Ryan was great for money and pure business but has the gaming knowledge and personality of a wall. Have to wait and see how they do but way more hyped for this combination than I ever was for Ryan and if they combined can do close to as good as what Layden did, I will be very pleased.
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Yeah, definitely feels like a breath of fresh air. PS has been too comfortable for a while now, but once they move…
Exciting times ahead.
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Xbox already have it with Matt Booty and Sarah Bond - only difference is they report in to Phil Spencer who reports to Satya, while the two Sony ones report into the Sony CEO / chairman directly.
The additional level between them is about what you’d expect given one is a 3 trillion company where Xbox is a small part, and a 100 billion one where PlayStation is a huge part.
Either way they’ll still get expectations from management above them and some decisions made above their heads (big acquisitions for example)
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Agreed.
Their issue is that they had to run promotions to get the sales they did and it has eaten severely into their profit margins which are the most important thing after total revenue
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I agree with that but the revenue and profit is never made on the hardware (unless you’re Nintendo), it’s always made on the software and everything else but you can’t get that if you don’t get the console into consumers hands and homes first.
It does explain their stated goal now though that getting more money from their players is more important than actual sales.
I’m thinking that means the Pro as many may be upgrades (admittedly not be as I’ll probably get later on the year as my first PS5 as I generally get both each gen), perhaps PS Plus rises (plus incentives to upgrade levels), more cosmetics and season passes in games and maybe more accessories and remasters etc.
It’s mostly the same play as other publishers - apart from yep I agree I think they’ll start to move to Day 1 PC, particularly for anything that isn’t single player (with those maybe going after shorter timespans)
The only problem is that like with every company, saying “players” simply means nothing because in order to get those players, they have to first and foremost buy into your console hardware, platform and eco-system and in turn, buy the actual games.
For example, I bought, played for 45 minutes and refunded Palworld back in January. I will forever count as 1 of their all time player count but do I actually mean anything to that game or that company? Nope. Because they’re not getting a dime from me.
For me personally, sales will forever be the be all end all because it shows that people are willing to spend money on the hardware and the software which in turn means that I will get more of what I want which is console hardware and more games. If people don’t buy anything, this isn’t happening and if you have 20m players in a game but only a handful are spending any money, again, you’re not going to get what you want because the company isn’t making any money and eventually will realize, why is this still alive? why are we supporting this when no one is spending any money in the game?
I think Fortnite is one example that proves that while us older generations may be all about sales, much of the industry now isn’t - it’s one of the most successful games around and rakes in an absolute ton of cash every year.
It and games like it even affected Sony - they chased the live service cash and while they’ve got one successful title from it, the number of failed ones that have left their first party developers with games years away is a major issue
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Also the Portal is another good example of “more money from our existing players” as you need to already have a PS5 for it
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The disc console was not sold at a loss for a while now, and they barely made any non-disc consoles.
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True but you don’t know how many people actually spend money within the game. if the vast majority don’t, then Epic is reliant and dependent on a handful of people or perhaps whales that keep the game huge. It’s more than that obviously but you don’t know the actual numbers. Would it be a shock if more people who play Fornite don’t spend money in the game than those who do? It wouldn’t be a shock to me.
Sony should have kept TLOU Online and Spider Man online game going since they’re established well known IP’s that have a far greater chance at success than Fairgames or Concord for example. Naughty Dog is taking forever but Insomniac has carried the PS5 thus far. According to the hack/leak, they have a Venom game in late 2025 and in late 2026, Wolverine should be ready so to have potentially 5 releases in 6 years is going back to the PS3/360 days of gaming.
True but we don’t know how many units it sold and we don’t know how many people are actually spending money on games and whatnot because of it. It could be majority just buying the hardware to play what they already own and that’s it which means outside of the $200 cost for the handheld, they’re not making any other money and does anyone know how much the Portal costs to make?
This isn’t quite right, it has been forecast down multiple times yoy. I was only looking because trying to see why investors are spooked (so t stock)
Will reply with more detail
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Sony originally forecast 25m for 2023. That was just fucking stupid on Sony’s part. I would always forecast less than im expecting so if I surpass it, it looks better.
Sony forecast 18m for the current fiscal year between April 1st, 2024 and March 31st, 2025 but have a much higher forecast for their next fiscal year 2025/2026.
Midway through the year they also switched from Sold to Shipped. Their original guidance of 25 Million was for SOLD. Now they didnt even ship the 21 Million number. This is a difference of “sell-in” versus “sell through”. That allows for a couple million more units to be out there but not sold to consumers.
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Again, old school thinking. Their platform is king, like the rest, but going to where players are is going to be a part of their future as well. It’s unavoidable now.
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They can go to where the players are like PC but here’s a question - if Sony’s PlayStation console dies which is driver for everything that they do, do you believe that they would still be alive and well because I don’t. I think their entire brand dies without the console being successful and going past 100m units sold.
Sony can do other things to get more people in but if they were to ever eliminate the number one point of entry for their brand, platform and eco-system, the rest isn’t going to matter.
Why would it die? Console users like consoles more than PC
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That’s what im saying. The focal point should always be the console as the driver and everything else is an extension from it.
There’s more mobile and PC users than there are those that use primarily use a console, by a massive amount.
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