Liar. Even though there is no proof, Jason broke this 6 years ago. Please credit him now by referencing his unwritten article.
You almost got me
A big studio can afford to cancel a project that's millions of dollars into development, smaller studios can't. Doesn't even necessarily mean the game is bad, maybe it just turned out niche and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's a good move for consumers in the sense that they don't buy things they just kinda like but don't love, it's just that those buys might be keeping the lights on in some situations.
I'm really not seeing how 2-hour game trails have any more of an impact on game sales than 3P games going directly into something like GamePass for people to play for "free" through the subscription.
I'm not making that association at all. Just pointing out the reality that most gamers have purchased a lot of games they never finished/barely played. It has more to do with taste than quality, but nonetheless that's a lot of $$$ removed from the market and developers in general. That game you bought and didn't love enough to finish might be nothing to you, but the sale might have been important to the company that made the game.
Again, the same would be the case with 3P games that go into something like GamePass, especially if they are Day 1 releases. If you seriously think these trails will hurt 3P game sales that much then you can kiss the idea of 3P AAA Day 1 releases into other services like GamePass goodbye permanently, because that, by this logic, would mean even more money lost on the open market.
And, while Microsoft could theoretically pay each of those games out based on lost sales, they'd create a net negative income flow from the GP service by doing so. This doesn't even consider that we don't know if Sony are providing compensation for publishers in some way with this program, such as a reduced cut of software royalties for the first 1 million sales, or something like that. Again, if publishers were adverse to this we'd be seeing a lot of grumblings and dissent among them right now or even earlier if that were truly the case.
I didn't catch that. If Sony will be the one controlling the 2 hour time limit and dev would have to do nothing for demos I'd be completely OK with this. Sony controls the licensing process they could easily block or allow players access to game based on time limits or whether or not they have PS+ Premium.
This could be like Game pass where players have access to all games on PlayStation for 2 hours for Premium members and then lock them unless they pay full price for each individual title. It'd be worse than Game pass but it would be better than nothing I suppose.
So....you're in a way saying a 2-hour trail would somehow be enough of a fill for most people to then not want to buy the full game, even when that trail represents a sliver of the game's content? And that regardless of the trail's quality the publisher stands to lose sales because of this? Are you thinking more about the publisher or the customer here?
Because when you compare to some of the other alternatives, logically speaking they both have gains here rather than losses. Publishers stand to gain a new buy if the trail is impressive, and customers gain some playtime with a 3P AAA release they would've otherwise had to shell out $60/$70 outright in order to get that same amount of playtime for feeling out the game. And unlike other alternatives you'll at least be able to play all 3P AAA releases through it Day 1 if just select portions of them.
So apparently the $34 refers to the wholesale price, not the retail.
Not sure what that actually puts the retail price at but I'm guessing in the $50+ range
Yeah, $50 - $70 range it seems. Can't find any AAA 3P releases coming out at $50 these days but it's there.
I'm not necessarily against the practice of games having a trial period. I'm not even sure I'm completely against the practice of it being somewhat required under normal circumstances. To be honest, I haven't found a place to dismount on it yet, so I'll continue to ride this fence for the time being.
What I am sure of though, is that Sony surely could've found a better way to do this. Sony could've gotten MS on board with this, and presented more of a combined front to developers. Just tell Phil upfront that you'd like a year exclusivity for the trial feature, and he'd have gone for it.
Why would Sony's plans for expansion of their own service need to go through Microsoft's approval? Did Microsoft ask Sony about whether to provide pricing discounts for games on GamePass? And why stop at 3P developers; Microsoft could've asked Sony about doing all 1P releases Day 1 into the service before deciding to do so themselves, going by this logic.
I mean, the 3P developers operate on their platforms so this would also be about what's best for Sony & Microsoft as well. And why leave Nintendo out of it? They work with many of those same 3P developers & publishers, too.
Phil is a people pleaser, and loves to collaborate on things like this. If Sony didn't want to go that route, or I'm completely wrong on Phil's willingness to cooperate, then Sony could've asked devs to implement a trial if they wanted to be included in any part of the new sub service. If they wanted this viewed through good optics in any capacity, they should've not tied this feature behind a paywall. Especially seeing as Sony's return policy is by far the worst among gaming platforms.
Phil Spencer is a cooperative person only as far as what is deemed best and most beneficial towards the company he works for. And, some of the things that would be beneficial for Microsoft in such a situation, may not be the most beneficial for Sony, or fit into Sony's own roadmap for product rollouts. There's only so much cooperation to be had anyway when both companies are effectively competing for marketshare through console sales, subscriptions, software revenue etc.
It could be argued (in a more pessimistic take) that part of this initiative IS to do something about the refund policy; play the game for a bit and if it's not to your tastes, you don't need to spend money on it so it saves you the purchase and also saves you on going through the refund process. It's not the best way to address that issue of course, if anything it's merely a stopgap that ironically might help in that regard. But it would inadvertently help with that for a temporary time.
Ultimately, you or I are not the ones who can decide for Sony if this was something worth paywalling. They are trying to grow their subscription install base, and for various reasons cannot seemingly justify the inclusion of all new 1P AAA games Day 1 as a driving factor, at least not now. And for other reasons, probably deem it ineffective to pay huge sums to 3P publishers for Day 1 of their games into the service, when even Microsoft, who has way more in financial resources than Sony (and thus are able to spend much more to sustain that type of business model regardless of the revenue it generates), have paid for at most 3 AAA 3P Day 1 releases into GamePass over the past two years, 2 of those being happenstance from third-party organizations (MLB) and the third arguably a AA release that needed a player boost anyway (Outriders).
By flat out making demands the way it seems they have, they're taking advantage of their marketshare position, but I'm sure some devs will see it as abusing it's position... Which is currently shrinking. Down the road, this is just another pebble on the scales that devs will weigh when deciding what platform to lead from or sign an exclusivity deal with.
They aren't making demands; again if it were truly
that draconian you'd see multiple people coming forth at least hinting as such, if not a publisher outright coming out and stating why they are removing this or that or won't be supporting them. We'd see a lot more dramatic theatrics if that is what Sony were doing.
No, whatever way they are implementing this sounds like it require as little work from publishers & developers as possible, and like a few others were saying ITT, could be at the OS-level. They may also be providing incentives for publishers; bringing up the idea again that they could waiver part of the royalty cut on the first 1 million or so sales, as such an incentive. That would mean instead of taking 30% they could take say 20% on the first 1 million copies sold, and now the publisher is getting an extra 10% in revenue from that game on PS platforms which could be on top whatever deals they have aside that.
I go back and forth on the pros and cons. My only hang up is that while it may very well benefit gamers. I can't really consider the pros point blank because it only applies to those paying for the top tier, instead of all PS users. At best, Sony is making a pro-consumer move.... but for only a select few consumers.
This is something I can kind of agree with, and hopefully they do open this up to the lower tiers and maybe even for a very limited selection of games outside of PS+ altogether. They could scale the trail time length and selection of available games to play via trail as they move down the tier brackets.
So to your point about publishers, the only ones who might be worried about this are those who publish shitty games. So why should we care about them? Why should low effort shitty games be rewarded? It's a commercial industry where competition is the aim and a huge benefit to the consumer. The moment we start rewarding and incentivising mediocrity is the moment we lose the competition aspect and the overall quality of games drops off a cliff, because pubs realise they can fart out shit low quality, low effort games and still make money.... nah... fuck that.
Not even just that but for the people worried game developers will lose out on sales from this (and since this is conceptually closer to demoes, I've never heard of demoes causing a game's sales to drop unless the demo was absolutely horrible or exposed ugly truths of the game being mediocre), don't seem to be considering the possible incentives Sony could have lined up here.
They aren't outright getting the full games into the service Day 1 so they don't need to pay per game in lump sums or pay based on engagement levels the way Microsoft are doing it. But, they could easily have a royalty cut incentive for the first 1 million copies (since these are effectively AAA games, they are probably going to do at least a couple million in sales especially the bigger titles), in exchange for those games having trails in the service. That's an extra 10% in revenue for the publisher on that platform ecosystem, which adds up.
We don't
know if they're doing something like that, but even from having a limited perspective on the finances side of a games publisher and platform holder (since I don't work for any of them) this sounds like an incentive that could work, and pretty much get everyone onboard.