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Fireside Chat: Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
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?

Because two things have historically been vital to success in this industry.

1. Having superior first party output compared to the competition.

2. Having a user base advantage over the competition.

That's how Sony "won" 3 generations and it's how Microsoft "won" 1 generation.

Sony is following Microsoft's footsteps because they no longer feel comfortable with their position at points 1 and 2.
 
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kyliethicc

Member
Pretty wild how all Jimbo was saying is he wishes Spidey would sell like 100 million units, and yet people read so much into what is just a veiled way of saying "I wish we made even more money, like a lot more, than we do currently."

Guy's a suit hired and paid to grow profits. Perfectly understandable why he's greedy.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
"I stand back, and this may have quite some timespan attached to it, but I see no reason why gaming as ubiquitous as music, movies or TV shows."

So Jimbo is aware this will probably take like 20, 30, 40 years to achieve.


"And I also think that technology will help. This is an area that we are particularly well placed to enjoy. As each generation of technology comes along, processing power increases, graphics power increases, which in the abstract is absolutely meaningless. But to the extent that they empower the art of storytelling and the empower the ability to portray character, portray emotion, portray personality, particularly the high-end gaming experiences are going to become more and more lifelike, they're going to become richer, more emotionally engaging. And I think that will lead to an increasing convergence with other forms of entertainment, particularly cinema. And I think that will accelerate this process of ubiquity."

This is a good point.
Exactly. And their attempts to leverage their IPs across mediums is the way to do it, in my opinion. The TLOU 2 launch, TLOU Remake, and TLOU HBO TV Series is the perfect example of that.

Make TLOU pretty AF. Then release a high-quality TV show/movie with A-tier superstars (Pedro Pascal) and acclaimed showrunners (Craiz Mazin) with pedigree and a production house that screams quality (HBO). Then tell those viewers that you can live this story by playing the TLOU Remake. And, in fact, they can even know what happens next if they play TLOU 2.

That's how gaming will become more ubiquitous without coming at an expense of gamers.
 
Ryan's job is to sell people on buying a Playstation. It's why these games exist.

Everyone's acting like there either isn't a place for a Playstation in future, and we'll all be cloud gaming, or that they themselves own a Steam account, and thus don't need to/couldn't possibly buy a PS to play those games as well, so fuck it, starve the platform of its selling points. Fuck the bigger picture of competitive development, the convenience of having every game on PC is what really matters.

...honestly could not give a flying fuck for the PC-only echochamber egging him on, any more than I care about Ryan's sob story about bigger audiences.

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?

Yeah, the XBox One strategy really worked out, in comparison to the PS4 strategy of gated exclusives. 😆 They're fucking stupid. They've been stupid for years, it's not just Ryan. I've started to think that the PS4 was a happy accident.

I hope this backfires and the Switch goes nuclear.
 

Radical_3d

Member
I get what he's trying to say about having games like TLOU find bigger audiences but thats a problem that cant be solved by putting games on other consoles or even PCs. The audience for games tops out at around 150 million. That includes PCs.

The PS4 and Xbox sold around 160 million units last gen. TLOU sold 20 million on a console base of 110 million. How much more is he going to sell if he puts it on Xbox? Especially when there is a pretty significant population that buys both consoles?

He is coming at this problem all wrong. GTA5 sold 150 million not because it was on PC but because it was a phenomenon. Mario Kart has sold almost 40 million and should finish at around 50 million on the Switch which has sold fewer units than the PS4 and did not need to sell on PCs.

Some games, especially games like TLOU and GoW will simply never reach 150 million people. He compares his games to movies and tv shows persumably because of the storytelling aspect of these games, but there is a HUGE ask here for women, children, and older adults who have never played video games. You are asking them to learn how to play video games in their 30s and 40s just so they can enjoy the story? come on.

Wanting games to reach audiences of hundred of million is delusional. It was delusional when MS wanted to sell a billion xbox ones, and it is delusional today when Sony wants to have their games be played by hundreds of millions of people. The market just isnt big enough. It is growing and they have surely seen results of that growth with their games selling 20 million when they would typically top out at 5 million in the PS3 gen.

But you will never ever get women who watch netflix all day to play games. You will never get your dad to stop watching sports for 3 hours everyday to play god of war for 3 hours. Your mom doesnt have the patience for games. Your friends will play Warzone with you every night but wont ever touch a story driven game because thats just not what they want.

If they want success like GTA. Maybe make games like GTA. If they want success like CoD and Fortnite. Maybe stop making single player games and figure out why they spent making multiplayer shooters in a decade when they were easily the biggest genre on the planet with Destiny, Rainbow Six, Fornite, and PubG carving a place of their own in a genre crowded by Battlefield and COD.

Stop with this hundreds of million dream. it will never happen. You can put PS5 games on roku and every smart tv with no console requirement for free and people wont play them. it's like asking a non-sports fan to watch 162 game season of Baseball. You have to understand your crowd. and your potential userbase.
Very well said.

Ryan is just your average executive that doesn’t understand shit of what he’s managing.
 
Exactly. And their attempts to leverage their IPs across mediums is the way to do it, in my opinion. The TLOU 2 launch, TLOU Remake, and TLOU HBO TV Series is the perfect example of that.

Make TLOU pretty AF. Then release a high-quality TV show/movie with A-tier superstars (Pedro Pascal) and acclaimed showrunners (Craiz Mazin) with pedigree and a production house that screams quality (HBO). Then tell those viewers that you can live this story by playing the TLOU Remake. And, in fact, they can even know what happens next if they play TLOU 2.

That's how gaming will become more ubiquitous without coming at an expense of gamers.
Sounds great in theory but good luck getting your average Netflix girl to buy and play something like TLOU. It's likely not happening. TLOU will still grow as a brand though, so Sony can make more money off it, just not in gaming.
 

zedinen

Member
Wish Yoshida replace this guy sometime in the future. This constant seek to money will eventually turn Sony into a EA alike company.

1. Yoshida (CEO) and Totoki (CFO) run the show

kXECXBJ.jpeg




2. Ryan, the third in command, execute their plans

mizRphL.jpeg


gl8ue6O.jpeg



3. Ryan's bosses demand growth. They target $45 billion revenue by 2025


4. SIE has three glaring weaknesses:

- PS is virtually non-existent in Asia, where PC and mobile gaming revenues are worth a combined $80 billion

- SIE is still a long way behind the largest publishers

- PSN's explosive growth in the 2010s (10x), which hid the lack of user growth, is coming to an end


5. Ryan's bosses are focusing on metrics such as EPS and credit ratings, therefore large-scale M&A are almost discarded


6. Jim Ryan has a tough job ahead of him. The margin for error is so small ...


7.That said, bringing PS games to PC is a no brainer move (Daniel Ahmad)

-This allows Sony to monetise its back catalog on PC

-Can drive PS5 sales for those wanting to experience new entries in said franchises

-PS4 is based on x86 architecture, so porting to PC isn't as difficult as it used to be for older console first games

-Move also benefits markets where PC gaming is bigger than console, such as China and SK
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Number 6 - if Jim Ryan has to stand down because of his ‘difficult job’ then I’m sure he’d walk away with enough stocks and share options plus golden handshakes that his next job won’t be minimum wage driving an Uber.

So I don’t feel sorry for his difficult job. He’ll be able to put food and water on the table. Chances are if I lose my difficult job I’d be fucked.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
I quite like Jim, he's always come across pretty well in interviews though. Even rude, confrontational ones like the one with the bell-end from Metro who's name escapes me.

I have to be honest and say I really do not think the disdain some of you all have for you seems completely unjustified, as yet anyway. Seems to me he's doing a good job, perhaps even a very good job given the circumstances of the last couple of years.

To be blunt, who exactly is doing better and why in the console space? MS have spent billions on top of even more billions pre-invested in cloud infrastructure (for their enterprise businesses) and it seems to me that nothing has really changed in terms of their overall market position and competitiveness. Nintendo are trucking along as usual, but I'd say no better than that given that the success of Switch has come at the cost of merging their Gameboy and console lines, and their software output has seemingly slowed to a crawl.

Bottom line, Sony are doing pretty damn good financially and they certainly aren't resting on their laurels in terms of their success in the console space as evidenced by the recent developer acquisitions and their push to expand their brand awareness in the PC and general media (movies/tv) space.
 

skit_data

Member
Pretty good interview actually, despite the lack of brand new interesting information on PlayStation. He comes across as a human being, something we’ve barely seen before. I doubt he’ll ever get the cult of personality-like following of Phil Spencer though, but that’s probably for the best IMO.
 

kikkis

Member
I quite like Jim, he's always come across pretty well in interviews though. Even rude, confrontational ones like the one with the bell-end from Metro who's name escapes me.

I have to be honest and say I really do not think the disdain some of you all have for you seems completely unjustified, as yet anyway. Seems to me he's doing a good job, perhaps even a very good job given the circumstances of the last couple of years.

To be blunt, who exactly is doing better and why in the console space? MS have spent billions on top of even more billions pre-invested in cloud infrastructure (for their enterprise businesses) and it seems to me that nothing has really changed in terms of their overall market position and competitiveness. Nintendo are trucking along as usual, but I'd say no better than that given that the success of Switch has come at the cost of merging their Gameboy and console lines, and their software output has seemingly slowed to a crawl.

Bottom line, Sony are doing pretty damn good financially and they certainly aren't resting on their laurels in terms of their success in the console space as evidenced by the recent developer acquisitions and their push to expand their brand awareness in the PC and general media (movies/tv) space.
Yeah, I feel like lot of the criticism is aimed at Jim being dry businessman, rather what playstation has done.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
To be blunt, who exactly is doing better and why in the console space?

MS, with their lack of contempt for gamers outside of their ecosystem. Most MS I have zero interest in, though if I did, I would be glad that I wouldn't have to ask myself "Man, I wonder if this is going to have crossplay support" every time a game looked like it should. That's just one bit that I think is starting to become pretty glaring with SONY.

. . .overall, it's just how little interest they have in providing anything of value other than great games (and yeah they have great fucking games) to their customers who are locked in. Next-gen tax (which I don't mind paying but that has YET to be satisfyingly justified by SONY), absurd next-gen upgrade practices (the upgrade cost for owners of Ghost of Tsushima, made the game more expensive for early adopters than folks just jumping in, and held back features that should be bog standard free updates), horrific customer support system (that isn't integrated into their storefront). . .these are the things I'm just noticing and starting to get annoyed with.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
Yeah, I feel like lot of the criticism is aimed at Jim being dry businessman, rather what playstation has done.

I'm starting to notice that too. Even with myself. I'm NOT a Jim Ryan fan at all!!! But I'm realizing that it's not because it's not good at his job, but it's more to do with the fact that he seems like he's not held a PlayStation controller in his life. Honestly....Jim's doing all the things right so far. He's made some dumb statements in the past, but he does a great job cleaning things up when he makes mistakes.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
MS, with their lack of contempt for gamers outside of their ecosystem. Most MS I have zero interest in, though if I did, I would be glad that I wouldn't have to ask myself "Man, I wonder if this is going to have crossplay support" every time a game looked like it should. That's just one bit that I think is starting to become pretty glaring with SONY.

. . .overall, it's just how little interest they have in providing anything of value other than great games (and yeah they have great fucking games) to their customers who are locked in. Next-gen tax (which I don't mind paying but that has YET to be satisfyingly justified by SONY), absurd next-gen upgrade practices (the upgrade cost for owners of Ghost of Tsushima, made the game more expensive for early adopters than folks just jumping in, and held back features that should be bog standard free updates), horrific customer support system (that isn't integrated into their storefront). . .these are the things I'm just noticing and starting to get annoyed with.
Playstation customer support has always been awful. I accidentally bought Doom Eternal at launch (my son pressed X on a move controller until the game was bought) and since the game didnt even download before I caught the purchase, i decided to call sony and see if i can get a refund. Couldnt even get through. No chat support. No call support. Nothing. It was during the early days of the pandemic so i waited and tried again in a few weeks. Nothing. Then a few months later. Nothing. How do you not even have chat support? Absolutely bizarre.

I'm starting to notice that too. Even with myself. I'm NOT a Jim Ryan fan at all!!! But I'm realizing that it's not because it's not good at his job, but it's more to do with the fact that he seems like he's not held a PlayStation controller in his life. Honestly....Jim's doing all the things right so far. He's made some dumb statements in the past, but he does a great job cleaning things up when he makes mistakes.
Has he? He stopped the PS3 and vita store closures but now he's adding weird stipulations like removing credit card and paypal purchases.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
MS, with their lack of contempt for gamers outside of their ecosystem. Most MS I have zero interest in, though if I did, I would be glad that I wouldn't have to ask myself "Man, I wonder if this is going to have crossplay support" every time a game looked like it should. That's just one bit that I think is starting to become pretty glaring with SONY.

. . .overall, it's just how little interest they have in providing anything of value other than great games (and yeah they have great fucking games) to their customers who are locked in. Next-gen tax (which I don't mind paying but that has YET to be satisfyingly justified by SONY), absurd next-gen upgrade practices (the upgrade cost for owners of Ghost of Tsushima, made the game more expensive for early adopters than folks just jumping in, and held back features that should be bog standard free updates), horrific customer support system (that isn't integrated into their storefront). . .these are the things I'm just noticing and starting to get annoyed with.


Sheet GIF



MS isn't even close bro! To be fair, they are doing a "good" job building a console and being a good ecosystem to support their customers. MS' approach "feels" gamer friendly because they HAVE to do so much more to make people interested in their console/ecosystem. And they are willing to spend the money (create a loss leader in GamePass and spend BILLIONS to buy whole publishers with many dev teams) to bring on more customers. And all of that feels like stuff Sony should be doing, but people forget that Sony already has the attention and love from 100+ million customers.

Playstation has enough crossplay. Could it use more? Sure....but most PS gamers are fine with it where it is. Do I love spending $70 on 1st party games? No, but I will if it gets me the gaming lineup that Playstation has. And I couldn't care less about the upgrade path that they are doing. I have a PS5, so why should I care? Does MS have a smarter system for that stuff? SURE! 100%, but that's out of necessity. Plus, MS is literally one of the best software companies on Planet Earth. If anyone were to find out how to make delivery of games on different generations smart, it'll be MS first. Not Sony or Nintendo.

Will MS release ANYTHING next year that will get me as hyped and excited as a gamer as Sony will when they release the PSVR2 hardware? I doubt it. And that's why MS is still behind both Nintendo and Sony.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
you’re reading too much into his comments. Sure Sony would love to have 100M sellers. Who is to say that won’t be possible one day though?

Sony first party sold 1-4M largely during the ps3 era. Now their top first party games sell 20M

I don’t think it’s unbelievable to think that one day, maybe twenty years from now, that their best hitters sell 50M+

I see things like Spider-Man and Wolverine having an absolutely massive runway. In order to reach these broader audiences gaming will need to have more emotional connection, he’s absolutely right about that.
This is his full quote:
"... music and movies, they can be enjoyed by almost limitless audiences, *umm*... and I think some of the art our studios are making is... is some of the finest entertainment that's been made anywhere in the world and to kinda gate the audience *umm* for the wonderful art, the wonderful entertainment these studios are making, to gate the audience for that at 20 or 30 million frustrates me, and I'd love, *umm* I'd love to see a world where 100's of millions of people can enjoy these games."
It's clear that the goal is no longer to sell more playstations. It's to sell more games. Which is fine, but then he shouldnt be in the console business. Go third party. Create your PC store front like EA origin, GoG and Ubisoft Play store. Stop selling consoles. Let MS make a single console or work with MS towards a single console future. He would never do that so clearly those words mean nothing and he's just trying to justify putting games on mobile and PC.

That 20-30 million comment is him hinting at the cross gen period when there are only that many consoles out in the wild. And yet, even at around 10 million units, Kena topped the charts on the PS5 and was nowhere to be found on PS4 charts. The man does not understand his own audience. The audience who buys games on Day one, the audience who buys games like Kena, the audience who is willing to pay full price for games like Kena is the audience who has already upgraded.

Sony has these numbers. They revealed how the people who bought the PS4 in the first year of its launch spent around $1,700 on games. Everyone else spent only $700. He needs to reward that audience and yet he treats them with disdain and or at best takes them for granted while he goes off chasing an audience that has no interest in buying his games. As seen by the paltry sales of Horizon, Death Stranding and Days Gone on PC.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
And all of that feels like stuff Sony should be doing, but people forget that Sony already has the attention and love from 100+ million customers.

So, don't try to do better? You've already got their eyeballs why do more work than is needed? If that's not what this means please clarify.

Playstation has enough crossplay.

Which makes the places where it doesn't exist even more glaring and frustrating because this means SONY is actively getting in the way of crossplay when they can. I cut out the rest of your post because I'm not looking for a conversation on why SONY is better than MS is better than SONY (and I already mentioned their creative content is what keeps them with a presence in my entertainment system), simply highlighting the simple things MS does (for whatever reason) that SONY seemingly has zero interest in. I had to cancel my pre-order for B4B because I wanted to get the deluxe edition and (since there is no way to upgrade game editions on console; not sure if this applies to all console storefronts) there was literally no option for "Cancel this game that I haven't played and that isn't out yet and refund my money to my CC or my wallet." Instead I had to go to a website that looks like it was made in 2003 and hasn't been updated since to cancel a game I bought on a modern storefront selling modern games.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
This is his full quote:

It's clear that the goal is no longer to sell more playstations. It's to sell more games. Which is fine, but then he shouldnt be in the console business. Go third party. Create your PC store front like EA origin, GoG and Ubisoft Play store. Stop selling consoles. Let MS make a single console or work with MS towards a single console future. He would never do that so clearly those words mean nothing and he's just trying to justify putting games on mobile and PC.

That 20-30 million comment is him hinting at the cross gen period when there are only that many consoles out in the wild. And yet, even at around 10 million units, Kena topped the charts on the PS5 and was nowhere to be found on PS4 charts. The man does not understand his own audience. The audience who buys games on Day one, the audience who buys games like Kena, the audience who is willing to pay full price for games like Kena is the audience who has already upgraded.

Sony has these numbers. They revealed how the people who bought the PS4 in the first year of its launch spent around $1,700 on games. Everyone else spent only $700. He needs to reward that audience and yet he treats them with disdain and or at best takes them for granted while he goes off chasing an audience that has no interest in buying his games. As seen by the paltry sales of Horizon, Death Stranding and Days Gone on PC.

Why not both.gif

What if I told you that Sony wanted to sell 135 million PS5s and also give more access to their games to people through PSNow and selling some of their games on PC? Just because people can play Horizon 2 on the PS4, doesn't mean they treat early PS5 adopters that me and you with disdain.
 

MikeM

Member
Pretty good interview actually, despite the lack of brand new interesting information on PlayStation. He comes across as a human being, something we’ve barely seen before. I doubt he’ll ever get the cult of personality-like following of Phil Spencer though, but that’s probably for the best IMO.

My thoughts too. Enjoyable interview to watch.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
So, don't try to do better? You've already got their eyeballs why do more work than is needed? If that's not what this means please clarify.



Which makes the places where it doesn't exist even more glaring and frustrating because this means SONY is actively getting in the way of crossplay when they can. I cut out the rest of your post because I'm not looking for a conversation on why SONY is better than MS is better than SONY (and I already mentioned their creative content is what keeps them with a presence in my entertainment system), simply highlighting the simple things MS does (for whatever reason) that SONY seemingly has zero interest in. I had to cancel my pre-order for B4B because I wanted to get the deluxe edition and (since there is no way to upgrade game editions on console; not sure if this applies to all console storefronts) there was literally no option for "Cancel this game that I haven't played and that isn't out yet and refund my money to my CC or my wallet." Instead I had to go to a website that looks like it was made in 2003 and hasn't been updated since to cancel a game I bought on a modern storefront selling modern games.

No that's not what I meant. Personally I think Sony is doing ALOT to gain the love of their fanbase. We can't act like the PS5 and today's Playstation infrastructure isn't better than what it was when the PS4 first released. So they've put in the work. Is more needed? 100% yeah!!! SONY....BRING BACK MY GAME FOLDERS!!!!


And I don't think Sony is actively getting in the way of more crossplay. They aren't going out of their way to make it happen either though. So that's a toss up. So I can see why you would be upset there. They don't seem to care about crossplay as much as MS does. I think if MS sold 120 million Xbox Ones, they wouldn't be all that interested either. So I'm "assuming" each company's position in the gaming space is leading how they view Crossplay. And I just bought Kena on the newly designed PS App and it was the best experience I've ever had with Sony. It actually used my CC, instead of forcing me to buy a PS card on Amazon and then using my PS bucks. Those were hard times lol!
 

zaanan

Banned
BC of PS3 isn't possible due to technical reasons

Bullshit. If that RCP3 emulator can get PS3 games to run 50% on variable hardware, Sony can figure out a way to get PS3 games to run 100% on *their own motherfucking PS5*. And if not, why did they try to shut down the PS3 store? They have their head so far up their ass on this one that they can chew their food twice.

Yes I am butthurt about this, because nothing has topped Resistance and Dead Space for me. They seem to hate Resistance - not available digitally or on streaming, and my PS3 disc drive has already broken once. I would take a remastered trilogy, but it seems unlikely. Don’t trust EA to remake Dead Space right either.
 
Finally someone at Sony says what I've assumed for years. Sony, despite selling all those Playstation consoles, their very biggest releases, Spider-Man, God of War 2018 etc get just over 20 million or so. It seems their cap on growth is at best 30 million sales because clearly not all Playstation gamers buy all the big AAAs most of us talk about. If Playstation were changing it up and releasing games on the cloud, through PC and looking into new means of exposing more people to their biggest games, that 20-30 million hard cap wouldn't exist.

How many copies do we think Spider-Man and God of War would have sold if they released on PC and PS4 simultaneously? 40-50 million+ isn't unrealistic in such a scenario. It's not enough to just sell on Playstation if you always know where your cap is. It's better to sell and know your potential cap is somewhere in the latter half of the near 100 million mark or beyond.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Finally someone at Sony says what I've assumed for years. Sony, despite selling all those Playstation consoles, their very biggest releases, Spider-Man, God of War 2018 etc get just over 20 million or so. It seems their cap on growth is at best 30 million sales because clearly not all Playstation gamers buy all the big AAAs most of us talk about. If Playstation were changing it up and releasing games on the cloud, through PC and looking into new means of exposing more people to their biggest games, that 20-30 million hard cap wouldn't exist.

How many copies do we think Spider-Man and God of War would have sold if they released on PC and PS4 simultaneously? 40-50 million+ isn't unrealistic in such a scenario. It's not enough to just sell on Playstation if you always know where your cap is. It's better to sell and know your potential cap is somewhere in the latter half of the near 100 million mark or beyond.

I don’t know about those games selling 20m on PC. Those kinds of games are more popular on consoles. I guess Ubisoft does pretty well on PC but they are not selling 20m copies of their games there.
 
I don’t know about those games selling 20m on PC. Those kinds of games are more popular on consoles. I guess Ubisoft does pretty well on PC but they are not selling 20m copies of their games there.

The recent success of all kinds of games on PC prove this isn't true. PC Gamers like Spider-Man and God of War also. Even tales is succeeding on PC. Look at Yakuza: Like A Dragon's success because it's on more platforms such as PC and Xbox. PC gamers play everything console gamers play. The idea that there was ever any true separation there has largely been a myth. People will mostly play what mostly comes to them. They can't play what never comes to them, so it's only natural for people to look at what's popular on PC and start thinking they learn towards a particular type of game.

Spider-Man and God of War would both be in the realm of 40-50 million sold a piece if they came to PC right when they came to Playstation.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
The recent success of all kinds of games on PC prove this isn't true. PC Gamers like Spider-Man and God of War also. Even tales is succeeding on PC. Look at Yakuza: Like A Dragon's success because it's on more platforms such as PC and Xbox. PC gamers play everything console gamers play. The idea that there was ever any true separation there has largely been a myth. People will mostly play what mostly comes to them. They can't play what never comes to them, so it's only natural for people to look at what's popular on PC and start thinking they learn towards a particular type of game.

Spider-Man and God of War would both be in the realm of 40-50 million sold a piece if they came to PC right when they came to Playstation.

I think they would do well for sure, just not 20m well.

Did GTAV even sell 20m on PC?
 
I think they would do well for sure, just not 20m well.

Did GTAV even sell 20m on PC?

I'm not sure, but I know for a fact it would have if it launched when the game first launched on 360 and PS3. :)

Don't treat PC as second class and the biggest of big Playstation releases will easily do an extra 15-20 million without a doubt.
 

yurinka

Member
This is his full quote:

It's clear that the goal is no longer to sell more playstations. It's to sell more games. Which is fine, but then he shouldnt be in the console business. Go third party. Create your PC store front like EA origin, GoG and Ubisoft Play store. Stop selling consoles. Let MS make a single console or work with MS towards a single console future. He would never do that so clearly those words mean nothing and he's just trying to justify putting games on mobile and PC.

That 20-30 million comment is him hinting at the cross gen period when there are only that many consoles out in the wild. And yet, even at around 10 million units, Kena topped the charts on the PS5 and was nowhere to be found on PS4 charts. The man does not understand his own audience. The audience who buys games on Day one, the audience who buys games like Kena, the audience who is willing to pay full price for games like Kena is the audience who has already upgraded.

Sony has these numbers. They revealed how the people who bought the PS4 in the first year of its launch spent around $1,700 on games. Everyone else spent only $700. He needs to reward that audience and yet he treats them with disdain and or at best takes them for granted while he goes off chasing an audience that has no interest in buying his games. As seen by the paltry sales of Horizon, Death Stranding and Days Gone on PC.
Wtf are you saying? He wasn't talking about the goal of his division. He was only mentioning that he'd personally like to see more people, like x10 more, playing the games they develop. He'd like to see games something more mainstream as happens in movies or music.

They know their audience so well that they are making more money than any console platform holder ever made, with PS5 they are selling more consoles than anybody ever did before with PS5, for PS4 they sold (and continue selling) more games than any other console ever did before, and their first party games are selling more and winning more awards than they even did before. They have around 80 million monthly active users on PS4 playing and buying games every month and only sold 10M PS5 so far.

He also knows better than you that their main business isn't to sell their own games, but instead to sell 3rd party games for their console. So their top priority is to sell more consoles, and nobody else ever made in the gaming industry history a better job than did with PS5. And the main selling point of a console are its exclusive games, so making them more popular would mean to sell more consoles.

So they will bring these games to other platfors in a way it doesn't hurt console sales, keeping their console the best and first place to play them: releasing a only a few of them several years after their original console release on PC and or via streaming to PC and mobile, and also will make movies to promote them.

Going third party would kill their business. Instead of growing their main revenue source (selling games for their platform) would decrease it because people wouldn't need to buy their console. It would only increase a bit their 1st party sales, but they are a small part of their total revenue, that mostly comes from 3rd party game/DLC/IAP sales for their console.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
No, but I think that's what this part is hinting at:



Some people don't want to hear it, but I'd suspect within the next 2 1/2 years you'll start to see simultaneous day 1 PS5 & PC releases, just like MS does. That's why Sony bought Nixxes. In addition to porting older games, they'll get Nixxes involved towards the end of development. So devs like Naughty Dog can focus on finishing their next AAA game, Nixxes can begin the PC port without any resources from the main dev having to be taken from the core release.
jurassic park dinosaur GIF
 

Holammer

Member
I think they would do well for sure, just not 20m well.

Did GTAV even sell 20m on PC?
For GTAV's sales on PC, Steamspy's estimate is between 20-50M and that's very conservative. Probably somewhere in the 50-60M region with my rule of thumb and then there's copies sold outside Steam like Rockstar's Social club and EGS where we have zero metrics for guesstimates.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Because two things have historically been vital to success in this industry.

1. Having superior first party output compared to the competition.

2. Having a user base advantage over the competition.

That's how Sony "won" 3 generations and it's how Microsoft "won" 1 generation.

Sony is following Microsoft's footsteps because they no longer feel comfortable with their position at points 1 and 2.
It can be argued first party games arent that important at all. Instead exclusives in general are probably more important.

PC and mobile do great, seem to increase every year and they have zero first party games. (while console makers can have roller coaster rides from generation to generation)

Just to show how ineffective first party games can be, Dreamcast flopped while having 10x better first party games than whatever PS2 had at the beginning. And despite the most popular and highest rated franchises like Mario, Zelda etc... only some Nintendo consoles did great. NES, SNES, Wii and Switch are great. N64, GC, and Wii U flopped.
 
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yurinka

Member
Bullshit. If that RCP3 emulator can get PS3 games to run 50% on variable hardware, Sony can figure out a way to get PS3 games to run 100% on *their own motherfucking PS5*. And if not, why did they try to shut down the PS3 store? They have their head so far up their ass on this one that they can chew their food twice.

Yes I am butthurt about this, because nothing has topped Resistance and Dead Space for me. They seem to hate Resistance - not available digitally or on streaming, and my PS3 disc drive has already broken once. I would take a remastered trilogy, but it seems unlikely. Don’t trust EA to remake Dead Space right either.
The emulator doesn't work will all games, many of the most important ones (the ones that took advantage of the part of the hardware that as of now it's impossible to emulate properly) don't work or have major issues. To emulate PS3 games properly they'd need to include PS3 hardware and it's too expensive for a feature that only few guys will use.

It made more sense for them to solve that using cloud and porting/remastering/remaking most successful PS3 games in future consoles. I assume somewhere in the future they will keep porting/remastering/remaking their main PS3 exclusives (Killzone / Motorstorm / Resistance collections + maybe MGS4).
 
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Topher

Gold Member
Bullshit. If that RCP3 emulator can get PS3 games to run 50% on variable hardware, Sony can figure out a way to get PS3 games to run 100% on *their own motherfucking PS5*. And if not, why did they try to shut down the PS3 store? They have their head so far up their ass on this one that they can chew their food twice.

Yes I am butthurt about this, because nothing has topped Resistance and Dead Space for me. They seem to hate Resistance - not available digitally or on streaming, and my PS3 disc drive has already broken once. I would take a remastered trilogy, but it seems unlikely. Don’t trust EA to remake Dead Space right either.

PS3 BC is still a daunting task. If Sony put enough resources behind it then yeah, I'd say they could probably make PS3 BC work. Would they see any return on that investment? Doubt it. So I just don't see it ever happening, unfortunately.
 

kevm3

Member
This generation of consoles has to be the most uninteresting one I've ever experience, PS5 and Xbox included. Nonstop cross platform games and sequels galore. These new consoles essentially feels like a graphics card upgrade instead of a new generation. You get the same game as last gen except with better resolution and framerate.
 
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