Just split every game into 19 parts. You would see a 19 fold increase in profits.
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But we know from the insomniac leaks, there only about 13 million users on the Playstation side that use the higher tiers of the service. So for now atleast the 3rd party deals are likely to cost more per user to put on the service.
When you add the current business model at playstation of one or two very big games a year they’re likely to have a churn issue where people just sign up for a month or two just to play those big games.
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I do not find these numbers awful. The best selling games are recent games, which is good for us.
I still find Last of US 2 numbers a bit underperforming considering the hype and cost.
Nintendo is a bad comparison, Nintendo consoles are first party hardware. I expect a succesfull mass market console not to rely too much on 1st party output, meaning this is a good market for 3rd parties.
With the way people fawn over these exclusives you’d expect them to sell more though considering the huge console sales PS has
I think they are decent numbers on a first look because 10-20m+ sounds huge but then you remember what the games cost and that considering the install base, most of these titles are selling maybe 1 copy to every 10 PS consoles
and just because PS is a more third party console doesn’t help their first party, their games cost far more than Nintendo’s but sell far less
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As you can see, their 1st party sell much more than during the ps1-ps3 area, and they were also quite hyped, at least during the ps3 area, where Sony fans started to hype their 1st party studios to counterbalance the fact they were trounced on every 3rd party by the X360
Now 20M unit sold is quite a number, the idea that every owner of a console buy the same games is quite naive
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Agreed. I don’t know in what world you can say that sales ranging from 10 to 25 million copies (for 9 titles since the PS4) are ‘awful’. More and more, I get the impression that I’m seeing here the same kind of idiotic comments being made by fanboys on the other side.
As a reminder, most Call of Duty games over the last ten years have sold between 15 and 30 million copies, but were released on three major platforms at the same time. Are these figures also awful?
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I would never say any game selling that much is terrible. but after seeing the numbers it’s not a good roi for the amount of cash you are investing into the project.
As for say call of duty a bunch of those same users who bought cod are going to buy coesmetics, new maps, etc (if I am wrong on this I am sorry I don’t own a PlayStation) none of Sonys first party titles do this, sure they invest in standalone which is a great way to recoup some costs by reusing assets but that’s way more investment then a single developer making a single cosmetic that sells like 200 k.
This has me more worried that we should be backing a bit up from these AAA titles as if a single one falters it could cost hundreds to thousands of jobs.
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Was going to reply to that post but you basically summed up what I was going to say
The numbers at first glance look, great, amazing even but then you remember the costs, resources and ROI and it paints a different picture
For the absolutely insane hype it got and endless praise, 10m for TLOU2 is not good when we know how much it cost to make and how many studios were involved
This also doesn’t show how many sales come from deep, deep price cuts
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TLOU2 grossed $450M, dev costs were $220M. Probably stuff like marketing, shipping etc. on top of that. Still profitable, but if theire costs keep balooning, then it’s no longer sustainable.
Once you look at the metrics, the numbers are aweful for Sony. From a quick eyeballing, their current higher selling titles are around the 1 in 10 to 1 in 14 attach rate. Selling 10 million copies to 140 million customers is low.
For what blockbuster first party attach rate can be, have a look at Nintendo. Their attach rate is 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 range. Notice Mario Kart 8 selling over 45 million out of 132 million Switch units or Super Mario Bros selling 40 million.
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then there are all the Metroids, Xenoblades, Fire Emblems or Kirbys that sell nowhere near those numbers…
and those games are dirt cheap to make compared to Mario, Zelda etc which they are also dirt cheap to make compared to TLOU, Horizon, Spiderman etc
This is the problem, the biggest selling Playstation games have insane, unsustainable budgets that keep going up meanwhile Nintendo is selling 2-3x as many copies from their “big” games on half the budget or less
Then you have the smaller titles that still sell millions but probably have a 10th of the budget Sony’s do
Now I’m not saying they need to sell as well as Nintendo because that’s a hard task for basically anyone out there but they absolutely need to do something about their budgets and the majority of their games being these hugely expensive one and done single player games
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Right, but that is what good attach rate numbers look like since most had no idea and questioned why the numbers are bad.
All of that doesnt even take into account the budgets for each game. This is why Sony is at the bottom for profit margins. Its alright to sell less, but not with budgets that are 3x to 6x other titles.
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But that is the thing those titles are on much smaller budgets (as far as we know) and even if they only sell 1-4 million copies the roi would be much greater.
I repeat myself but yeah… I paid $2 for TLOU2.
Yeah the numbers by themselves are for the most part not awful in a strict sense, but I for one was very surprised at the very low attach rate.
Playing devil’s advocate a bit here though I would assume much of the point of these games are to ensure the prestige of the brand. That could make the ROI look significantly better.
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I think this discussion is missing the detail that has long been held up about Sony first party games - their goal isn’t just to sell games, their goal is to sell the console as well. They want to show off that big exclusive like up of games and graphical prowess that these big budgets achieve. It all feeds into that larger ecosystem when every consumer who buys the console is another potential source of revenue for them, as they continue to make a cut of every game sold on the platform.
Of course, I’m sure they’d love to have their cake and eat it too by pushing for more profitability as well as that.
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Well we know Sony have realized their games are a bit too risky to make, hence their u-turn to GAAS - currently 55% of their resources are dedicated to developing live service titles.
Nintendo is not a good point of comparison since their platform has a much worse ecosystem of 3rd party games, hoping that a Sony or a MS game can reach 50-60% attach rate would not be realistic.
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We don’t need to defend Sony’s honor here y’all, some people are just saying what the reality is. Yes their games are selling well but it doesn’t bring them money because the margin is low( probably because of high dev cost). That’s why Sony is pivoting to live service because they can’t just rely on brand loyalty and exclusives to improve their profitability( in the end of the day, they answer to shareholders).
Also, a majority of PlayStation buyers are casual players, and guess what games those people usually buy, not Sony exclusives, but games like COD, which is now owned by their rival( so they can’t take advantage of it anymore). Sony is in a crossroad right now and despite its industry leading position, it is actually the one that has the most to lose if the market conditions change in the gaming industry.
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The problem is not that Sony produces AAA with low margin, the problem is not that that their AAA costs more and more (3X between SM1 and SM2), that would be very nothing if it stopped there
No, the problem is that their solution is to invest in GAAS, a politic
- that they despise and taught their audience to hate
- that is risky and has produced very bad results for companies like Amazon, which share with Sony that they know nothing about GAAS
- that their opposition has invested and bought some of the most succesful licences of that kind (both Tencent and MS).
- that they painfully learnt it now (see the departure of the head of Gaas at Sony for evidence)
When your solution to one problem is trying an even harder task, then something is wrong
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Indeed. The myths keep being knocked down with this leak.
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