Sony Consoles and Updates

[Nag]

Speak english then.😘

 

[mfnick]

It’s absolutely unsustainable as is. As shown by OCH, the PS2 is still the highest selling console of all time. Development costs are spiralling, yet the amount of potential players is the same or less. 
 

Now I would say this is a good reason why I can understand the price increase. However, gaming companies keep shouting about record profits, shareholders keep getting huge payouts, year on year revenues keep going up, and we keep hearing how gaming is the most profitable entertainment media there is. So ultimately the price rise is bullshit. But there’s obviously still problems here, even with record profits all these companies seem to be constantly on the edge of collapse so the issue is far deeper, 
 

Regardless of all that, you can talk about inflation and how games were £70 back in SNES & N64 games but that’s ignoring the fact wages haven’t kept up, manufacturing costs are far lower now (especially with how many sales are digital now removing a huge overhead and sending more money directly to the devs), they have longer legs & they can nickel and dime you now.. & I don’t know about you but £70 today still feels as huge as it was back then for a game. Back in N64 days I’d literally buy 3-4 games a year. If that. Whereas since the PS2 days it’s not unusual to buy that a month.

 

Plus I never asked for all these games to be 30hour+ and filled with bloat which is no doubt why games cost so much now. Give me smaller games which cost less any day. More games like Hi Fi Rush please. Publishers only seem interested in the huge bets now. Why not fund some smaller AA games which won’t bankrupt you if their  theyre not huge sellers? You never know where the next breakout smash hit and new IP is going to come from if you don’t try. 

Another issue with the price is it’s made me go back to 2nd hand games. I’ve just bought GoW Ragnarok. On the PS Store it’s £70, on most online stores it’s still £50-60. But I ended up paying £33 for a 2nd hand copy off eBay. I can’t remember the last time I bough 2nd hand but that’s what the new prices are pushing me to do. Same with the new Star Wars, I’d have bought that at release under £50 but now I’m just going it wait. 

Anyway I’m rambling. In short, games cost too much to make, they take too long to make, the audience isn’t getting bigger, there’s no investment in new ideas and the £70 price point isn’t going to save them. Smaller bets are needed again.
 

[OCH]

I was really shocked by that PS2 lifetime sales number. That is an enormous userbase. To think I was part of that figure, twice. Once with the OG Fat PS2. Later with the Slim. 

 

Oh and for the curious, wondering who the second biggest seller was? The Nintendo DS sold 154.02 million.

[one-armed dwarf]

I wonder if on some level the big sales of PS5 is due to a feeling of scarcity during the pandemic years. People just buying them cause they were worried they would never be able to get one. And now they have this big wavey white obelisk in their living room with no games on it they are interested in playing.

 

It's an interesting and funny contradiction lol, I think anyway

[shinymcshine]

I guess the issue is a combination of:

 

a. People buying consoles but unlike 'traditional' gamers they predominantly use them for single titles and therefore don't buy that many games (i.e. I know people who buy a PS5/Xbox just to play CoD or FIFA, and some just Minecraft).

 

b. Others aren't that interested in buying AAA games, and predominantly play indie titles or just games included within a subscription.

 

c. What @mfnick  and @one-armed dwarf says above.

[mmmark]

“Yeah but it’s cool cus haha Donkey Kong 64 was £70 and that was awful but people paid that much back then for games.”

 

Yeah but also back then people could also afford to buy their own home or put the heating on.

[DisturbedSwan]

On 29/04/2023 at 06:44, mmmark said:

 

This guy is like a meme at this point 😂 the analyst he’s referencing once said the PS5 wouldn’t sell because it’s white lol.

 

Also the ‘data showing PS5 users aren’t buying new games’ relates to a 4% drop in software sales. 4% lol.

 

And yet this article has seemed to trigger a massive overreaction on here with folks regurgitating their opinions and concerns that the PS5 would fail because of £70 RRP (£55-£60) games. I love you @one-armed dwarf but your post that people are buying PS5s just to look at them in their living room is quite possibly the worst take I’ve read in awhile and ignores pretty much all sales data out there.

 

Some of these opinions exist outside of fact if you pop your heads over to the sales thread. Have you seen how well AAA games are selling? Particularly Sony’s? 
 

Whilst it may be good for people’s own personal finances to subscribe to Game Pass, it seems with the slowing of Xbox sales that people still prefer to own their own games rather than subscribe to Game Pass. A service which is overall not good for the industry and not sustainable, no matter how many times the usual Xbox clowns are wheeled out to insist otherwise.

[shinymcshine]

Albeit forward projections from a 4% drop at this point of the PS5 lifecycle would be of greater concern - if it adversely affects business confidence / return on investment / dividend payments etc.

[DisturbedSwan]

There haven’t been as many big releases this year as there were last year, that’s pretty much it. 

 

I’m going to return to this thread when Spidey 2 comes out and have a read of some of these posts for a giggle. 

[Nag]

It was only a matter of time before all this talk would elicit a response from the SDF... 😂

 

[one-armed dwarf]

No idea where that 4 percent figure comes from, but in that pdf blakey already posted a few pages ago it says 303.2 million units for gaming software sales for 2021, and 264.2 million for 2022. Which when combined with a massive increase in hardware sales does imo point to the kind of trend an analyst would be justified to call a bit strange, and say things to the effect that people don't really seem to be buying many games for their new PS5

 

I don't get the idea behind posting all these dry spreadsheets and KPIs but roasting the analysts who break it down into what kind of trends they are seeing. Unless the idea is that people in this thread do boring homework with it like I just did.

 

Like of course you can divvy up the data as you choose to fit into an argument that you are trying to make, and represent things in a very subjective way. But I really get tired of the cheerleading around these financial figures and the idea that if you aren't uncritically accepting of the spin doctor/PR take on things you are some sort of negative take merchant or fake news. I mean the corp's own figures point to a downward trend in software and upward trend in hardware, it's a weird looking figure and none of these takes are exceptionally out there in what they are saying. The only thing I would say is COVID adds a significant variable to things that makes it harder to know what to think. But at the same time, fuck all the cheer leading all the time. It's really boring

[mmmark]

1 hour ago, DisturbedSwan said:

There haven’t been as many big releases this year as there were last year, that’s pretty much it. 

 

I’m going to return to this thread when Spidey 2 comes out and have a read of some of these posts for a giggle. 

What for? It’ll sell millions again. That’s hardly the benchmark for overall industry.

[HandsomeDead]

You mess with Spidey you mess with all videogames 

[Jimboxy]

2 hours ago, HandsomeDead said:

You mess with Spidey you mess with all videogames 

 

[DANGERMAN]

on the price increase, I honestly think Returnal could have done really well if it was £50 (so less physically). It looked cool, really interesting, but it's a run based game that could last hours, and had a few technical issues, fuck paying £70 for something like that

 

£60-70 for God of War is a little easier to swallow, but with everything costing more now, it's not like that isn't a lot of money still

 

I am also of the opinion that Spiderman will sell really well

[mmmark]

PlayStation's Concrete Genie studio PixelOpus is shutting down

 

 

[DANGERMAN]

shame, Concrete Genie was decent. Not amazing, but I'd have played another game from them

[DisturbedSwan]

Yeah shame that, it was a small experimental team and Concrete Genie wasn’t great (played it last year) but wasn’t bad either. Would’ve liked to of seen another game from them but guess it wasn’t to be.

[DisturbedSwan]

PHASE TWO!

[one-armed dwarf]

Maybe we will see Snake Eater