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[Forbes] Sony’s Live Service Triple-Down Is A Dangerous Road For PlayStation

Gambit2483

Member
GAAS is so Fetch!

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It’s not throwing shit, it’s VC funding idea applied to game development. You invest in 10 startups, 8 will fail, 1 will continue to grow slowly without ever reaching critical mass, 1 will be the next Uber (which is a terrible example, since they are still not profitable).
Exactly. It's literally what they're doing right now, just with single player games. You have 20 studios, you give them money hoping that you get a hit. Sometimes you get a couple big hits, some middling ones, and a few failures. Sony feels like they've invested the "max" they can at one time, taking into consideration user base, to get an acceptable ROI. They're trying to expand and branch out by purchasing studios that have experience in making GaaS games rather than making their current studios make GaaS games... at least we haven't heard any reports of this, yet.
 

yurinka

Member
Forbes? Sounds more like the typical Bloomberg article throwing lies and fud over Sony.

The first big GaaS from Sony, MLB and GT7 are very successful. The next ones are made by people who made Destiny, Halo or Rainbow Six Siege, they know their shit. And are helping the others like Naughty Dog, who knows who to make great games and multiplayer.

Sony will get minimum a couple of super successful games whose profits will more than compensate some other GaaS that may potentially fail.

And well, to invest in GaaS doesn't mean they'll stop or reduce their investment in traditional games: the opposite. The majority of PS Studios under development aren't GaaS and their investment in non-GaaS is planned to be increased. So even if their GaaS would fail, they still will have the non-GaaS games, plus the money they get from hardware, accessories, game subs and 3rd party games.

They will be let go. They have good resumes, they will be fine.
Yes, out of 12 projects 1-2 will be hits, 2 will break even, rest will be flops.
The first two of the 12 already are a hit, the most successful games ever from their studios: MLB and GT7.

Most don't want to admit it, but we'll likely never see another Gravity Rush or Days Gone type of game from Sony ever again. The good ole days are gone forever.
The majority of games under development at PS Studios aren't GaaS. They have over 25 games under development (pretty likely close to 40 including VR and 2nd party).

Out of the 12, the first two are MLB and GT7, and up to three more could be non-PS Studios games from Bungie: Destiny 2, Marathon and at least an unannounced new IP Bungie considered could be released around/before 2025.

Imagine thinking spending 60 PERCENT of your budget on GAAS trash is a smart idea.
It's worth mentionig that Sony invest on GaaS without reducing -but instead increasing- their investment on traditional non-GaaS games

And looking at where players put their money and from where the other publishers get their money, 60% seems normal -specially now that they are starting multiple of them- or even conservative:

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Sony is walking down the same path MS did ten years ago when they were trying to capture the casual market with Kinect. All these posts justifying Sony's approach are eerily similar to those who were back then justifying MS chasing the Wii audience. Well, MS never recovered from that foolishness. Hopefully Sony does better cause they're betting a lot more money on GaaS than MS did with the Kinect.
You're totally wrong.

Sony is trying to get traditional gamer audience that already are in their platforms (or on Xbox and PC) playing other GaaS like CoD, Destiny, Apex Legends, GTA Online, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch, Fortnite, The Crew/Forza, FIFA, NBA 2K, Genshin Impact, Rocket League etc.

These are most of the most successful games on PS and PC, so Sony wants a slice of the GaaS pie making their own GaaS games. And to create them they hired or bought some of the most successful people in gaming creating new IPs and GaaS games.
 
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Crayon

Member
Not that it dismisses the point, but these forbes contributor articles are more or less glorified forum posts.
 

Woopah

Member
I think trying to Naughty Dog etc. to do GAAS is a bad idea, but having the new ones like Haven and FireSprite do it makes perfect sense.
 
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As long as Sony still doing their SP stuff I'm fine with that.
The only concerns I have is the huge number of live service games.

How is that even supposed to work? 12 live service games by 2025? Aren't they competing with themselves?

No.

Do Destiny, Fortnite, Geshin Impact, and Warframe all compete with each other? Not really. Each game finds its own audience. Who publishes the games is irrelevant.
 
Anyone who thinks Sony will invest more into single player games if their live service push really takes off are just kidding themselves and being way too optimistic. They’ll just invest more into GAAS and put single player games with exceptions of course on the back burner just like they did with Japanese games once they saw that their Western games were selling better.
 
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