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Shuhei Yoshida: "We believe in the premium release of a title" before subscriptions

Pelta88

Member
"The new PS Plus has tiers and essentially it’s like the old PS Plus, we still release two or three new games every month and a new tier, Extra, has a catalogue of hundreds of games for people to play. For Extra, our approach [is] we like to help the publishers [with] lifecycle management. I was managing first-party [at PlayStation] so I know that it’s like in the movies — a movie comes out at the theatre first, then goes to pay per view, or a subscription service, or free TV, every time generating new revenue and reaching out to a broader audience."


PlayStation with the 'If it aint broke' approach...
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Oh, so PlayStation Game Pass is going to be announced soon?
Robin Williams What Year Is It GIF
 
I see... so, PlayStation Game Pass is going to be announced soon?
Sony had PSplus before MS, so they giving games to PSplus describers on a montly basis for a long time. And Sony has now theyr version of "gamepass" with aprox. 800 games.

But they not throwing theyr first party games on theyr service day one, and are not pushing ore paying third party developers to,do that. But most third party developers are not taking the bait that MS is holding for theyr face. They want to sell theyr games first and much later put them on services, so they in a way agree with the Sony approach.
 
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Ezekiel_

Banned
Business wise, it makes sense for premium titles to be 'pay to play' at launch. After some time on the market and after going through different sales/discounts, the game goes to a subscription service for rental, and get a bit more revenue that way.

One has to wonder, if a subscription model was really that more profitable, wouldn't we have seen a Steam subscription plan by now?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?



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One has to wonder, if a subscription model was really that more profitable, wouldn't we have seen a Steam subscription plan by now?

At least we've moved on from 'wouldn't we have seen a Playstation sub plan' since they followed the model.

Steam probably won't ever have it because there's way too much content to curate for the sub model and there's no real "first party" on PC games to push the content/plan forward.
 
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CamHostage

Member
Here whe go again with the same meme, it is so old and not what sony ment with that steatment. But it is a remark thats been trowing to the wall in the hope that it sticks, for people that misread that steatment, and for people that dont like Sony it sticks like glue...

I'm a Sony fan, and I'm well aware of PS Plus. I'm also not a cross-gen hater (which surprises even myself...), as I'm aware of development circumstances and global issues which have made maximizing these new boxes hard as well as the surprising flexibility of software scaling approaches to target games for a variety of platforms.

And I'm also aware of the context of the original "We believe in generations" statement. If you honestly took that to just mean, "We believe that PS5 games should be played with a PS5 controller, with superduper rumble and like bow-and-arrow triggers and sound that whizzes around you, and it doesn't matter if they're cross-gen games like our competitor is promising because our new hardware generation has cool extra shit," then okay.

...But most people did not take it that way. And specifically in the context of the article (which might be the writer's fault, although I am certain that the writer pointedly asked about Xbox's original cross-gen continuity plans,) it's established what he was referring to before he went into the hardware features of Tempest Audio and DualSense controls. (BTW, Sony could have just released a DualSense controller on PS4 and not started a whole new console generation if that was the radical generation-defining revolution he was excited about with the launch of the powerful new PS5.)

It's a meme, maybe an unfair or a mean one, but when gamers hear Sony explain what it believes, they have fair reason IMO to scoff at the conviction of that belief.

And they're not going to live down that meme by explaining it away. Make games, make people happy, make people forget the meme. Because as things are now, it stuck.

hp6wpuxqbon51.jpg
 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I believe GP model will lead to devaluation of games and gaming as a whole.
Hard to profit sub model
Games have to be cheaper to make
Games have to be gaas
Userbase gets used to free/cheap games.

Death of 60-70$ high quality games... and death of physical and and ownership... so HOPE IT'S NOT END ALL BE ALL !
I like ps because of physical games but it was really hard to find tlou part 1 in stores day 1... almost like they printed very little copies.

At the same time - I have almost 600 games on steam and just also got a steam deck... a digital only device. My brain is pancake
 

Fbh

Member
I have been saying it from the beginning but I have no problem with this approach and in the long run I think it will be better for the types of games I like (10-40 hours single player games with nice production values).
Launch as a full retail title, then maybe get a few $40-50 sales and then come to the subscription service.
 

SLB1904

Banned
I have been saying it from the beginning but I have no problem with this approach and in the long run I think it will be better for the types of games I like (10-40 hours single player games with nice production values).
Launch as a full retail title, then maybe get a few $40-50 sales and then come to the subscription service.
thats literally the approach everyone in the entertainment industry is taking.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
But I thought y'all loved the xCloud streaming? They also added it in 2018.

Streaming as a supplementary thing is cool, but as the sole thing it's probably not viable. Hence people still keep demanding native PS3 emulation after almost a decade of PSNow being a thing.

Anyway that's besides the point.

I expect a big Sony game to launch day and date on PS+, maybe not a franchise but a new IP from one of their studios.
 
If anyone believes this, I have a bridge to sell you. No one thought Sony would start releasing their games to PC either. Nobody thought Sony would step up to start offering a bunch of their first party games for free as part of a catalog in a subscription service in addition to cutting deals to bring even third party AAA games to that catalog. They initially resisted EA Play also before they relented on that.

Soon they'll do console and PC day and date releases. And eventually they will also end up releasing their biggest first party games day one on PS Plus. It's only a matter of how soon will they be forced to do so.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Many users on GAF said the same about a PS "game pass competitor".

It's a viable business model and I see less reasons why they won't do it than why they would.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's leading to a reduction in net consumer spend. That's less money flowing into the the industry overall. From an industry health perspective that's terrible.

The only way this works long term is if volumes drastically increase in order to offset it (as in an increase in the number of core gamers, all of which ideally subscribe to one of these services). This clearly isn't proving to be the case based on console sales numbers, those are shrinking as well.

This is why you see xbox and Phil pushing cloud gaming as aggressively as they are and why they constantly talk about "billions of gamers". If this doesn't play out like they need it to they will actually end up making less money.

Sony following them down this path is foolish, and rightly so, Nintendo can probably see the writing on the wall so are staying well away from it. If unsuccessful the involved parties will need to pivot back towards a traditional purchase led business model, which will prove to be difficult after years of conditioning gamers into believing games aren't worth purchasing.
 
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Ezekiel_

Banned
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At least we've moved on from 'wouldn't we have seen a Playstation sub plan' since they followed the model.

Steam probably won't ever have it because there's way too much content to curate for the sub model and there's no real "first party" on PC games to push the content/plan forward.
PlayStation haven't 'followed' the model. They introduced it.

The very first subscription game plan, PS+, all the way back in June 29, 2010.

They then introduced PlayStation Now (Cloud + Rotating games catalogue) in January 28, 2014.

Even without first party games, Steam could make a sub plan with a rotating curated list of third party games. According to some, it would be a 'win-win', since gamers would pay a low monthly fee (and yet somehow spend more money in the ecosystem?), and Steam would have recurring monthly revenue. So why haven't they?
 
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