.

Phil Spencer said they're no longer in the business of trying to "out-console Sony", within weeks the third party floodgates opened.

The home console see-saw is now well and truly tipped in PlayStation's favour and no one's going to budge it. Sony's first party is just the icing, not the cake.

 

[Xbox 360 slim]

All the talk about Sony woke and Sony live service is meaningless.

In reality, outside of NeoGaf, over 117 million people worldwide chose PS4 over Xbone largely to play the likes of GTA, COD, FIFA, Madden and Fortnite with their mates.

When current gen rolled around Microsoft tried everything, acquisitions, Gamepass, good hardware, but none of it mattered. People had built up huge digital libraries and friends lists on PS4 so when PS5 came out they just stitched to that without even considering an Xbox.

Phil Spencer even admitted it, they lost the worst console war to lose in history when people built their digital libraries.

Phil Spencer said they're no longer in the business of trying to "out-console Sony", within weeks the third party floodgates opened.

The home console see-saw is now well and truly tipped in PlayStation's favour and no one's going to budge it. Sony's first party is just the icing, not the cake.

Dude, people in Asia and Europe/globally have always went with PS. The only time there was ever a "war" was in the US and Mexico, maybe in Canada and the UK too. And that was mostly in the 7th gen. 8th gen it was mainly only in the US and Mexico. Xbox has basically collapsed in all markets in the 9th gen. The console war never existed for most of the world and still doesn't. This isn't really shocking.

 

[Sooner]

Just like when Sony tried to compete with Nintendo with the PSP and PS3 vs the Wii and DS, and got curb stomped

Both of those consoles sold over 80 million units. Your Sony-hate boner is making you crazy.

 

[Xbox 360 slim]

Both of those consoles sold over 80 million units. Your Sony-hate boner is making you crazy.

Now compare them to the DS and Wii. The PS3 made sony sell buildings to keep afloat, and I love the PS3. It was a failure finaically.

 

[N1tr0sOx1d3]

 

[nial]

Now compare them to the DS and Wii. The PS3 made sony sell buildings to keep afloat, and I love the PS3. It was a failure finaically.

87M versus 101M is not exactly a MASSIVE difference and the ROI on console sales don't have much to do with the topic of market consumption at large.

 

[Sooner]

Now compare them to the DS and Wii. The PS3 made sony sell buildings to keep afloat, and I love the PS3. It was a failure finaically.

Ok, so the WORST console generation is the PS3 selling 87.4 million. Compared to:

GameCube - 21.7 million
Wii U - 13.5 million
Nintendo 64 - 33 million

You really have to move goalposts around to make PlayStation console sales look poor. The worst PS console outsold 3 Nintendo consoles combined.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

You really have to move goalposts around to make PlayStation console sales look poor. The worst PS console outsold 3 Nintendo consoles combined.

The worst selling PlayStation outsold the best selling Xbox.

PS5 will also leapfrog both by the end of this year.

 

[Xbox 360 slim]

Ok, so the WORST console generation is the PS3 selling 87.4 million. Compared to:

GameCube - 21.7 million
Wii U - 13.5 million
Nintendo 64 - 33 million

You really have to move goalposts around to make PlayStation console sales look poor. The worst PS console outsold 3 Nintendo consoles combined.

compare it to the PS2, sony literally had to sell buildings to keep afloat. Stop glazing sony so hard bro.

 

[Unknown?]

Now compare them to the DS and Wii. The PS3 made sony sell buildings to keep afloat, and I love the PS3. It was a failure finaically.

PS3 eventually turned a profit. 360 never did.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Glancing through the thread, for a second I thought it was PS5 that dipped 30% YoY.

Oh wait, it was Xbox. And it was a dip from a prior big dip despite making the biggest premium shooter series 'free' on GamePass.

I can't even fathom how this thread turned into the #SonyToo when PS5 rose YoY and right now the hottest topic in social networks and among a lot of normies is the PS5 exclusive by Hideo Kojima. On the other hand it's getting progresssively hard to find even recent Xbox accessories in Europe, let alone consoles.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

compare it to the PS2, sony literally had to sell buildings to keep afloat. Stop glazing sony so hard bro.

Your argument is so weak you've had to go back nearly 20 years.

Now stop derailing.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Yotei.

8 games in 2024 (including Helldivers 2 that sold 12M units in three months), and 6 games in 2025, which is basically the same as Nintendo this year.
Also, what would sales have to do with output or studio management? And you want us to believe that you're not a clown warrior.

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Ok. I hope its successful but I dont agree on that one.

 

[Klayzer]

It's the same clowns, derailing every thread with a SonyToo fanfic.

 

[Karim]

 

[Hector Hall]

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Ok. I hope its successful but I dont agree on that one.

Doom and Indy for sure, they have sold poorly.
Forza Horizon 5,compared to the Xbox and PC sales, sure. Now if you add the 3 million PS5 sales now, it will be more difficult.
Oblivion has sold very strong and will have lots of price promotion, so probably not.

 

[Vlodril]

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Ok. I hope its successful but I dont agree on that one.

It probably will. None of those games did extremely well (i mean got numbers for example). So it's quite possible.

 

[nial]

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Ok. I hope its successful but I dont agree on that one.

Read what I said again:

Sony has a game that will do better than every game published by Microsoft for the next 5 months on PlayStation combined (outside of COD, and I was not the one to make that exception in the first place).

Now, individually? Yes, it will outsell all of those on PlayStation. It's not even a question.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Sony
Always
Wins

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

You know things are bad for Xbox when the usual suspects have to pull out the #SonyToo card despite PS5 being the only console up YoY

 

[Nydius]

The PS3 made sony sell buildings to keep afloat, and I love the PS3.

sony literally had to sell buildings to keep afloat.

Do you have any other argument than "but think of Sony's real estate"? Because that one's completely failed.

 

[drganon]

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Yes. Most people who aren't green rats such as you believe this as well.

 

[Three]

You know things are bad for Xbox when the usual suspects have to pull out the #SonyToo card despite PS5 being the only console up YoY

But they sold a building 2 decades ago bro. Weren't you looking forward to visiting that office building?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

But they sold a building 2 decades ago bro. Weren't you looking forward to visiting that office building?

Don't forget about what happened to Psygnosis 30 years ago too!

 

[demigod]

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Ok. I hope its successful but I dont agree on that one.

 

[Syphon Filter]

woke yotei wont outsell them lol.

 

[Three]

You think yotei is going to outsell oblivion remaster, forza horizon 5, doom, indy...the list goes on and on?

Ok. I hope its successful but I dont agree on that one.

On Playstation he said. Not entirely.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Never mind those he threw under the bus while chucking you a compliment, eh Dench?

I didn't see them mention any other names. I only saw the comment with my name included so I just thought he was talking generally. Ill check the posts and reserve judgement for now.

 

[DenchDeckard]

The problem is a logistical one. If you assume extending dev timescales are an industry-wide problem then obviously productivity is going to go down and gaps will start to appear in release schedules. So, what's the solution? You acquire more studios which increases burn-rate and adds burden on management and publishing, or create partnerships with third parties to fill the holes short-term and hopefully deepen the relationship in the long run.

Sony have picked the latter and MS the former, and I think its pretty obvious which one is work out better thus far.

As to disappointment from fans... First of all I think with a lot of people expectations are seriously out-of-whack. Games have never looked or run better on average but, of course, its never enough! As to the content, again the reality is that any project coming out now would have been greenlit back in 2020 or so, and in many instances you cannot pivot midway through without a huge amount of waste.




5 years sounds terrible, but when that's a standard AAA dev-cycle with Covid disruption factored in... Its just reality we all have to deal with.




The problem is that the "backlash" to Yotei is fucking stupid. There's no sugar-coating the fact that if people are bent out of shape over the gender of the lead they aren't making a credible argument... they are using the same retarded playbook as the wokies bitching about "gruff white male" leads being passe a few years back.

As to the lack of perceived advancement, it should be fairly obvious that the comparator should be how the older game was running on its target hardware back at launch, and not any remaster or patched re-issue running on current gen hardware!

The basic reality is that relative improvement is what it is. A team who wrote optimized code for PS4 is unlikely to suddenly start writing unoptimized code on PS5, outside of extenuating circumstances where they are desperately crunching to hit a deadline. There's a weird persecution complex that some "gamers" seem to have where they irrationally acsribe everything that doesn't make them perfectly happy to malice.

Its stupid, victim-mentality, bullshit and I have no time for it.



All good. But I personally think people acting like Sony's first-party plan this gen has been egregiously bad, are overreacting. Not to say their plans have been perfect, but it seems to me that little flurry of titles at the end of the PS4's life made this mostly inevitable. Take Naughty Dog for example; it was known at the time the whole studio was crunching to get that title out of the door in 2020. Then there was the pandemic and so even more time was lost with reorganizing to remote working etc. Then of course there was the elongated process of Factions 2 being spun out from its original "bonus mode" status on TLOU2, rescoping to a GAAS, then a labour/cost analysis showing that supporting it would require turning ND into Bungie... A typical shit-tastic result that just underscores my earlier about about pivoting approach mid-cycle tending to just short-cut devs into production hell.

Point being, errors made in the PS4 era often take years to become evident to the market. Same deal with Days Gone 2... the fallout between local studio management and creative that led to John Garvin's departure and the lack of progress to a sequel getting made was a PS4 problem. The studios creative leads both exit under a cloud and the next project flounders... well colour me shocked!

I mention these because these two studios seem to be the only ones that weren't acquired or hired to support the GAAS initiative that business's desire for greater profitability demanded.

Great post. I agree wirh everything here. Hope the ps5 has a strong end to the gen like ps3.

Thanks for taking the time to respond in such a great way. Appreciate it.

Nintendo isn't releasing tons of games each year and their flagship Switch 2 game was a Switch 1 game that got delayed.

On Playstation he said. Not entirely.

Unknown, Nintendo normally release 3 to 4 self developed games a year. That's some good management. Well paced releases that normally have you excited every quarter.

Three, a publisher just wants the most sales and xbox is third party now. I hear ya though and would hope yotei does huge numbers. Sony having 1 release in the year is going to hype up the owners because they are starving. Imo, anyway.

 

[Starbuck2907]

Not surprised. Price hike and they said they were having supply chain issues.

They had supply chain issues in 2021 and 2022, and they seem to have started having them again when the tariff war started.

Plus, they don't view selling consoles as a profit center. They want gamepass to be the profit center and you don't need an Xbox for that. My buddy just uses his Samsung tv to play Xbox games through the Xbox app for tv. I play on my iPad sometimes when I travel. They still want to sell Xboxes, but they are probably ok carrying low inventory until the next Xbox comes out, which will probably be sooner than later.

 

[Giallo Corsa]

I think mostly it's the idea that the alts are people who were previously banned from NeoGAF.

That'd be correct and that would also include you and the Xbox 360 slim guy.

Years old accounts with known and aggressive behaviour showing lots of e-confidence® talking and acting like they've been here before - why even register for an account if you're not going to participate and just come out of the woodwork during very specific moments and in very specific threads ? why not just lurk without registering for an account ?

You people act like we were born yesterday and whenever you get called out you start crying wolf, it's always the others that are crazy for stating facts, amirite ?

 

[drganon]

That'd be correct and that would also include you and the Xbox 360 slim guy.

Years old accounts with known and aggressive behaviour showing lots of e-confidence® talking and acting like they've been here before - why even register for an account if you're not going to participate and just come out of the woodwork during very specific moments and in very specific threads ? why not just lurk without registering for an account ?

You people act like we were born yesterday and whenever you get called out you start crying wolf, it's always the others that are crazy for stating facts, amirite ?

You can throw in that MicTyson guy in as well. Couldn't act more like alts if they tried.

 

[Xbox 360 slim]

Check

That'd be correct and that would also include you and the Xbox 360 slim guy.

Years old accounts with known and aggressive behaviour showing lots of e-confidence® talking and acting like they've been here before - why even register for an account if you're not going to participate and just come out of the woodwork during very specific moments and in very specific threads ? why not just lurk without registering for an account ?

You people act like we were born yesterday and whenever you get called out you start crying wolf, it's always the others that are crazy for stating facts, amirite ?

Check my post history.

 

[Mattyp]

You spend 100 billion dollars an increase in revenue isn't going to cut it. That increase needs to be massive to make up for the amount of money you spent plus the additional overhead of the studios you acquired.

The fact they are laying off thousands of developers and shutting down full studios, including their own "AAAA" studio, they do not seem to be doing well.

It's even worse given the fact the software they ARE selling they are now giving 30% of the revenue to Sony, Nintendo and Valve.

How did you get $100billion from $68billion? Quite a jump, but does make it sound better I guess.

They weren't aware what selling on another service was going to cost them before the purchase…? Or was Activision already paying that fee.

 

[Mattyp]

Sony make hardware? Really? Are you sure?

Well shit they don't make games besides Astro

 

[DenchDeckard]

PS3 eventually turned a profit. 360 never did.

Is there evidence of this? All i ever saw is that the 360 generation started turning a profit in around 2008. Interesting if it never became profitable and Sony managed to turn it around.

 

[jm89]

Well shit they don't make games besides Astro

They are running a healthy palform . Some thing that Microsoft have realised they need to keep their Xbox studios afloat

 

[Three]

Three, a publisher just wants the most sales and xbox is third party now. I hear ya though and would hope yotei does huge numbers. Sony having 1 release in the year is going to hype up the owners because they are starving. Imo, anyway.

Yeah as a third party getting more sales regardless of place is important but beside the point. I can't agree with your second point about people starving and that was what nial was disputing too. Your idea that PS users need these MS games to drive engagement:

Nah, you just implied that Sony has nothing on its own, so it will be up to Microsoft to help driving engagement on PS5, while in reality, Sony has a game that will do better than every game published by Microsoft for the next 5 months on PlayStation combined (outside of COD, and I was not the one to make that exception in the first place).

So Dench, how can they be starving if theyre getting all the games from other platforms plus more (Astro, DS2, Yotei)? They're getting Sony exclusives that PC or xbox don't have yet plus all the xbox/PC games from MS too.

His point was that they're not starving, they were offered MS' games but they didn't go out and buy them. his point is that more PS5 owners will go out and buy Ghost of Yotei than all the things MS offered on the console. The most third party sales is irrelevant to that.

 

[Unknown?]

Is there evidence of this? All i ever saw is that the 360 generation started turning a profit in around 2008. Interesting if it never became profitable and Sony managed to turn it around.

They were still having rrod problems in 2008. That drained ANY profit they may have had.

 

[Duchess]

Xbox 360 did 85 million?

PS5 will likely overtake that in the next few years. It will pass the PS3's sales figures, too.

 

[m14]

That'd be correct and that would also include you and the Xbox 360 slim guy.

Years old accounts with known and aggressive behaviour showing lots of e-confidence® talking and acting like they've been here before - why even register for an account if you're not going to participate and just come out of the woodwork during very specific moments and in very specific threads ? why not just lurk without registering for an account ?

You people act like we were born yesterday and whenever you get called out you start crying wolf, it's always the others that are crazy for stating facts, amirite ?

I've already addressed this earlier in the thread.
I wasn't aware that making jokes about Sony qualified as "aggressive behaviour" but I guess it might feel that way to some particularly sensitive users. I'd also say it's the pinnacle of "e-confidence" to make accusations about other users with zero actual evidence to back it up.
And yes you'd find that "years old accounts" would indeed talk like they've been here before... because they've been registered members for years.

why even register for an account if you're not going to participate and just come out of the woodwork during very specific moments and in very specific threads ?

The vast majority of members on this or any forum will never post. Members are free to post however they wish as long as it is within the rules. Some threads will be more interesting to them than others. Registering gives the opportunity to participate and makes more features of the forum available to someone than if they remained unregistered.

None of this paranoia has anything to do with post frequency etc. It's all because some people can't tolerate dissenting views.

 

[Three]

How did you get $100billion from $68billion? Quite a jump, but does make it sound better I guess.

Because they didn't just buy Activision. They bought ABK, Zenimax, Mojang, and several other studios. They've been doing this for a while to be "pumping" on software.

 

[DenchDeckard]

They were still having rrod problems in 2008. That drained ANY profit they may have had.

I am not sure that was what I heard. I was at Gamestation at the time and we heard that it cost MS 1.15 billion to fix the RROD issue. Sony lost like 3.2 Billion with the launch of the PS3 and the cost it was to manufacture. Where are you getting these numbers from?

 

[TGO]

Ok, so the WORST console generation is the PS3 selling 87.4 million. Compared to:

ironically Sony's biggest flops are MS's greatest hits.
And you can't say Nintendo wasn't a bit concerned with the PSP's 80m sales.
Sure the DS did a better but you can't ignore those numbers as nothing of concern.
Sony is actually their own worst enemy.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

ironically Sony's biggest flops are MS's greatest hits.
And you can't say Nintendo wasn't a bit concerned with the PSP's 80m sales.
Sure the DS did a better but you can't ignore those numbers as nothing of concern.
Sony is actually their own worst enemy.

Sony got a lot right with PSP, lovely piece of kit.

The problem with PS Vita and Wii U was growing budgets, neither could afford to support their secondary platforms alongside PS4 and 3DS.

 

[Brucey]

Is there evidence of this? All i ever saw is that the 360 generation started turning a profit in around 2008. Interesting if it never became profitable and Sony managed to turn it around.

Well we have Microsoft's sworn testimony that the xbox consoles never made a profit if that can be accepted as reliable...

"The Washington-based tech giant sells every Xbox at a loss, according to sworn testimony from Microsoft's VP of Xbox business development Lori Wright.

"Has Microsoft ever earned a profit on the sale of an Xbox console?" she was asked. "No," she said."

Xbox consoles have never been profitable on their own, Microsoft admits in court

Xbox consoles have never been profitable, a Microsoft representative said in a court testimony on Wednesday.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[TheGodfather07]

Why the heck are people talking about 360 in here? It's 2025, not 2008. I know they were good days but them days are looooong gone.

 

[Zacfoldor]

Not surprised. Price hike and they said they were having supply chain issues.

They had supply chain issues in 2021 and 2022, and they seem to have started having them again when the tariff war started.

Plus, they don't view selling consoles as a profit center. They want gamepass to be the profit center and you don't need an Xbox for that. My buddy just uses his Samsung tv to play Xbox games through the Xbox app for tv. I play on my iPad sometimes when I travel. They still want to sell Xboxes, but they are probably ok carrying low inventory until the next Xbox comes out, which will probably be sooner than later.

This is true but they will also carry this ideology into next gen. They aren't waiting for the next xbox, instead they are bulldozing forward with their play-anywhere initiative and only designing/releasing a new box for clout. It's a virtue signal, not a loss leader. That is why I think sales will continue to retract for them in hardware.

 

[Sooner]

Sony is actually their own worst enemy.

So it the band Lit. But, that's no surprise.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

ironically Sony's biggest flops are MS's greatest hits.
And you can't say Nintendo wasn't a bit concerned with the PSP's 80m sales.
Sure the DS did a better but you can't ignore those numbers as nothing of concern.
Sony is actually their own worst enemy.

All three of the Big 3 are their own worst enemy. How they respond is more important and this is where Microsoft fails worse than everyone else. At least in regard to Xbox.