People double dip. You gain 2x sales by putting in on 2 platforms.
Also, PC is extra money for them, on top of console sales. That 30% tax means nothing, when they can gain extra 70% on top of 100% sales on their console.
Game sales do strong, when they sell at $60, compared to $30.
If they put all of their games Day 1 on PC though, they lose the value of double-dipping because some of the players who may've bought it on console at launch and then on PC years later, could just choose the PC version and be done with it. Even if Day 1 on PC could remove certain bonus content and enhancements that late ports afford.
They also would need to be able to guarantee they can sell a significant portion of copies on PC to make up for the loss of potential 3P revenue (and their cut from that revenue) of players who decide to go PC for those Sony 1P games instead of picking up a PlayStation...and there are WAY more 3P games released a year than any number of games Sony (or any platform holder) can release in that same time frame.
So even if a platform holder like Sony gets a majority of their 30% cut from games priced at $30 or $40, if that still equates to 100 million units of 3P software sold that year, they make a lot more versus potentially reducing that 3P revenue and selling say an extra 8 million units combined on PC for 1P Day-1 games. Say that by them doing all 1P, single-player story-driven games Day 1 on PC, Sony lose 10% of their core console market but 30% of division revenue (lost 3P sales, lost subscription revenue, lost DLC & MTX purchases in their ecosystem due to lost sales, etc.).
That would take a typical FY of say $24 billion down to $16.8 billion. Let's say Sony typically generate 1/6th of their division net profit off revenue; that means they're now short $1.2 billion (maybe somewhat less than this in practice, but still over a billion). They get let's say an extra 10 million sales combined all 1P single-player story-driven games Day 1 on PC, and let's just assume those are all at full price. Cool, that's $600 million. Valve gets their 30% cut; now that's $420 million.
$420 million in extra profit from those 1P single-player games Day 1 on PC, vs. $1.2 billion profit lost from adopting that specific strategy. That's almost 66% less profit. Not a good trade whatsoever.
Xbox one has nothing to do with this era.
Everyone knows that gen is a failure for MS. And they learned their lesson. They have more devs now, which will make alot of games for them.
Quantity of games is never really the problem, the question is the quality. And more specifically, as MS are a platform holder, which of those games will rise up and be a leading example for the industry to follow in terms of some or multiple aspects of game design? More sheer amount of games can give you more chances at such quality but in no way guarantee any of them will actually hit that type of quality.
As well, more devs means more overall management and it's not really a matter of talent at question with Xbox, but their management capabilities over their teams. They are still struggling very clearly at demonstrating that management has improved.
Last year, they released Fh5, halo infinite, Psychonauts 2, age of empire 4, and flight simulator for console. Aside of flight simulator and Psychonauts 2, every other game will bring extra revenue from Steam.
Maybe, but that depends on player communities and what portion of them are "whales" or big spenders. All of those games you listed already have much smaller average player communities than the bigger PC live-service GaaS titles, and I doubt they have a higher density of whales compared to those games, either. So needless to say while they probably generate some money it is not as much as the more popular games.
This is just MS games, without bethesda, and their other studios. Now imagine bethesda +activision+Blizzard +MS studios. That is alot of xbox games, which will drop day1 on steam. And each sales will bring revenue for MS.
Yes that's correct, and maybe that approach works for Microsoft. My point is, that approach very likely won't work for Sony without causing some notable decrease in overall console sales and spending in the PS ecosystem. And unlike MS, Sony isn't a $2.5 trillion company that has a gaming division which is only a paltry amount of their total revenue, wherein the other divisions can more than cover any softening of revenue and profits for.
Sony needs console gaming and the full PS ecosystem (which includes console as the root) a lot more than Microsoft needs console gaming and the Xbox ecosystem, and it's been that way for several years now. So I wouldn't expect Sony to more closely mirror MS's approach for any 1P games that aren't easily identifiable as live-service GaaS titles, and even there, they may be a bit selective (i.e in the off-chance they ever did a Parappa live-service game (not saying they will or that I'd even want THAT type of direction for Parappa, but it's an example), it may probably not be Day 1 on PC and just be something for PlayStation).
For the 1P single-player games, especially marquee story-driven content, their approach will more closely mirror Nintendo's, then you might get PC ports much later for some or all of such titles (eventually). They won't really risk Day 1 PC for any of those.
Forza horizon 4 and sea of theives were dominating steam weekly charts. That is how well those titles sell.
Getting steam weekly sales, means you have to bypass all other games. And doing that for alot of weeks, since release means the sales are pretty strong.
Well I'm looking through the Top 10 right now and I don't see FH4 or Sea of Thieves in there for any point in 2022 so far.
Like I said I'm sure the games are doing pretty decent sales on average, but I would in no way say they are dominating Steam sales charts, let alone concurrent players.
Nintendo sold 45m copies of Mario Kart at $60. They don't need to put their games on PC, when they have strong sales like that..
Well even when their games weren't reaching those types of sales they never brought them over to PC. Also not all Nintendo games reach the level of sales Mario Kart does. Metroid Dread definitely hasn't, nor will it, should they consider porting that to PC since there's no chance in hell that game gets to even 25 million let alone 45 million?
MS and Sony do permenant price cuts, which will lower the revenue those games bring in the long term. Last of us 2 is $40, despite being released in 2020.
Most AAA games, including Sony's, do the bulk of their sales on launch day and within the first couple of weeks. That's just how the AAA market tends to work. Only some of Nintendo's games are excused from that type of model, and even some of Sony's have managed to show more evergreen properties these days (such as Miles Morales, which sees big sales spikes whenever PS5s are in stock despite also being available on PS4).
Also even at $40 that is still a lot of revenue Sony is bringing in, whether physical or especially digital.
Active players is for fanboy kids.
Companies care more about sales for platforms like steam.
Well MS are the ones who introduced MAU into the conversation years back, and in terms of solid numbers MAU and such metrics (such as "lookalikes") are the only ones MS present publicly when talking gaming revenue (aside from general revenue figures per sector).
Also their GamePass sub numbers are basically another form of measuring active players, you can't be implying sub numbers are also junk for fanboy kids too, right?
Active players only matter to MS when its on gamepass. Since that tells them how many gamepass users play their games.
Except it doesn't. Or at least, we don't know for certain if it does because Microsoft doesn't provide enough data. It could be millions of cumulative players, but those might not all be 100% unique players, just player instances that log on each day over a period of days, weeks or months.
Basically the way it is on Steam when a lot of companies mention MAU. Then you look at concurrent player counts (something MS does not provide through GamePass) and you get a better picture of how popular a game really is in terms of the core mainline community, when a certain level of players can be maintained over the long-term period.
So being top 10 weekly steam sales, means tons of money.
Except I just mentioned (and checked for 2022 at least so far) that MS games are rarely, if ever, in the Top 10 weekly sales on Steam. They do decent on Steam on average but I suspect any that do pop into Top 10 and aren't brand new releases, manage that through sales discounts or specific events.
