Support NeoGAF

[Imru’ al-Qays]

I can only begin to fathom how degenerated your cognitive functions have to be for you to turn into a fanboy for live service dreck

 

[FunkMiller]

What level are they chasing? Did Helldivers 2 reach that level?

Yes. Helldivers 2 has been a massive success.

Meantime Destiny 2's player count has dwindled by over 70% in the last year.

You can't just point to one successful GaaS... and claim that they are all like that, and that the market can sustain dozens of them.

Look at the bigger picture, and it's plain to see the opposite is true. Only a few can sustain a high level.

 

[LordCBH]

The problem is that with most of these massive corporations, a live service being successful isn’t good enough. If they aren’t raking in all of everyone’s money, then they won’t see it as a success.

 

[FunkMiller]

Dat title change.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Errr... no, the point Layden was making was that there are a limited number of games that can succeed in the space, and Sony's trying to pump out like a dozen of them at a time. Completely different strategies.

He was literally the person that introduced Sony's current strategy.

And if you read his recent interview, he's clearly talking about how Sony is taking this approach to reach beyond the PlayStation installbase to get them into the PS eco-system and onto consoles.

It should be pretty clear what they're after.
They didn’t look at MS and thought: "hey, these guys hold the key to the future, let's kill our brand as well."

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Yes. Helldivers 2 has been a massive success.

Meantime Destiny 2's player count has dwindled by over 70% in the last year.

You can't just point to one successful GaaS... and claim that they are all like that, and that the market can sustain dozens of them.

Look at the bigger picture, and it's plain to see the opposite is true. Only a few can sustain a high level.

In your estimation, how many Live Service games had a monthly active user base of over 100k players in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and today?

Do you REALLY think that number has plateaued?



This is the important thing. The thing you're not going to want to hear. The majority of the growth illustrated in that video is the result of minimal industry investment into multiplayer. Live Service got a massive influx of investment over the last 6 or so years, thanks to PUBG & Fortnite. We're now about to see what growth looks like when the major players are investing the big bucks into the field.

 

[Last Hearth]

In your estimation, how many Live Service games had a monthly active user base of over 100k players in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and today?

Do you REALLY think that number has plateaued?



This seems like pretty damning evidence against your position.

Nobody has said the number has plateaued, what they are saying is that the userbase increase is being outpaced by both the increase in number of GAAS games being developed and the cost of development, so while pie is getting bigger, the number of people wanting in on it is increasing faster, and the amount they each need to take from the pie to profit is getting larger.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Nobody has said the number has plateaued, what they are saying is that the userbase increase is being outpaced by both the increase in number of GAAS games being developed and the cost of development, so while pie is getting bigger, the number of people wanting in on it is increasing faster, and the amount they each need to take from the pie to profit is getting larger.

If that's the new position of the anti Live Service crowd, then progress has been made and you people are redeemable after all, lol.

 

[FunkMiller]

In your estimation, how many Live Service games had a monthly active user base of over 100k players in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and today?

Do you REALLY think that number has plateaued?



This is the important thing. The thing you're not going to want to hear. The majority of the growth illustrated in that video is the result of minimal industry investment into multiplayer. Live Service got a massive influx of investment over the last 6 or so years, thanks to PUBG & Fortnite. We're now about to see what growth looks like when the major players are investing the big bucks into the field.

That video literally shows that only a small number of GaaS games achieve the levels of success the publishers are likely after. Why are you doing my work for me?

The bit you don't want to hear is what I referenced with Destiny 2's player count. Some GaaS games absolutely explode in popularity - but there are always other GaaS games that drop in popularity at the same time.

Your entire thesis is based on the idea that the market can and will sustain many, many more GaaS games at a commercially very successful level. But you have zero proof of this.

You can absolutely show proof that some GaaS games blow up, and do gangbusters - but nobody is arguing with you that this doesn't happen.

You've still yet to offer any evidence that a massive amount of growth is coming in the GaaS sector in the near future.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

That video literally shows that only a small number of GaaS games achieve the levels of success the publishers are likely after. Why are you doing my work for me?

But it does disprove the saturation argument. You can say only a small number of games are succeeding on X level but that number is quickly growing.

The bit you don't want to hear is what I referenced with Destiny 2's player count. Some GaaS games absolutely explode in popularity - but there are always other GaaS games that drop in popularity at the same time.

That's how ecosystems work. As the universe expands, new stars are born and old stars die. Just because you focus on the dying stars doesn't mean the ecosystem isn't expanding rapidly. The Live Service segment of the market is in the expansion phase.

Your entire thesis is based on the idea that the market can and will sustain many, many more GaaS games at a commercially very successful level. But you have zero proof of this.

No one has proof of the future. What we're doing here is attempting to read market trends and see where the industry will head.

You can absolutely show proof that some GaaS games blow up, and do gangbusters - but nobody is arguing with you that this doesn't happen.

You've still yet to offer any evidence that a massive amount of growth is coming in the GaaS sector in the near future.

Again, it's impossible to provide proof of what 2024 through 2026 will look like. It's going to be interesting to see how the narratives shift as PlayStations Live Service initiative keeps producing the hits.

 

[jakinov]

Depending on how you want to slice it, there's about a dozen live games right now that have very likely cleared over $1B in revenue from subs/microtractions in the last 5 years. And there's a bunch of live service games that are likely in the 9 figure range in terms of lifetime revenue. I use the word "likely" becasue some companies like Valve don't release numbers but Valve's estimates for example are in the several billions and we have little bites of infomration that suggest at least 9 figures in only some small periods of time, or for some games we haven't heard of any milestones in a while but the games have since grown in poplarity. I think there's room for lots of live service games but of course not everyone is going to make 2-4 billion a year like Fornite and League of Legends; I don't think most publishers need or expect to get Fornite levels and are happy wtih their games taking multiple years to hit milestones or even fine with the 7-8 figure revenue coming in consistently (monthly). There's a lot of good money to be made.

Pure live service games that aren't traditional style AAA games with live elements have a less complicated cost structure, usually have smaller scope, lower standards and a differnet developme methadology. You aren't spending a bunch of time/money building super realistic open worlds, with super fancy animation/mocap, fancy voice acting, etc. You can build an MVP of a live service game with okay graphics, get feedback and interate; whereas traditonal game development is not like that; you do a lot of planning initially like (year or more) and move along in phases to make sure you build the full right thing in the end. Live service games can be very cheap to make and therefore very cheap to fail. People like to make a big deal pointing out the failures but the risk is not that high for a company like Sony to make a bunch of games and have most fail. Most the games will get at least some of its money back and then the ones that do succeed can potentially make up for the loses and more. Greater than $1B is arbrtirary feat but it's a milestone that's uncommon for traditional AAA style games which take as much as 5 potentially more expensive years to develop. Attaching photo from Insomniac leak of Sony's first part game revenue:

Example of super succesful live service games right now

1. Fornite ($4-5B/.year with fuck ton of MAU)
2. League of Legends ($1-2B/year with 150M+ MAU)
3. PUBG - several billion in lifetime
4. Warzone - there was some stat about it making mid 7 figures a day when it was in it's prime which well over $1B
5. Dota II - Valve doesn't release numbers, supposedly made $300M just from one battle pass,
6. Apex - Made over $2B
7. Counterstrike - Valve doesn't release numbers, estimated to be several billion
8. Rainbow Six Siege - made over $1B a while back, ubisoft doesn't release cumulative numbers anymore but they say that the spend per user has been growing and more users are playing
9. GTA Online - success goes without saying, but with the low completion rate of GTA V story, the cancelation of story DLC, the fact that GTA4 with much weaker online mode sold much muchg less and how popular the online mode is that most of GTA V sales can arguably be attributed to the online mode than the single player mode.
10. World of Tanks - several billion in lifetime
11. FIFA Ultimate Team - generates about a $1B/year
12. Roblox = $1-2B/year

Other honorable games ( some of these games have made over > $1B in revenue but may not be in their prime anymore)

1. Read Dead Online
2. Team Fortress 2
3. Sea of Thieves
4. Rocket League
5. Valorant
6. Destiny 2
7. Overwatch
8. Heartstone
9. Heroes of the Storm
10. Warframe
11. Fall Guys
12. Smite
13. Paladins
14. Smite
15. MMOs
    1. FF14
    2. WOW
    3. Black Dessert
    4. ESO

There's other not so honorable mentions too which seem to be doing okay to continue to get support like Halo Infinte and Fallout 76 come to mind.

 

[Killer8]

Based on the quote provided, it seems he understands live service games far better than most. What Layden is getting at is that there's always going to be some level of cannibalization with live service games. The pool of players to sell them to is finite and people only have time and money to invest into maybe a couple of these games at once. Sony might be able to attract a player from game A to game B, but if both game A and B are funded and run by the same company, they aren't exactly extracting any more money from the player now are they? A dollar from Destiny 2 and a dollar from Helldivers II is still a dollar.

It's why throwing a dozen live service games out there and expecting them all to be a success is stupidity. The graveyard of GaaS far outsizes the number of games which are still alive and well. The rejoinder is always "but Sony only need one or two of those games to be a hit", which is basically the business equivalent of throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks. I suspect Sony themselves realized this is pure retardation and is the reason why their 12 projected live service games by FY2025 is now just 6.

As a side note, i've noticed in the discussions that when a Destruction AllStars crashes and burns it's written off as just part of Sony's plan; and when something like Helldivers II sticks, it's also proof that Sony's whole plan makes perfect sense (*even when Sony seemingly didn't have much faith in it based on the server preparedness). When a company is infallible no matter what it does, even when it's demonstrably failing, then it's obvious there is some level of fanboyism going on.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Based on the quote provided, it seems he understands live service games far better than most. What Layden is getting at is that there's always going to be some level of cannibalization with live service games.

What he means and what he says seems to be two different things. He explicitly says the market can only support 10 or 20 of these types of games. The market is currently supporting over 100.

The pool of players to sell them to is finite and people only have time and money to invest into maybe a couple of these games at once. Sony might be able to attract a player from game A to game B, but if both game A and B are funded and run by the same company, they aren't exactly extracting any more money from the player now are they? A dollar from Destiny 2 and a dollar from Helldivers II is still a dollar.

This is a low resolution picture on the realities of the market. I find that people who don't enjoy multiplayer tend to lump all of them in the same basket. Helldivers 2 had minimal impact on Destiny 2. I'm sure it pulled a small percentage of players away, but nothing substantial. Jim Ryan or Herman Hulst already said that their Live Service games will ne catered to different markets to mitigate the effects you describe. For example, Concord is a PvP focused social game. Helldivers 2 is a PvP focused horde shooter. Almost entirely separate markets.

It's why throwing a dozen live service games out there and expecting them all to be a success is stupidity. The graveyard of GaaS far outsizes the number of games which are still alive and well.

The graveyard of all games (single player) outsizes the ones that are currently generating money. How much money do you think Deathloop or Demons Souls or Ratchet and Clank generates today? Those games are on life support just like any number of Live Service games.

The rejoinder is always "but Sony only need one or two of those games to be a hit", which is basically the business equivalent of throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks. I suspect Sony themselves realized this is pure retardation and is the reason why their 12 projected live service games by FY2025 is now just 6.

Or...Bungie is allowing Sony to read the lottery ticket before buying and they know which ones will hit and which won't.

As a side note, i've noticed in the discussions that when a Destruction AllStars crashes and burns it's written off as just part of Sony's plan; and when something like Helldivers II sticks, it's also proof that Sony's whole plan makes perfect sense (*even when Sony seemingly didn't have much faith in it based on the server preparedness). When a company is infallible no matter what it does, even when it's demonstrably failing, then it's obvious there is some level of fanboyism going on.

This is a huge point.

The influx of Live Service investment occurred in 2018 / 2019 as a result of PUBG and Fortnite.

Certain types don't like to give credit where it's due but those games fundamentally changed the gaming landscape forever. The industry finally woke up to the fact that multiplayer graduated out of its sports phase, into it's Heroes Journey phase. This new type of multiplayer leverages the social aspect, progression, and differing playstyles significantly more than the old type of multiplayer.

Destriction All Stars flopped because it was a mediocre old style multiplayer game.

Helldivers 2 succeeded because it was a mediocre Heroes Journey type game.

That can't be stressed enough.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Wonder who understands the industry better, high ranking executive with several years of work in it under his belt or random Neogaf user?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Wonder who understands the industry better, high ranking executive with several years of work in it under his belt or random Neogaf user?

And yet, his stance doesn't seem to supported by any of the major players still in the industry. PlayStation, WB, EA, Ubisoft, ABK...they're all going heavy into Live Service while Shawn Layden looks on from the sidelines.

 

[RaySoft]

Based on the statement you quoted, I'd argue that he understood live services and Sony didn't.

I sat with the same feeling, so I didn't understands OP's comment...

 

[LavitzSlambert]

And yet, his stance doesn't seem to supported by any of the major players still in the industry. PlayStation, WB, EA, Ubisoft, ABK...they're all going heavy into Live Service while Shawn Layden looks on from the sidelines.

And look at all of those publishers getting into some real trouble managing development costs. Who would have guessed! It's not only live service game costs that have ballooned. The issue is publishers are looking at successful live service games like lotto tickets, and banking on one of them taking off that can support the rest. Can this be done? Sure, it has happened. But it's an incredibly risky strategy in an increasingly crowded market segment.

 

[SHA]

So you put all these great men in boxes? What is this, a product?





/s

 

[Shut0wen]

In March of 2018, Shawn Layden left his position at PlayStation. There were rumors that Layden did not leave on good terms. His departure was abrupt. David Jaffe said he heard he was fired from his contact at PlayStation and I believe Layden liked a controversial Tweet suggesting everything was not copacetic between him and PlayStation later that year. Fast forward a few months and PlayStation goes on a huge Live Service hiring spree.

Yesterday, Shawn Layden goes on a podcast and answers the following question. His response is time stamped...

Question: "Live Service games seem risky with most of them failing. Why is PlayStation going so heavy into the (Live Service) market? [Paraphrase]




The quote that jumps out is... "In practice, there's a very small handful of games that can do it. There's only so many of those games the market can tolerate...The idea you can have 10 or 20 of those games successful, in the market at the same time, is just unrealistic."

Guild Wars 2 is the 198th most played game on Steam right now. It's still getting updates in 2024. There's a number of highly successful Live Service games not available on Steam.

Was Shawn Layden pushed out because he didn't fundamentally understand the growing Live Service market?

We are comparing an MMO to live service? both completely different beasts, mmos get updated nowhere near as regularly as majority of live service games for one

 

[FunkMiller]

And yet, his stance doesn't seem to supported by any of the major players still in the industry. PlayStation, WB, EA, Ubisoft, ABK...they're all going heavy into Live Service while Shawn Layden looks on from the sidelines.

It’s like you just haven’t heard about all of the cancellations. If you’re right, why are so many GaaS games being cancelled? Including one by Naughty Dog, in one of the most successful franchises in gaming history.

And why are so many that do come out failing? Surely if there’s this massive untapped audience, this should not be happening quite as much.

The facts on the ground don’t support your prediction. They support Layden’s.

 

[TheAssist]

Guild Wars 2 is the 198th most played game on Steam right now. It's still getting updates in 2024. There's a number of highly successful Live Service games not available on Steam.

Was Shawn Layden pushed out because he didn't fundamentally understand the growing Live Service market?

Ok, how many people does Guild Wars 2 need to support (how much money does it need to make so the dev team stays afloat).

Now how much money does a Sony Studio needs to make in order to pay for its devs, rent, servers, assets, operational overhead and a profit margin that satisfies Sonys shareholders?

You need to understand that big companies need big products. On the one hand to pay for the mentioned overhead such companies have (support staff like facility management of a really big office building, human resources, marketing, PR, Ads, etc., plus rent and general maintenance costs).
Secondly there is always an opportunity cost. Just making a bit of money to stay afloat is not enough, when that same money could go into something that makes even more money.

Companies like Sony, MS, Apple, Google, Meta want to be market leader. If they can not be market leader in a feasible amount of time, they usually leave that market, unless there are other strategic benefits (like games for MS, though they still believe they might be some kind of market leader at some point. Be it subscription or cloud gaming).

And when we are talking about big AAA GAAS games that are played by millions of people and generate billions of revenue (and thats the kind of number Sony is looking for), then yes, Layden is correct in his assessment.

But I dont think Sony wants all their gaas games in development to be successes. They try different things and see what sticks. As in many other industries like cars or pharmacy. For every one drug that makes it to the market dozens fell through first and seconds phase clinical trials and thousands through preclinic. But you have to R&D more than one single product at a time to have some kind of insurance that at least one of them makes it big.
And of course, Sony advertises this number for investors so they know that Sony is working on it. But they know very well that in the end, if they are lucky, only one or two of these games will make it.

 

[mayham2199]

That, I think, is where your logic is fundamentally flawed. And again... can you make a list of them with their profits? Your confidence suggests you have hard evidence of what you believe? Because whether a GaaS is still available to purchase on Steam is not an indicator of profitability. It's an indicator that enough money is being made to carry on. Nothing more. GW2 has a concurrent player count of about 5000 max.

The only evidence I can go on for my position is that multiple GaaS games have failed in recent years. Dozens of them. Massive, high profile games. Even Naughty Dog couldn't get one out of the door! That suggests a limited audience, no? That suggests a genre that can only sustain a certain amount of games.

How do those facts correlate to your position that there's a lot more growth to be had?

You could make that argument for SP games as well.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

It’s like you just haven’t heard about all of the cancellations. If you’re right, why are so many GaaS games being cancelled? Including one by Naughty Dog, in one of the most successful franchises in gaming history.

Game cancellations happen all the time. Some people cling on to certain game cancellations because it serves the narrative they want to believe.

Former PlayStation Boss Says They 'Cancel So Many Games'

Shuhei Yoshida, the previous president of PlayStation, explained canceling all these games was done to “save” the devs

kotaku.com

Instead, look what the leaders in the industry are saying. They're all committed to the future of Live Service.

And why are so many that do come out failing? Surely if there’s this massive untapped audience, this should not be happening quite as much.

Multiplayer has always been trickier than single player. If the market was saturated, you'd have to show that failure rates have increased dramatically in a certain time period. It would also help to explain why the Live Service market continues to grow in revenue while the SP market has plateaued for years.

You'll do neither because you've pinned your entire thesis on cherry picking. Don't do that.

The facts on the ground don’t support your prediction. They support Layden’s.

PlayStation said their mid to long term plans surrounding Live Service remain unchanged (60% LS v. 40% SP)

WB games said they're focusing more on Live Service.

EA is moving away from liscensed IP (the domain of single player) and will “invest disproportionally” in the likes of EA Sports FC, Apex Legends and The Sims – “massive online communities” in which CEO Andrew Wilson sees the potential for “exponential growth”.

Ubisoft, ABK, Tencent...they're all investing a disproportionate amount into Live Service for obvious reasons.

Layden is out. He's out because he's a Vib Ribbon blowhard in the era of super carriers.

 

[FunkMiller]

You could make that argument for SP games as well.

...an argument which backs up the fact the market can't sustain more than a few big GaaS games.

If games across the board are being cancelled... what does that tell you? It tells you that there just might not be the market out there for all these products at the moment. That's how industry functions: supply and demand.

If the games industry is going through lean times in general, where many games are being cancelled, what does that say about the potential audience for just one type of game? One that relies on a consistent and returning, paying customer base?

Men In Boxes is trying to claim that when you look at the games industry today, it's in a place where there's a huge amount of room for growth in GaaS. That is contrary to every single thing that we see going on at the moment. I believe fact and figures - not corporate blather from PR departments. And the facts are multiple high level GaaS games have failed in the past year.

There's only room for a few big earners - and that's it.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

It’s like you just haven’t heard about all of the cancellations. If you’re right, why are so many GaaS games being cancelled? Including one by Naughty Dog, in one of the most successful franchises in gaming history.

And why are so many that do come out failing? Surely if there’s this massive untapped audience, this should not be happening quite as much.

The facts on the ground don’t support your prediction. They support Layden’s.

Exactly this.

The reason Sony invested in so many GaaS titles, is because they already expected some to not be successful or get canceled.
It’s literally Layden’s idea to take that approach.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

So, has someone made men in boxes see that light at the end of the tunnel, or is he still lost in limbo trying to finish the season pass?

 

[Kappa]

So every game with updates counts as live service?

 

[SHA]

Shawn must have had lots and lots of metrics...so he has the data, saw what the board/stakeholders wanted and thought it wasn't possible.

You guys are discussing guild wars 2 and I believe the higher ups were asking Shawn for Fortnite and Minecraft., not GW2.

And he is right, how many big...and I mean BIG GaaS are there?? More than 20?? You guys are missing the point with GW2.

Are you so delusional to think that a board of directors wants the next GW2 over the next Fortnite???

The point of gaas is to get lost in the game and not thinking about anything else, it got it's special place when done right, it has the qualities to steal the spotlight from many other games, who knows, they may replace sports games numbers back in it's prime days, we saw 10 or more sports games were successful comercialy without hurting one another.

 

[Fafalada]

The only evidence I can go on for my position is that multiple GaaS games have failed in recent years. Dozens of them. Massive, high profile games. Even Naughty Dog couldn't get one out of the door! That suggests a limited audience, no? That suggests a genre that can only sustain a certain amount of games.
How do those facts correlate to your position that there's a lot more growth to be had?

The data points you reference are anecdotal - so they don't really do either.
If we want to talk statistics - it takes about 100k-200k CCU to reach critical mass with revenues of 100-200M/year. I'm being somewhat conservative with how aggressive monetisation is - but we're also talking rule of thumbs/averages. Assuming title sustains that average for at least 5 years - we're looking at lifetime 500M-1B, effectively billion dollar IPs, which even some of the most acclaimed AAA hit-releases take multiple sequels to reach.
Looking at current numbers - the Steam market alone would hypothetically allow to sustain several hundreds of such titles at any given time - without adding other devices/markets. Including console/mobile we should be in the thousands range.

To be clear - that also assumes no competition from other business models - and even distribution (the truly big hits obviously take a much larger piece of the pie) but the point is, unless you literally expect the top 10-20 to all be Fortnite sized hits (and that's never been the case - Fortnite is just larger than anything else out there by a wide margin), the market can support a fair few of those.

Of course - the other side of this equation is that Steam on average gets more than 10000 new releases every year - and while most of them aren't service based, the opportunity for failure remains vast regardless of your business model.

That said, I would expect those games would have generated more profit than GW2. Do you have the numbers to suggest otherwise?

Not sure where GW2 is in terms of their active users - but see above for some ballpark estimates where a title might land.

In your estimation, how many Live Service games had a monthly active user base of over 100k players in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and today?

While 100k MAU can be the critical mass needed to keep something alive, it's not even close to enough to constitute a success on the scale these companies are looking for. See above for what might be though.

Live Service got a massive influx of investment over the last 6 or so years, thanks to PUBG & Fortnite. We're now about to see what growth looks like when the major players are investing the big bucks into the field.

Live services have had massive influx of investment for at least 15 years now, it's long been a much bigger market than Steam or consoles, and even on consoles the push already started before last gen launched (and it also suffered a mini-crash back then as well - which is arguably happening now also).
And the whole notion that 'the big players' are about to change the field has been proven wrong at least 5 times over already since the industry first saw how popular these were 2+ decades ago though. The big IPs and big $$$ has come and gone many times over - most of them failed, a few (Fifa, GTA, COD) have found big success, but aren't leading the market.

 

[diffusionx]

When Sony undertook t his initiative, I think most of us felt that they were launching development on 12 or 15 games or whatever, and would be lucky if 2 of them hit big. We have seen this process play out.

The problem OP makes is that he declares these games to be a success after one month. It's ridiculous to think a F2P game with a huge player base in the first month is anywhere near a success. A boxed game that you pick up from the shelf with a huge player base in the first month is a success, but it's a different model. The vast majority of these games hit big initially and then burn out far before it can become a sustainable business.

Yes Guild Wars 2 has found sustainable success but it's not like some monster hit and has had its fair share of bumps along the way. I would say Guild Wars 2 is not as relevant as Guild Wars 1 was back in the day, although I personally think the game is really good.

 

[Hudo]

Personally, I cannot take anyone seriously who hasn't finished Wizardry 4.

 

[Cyborg]

He is not wrong most of those games fail. Some succeed but for a short period and only a few are cash cows (often the ones that came first)

 

[chonga]

But his 10 - 20 number is already an order of magnitude off the actual number. Plus, Sony seems pretty happy with Live Service game Helldivers 2 at the moment so...

I suspect if you think his number is out by orders of magnitude then you are likely not on the same page in terms of what "successful" is. Success isn't just that you are able to recover development costs it is that you are going gangbusters and reach of a Fortnite or a Helldivers 2 like you mention.

In addition you have to think about concurrency.

So Helldivers 2 is doing well right now, but if you have Game X launch and get a million people playing what you have to remember is that isn't a million extra people playing games - many of those are playing Game X instead of Game Y.

So when he says there's not room for more than a certain amount of games that's what he means.

Could you have 200 games co-existing and do 'OK' and break even? Probably. You might define that as success - he wouldn't.

Could you have 200 games co-exist that bring in millions upon millions of dollars and oodles of players every single month? No. You are spreading the market too thinly, thus he isn't an order of magnitude out.

 

[mckmas8808]

When Sony undertook t his initiative, I think most of us felt that they were launching development on 12 or 15 games or whatever, and would be lucky if 2 of them hit big. We have seen this process play out.

The problem OP makes is that he declares these games to be a success after one month. It's ridiculous to think a F2P game with a huge player base in the first month is anywhere near a success. A boxed game that you pick up from the shelf with a huge player base in the first month is a success, but it's a different model. The vast majority of these games hit big initially and then burn out far before it can become a sustainable business.

Yes Guild Wars 2 has found sustainable success but it's not like some monster hit and has had its fair share of bumps along the way. I would say Guild Wars 2 is not as relevant as Guild Wars 1 was back in the day, although I personally think the game is really good.

And why aren't we talking about how wasteful and stupid this idea was in the first place. Why would a 15% success rate be considered good in the first place? If only 2 out of 12 Live Service games were successful, I'd call that a HUGE failure!

 

[Killjoy-NL]

And why aren't we talking about how wasteful and stupid this idea was in the first place. Why would a 15% success rate be considered good in the first place? If only 2 out of 12 Live Service games were successful, I'd call that a HUGE failure!

Depends on how much revenue they expect to see in return long-term.

More importantly, they want players engaged within the PlayStation eco-system.
That's most likely the main goal, as singleplayer games make it hard to have high user retention.

They said they want to rely less on 3rd party, especially after MS acquired ABK.
That means they have to give the PS userbase something in between major AAA singleplayer releases. The best way to do that, are GaaS IPs.

 

[diffusionx]

And why aren't we talking about how wasteful and stupid this idea was in the first place. Why would a 15% success rate be considered good in the first place? If only 2 out of 12 Live Service games were successful, I'd call that a HUGE failure!

It’s because a successful live service game is soooo successful. Think of Apex, Destiny, Fortnite, GTAO, Madden, EAFC, these games pay for themselves and basically everything else.

 

[AJUMP23]

He built the brand and had market dominance. He left on his own accord. Layton was not forced out. I assume Kaz was happy with his performance.

 

[AJUMP23]

I heard every time he saw Kaz he said “RIIIIDGE RACEEEEER!” and that is why he had to go.

 

[Krappadizzle]

I'm gonna go ahead and postulate that the man who ran a major business and oversaw millions/billions in budget/development/advertising probably knows a hair more than the even the mighty Men_in_Boxes Neogaf poster..

 

[Plague Doctor]

OP you have done something remarkable here. You have made me agree with a corporate suit.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

The data points you reference are anecdotal - so they don't really do either.
If we want to talk statistics - it takes about 100k-200k CCU to reach critical mass with revenues of 100-200M/year. I'm being somewhat conservative with how aggressive monetisation is - but we're also talking rule of thumbs/averages. Assuming title sustains that average for at least 5 years - we're looking at lifetime 500M-1B, effectively billion dollar IPs, which even some of the most acclaimed AAA hit-releases take multiple sequels to reach.
Looking at current numbers - the Steam market alone would hypothetically allow to sustain several hundreds of such titles at any given time - without adding other devices/markets. Including console/mobile we should be in the thousands range.

To be clear - that also assumes no competition from other business models - and even distribution (the truly big hits obviously take a much larger piece of the pie) but the point is, unless you literally expect the top 10-20 to all be Fortnite sized hits (and that's never been the case - Fortnite is just larger than anything else out there by a wide margin), the market can support a fair few of those.

Of course - the other side of this equation is that Steam on average gets more than 10000 new releases every year - and while most of them aren't service based, the opportunity for failure remains vast regardless of your business model.


Not sure where GW2 is in terms of their active users - but see above for some ballpark estimates where a title might land.


While 100k MAU can be the critical mass needed to keep something alive, it's not even close to enough to constitute a success on the scale these companies are looking for. See above for what might be though.

These companies make games like Returnal, Ratchet and Clank, Deathloop, Demons Soul, Alan Wake 2 etc...

It's been interesting to see how badly people want to move the goalposts to "Fortnite level success only. Everything else is a failure." I guess if you can convince yourself of that, then you can believe the Live Service push is doomed for failure more easily.

Live services have had massive influx of investment for at least 15 years now

Completely wrong. The Live Service push 15 years ago was so unattractive that PlayStation produced a whopping 0 Live Service games.

From 2009 to 2014 we weren't having this discussion because AAA single player games were the dominant tool of these companies to make money.

The pushback against Live Service really started in ~2018 when PUBG and Fortnite woke the industry up to the potential of the medium. People who preferred the old order started complaining that they weren't the main focus anymore.

, it's long been a much bigger market than Steam or consoles, and even on consoles the push already started before last gen launched (and it also suffered a mini-crash back then as well - which is arguably happening now also).
And the whole notion that 'the big players' are about to change the field has been proven wrong at least 5 times over already since the industry first saw how popular these were 2+ decades ago though. The big IPs and big $$$ has come and gone many times over - most of them failed, a few (Fifa, GTA, COD) have found big success, but aren't leading the market.

We've never come close to seeing the top publishers of the industry spends 50+% of their resources towards Live Service. That push began ~2018/2019 and the results of those investments are just hitting shores now. The next few years here is going to wake a lot of y'all up.

 

[crackajack]

GaaS need a huge team to maintain seasons for years.
Bloated open world games need huge teams.
I'd rather have those people work on smaller, more diverse and just more games. I generally cannot be entertained by one game for hundreds of hours or maybe even years. That is boring af no matter how good the core loop is. Some/Many want that though. Thanks to at least Fortnite for financing EGS and its freebies.

GaaS are inevitable, but like Madden or Fifa FC or CoD, having a few dominating titles will hardly benefit them, due to lack of competition, and hence we gamers will notice it. Or not in many cases. People who actually love being in a treadmill, getting back to almost coin operated entertainment, can love this future.

 

[Fafalada]

It's been interesting to see how badly people want to move the goalposts to "Fortnite level success only. Everything else is a failure." I guess if you can convince yourself of that, then you can believe the Live Service push is doomed for failure more easily.

To be clear - I just used Fortnite as example of what isn't necessary. But the counter to 100k MAU is factual - that's about 10-100x smaller than what success looks like to large companies (which is the 100k CCU number I mentioned).
Fortnite is obviously in a completely different tier from that.

Completely wrong. The Live Service push 15 years ago was so unattractive that PlayStation produced a whopping 0 Live Service games.
From 2009 to 2014 we weren't having this discussion because AAA single player games were the dominant tool of these companies to make money.

Sony being late to the party has no bearing on the industry as a whole (and it's not like they didn't try - they just failed or quietly shut-down most of those early efforts).
But yes - the first push started in mid 2000s - the first major western-developed hit (that wasn't a subscription service), came out in late 2006, hit 200k CCU in a single country and went on to average over 100M annually for the next 18 years. That game alone earned more than the combined total for all the SP IPs you mentioned in the previous post.
Of course there's the other side of the coin too - another major publisher tried something similar a few years later(bring one of their big IPs into GaaS) - where about 1 year into Open Beta the project budget already approached 100M (yes, that was for a F2P title in early 2010s). The game never made critical mass needed to even be operationally profitable(let alone make back the initial investment) and was shut down 3 years later.
In the run up to 2013 console launch - the industry push into services was everywhere. It's not so well advertised as their hardware failures, but Microsoft's entire software strategy for that launch was centered around F2P GaaS, and results spoke for themselves. And the rest of industry didn't fare much better - studio closures abundant in those years were chiefly on the back of failed F2P entries (some that never saw the light of day). By the time Destiny rolled around - most already pivoted hard into the other direction again, so it took awhile for the next wave to start.

We've never come close to seeing the top publishers of the industry spends 50+% of their resources towards Live Service. That push began ~2018/2019 and the results of those investments are just hitting shores now. The next few years here is going to wake a lot of y'all up.

Define top-publishers - the likes of Bethesda, Bungie and Riot were all-in since early last decade. Blizzard even longer. EA / Activision 2 biggest IPs are both full on GaaS for close to a decade now. Ubisoft has been trying for over a decade, even announced the 'all GaaS strategy' multiple times, but they just haven't been doing particularly well at it.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

To be clear - I just used Fortnite as example of what isn't necessary. But the counter to 100k MAU is factual - that's about 10-100x smaller than what success looks like to large companies (which is the 100k CCU number I mentioned).
Fortnite is obviously in a completely different tier from that.

Again, these companies are making Alan Wake 2, Returnal, Deathloop, Ratchet and Clank, Immortals of Avium types games all the time. These games are not producing.

Large companies have always made smaller bets. Now scan the environment and look where small bets are paying off and where they're not. The last 30 "breakout hits" from indie and AA studios have all been multiplayer Live Service games. There are no Lethal Companies, no Valheims, no Enshroudeds in the SP space. That market is fully mature and fully saturated.

Sony being late to the party has no bearing on the industry as a whole (and it's not like they didn't try - they just failed or quietly shut-down most of those early efforts).
But yes - the first push started in mid 2000s - the first major western-developed hit (that wasn't a subscription service), came out in late 2006, hit 200k CCU in a single country and went on to average over 100M annually for the next 18 years. That game alone earned more than the combined total for all the SP IPs you mentioned in the previous post.

You're confusing "birth" with "influx of investment". The birth of Live Service can be attributed to that time period but the level of investment we see today isn't comparable. The biggest companies in the field today are Live Service oriented. That wasn't even close to the case 15 years ago.

It's not so well advertised as their hardware failures, but Microsoft's entire software strategy for that launch was centered around F2P GaaS, and results spoke for themselves.

Yeah, no. Just no.

Define top-publishers - the likes of Bethesda, Bungie and Riot were all-in since early last decade. Blizzard even longer. EA / Activision 2 biggest IPs are both full on GaaS for close to a decade now. Ubisoft has been trying for over a decade, even announced the 'all GaaS strategy' multiple times, but they just haven't been doing particularly well at it.

Bethesda has gotten killed lately. They've released a number of SP games that have all flopped on the market. They're essentially pinching a loaf on the toilet getting the remainder of their duds out. Their next batch of titles after Indiana Jones look to be mostly Live Service.

Bungie started their Live Service push in 2014 (not 2009) and their investment was a relatively small studio with ~100 employees. They're now 1,400 large working on 3 or 4 Live Service games.

Riots level of investment into Live Service has also exploded since 2014. They released one or two dud SP games and are supporting numerous successful Live Service games at the moment. They've come a long way since League of Legends only.

So you're mostly wrong about everything there.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

OP you have done something remarkable here. You have made me agree with a corporate suit.

Which corporate suit? The one without a job talking about Vib Ribbon in interviews or the corporate suits still working in the field going after Live Service? You have to be more specific.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

And why aren't we talking about how wasteful and stupid this idea was in the first place. Why would a 15% success rate be considered good in the first place? If only 2 out of 12 Live Service games were successful, I'd call that a HUGE failure!

He's wrong though.

PlayStations plan was "12 GAAS before FY2025".

They've since lowered that number to "6 GAAS before FY2025".

The first title in that initiative is a smash success. If Bungie is helping Sony prune their GAAS tree, you're almost certain to see all 6 GAAS games be successful.

So it's not 15%, it's 50% (of the original 12) and the ROI is significantly healthier than even that considering many of their GAAS titles never reached full production (the most expensive part of the dev process).

 

[Wildebeest]

Obviously, things like social media and established live service games have more of a magnetism to them in that people get pulled back to spending large amounts of time on them after pulling away to try something different. So even if a new live service game has a big launch, it can end up not really benefitting from the long term recurring payments if it doesn't make itself one of the big attractors. But really a lot of these live service games emerge from the modding scene of non-live service games with a lot of magnetism, of long term players, such as half-life, warcraft 3 and arma. Without this sort of fountain of new popular game modes, the corporate "do it by the book" suckers are really pulling on a dry teet when it comes for ideas for new live service games.

 

[stevish]

Guild wars 2 came out in 2012 right? It had a steam release in 2022, something tells me the majority of their player base isn't using steam...

 

[SHA]

"Only dogs can hear the difference"
Shawn Layden,

/s

 

[WitchHunter]

Why do a game has to be online only? Create a base game with good SP content, and also offer an MP option. The two are entirely separate entities. If you don't want others to rummage around in your game and don't want to spend extra, then you can play the SP part, while others who are hooked on the SP and want more, can continue their journey in the multiplayer extension. Counterstrike is a Half Life mod... so why not follow this model. Established universe, that sells well, with a multiplayer part.