The console market has been growing for many years and it's planned to continue growing. In terms of revenue (you can see it in the Newzoo worldwide gaming market yearly reports) and in users (you can see that if you add sales of all consoles of all generations once all of them get discontinued).
Literally this.
They haven't been able to release a single hit in decades after dozens of games, and some of their projects were a money pit. Instead of shutting the studio down as they did with all western studios they had that were in a similar situation (and with the ones they didn't wait for decades), they decided to restructure Japan Studio.
PS5 already has full BC, they already signed many Japanese deals and are working in more. Jimbo and Hermen only have been in their position for a couple of years, and during them From has been busy with Elder Ring. But Sony signed the deal with Kadokawa, which pretty likely will mean future deals with From Soft.
except we do, though i'm not entirely sure what exactly you mean by "like Death Stranding"
Risky AF concept with top notch production/money.
I half agree those usually may not generate as much revenue as more generic games, but we do have third parties releasing games with riskier concepts and AAA quality. I don't think their budgets is as high as death stranding (no celebs in important roles after all) but i don't think they lose in terms of their overall production quality. For example we have:
I half agree those usually may not generate as much revenue as more generic games, but we do have third parties releasing games with riskier concepts and AAA quality. I don't think their budgets is as high as death stranding (no celebs in important roles after all) but i don't think they lose in terms of their overall production quality. For example we have:
Don't know how big the budget for this game was, but it does have a great visuals, a gigantic map of Europe, day/night/weather cycles and real brands of trucks modeled after their real counterparts. All of that for a game that revolves around delivering cargo.
AAA production CRPG:
Not only a racing game which are already on decline, but a niche type of racing game that had been dead for a while. Doesnt lose to other high profile racing games in terms of production.
RTS meets RPG
3D Factorio (game about factory building and production logistics
Baldurs Gate 3 team is 3x bigger than KP's, and the devs themselves declared their budget is on the same level as AAA games. It as far from indie as it gets.
I do agree with this, we are mostly there i think. (at least for most first person games, since animations are still something that's lacking in most games with the exception of the couple of ones with the know how)
The other day Shawn said they decided to put old ports on PC, before Ryan was in charge. And yes, revenue from selling games at full price is way higher than the one games get from a subscription with a few million subs, which is tiny. AAA costs hundreds of millions of dollars, it's a financial suicide to give them away and to reject profiting from them selling them at full price at launch unless they are GaaS/F2P well designed as casino apps full of IAP. This is why nobody outside MS puts non-F2P/GaaS AAA games day one on subscriptions.
To continue selling them at full price, to price cut them later and less, maybe to stop making them bigger and bigger, maybe adding more GaaS/IAP/DLC, getting extra revenue from them in subscriptions or PC ports once they made all their money on consoles with the previous sources, making these IPs more popular with mobile games and movies using them, maybe rehashing stuff to make a shorter sequel, spinoff or 'director's cut' with extra content. And to -totally separate from these projects- release more smaller projects rely less on the huge ones.
I hate to tell you this but.... every company's end ultimate goal is to make as much money as possible. Microsoft has set the stage clearly with game pass and their games being available across a wider spectrum of things and multiple platforms. As competition and market shapes, others will be forced as well. Jim also confirmed that something similar to Game Pass is in the works for Sony, and I can't disagree with him, it is a smart move going forward and everyone just has to face the facts.
Revenue or console sales is irrelevant. This is about Cloud gaming and Sony is currently behind MS in business model, content, and platform expansion. Sony was first in terms of a major company entering the market, but they squandered that opportunity.
It actually baffles me why Sony seems so infatuated with following in the footsteps of Microsoft who is trailing behind them considerably. Sony’s strategy has worked for many years and even lead to global domination. Microsoft basically had to change up their plans to stay relevant in the industry. Why potentially screw it up?
Revenue from selling new games cannot be directly compared to just declare that’s it’s more money than a subscription service. The idea is that the one game may be more at first, but the subscription service continues to provide money.
What are you comparing Netflix to, to say that they can barely turn a profit. I feel like people fail to understand Netflix business model, and just assume they can’t turn a profit. Their business model is based on borrowing. No investor is actually worried about Netflix’s debt.
