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Xbox boss speaks on rumored PlayStation service tiers/consolidation

Three

Gold Member
I really doubt Sony will allow day one first party games on their subscription service, at least for a very long time. So instead of potentially selling millions of copies of Spider-Man 2 for $70 a pop on PS5 and PS4, they are going to give it away on a presumably fairly cheap subscription service? Microsoft had to do that because most of their games weren’t selling as well or as popular as they wanted I’m assuming. Sony first party games usually sell really well. In the millions easily.

What sense does that make financially if Sony wants to maximize profits on their games? Sony is putting games on PC and PS4 for more money, so wouldn’t this be counterintuitive? I’m sure Gamepass is already further damaging XBOX software sales. I guess you never know, but I don’t think Sony would ever go this route unless they really, really needed to.
It depends if they will pivot to more MP gaas/mtx games slowly. Essentially ending up selling f2p type games on a subscription slowly. Or they might do what isn't really day one. Play a game 2 weeks early if you buy the ultimate edition and release not exactly "day one" on the service kind of like what MS does already. Otherwise I agree that I don't see big budget single player games releasing day 1 unless they start spreading those out to once every couple of years.

My guess is that this would be a rebrand to PS+ Premium or something with maybe PS5 game streaming on PS4. PSNow does what Gamepass does already and if they wanted to do day one big single player games with no MTX on PSNow they could have already just released them. It didn't make sense though and still doesn't unless there is a strategy change with new games.
 
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It's going to suck if this becomes a race between the two companies to start locking out content from one another (for their subs).
They are doing this since many years and Sony even started buying timed exclusivity for 2 years now. I don't know if there is some overview, but i think Sony would win this easily.
 

SSfox

Member
IDK how Sony are gonna do this, the main appeal of gamepass is day one exclusives on Xbox, and Sony has bigger, more expensive games and in a larger number, so they can't just give their exclusives day one unless they will triple the price of service by 300$ per year. Hum...
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I think the gamepass model is inevitable option for all major gaming platform, its just how people consume there entertainment these days.

The hard thing is though that the majority of people are only going to go with one gaming subscription, everything Microsoft is doing is motivated by gamepass so its going to be harder for sony to adjust to this business model.

Sony is more about the premium experience rather then the stack em high sell em cheap approach that subscription services require.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
They are doing this since many years and Sony even started buying timed exclusivity for 2 years now. I don't know if there is some overview, but i think Sony would win this easily.

Sony beating Microsoft at developer aquisitions?
You have to be joking, Microsofts aquisitions are in another league to sonys.
Microsoft has spent over $10billion on new studios in the last 5yrs, sony are more in the $2bilion range.
 

Alex Scott

Member
I think the gamepass model is inevitable option for all major gaming platform, its just how people consume there entertainment these days.

The hard thing is though that the majority of people are only going to go with one gaming subscription, everything Microsoft is doing is motivated by gamepass so its going to be harder for sony to adjust to this business model.

Sony is more about the premium experience rather then the stack em high sell em cheap approach that subscription services require.
Didn't subscription services decline in the United States or they will decline?
 
Sony beating Microsoft at developer aquisitions?
You have to be joking, Microsofts aquisitions are in another league to sonys.
Microsoft has spent over $10billion on new studios in the last 5yrs, sony are more in the $2bilion range.
Where the hell did i talk about developer aquisitions? I was talking about timed exclusives like Deathloop or Forspoken.
 

Shmunter

Member
Sony beating Microsoft at developer aquisitions?
You have to be joking, Microsofts aquisitions are in another league to sonys.
Microsoft has spent over $10billion on new studios in the last 5yrs, sony are more in the $2bilion range.
Sony doesn't need to pay for established IP however. They release a 1st part game with the Sony logo and it's money in the bank. New or old IP.
 

reksveks

Member
Didn't subscription services decline in the United States or they will decline?
Different metrics, churn is the normal and this is just the sum of all the cancelled accounts, what Deloitte doesn't say is the number of new accounts or people will sign back up.

One more thing to add is whether the churn rate on gaming services is inherently lower than movie/video services?

I think Xbox lifetime cloud saves makes it easier to cancel for a month or 6 month or what not. Sony's current setup doesn't.

Video subscriptions are probably the easiest to cancel unless you really care about the watch history and recommendation.
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Sony doesn't need to pay for established IP however. They release a 1st part game with the Sony logo and it's money in the bank. New or old IP.

Usually studios have some ip and when aquired that ip is included in the deal.

E.g the ratchet and clank franchise is now owned by sony, hellblade is owned by MS etc
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
saying "when I hear others are doing this" is lame as fuck. Just say sony.
Anyway. I am this old grandpa who prefers to pay for physical game still :p
 
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Elog

Member
So Nintendo is the most profitable game/ console company on the planet followed by Sony. MS is loosing money and has been desperation buying companies to build.a content portfolio to be able to compete.

And the narrative in this thread is that everyone needs to do what MS is doing to be successful?
 

SSfox

Member
You can spend 10$ easily. but normal people wont spend 70$ at once. Only those who have the money can.

If you can extract 10$ from normal people monthly, they feel a dent on their pocket. Compared to 70$.

That's rent vs buy, so the ratio $ make sens.

Personally if I want a game i will just buy it, and if I can't afford i will just wait for sales.
 
IDK how Sony are gonna do this, the main appeal of gamepass is day one exclusives on Xbox, and Sony has bigger, more expensive games and in a larger number, so they can't just give their exclusives day one unless they will triple the price of service by 300$ per year. Hum...
Agree. Sony's big hitters + the marketing are way too expensive to offer them on Spatacus for a reasonable price.
 

Godot25

Banned
If Sony is not willing to put their first-party games on Spartacus Day One then I really wonder what is even a point of Spartacus...

Rebranding PS Now, so it magically won't have shitty number of subscribers? Because people does not subscribe to Game Pass because it is called Game Pass. They are subscribing for value in that service. Something PS Now is lacking (that's obvious by how long is Sony running it and how little subscribers it has).

At minimum I expect clear plan from Sony. If not day one first-party games, then at least one year after release.

But I don't think they will be straight with customers. Because Sony likes smokes and mirrors approach.
 

Shmunter

Member
Usually studios have some ip and when aquired that ip is included in the deal.

E.g the ratchet and clank franchise is now owned by sony, hellblade is owned by MS etc
I actually suspect the R&C IP has always been Sony's from inception. Insomniac was the studio that developed it for Sony.
 

Godot25

Banned
I actually suspect the R&C IP has always been Sony's from inception. Insomniac was the studio that developed it for Sony.
Yeah. That's why Insomniac deal was so "cheap" for Sony. Because Insomniac (outside Sunset Overdrive IP) didn't own shit. All IP's were owned by Sony.
 

reksveks

Member
You think people will complain if they (Sony) don't breakdown the splits of Spartacus subs per tier in their financial documents to investors?
 
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Godot25

Banned
You think people will complain if they (Sony) don't breakdown the splits of Spartacus subs per tier in their financial documents to investors?
Of course they won't break it down.

But since they are effectively "merging" both services (PS Plus and PS Now) I expect them to use PS Plus number to boast "Look, how much more subscribers we have compared to Game Pass" :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Who cares that PS Plus is 60$ per year, while Game Pass is 120$/year right?
 

reksveks

Member
But since they are effectively "merging" both services (PS Plus and PS Now) I expect them to use PS Plus number to boast "Look, how much more subscribers we have compared to Game Pass" :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Who cares that PS Plus is 60$ per year, while Game Pass is 120$/year right?
If it leads to Xbox trying to push GP even harder and introduce better features, as a consumer I would be happy.

Actually just realised that we should still be able to get arpu though (with a couple of small assumptions) so we could do some what if's.
 
Usually studios have some ip and when aquired that ip is included in the deal.

E.g the ratchet and clank franchise is now owned by sony, hellblade is owned by MS etc

Ratchet was a Sony IP prior to the acquisition. That is why Sony approach to buying studios will prove much more efficient: They are plenty capable of creating their own IP and so all they need at this point is manpower.
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Ratchet was a Sony IP prior to the acquisition. That is why Sony approach to buying studios will prove much more efficient: They are plenty capable of creating their own IP and so all they need at this point is manpower.

The approach does not matter , how they treat the devs is what matters.
Sony/Microsoft have little input to what the games will be, of course they ultimately can choose what they want, but it will be the studio which creates concepts/game ideas and once sony/ms green light a project its up to the studio.
The most impactful decision sony/ms can make is weather to give a game more dev time or not.

At the end of the day they both have excellent first party, in terms of releases they seem pretty equal.

Theres no doubt though that the Zenimax aquisitions has sped up and encouraged sonys aquisitions and deals.
I mean sony did two deals with zenimax on deathloop and ghostwire, it was also rumoured that sony wanted starfield aswell.
For Jimbo and Herman to wake up to the news that Microsoft is aquiring zenimax certainly must of been quite the surprise and reality check for them.

I mean jimbo and Herman are only human, can you imagine what they were thinking that a business parter they just had 2 exclusive deals with has been aquired by there biggest competitor.

If I were them I would not be concerned, but I would certainly want to aquire more studious rather swiftly to ensure a line up of games that can compete with the 25 strong Xbox game studios.
 
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I would go $20 a month for all their exclusives day one
That's a price many people would accept i guess, but unfortunatley not gonna happen:

"we are not going to go down the road of putting new releases titles into a subscription model."
“These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don’t see that as sustainable.”

 

kyussman

Member
Even a miserable old bastard like me can now see this is the future of gaming.....at the end of the day Microsoft got there first,but I'm sure they will both make a lot of money from it going forward.
Saying that.....I'm going to be doing a lot less gaming going forward than I have in the past(because so many games are a bit shit these days,at least in terms of what I want out of gaming),.....so I've fuck all interest in having 100's of games at my disposal.I'll just continue to buy the ones that interest me like I always have.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
IDK how Sony are gonna do this, the main appeal of gamepass is day one exclusives on Xbox, and Sony has bigger, more expensive games and in a larger number, so they can't just give their exclusives day one unless they will triple the price of service by 300$ per year. Hum...

This is just the thinking that Sony is selling because they don't have anything else to offer at the moment. The idea that their games are too expensive is a bit nonsensical.

Let's say they offered a separate addon for PSNow that specifically added all Sony published titles to PSNow and did not add anything else. How much would they have to charge? How many copies does Sony publishing really sell in a year all combined and at what prices? 30m, 40m, 50m, 75m who knows. If they charged $5/mo and sold that to 10m users, that equalizes about 9m full price sales, when you think about the fact that 10m users is less than 10% of the userbase on PS4 (and thus the majority of traditional sales are still there) that isn't bad at all. Even if you say that those that subscribed were some of their heaviest buyers, say maybe represented 30% of their sales instead of 10%, you could probably still make that work.
 
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sainraja

Member
They are doing this since many years and Sony even started buying timed exclusivity for 2 years now. I don't know if there is some overview, but i think Sony would win this easily.
My point wasn't that it doesn't happen now (and honestly they both engage in this behavior and from a business point of view it makes sense; AND they both could win this easily lol not that it matters if one of them does it more than the other), the point was that it's just going to be worse now that they both will also have their sub services to promote. Sony has so far somewhat neglected PS Now but they are pivoting (it seems) to re-vitalize it in a way that might attract people to it.
 
There is no way Spartacus doesn’t have a day 1 pc exclusives tier now. Or the push to day 1 pc releases in general will happen sooner. They just lost COD money.
 
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Concern

Member
Haha, $1 bet says you're in finance for you to reference such a reporting technicality. I know what you're saying, but it doesn't matter how you want to record that acquisition; at the end of the day, $7.5 billion of real money went out the door and Microsoft is looking to recoup that money via game pass and any other sources of revenue that come with it - MTX? NFTs? Future looks bright indeed! /s

Alt just in time for a meltdown lol
 
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