I think if they could totally abandon their existing approach immediately and started releasing all their 1P games into PS Now immediately AND partnered with Google for game streaming they might be able to hang in there ok. That said, I don’t see them being able to turn on a dime and they would still be at a huge deficit in subs for along while yet and by then XGS might well be firing on all cylinders anyhow.
Well thats a lot of ifs…even so, could they match Microsofts still growing studio count? Will there be cross-gen with PC and NATIVE PC versions? Will there be a $1 PS+ upgrade deal? Will Naughty Dog be able to release The Last of Us 3 with multiplayer in less then 5 years between releases?
I doubt bruv. I very doubt!
Well thats exactly it. We’re looking at 33M GP Subs by end of year and 50M+ the year after, all pistons firing on PC, 2 consoles, Xcloud, smart phones, dongles, tvs and browsers.
The time to act is really…NOW (thats a pun) and we aren’t seeing it.
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Just had a thought. Phil Spencer mentioned that MS envisions gaming being cloud-first and scaling up and down devices and not be bound to capabilities of the local hardware. I think the reason why MS can do this without the operating cost skyrocketing based on data used by gamers is because they own the infrastructure.
I think Microsoft owning the data centres they are operating will be a MASSIVE advantage in sustaining a cloud gaming subscription service like Game Pass at scale. You see, the pricing model for Azure is the more MB used, the more you pay. Microsoft doesn’t have to pay for renting out server capacity (they own the data centres), so this means that they can have games that use unlimited CPU, GPU power or have over 100,000 players in a single map they envision coming. Whereas Sony or anyone not owning their infrastructure could potentially run in a situation where subscribers will use more data than the subscription pricing can sustain or more than actual subscribers, or the more complex the game, the more expensive it will be for company in operating the service/game. That alone is why Sony for example will be resistant to expanding PSNow.
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That’s exactly what I think Jim Ryan meant when he said that the Gamepass model was not sustainable, he meant it specifically in their case.
Another problem for them is that PS games are built explicitly to run their API, so they can run only on PS5 hardware, meaning they would have to supply PS5 blades to Azure/AWS/GC or port their games entirely to PC which is what they are doing now, but they would need to start doing with day 1 releases.
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I agree, Microsoft played this in a very smart way, they don’t have this problem because they unified the Xbox GDK so you can do Cloud, PC and Console development and they own data centres, so they don’t need to find Billions investing in data centres and be at the mercy of external vendors that Sony is.
Microsoft took some heat for the undercooked dev tools for Xbox at launch, but Microsoft is thinking long-term with Gamecore because the promise is substantial with developers being able to deploy a game across cloud, PC, console with minimal effort, at least in theory. It is a cornerstone of Microsoft’s overall goal for gaming.
My understanding is that PS3 games on PS Now run on PS3 blades. I presume they’re not planning to manufacture those forever. So what happens when the PS3 hardware starts to break down over time? PS3 back compat goes away?
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Normally Sony would just emulate the PS3 games on the newer hardware but their backwards compatibility still seems like an afterthought. Emulating the PS3 is definitely possible, RPCS3 emulator for PC is improving all the time and Sony knows the in and outs of the cell processor so it should be easier for them.
The other option to continue to manufacture those apus, the process nodes probably still exist but this is definitely the stop gap solution.
MS has already solved the emulation problem, in the future you probably be able to stream every single game you own from the OG Xbox to the current gen, publisher allowing that is.
True, with Gamecore theoretically any game built for PC should work on Xbox with minimal effort, so any the only reason for a game coming to PC to skip Xbox would be paid exclusivity.
I too think it’s a mistake, but they are probably stuck.
They can’t get Ps3 games without Ps3 hardware, or Ps4 and games without Ps4 and Ps5 hardware.
That puts a big humper on how they can expand their offerings.
Ms “solved” that issue by modifying the SoC so it can be used as a regular instance on the cloud, so unused consoles are still generating revenue for them. Not to mention the long term goal of porting the underlying xbox architecture to windows so they can be truly hardware independent in the cloud.
Sony needs to figure that our first before trying to expand Psnow otherwise they will never be able to recoup the investments.
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