yurinka
Member
I think Sony has more top IPs than the ones they can develop, and every generation they release some top IPs more. This generation got half a dozen exclusives that sold over 15-20M, their exclusives are selling more than ever and in the last decade their exclusives dominated the GOTYs. Sony doesn't lack IPs or teams capable to constantly deliver goty candidate level games.
In terms of financials, consoles sold, games sold for their console, game subs, console exclusives sold or awarded, or game division revenue and profit they are performing better than their direct competition. The direct competition made important acquisitions but these companies represented a very small % of total the game sales on PS and a small % of their users bought, won't affect too much. On top of that Sony is growing in most gaming areas and financials, so don't need to worry about the direct competition and there is no need of making similar moves like giant acquisitions or to put their games on a sub day one, or in PC day one.
I think their strategy is performing well, so they need to continue with it:
Even ignoring its decline in sales, each CoD sells around 20-30M and assuming around half of these copies are sold on PS means each CoD wasn't bought by over 90% of the almost 120M PS4 owners.
Even in case PS loses CoD (we'll see if it's the case, Spencer said want to keep it on PS and they did use Minecraft -PS got its post acquisistion updates and new console games- as example in the SEC filling, and same happened with Zenimax existing big IPs until now), some of these CoD sales were due to Sony marketing that now will be replaced by other publishers, some players won't care and would play on PS other games instead of CoD (ex: there's plenty of top shooters and MP games on PS) and other ones would play CoD on other device (Xbox or gaming PC) they may already own and would continue having and playing a PS5.
So if PS loses CoD -which doesn't seem likely looking at what they said for ABK, Minecraft and Zenimax and what they did until now with Minecraft and Zenimax-, pretty likely PS would lose way less than 5% of its userbase. And PS had been growing these years achieving new gaming histoy records both in PS4 and PS5, and the new console seems to have better sales and engagement than PS4. So pretty likely this growth would compensate this less than 5% of userbase lost.
CoD being acquired won't have a meaningful impact on PS even if it goes console exclusive, which as of now doesn't seem to be the case at least for the next few years.
Regarding to the comparisions between CoD and Spider-Man or other exclusives, PS4 had half a dozen exclusives that sold over 20M or at least 15M, or are on track. Sony exclusives experienced a huge growth in sales on PS4 compared to the previous generations. If they continue growing both their teams and sales (pretty likely, considering the PC ports) the top PS exclusives may outsell CoD in units sold, specially if CoD goes console exclusive, even if CoD doesn't continue decreasing after Vanguard.
This is not counting Warzone, which it's fair to assume will continue on PS since MS after acquisition not only released the new games of the top Mojang and Zenimax IPs, they also kept updating their pre-acquisition games and giving dlcs and so on.
In terms of financials, consoles sold, games sold for their console, game subs, console exclusives sold or awarded, or game division revenue and profit they are performing better than their direct competition. The direct competition made important acquisitions but these companies represented a very small % of total the game sales on PS and a small % of their users bought, won't affect too much. On top of that Sony is growing in most gaming areas and financials, so don't need to worry about the direct competition and there is no need of making similar moves like giant acquisitions or to put their games on a sub day one, or in PC day one.
I think their strategy is performing well, so they need to continue with it:
- Aggresively growing all their gamedev teams to allow them to work on more games at the same time and to be able to milk many top IPs they have sleeping with potential for awesome sales or to cover some niches (Uncharted, arcade racers from SIE Liverpool/Evolution/Firesprite, Syphon Filter, Loco Roco, Parappa...)
- Acquire dev teams that worked in several successful Sony exclusives to secure from other acquisitions, help them grow and cover niches not covered by 1st party, where these estudios have potential to make the best games of the generation for these niches, plus ensuring they're always available for them and not busy with multis or exclusives for other platforms (most of them won't want/need to sell but Kojipro, Quantic Dreams, ARC System Works, Supermassive, Arrowhead and may be too big but Capcom, Kadokawa, Square-Enix and Sega).
- Acquire support/tech/outsourcing teams that already worked for them and help to keep their main teams focusing on new console games and delegate in these secondary teams many secondary work to protect them from other acquistions, secure that always are available for them and help them grow (as they did with PC ports/remasters or remakes/art outsurcing/VR). More PC porting teams as Iron Galaxy (Uncharter 4 Refurbished PC) or Jetpack Interactive (GoW 2018 PC), a few top VR devs (devs of Firewall Zero Hour, Tetris Effect, No Man's Sky, Moss) or a few top mobile devs big in Asia that may help them grow big on mobile and grow in Asia: Netease (also own Grasshopper and Nagoshi Studio), GungHo (Puzzle & Dragons, also own Acquire or Game Arts). The acquisition of Discord would also be cool. Acquire/hire Mark Cerny for future hardware design, bath (plus thubs and Knack 3).
- Iterate VR, game subs and cloud gaming with next gen iterations that adresses the main issues of the previous gen: merge Plus & Now and add a PS Now tier without cloud gaming available worldwide, no need to put AAA games day one there. Easier/more comfortable to use VR with solved dizziness issue, better visuals and controls, and with more AAA or top IPs.
- Improve the multiplayer/social experience by Integratin Discord and the Tournament features on PS4 & PS5, investing harder on EVO & Gran Turismo eSports doing something to engage players to watch them on the console. Plus bring back PlayStation Home with a VR compatible sequel to show Satya Nutella, Kotick and Mark Zuckerborg what is a Metaverse (I'm joking, isn't needed but PS Home was profitable and would pump investors)
- Make anime more movies, tvs shows and anime of your PS IPs (add God of War, Horizon, Gran Turismo, Killzone, Wipeout, Detroit, Gravity Rush, Parappa... to Uncharted, TLOU, GoT or Twisted Metal, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter or MGS) and make your own Netflix to merge into on a single subscription service available worldwide with all your (the available ones in each contry since there may be signed deals) movies, tv shows and anime content, since a lot of it isn't available in any service.
Even ignoring its decline in sales, each CoD sells around 20-30M and assuming around half of these copies are sold on PS means each CoD wasn't bought by over 90% of the almost 120M PS4 owners.
Even in case PS loses CoD (we'll see if it's the case, Spencer said want to keep it on PS and they did use Minecraft -PS got its post acquisistion updates and new console games- as example in the SEC filling, and same happened with Zenimax existing big IPs until now), some of these CoD sales were due to Sony marketing that now will be replaced by other publishers, some players won't care and would play on PS other games instead of CoD (ex: there's plenty of top shooters and MP games on PS) and other ones would play CoD on other device (Xbox or gaming PC) they may already own and would continue having and playing a PS5.
So if PS loses CoD -which doesn't seem likely looking at what they said for ABK, Minecraft and Zenimax and what they did until now with Minecraft and Zenimax-, pretty likely PS would lose way less than 5% of its userbase. And PS had been growing these years achieving new gaming histoy records both in PS4 and PS5, and the new console seems to have better sales and engagement than PS4. So pretty likely this growth would compensate this less than 5% of userbase lost.
CoD being acquired won't have a meaningful impact on PS even if it goes console exclusive, which as of now doesn't seem to be the case at least for the next few years.
Regarding to the comparisions between CoD and Spider-Man or other exclusives, PS4 had half a dozen exclusives that sold over 20M or at least 15M, or are on track. Sony exclusives experienced a huge growth in sales on PS4 compared to the previous generations. If they continue growing both their teams and sales (pretty likely, considering the PC ports) the top PS exclusives may outsell CoD in units sold, specially if CoD goes console exclusive, even if CoD doesn't continue decreasing after Vanguard.
This is not counting Warzone, which it's fair to assume will continue on PS since MS after acquisition not only released the new games of the top Mojang and Zenimax IPs, they also kept updating their pre-acquisition games and giving dlcs and so on.
If CoD made a maximum of 260M/year on PS, that is a 1% of the $25B/year generated by the Sony gaming division. Sony won't give a fuck if they lose that specially considering they are growing.
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