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Why does Sony insist on gate keeping ps5 on cloud?

Dorfdad

Dorfdad

Gold Member
I get the whole we want our games on console, but they also wanted to get some of that PC money and started dipping their toes in pc ports.

Now they have shifted back to single player titles only on Console again, but why do they not embrace cloud clients for tv and pc / Mac / mobile?

This would ensure they get additional revune from people getting their services and they could still keep their games as exclusives?

It's not like it doesn't exist or impossible as there are a few apps now that "bypass" their system and allow you to do this, but they are not official or reliable as a long term solution.

Sure they want to sell the portal, but that's limiting and I find the screen horrible and to small.

Seriously how would allowing more users via cloud devices hurt Sony??
 
I don't see the issue. They have their own cloud streaming platform. You can play playstation games rn on pcs, phones,etc with remote play.

Edit: i guess you do need a ps5 to do this. if they allowed cloud without restrictions, this would cause the same problems as playstation putting their games on other systems.
 
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Not fully sure. But then they also don't allow you to stream PS4 games to portal yet either. So there's weird restrictions.

It's also possible they don't have the cloud infrastructure for a potential large increase in users if they allow PS5 streaming to PC/Mobile. Though who knows.
 
Dorfdad said:
I get the whole we want our games on console, but they also wanted to get some of that PC money and started dipping their toes in pc ports.

Now they have shifted back to single player titles only on Console again, but why do they not embrace cloud clients for tv and pc / Mac / mobile?

This would ensure they get additional revune from people getting their services and they could still keep their games as exclusives?

It's not like it doesn't exist or impossible as there are a few apps now that "bypass" their system and allow you to do this, but they are not official or reliable as a long term solution.

Sure they want to sell the portal, but that's limiting and I find the screen horrible and to small.

Seriously how would allowing more users via cloud devices hurt Sony??
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Streaming of games is a pretty expensive technology for the host: you pretty much need a full PS5 (in server racks of course, so a bit cheaper then the home version) for each and every parallel player at the peak time. And since you need low latency you can't even use servers at the other end of the world. You also need to keep them running 24/7, so it also takes a lot of energy for the servers and air conditioning. And you need tons of data centers around the world and generate a lot of data you need to pay and can not use caching like for example Netflix...

Long story short: if you let people for example play free2play games or $5 games without them paying for the running cost you might lose A LOT of money...

Maybe you should not require the full premium subscription which is pretty expensive now, but hiding it behind some subscription service like PSN Essential is a good choice for a company.
 
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I'm sure it will come eventually, unless maybe licensing deals prohibit it on PC (e.g. publishers with deals for alternatives) and it is cleaner to keep it on official Sony hardware. Who knows.
 
I kinda get it. If they allowed cloud streaming of PS5 games on PC, I would just subscribe shortly to play Astrobot and stop there.

Forcing you to own a PS5 to stream their exclusive games probably ensures more long term customers.
 
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DrFigs said:
I don't see the issue. They have their own cloud streaming platform. You can play playstation games rn on pcs, phones,etc with remote play.

Edit: i guess you do need a ps5 to do this. if they allowed cloud without restrictions, this would cause the same problems as playstation putting their games on other systems.
Click to expand...
How so? They still get the money from you subscribing to their service and purchasing the license for the game!?
 
vince mcmahon wwe GIF
 
Turns out when you run games natively, you pay the electricity bill and maintain your own hardware, but in a server farm somewhere, the service provider foots that bill, which can get somewhat expensive. Which is another reason why going full cloud will never happen and it's pretty stupid when it can be avoided
 
Dorfdad said:
Seriously how would allowing more users via cloud devices hurt Sony??
Click to expand...

They lose money and weaken the PlayStation's position. They are not going to follow Microsoft down the road of killing their cash cow any more than Nintendo is as long as the console strategy is working for them.
 
reinking said:
They lose money and weaken the PlayStation's position. They are not going to follow Microsoft down the road of killing their cash cow any more than Nintendo is as long as the console strategy is working for them.
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It if you have to buy their games and said games are not on PC how is it weakening their position? PC player were never going to buy a console
 
Might be a wait and see approach for Sony.

Keep it on there own devices for now, continue developing it and if cloud gaming ever takes off then expand out.
 
Dorfdad said:
It if you have to buy their games and said games are not on PC how is it weakening their position? PC player were never going to buy a console
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The XBOX Series X will probably may be my last XBOX console and I sold it halfway through this generation. Why? Because I do not need it to play XBOX games. I was playing them more on PC and was not using the console. I would not do it for a streaming solution but it is the same idea for people that will. Any other place that people can play their console games it weakens their consoles position. It is just a matter of how much. They have shown that is not where they are right now.
 
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It is an absolute dumb position to not expand their Cloud Gaming to other non PS branded hardware. Or atleast provide a cheaper solution for streaming to TV and larger screen devices than the 8" Portal.

DrFigs said:
I don't see the issue. They have their own cloud streaming platform. You can play playstation games rn on pcs, phones,etc with remote play.

Edit: i guess you do need a ps5 to do this. if they allowed cloud without restrictions, this would cause the same problems as playstation putting their games on other systems.
Click to expand...

It's not the same as porting to other devices. It is an extension of the PSN ecosystem, the games run on PS hardware and purchases are made on Sony account and PS+ subscription is used to do the streaming. If the goal of selling hardware was for you to join the PSN ecosystem, buy games and subscribe, Cloud Gaming is the perfect avenue for that.

Mownoc said:
Not fully sure. But then they also don't allow you to stream PS4 games to portal yet either. So there's weird restrictions.

It's also possible they don't have the cloud infrastructure for a potential large increase in users if they allow PS5 streaming to PC/Mobile. Though who knows.
Click to expand...
Sony doesn't have many of their own datacenters. They have partnered up with regional datacenter companies to co-locate PS5 hardware, currently they have PS5 hardware in atleast 28 datacenters. They could expand if they wanted to, even if the users had to experience queues, it would be better than not having the option at all.

Dorfdad said:
How so? They still get the money from you subscribing to their service and purchasing the license for the game!?
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Exactly, like what more could they want? Alternative is, they get nothing.
 
Dorfdad said:
It if you have to buy their games and said games are not on PC how is it weakening their position? PC player were never going to buy a console
Click to expand...

Selling you first party games without a console doesn't help Sony. Sony's business model revolves around locking people into it's ecosystem to get a share of every future gaming purchase. PC gamers and players from other consoles would occasionally sub to beat the exclusives and continue to buy the rest of their games elsewhere. Sony would be stuck with the two most expensive parts of the process (making the game and hosting a cloud) and miss out on the profitable part.
 
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LyricalShrike said:
Selling you first party games without a console doesn't help Sony. Sony's business model revolves around locking people into it's ecosystem to get a share of every future gaming purchase. PC gamers and players from other consoles would occasionally sub to beat the exclusives and continue to buy the rest of their games elsewhere. Sony would be stuck with the two most expensive parts of the process (making the game and hosting a cloud) and miss out on the profitable part.
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I hear you but I'd counter people on pc never bought Sony subscriptions and or games and missed out all together. This would o ly add additional income from those who would only window shop Sony games. The cloud infrastructure is there already but possibly not big enough for everyone yet, however they have been building g out psnow forever over 10 years so they should have and know capacity
 
Ironman_Bad said:
Ask Nintendo why they dont want the pc money first
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This always co fussed me also. If any of the consoles could have cloud it should be Nintendo. Imagine a membership like on the switch 2 which had cloud based virtual console and you could play games through their emulation. He'll the titles are small enough for most they could be loaded straight into RAM removing the need for anything stored even! It would sell like crazy to get n64/snes/gba titles
 
Dorfdad said:
I hear you but I'd counter people on pc never bought Sony subscriptions and or games and missed out all together. This would o ly add additional income from those who would only window shop Sony games. The cloud infrastructure is there already but possibly not big enough for everyone yet, however they have been building g out psnow forever over 10 years so they should have and know capacity
Click to expand...

What happens when PS gamers get the same idea and buy PC to play everything else and play the occasional ps game over cloud? Sony walked back PC exclusives because it was afraid of losing its captive audience of third party players. Playstation would collapse if it had to depend purely on first party revenue.
 
Mahavastu said:
Streaming of games is a pretty expensive technology for the host: you pretty much need a full PS5 (in server racks of course, so a bit cheaper then the home version) for each and every parallel player at the peak time. And since you need low latency you can't even use servers at the other end of the world. You also need to keep them running 24/7, so it also takes a lot of energy for the servers and air conditioning. And you need tons of data centers around the world and generate a lot of data you need to pay and can not use caching like for example Netflix...

Long story short: if you let people for example play free2play games or $5 games without them paying for the running cost you might lose A LOT of money...

Maybe you should not require the full premium subscription which is pretty expensive now, but hiding it behind some subscription service like PSN Essential is a good choice for a company.
Click to expand...
And to expand on this, the only reason Xbox didn't have an issue doing Gamepass is because they have EXCESS hardware sitting around doing nothing. The only reason they approved of the idea is that Gamepass would use up the excess hardware capacity that are already built for Enterprise. MS already have the servers that they are paying to keep running.

Sony doesn't have the servers for that already built. This is also why as far as I am aware, there is no PS+ Streaming in Australia because the population density makes it impossible to make the money back. Instead the alternative is that you had to download the entire game to play them.

Basically MS is all in on Streaming at HQ and that is why they are pushing the same for gaming, even when it doesn't fit.
 
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LyricalShrike said:
What happens when PS gamers get the same idea and buy PC to play everything else and play the occasional ps game over cloud? Sony walked back PC exclusives because it was afraid of losing its captive audience of third party players. Playstation would collapse if it had to depend purely on first party revenue.
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But that's where we're heading anyway. Third parties can afford to be exclusive anymore and Sony and Microsoft can't afford to front load massive deals for exclusivity. First party is all they have left. I'm just saying it would allow additional income. Sony can't and Microsoft can't pump out massive games like Nintendo does. Nintendo can because of their deep IP library and the nature of their games not being massive scaled Modern coding adventures. 3-4 massive first titles can't carry a 10 year life cycle
 
Dorfdad said:
But that's where we're heading anyway. Third parties can afford to be exclusive anymore and Sony and Microsoft can't afford to front load massive deals for exclusivity. First party is all they have left. I'm just saying it would allow additional income. Sony can't and Microsoft can't pump out massive games like Nintendo does. Nintendo can because of their deep IP library and the nature of their games not being massive scaled Modern coding adventures. 3-4 massive first titles can't carry a 10 year life cycle
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I agree with you totally. We are making different points. Players migrating from PS/Xbox will kill the console business which is built upon third party royalties and subscription fees. Nintendo could survive as a pure publisher off the strength of its IP and first party library. Microsoft could also survive in a different form through it massive collection of publishers. Sony would die as a first party publisher. Its always been known more for its third party exclusives than its own games. Console sales are already in decline. Xbox and Playstation would rather lock in the audience they have than risk losing anybody to open platforms.
 
Dorfdad said:
But that's where we're heading anyway. Third parties can afford to be exclusive anymore and Sony and Microsoft can't afford to front load massive deals for exclusivity. First party is all they have left. I'm just saying it would allow additional income. Sony can't and Microsoft can't pump out massive games like Nintendo does. Nintendo can because of their deep IP library and the nature of their games not being massive scaled Modern coding adventures. 3-4 massive first titles can't carry a 10 year life cycle
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Sony is not that worried, Nintendo is already struggling to sell their hardware at profit. They are positioned the same as with PS1, they get default exclusives because the competition is not strong enough. Xbox wouldn't even get ports without Xbox paying for the privilege. Sony is not that focused on 1st party precisely because they don't need to. They got what they wanted.
 
LyricalShrike said:
I agree with you totally. We are making different points. Players migrating from PS/Xbox will kill the console business which is built upon third party royalties and subscription fees. Nintendo could survive as a pure publisher off the strength of its IP and first party library. Microsoft could also survive in a different form through it massive collection of publishers. Sony would die as a first party publisher. Its always been known more for its third party exclusives than its own games. Console sales are already in decline. Xbox and Playstation would rather lock in the audience they have than risk losing anybody to open platforms.
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Microsoft needs to collect ip's and sell out the franchise license to developers and take 40% or something. They cant manage or develop I house games anymore. They were able to get halo with bungie but they basically bought and left the. Alone ever since they messed with the formula and added all kinds of bs and bean counters as they do with software and ruined the vibe and soul of the games.
 
Setsuna Mudou said:
Which is another reason why going full cloud will never happen and it's pretty stupid when it can be avoided
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Hahaha, People said that about CDs and Spotify/Apple Music. We know what happened.

They are going to be super aggressive with cloud in some years, they will subsidised the cost at beginning so physical devices simply make unprofitable, and when most people is renting those cloud systems, they will raise prices. Compare Geforce now currently vs when released, you pay the same, but unlimited vs 100 hours per month.
 
vkbest said:
Hahaha, People said that about CDs and Spotify/Apple Music. We know what happened.

They are going to be super aggressive with cloud in some years, they will subsidised the cost at beginning so physical devices simply make unprofitable, and when most people is renting those cloud systems, they will raise prices. Compare Geforce now currently vs when released, you pay the same, but unlimited vs 100 hours per month.
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The only one going all-in streaming was Xbox. And Xbox is the one failing.

Nothing stopping you from renting ANYTHING. It just costs more to rent. And people who rent by choice are just suckers or just people who hate money.
 
OP: "I see Sony is getting back on the exclusivity train with their single player in-house first party games to be only available on PS5 and no more on PC, to increase the value of their Console."

Also OP: "Why isn't Sony letting me play their single player in-house first party games on pc and other devices?!"

Absolute exclusives have always been their M.O., like Nintendo, and this brief stupid temporary stunt of releasing a handful of those which brought them little to no money (13 to 14 single player games of those which made them about a cumulative total of 250 to 300 million dollars out of the 2.3 billion dollars, total, they made from pc in the program's lifetime, including their gaas garbage), ain't gonna change that fact.

Also, their infrastructure in cloud compute isn't as robust as Azure, AWS or Google, but their quality is better than Xbox Cloud (and lesser than Nvidia Geforce Now), so at best, even at their peak services, you'll only see third party stuff going forward.
 
People vastly overestimate the market for cloud streaming and vastly underestimate the costs. No it won't be as cheap and easy as buying a controller and downloading an app on your TV. You still have to pay for the streaming hardware and all of the associated running costs. The monthly service fee would be astronomical. The $600 console that you guys spend all day crying about? That's actually much cheaper for consumers than the cloud alternative, not to mention the other advantages.
 
vkbest said:
Hahaha, People said that about CDs and Spotify/Apple Music. We know what happened.

They are going to be super aggressive with cloud in some years, they will subsidised the cost at beginning so physical devices simply make unprofitable, and when most people is renting those cloud systems, they will raise prices. Compare Geforce now currently vs when released, you pay the same, but unlimited vs 100 hours per month.
Click to expand...
They can subsidize it all they wanting the beginning but it will not work out in the end. We have a current example of that with Game Pass. They literally just had to roll back the pricing after subsidizing it for years because they started bleeding subscribers.
 
reinking said:
They can subsidize it all they wanting the beginning but it will not work out in the end. We have a current example of that with Game Pass. They literally just had to roll back the pricing after subsidizing it for years because they started bleeding subscribers.
Click to expand...
The model is not going to be GamePass, the model is going to be more like Geforce Now. You rent your PC/Console, but you pay for your games individually. They can force you, simply making the local hardware unsustainable with huge prices
 
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Dorfdad said:
Now they have shifted back to single player titles only on Console again, but why do they not embrace cloud clients for tv and pc / Mac / mobile?
Click to expand...
They still have their PC client. I played FF7 Remake integrade on my Steam Deck through the PS+ cloud app
 
vkbest said:
The model is not going to be GamePass, the model is going to be more like Geforce Now. You rent your PC/Console, but you pay for your games individually. They can force you, simply making the local hardware unsustainable with huge prices
Click to expand...
Geforce now exists for about 10 years now, maybe more widely available for about 6 years and despite the ridiculous PC component costs, how many people are using it?
And I think you are right in part, there's a ton of subsidizing at the beginning to help things accelerate, but yet, crickets. Imagine when the prices are aligned with the real server costs.

We've seen how well that has gone with Xbox too...
 
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