I honestly don’t know what Sony were thinking with PSVR2
The first at least was a solid attempt at breaking into new ground but it was blatantly obvious that no matter how good the tech is, a viable market isn’t there until it’s super cheap and has full dev support so them trying again with 2 after seeing how bad the market is for this stuff is mind blowing
I would say it’s this gen’s Vita but Vita only failed because of Sony’s own horrible first party support, VR2 had absolutely nothing going for it
Any CEO with a brain would have immediately rejected it
They have spent who knows how many 100s of millions in R&D for this crap as well as the costs for making the games for it
That would make sense it it was some clueless Sony suits pushing it from above, I imagine plenty of PS folk either knew it was a stupid idea or hated having to work on it
You only had to see the reaction on this site about xbox “exclusives” going away. Everyone needs to accept the gaming business is changing forever. Phil and the xbox team have know this for years and the sooner people accept this the better we all will be.
Sony want to invest in the VR/AR space because it’s projected to be important in the future, probably not in gaming but for spatial computing & industrial applications.
They have a strong gaming brand, they experiment and push the technology through that because it will give them more marketability and exposure, but the ultimate goal is for them to be an important supplier for VR/AR technology.
A strong argument could be made about cars being the most social of assets we own tbh, i.e. because it “takes us places where we meet new people” etc. (in fact some commercials have already used this angle). Also, I’ve never ‘played’ video games with any of you guys… so I think that’s a moot point. This forum represents a ‘community’ of people with a shared interest & hobby, that is all.
The word ‘community’ has basically been appropriated & misappropriated by every single company out there. There’s so much handwringing from consumers about the gaming industry at large I don’t even know where to begin, i.e. with these types of stories (layoffs) being a perfect case in point: everyone is losing their minds like we’re somehow participants in this clown show & have actual agency to make change. Aka like a real ‘community’.
We don’t. We don’t matter. I’m just a miniscule fraction of a number on a spreadsheet somewhere over at Redmond (& Sony’s HQ because I had a PS4 with a few games on it).
My initial post in this thread was more like an indirect response to some ‘trends’ I’m noticing online among the more fanatical voices whereby we’re being encouraged into spending more on video games in the name of ‘protecting the industry’. Well, misplaced sense of belonging to a ‘community’ which is de-facto hidden behind a paywall (Sony’s in this instance because this news relates to their PlayStation business) can lead to all sorts of weirdness.
Development costs are now 10 times more expensive than in the 90's and more than double or nearly triple the cost of Tekken 7. Even the Fight Lounge servers are costly to maintain. In the past there weren't so many specs and there wasn't online. Plus they didn't have such high…
Crazy that after all the talk (from a certain group) about Game Pass being unsustainable, it turns out that the real unsustainability came from massive budgets to these single player “blockbusters”.
And on top of all that Sony has been paying massive amounts of money just to keep certain third party games off of Xbox. And all for what? So that you can brag and say you’re winning the console wars by selling more consoles? When in the end it didn’t mean jack because your margins are basically non-existant?
Really is a terrible time for people working in the games industry and it’s not going to get any better. Wouldn’t be suprised if we see something like 15k jobs lost this year. I’m expecting a lot of cuts at ubisoft and some of the other big publishers while smaller studios will struggle with capital either cutting back staff or closing completely.
The issue the industry will face is that gaming has to deal in long term projection because of the length of time needed to develop games. Job cuts and project cancelations now mean the end of this gen and beginning of next gen could see less titles than desired and a lot more cross generational games.
This has The Last Jedi message written all over…and well we know how folks treated it. Disregarding the opinion on the movie itself, this is among the hardest pill to swallow. Sure was easy for Netflix and streaming taking over cable acceptance though.
Yep on PX when the Sony fanboys would come over from PS I’d point out that a strong monthly income was preferable to peaks and troughs in revenue, because it smoothed out cash flow, allowed for better forecasting and meant the whole company wasn’t bet on every release.
But no, us Xbox gamers were apparently devaluing gaming, even though many of us have been able to try out games we never would have thanks to Game Pass and ended up buying them / getting DLC / buying other games from the developers, and have got to play many more games…
I’ll likely still get a Pro at some point once they’re out to pick up some games I’ve missed and play a few rounds with the PlayStation side of my friendship group, but if Game Pass stays as good and varied as it has been my Series X will remain my primary console as it gives me such different experiences
