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Sony has acquired Bluepoint
- Thread starter BennyBlanco
- Start date
MasterCornholio
Member
Too many insecurities up in here. Folks need to relax.
Just breathe....
Ok I'll try to pass a law that will make bubble blowing illegal.
Heimdall_Xtreme
Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
.
yurinka
Member
Insomniac has a team for Spider-Man 1 & 2, another for Morales & Wolverine, at least another one for Ratchet an who know if a 4th one for their VR stuff.
Firesprite (now including Fabrik) has a lot of former staff from Liverpool Studio, Evolution Studios and Bizarre Creations in addition to many people from other studios like ND, Rockstar or Ubisoft. It's confirmed that they are working in at least 2 AAA games, and they also have another one with Fabrik but may be one of these two. They also soon will have 300 workers so now are one of the biggest Sony studios, so you should add them to the group of studios working on 2+ AAA games.
London is working on a big AAA game too.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
100% agree here!
yurinka
Member
Psygnosis was bought by Sony Computer Entertainment (SIE) and renamed to Studio Liverpool in 2001. But I just saw that ' Sony Electronic Publishing' (SIE) bought them in 1993 but it's weird because they released some games for Saturn and Wipout 64 on N64, and most PS1 console exclusives were released on PC. Regarding their 16 bits games yes, I had many of them.
It's a rough personal generous estimate (~50M for PS4 only, remember many of them are from PS3) only based on my guts and sales I know from similar AAA games:
Skyrim 5
Fallout 4 10
Dishonored Definitive Edition 1
Evil Within 2
Wolfenstein New Order 2
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood 1
Elder Scrolls Online 3
Doom 3
Dishonored 2 2
Elder Scrolls: Legends 1
Prey 3
Evil Within 2 2
Wolfenstein 2 2
Fallout 76 4
Rage 2 3
Wolfenstein: Youngblood 2
Doom Eternal 4
Doom 64 1
In any case, PS4 passed the 1622 million PS2 record while ago, now should be way above 1700 and probably even 1800. At the end of the generation will be way higher, so I think will be under 3%, probably closer to 2%.
It's only my personal opinion/sales estimate vs yours.You haven't provided anything tangible to say why you don't think that to be the case tho so
Yes, this is what I said. We don't have numbers of the totality.
We have numbers of 17 or 18%, I agree previous years could be smaller but not to go 10%. I'd say maybe 15% sounds more realistic to me.
Yes, Nintendo's 1st party sales percentage of their total sales is way higher because they have more 1st party sales way less 3rd party sales, because most of the best selling games in the market (CoD, GTA, FIFA, AC...) don't release their games on Switch or release watered versions there. People prefer to buy the multiplatforms on their powerful device to get a better version, so for Switch people focuses more on exclusives.
True
Yes, PS5 and PS4 are record breaking consoles at their point of lifetime, but Switch too. And Nintendo sells more 1st party games. Sony holds the records for other things like 3rd party game sales, total game sales, revenue generated by the gaming division, MAU on their online service, revenue from gaming subs, etc.
Minecraft is included into the MS gaming division obviously, and it makes less revenue than the Sony one. We can't compare 1st party game revenues because we don't have them. And yes, its sales are out of the place since it's one of the most successful games ever (this is why MS bought it) and it's available for all platforms including my toaster.
What I meant is that even with these fancy acquisitions MS spending billions on them, investing hundreds of millions (probably some billion) more into Gamepass putting theirs and others games there day one isn't as successful as Sony, even if they have trillions. They are improving, and Sony too. So who knows if they ever will catch Sony.
You can be successful without reaching Sony numbrers? Sure, as happens with Nintendo. Do I consider MS successful now? No, I think they have some good metrics, I can't evalute others because they hide them and I assume that if they don't show them is because aren't very good, but I also know that since they started the first Xbox they invested a ton of money and at some point they should recoup it. In the recent years they made huge investments that I don''t see how do they plan to recoup them and don't see it financially healthy.
I understand it's a long term plan and it will need patience to see results, but I'm afraid that their stakeholders may get tired of throwing billions to keep increasing the total cumulative loses of the division instead of reducing them to turn it into a cumulative profit in some years. So at some point they may want to sell Xbox or shut it down.
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Bo_Hazem
Banned
I'm not rewriting anything; I'm actually giving context that you want to pretend doesn't exist. The final conclusion of things might be as you say, but the problem with some people when they talk about consoles in historical context is they lose the subtlety of things, the nuance and context of how things specifically led up to certain moments. That cheapens the discussion.
Saturn was still a competitive entity in the Japanese market from 1994 through early 1997. The N64 had very strong sales in the West and got a lot of specific Western support during the generation. These are facts. You can't act like all the support Sony got that generation, during the first half at least, just naturally gravitated to them due to their mere existence. Deals happened. Talent was poached. Preferences were built. Financial and resource might competitors absolutely lacked was leveraged to pull in support and lock deals down.
And all of that led to what essentially became a form of consolidation: content consolidation.
Uh, what fanbase was there for Final Fantasy on PS1 before FFVII came out? Was there a Sony console before the PS1 that got Final Fantasy releases I should be aware of? Because it almost sounds like that business deals were established in attracting certain devs/pubs and IP to Sony's first platform that lacked organic presence of fanbase for those IP, and those IP now being established on their platform got the fanbases to gravitate to that platform.
Almost as if, people will go where the games are, the platform itself be damned...
Tell that to Shinji Mikami and the kerfuffle that was RE3/Code Veronica. I guess Sony mandating three numbered RE entries on their system wasn't a factor whatsoever in what was meant to be Dreamcast Resident Evil 3, turning into Code Veronica...
How do you know they don't want to? You do realize the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games have been on Nintendo for decades post-PS2, right? Isn't that a non-Sony platform? So they are already multiplat, and have been for a while now. Never mind they were vehemently multi-plat pre-PS2 as well, releasing multiple games on the Sega Saturn and even a few on Dreamcast, while also supporting PS1 (and before that, sticking with the SFC and Famicom, the only time when they were actually a single-platform dev/pub btw).
They made Way of the Warrior for the 3DO well before the Crash Bandicoot games.
These were due to pre-existing contracts.
They were acquired by Sony in 1993, your dates are wrong. And before doing content for Sony, they did games for various microcomputers, including Ballistix, Obliterator, and Shadow of the Beast.
What criteria are you using to assume that would be more realistic? Estimates put Fallout 4 alone at between 20 million - 30 million copies sold across all platforms. Assuming an even split between PS/Xbox/PC (it would in reality lean more towards PS and PC over Xbox, btw), that's at least 6.6 million - 10 million across PS platforms, and Pete Hines has also said FO4 is their most successful game ever, likely in revenue. So even if Skyrim has sold more copies, they have generated more revenue (and profit) from Fallout 4, comparatively speaking.
Never mind that when talking Bethesda you're also talking Zenimax which includes all the other IP such as Wolfenstein, Dishonoured, DOOM, Quake etc. Over the period of seven years, cumulatively speaking they have likely reached around that 48 million figure.
You haven't provided anything tangible to say why you don't think that to be the case tho so
That was 18% for that fiscal year, not 18% in totality. Considering there were years where 1P output was very quiet or tepid compared to what really started to get going 2016 and onward, we can probably average that totality rate out to between 10% to 12% of that total software LTD sales total. Which, yes, is still great, but are we now talking about absolute numbers or percentage ratios?
Because if you're being fair here, they (and Microsoft) are clearly behind Nintendo in terms of the latter and also behind Nintendo in terms of software revenue and profit figures relative to their percentage ratios of 1P content sales in the software ecosystem (Sony and MS 1P games get price cuts, sales, and packaging inclusion in certain SKUs much more frequently and quickly than Nintendo 1P software).
You also don't need to "catch" someone else to be successful in your own right. Did you forget this part? Nintendo hasn't "caught" Sony in 20 years either if talking about home consoles, but they're mighty healthy and in some ways more successful than Sony. If you wanted to include brands like Minecraft into the equation, Microsoft's gaming division is actually quite strong in its own way and can claim to have an IP of revenue potential much higher than any single Sony IP.
Topher
Gold Member
Does anyone actually read his posts?
Tons of people said that. I have a hard time believing you haven’t seen that. Ask bo since he decided to participate.
Edit: Here’s one.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake will most likely come to PC in 2022 as Playstation exclusivity is extended
This confused me, that last part. Why should i as a gamer be happy that i own a game that only people who bought my console can play? like what does that even benefit me? what i am getting out from it? lets say the game is available on all consoles, or lets say its only available on the console...
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Topher
Gold Member
Tons? Well...shit. You have a lot of work to do quoting "tons". Get to it. Back up your shit. Shouldn't be hard to find "tons", right?
edit: how do you measure "tons" on a forum. I'm not sure
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Wrath of the Toomics
Member
Good news, good news!
MasterCornholio
Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Like I said, some of those were due to pre-existing contracts, it's not that much different from Bethesda releasing Death Loop and Ghostwire Tokyo as PS5 timed exclusives post-acquisition. If contracts were not in place and pre-established deals didn't need to be honored, those various Saturn & N64 releases from them wouldn't have happened.
Sony mainly purchased them for middleware purposes to help build the PS1 SDK hardware & software, but their games software output was another factor.
That's 51 million right there, or a little north 3%. Considering most publishers don't have cumulative sales figures that much more on the platform, on average (although it gets weird when talking about some such as Embracer Group, who would have a pretty big chunk due to how many companies they own), that is pretty good for a 3P publisher.
And any revenue is good revenue for a platform holder; saying they won't be missed (as if they are going to 100% drop PS support when games like TEO Online guarantee at least a bit of support for that platform into the future) due to generally increasing revenues and profits is missing the point: it still means one less publishing arm supporting the platform, that is probably some money that would be desired to come to the platform otherwise.
Weren't the 1.6 billion figures just mentioned in the end of fiscal-year report? How long ago was that report, it couldn't of been more than four months ago. Also was it just specifically PS4 or PS "family" of devices including PS5? Because that report did come out after the PS5's launch and at least six months post its release.
That's just because you want it to be. Seems a better rule is to take the top number, divide by two and go halfway of that at most. So I'd say peak totality of PS 1P software sales out of the total software sales LTD on PS4 are probably between 12% - 13%, and that's probably also including games they may not have had 1P teams develop in-house, but published themselves on the platform.
That's true, fair enough. But it doesn't change that their ratio of 1P sales to 3P sales on their platforms are a lot higher than Sony and Microsoft's. But at least we know some of the reasons to that.
How can you assume the costs for GamePass? A lot of people overestimate this because they think they are 100% following the Netflix model. However, Microsoft owns the streaming hardware and software stacks that power GamePass; Netflix has to rent servers out from Amazon and also rely on their software APIs on those servers, incurring an extra cost. That's just one example.
Netflix also operates on a debt-based model and while there are sunk costs involved in getting a service like GamePass up-and-running, and keeping it maintained, the maintenance costs are probably not much more than what Sony pays for PS Now and PS+. People also seem to think that MS are paying dozens of millions for every game in the service; this is virtually impossible.
Companies like Sony and Nintendo have gotten some timed exclusives of Day 1 releases for $10 - $20 million, what makes people think Microsoft are paying double that for games six months - one year old (if not older) to go into GamePass, especially the games that are rotated out after a bit of time? Those kind of costs are only associated with a small sliver of 3P games into the service, and have happened in piecemeal over the past four years.
Whether you personally consider Microsoft successful in the gaming space is irrelevant; if they considered themselves so unsuccessful, they would have folded the division years ago. Even with XBO being their worst generation, they still sold north 50 million units, and had a decent share of critically acclaimed games as well as a good handful of commercial hits (whether in sales or generated revenue). And that was with only really having the U.S as a viable market (U.K becoming less and less so of one as the generation went on, something we can see the effects of now).
Companies like Apple also don't share some of their numbers, will we assume they are not doing well now because of such? Not every company is going to operate the same and that includes in what numbers they divulge publicly. It also doesn't matter if you or I don't see how some of these moves these companies make, are financially beneficial to them down the line. That is their job; ours is to enjoy the games and balk back at any stupid decisions these companies make that directly harm or impact us gamers.
Are we really circling back to the "Xbox doom-and-gloom" narrative from 2015 all over again? The stakeholders are investing money into the entirety of the company, I would assume most of them aren't prioritizing gaming as the chief reason of their investments. If that's something Microsoft wants they'll have to show them growth in the Xbox division but in the meantime, I think most of them are good with knowing their investments are for areas like data center, business, office etc. sales and subscription revenue growth/stability of the company's larger sectors.
The only platform holder where shareholders are investing explicitly and exclusively for purposes related to gaming, is Nintendo. And even that one is dubious given Nintendo's recent push for more trans-media content (Super Nintendo World, new film adaptations, etc.).
Do you ever?
Yoboman
Member
You realise this bullshit is banned now right?
JapaneseGamesRULEZ
Banned
Name?
yurinka
Member
Yes, but as I mentioned it was only a personal rough estimate guess trying to be generous. Zero scientific method.
I'd say at least Activision, EA, Take 2, Ubisoft, Epic and not sure but I'd bet Square Enix too should have higher amount of units sold/revenue made on PS4 than Bethesda. But yes, it's pretty good for a 3P publisher even if lower than I think they made in the previous generation with Skyrim, Fallout 3 etc.
Yes, any revenue is good for them. What I meant by saying they won't miss them is that the revenue they will lose for not having them is going to be less than the one they will earn in the following years due to the software revenue growth they are experiencing.
And that part of the revenue generated by Zenimax was there because they were featured by Sony in their store, their events, their trailers, marketing campaigns, youtube channel etc. Sony will invest these marketing deals with other AAA 3P games so this 'extra revenue for supporting 3P games' will continue there but being generated with games from other companies.
Not sure right now, but I'd say that until the quarter previous to the PS5 release they were releasing each quarter the amount of games sold for PS4 and was super close to the final 1622M figure of PS2 and then since the PS5 release they merged the PS5+PS4 game sales so we don't know the exact PS4 number since them, but we know its more than PS2.
Mine is only a personal guess, just like yours. But when I talk about this % of 1P sales, like Nintendo and Sony I'm also including 2nd party games: those published by them but developed by external studios. Like games made Next Level Games (Nintendo bought them this year, made many 2nd party games until then), HAL Laboratory, Game Freak, Intelligent Systems, Platinum, Good Feel etc.
Yes, independently of the reasons Nintendo has a higher ratio of 1P sales. And Sony has a big amount of game sales/software revenue due to having way more 3P sales. These things are only data, nothing good or bad. Just data. They both are doing great, each one with their own strategy.
-They invested 10B in acquisitions that will be focused on making content for Game Pass
-All their 1P published games are and will be there since day one which means they won't earn billions they were going to earn with these game sales and instead will earn less money per user
-They pay millions to 3P studios to put there their games, in many cases day one to compensate units not sold for doing that
-These 3P missing sales would have generated their 30% for MS, so more revenue they don't see
Obviously can't provide an aproximated number, but we're talking about many billions and way more expensive than Sony's approach with PS Now, which is the same but without prioritizing the game subscription as main busines (they prioritize full price sales instead) and without putting there the games day one:
-1st party published games are included there once they completed their sales cycles after many discounts, price drops, etc. When they aren't selling anymore, so don't lose potential sales by including them there.
-Same with the 3P games included, so they don't lose the 30% from them and to make the deal to include a game in the game service once it's sales are dead must be way cheaper than asking them to include it in the service day one
-By focusing on putting dead (in terms of sales) games on the service they don't negatively affect game sales (both of the games included in the services and the ones not included) and help both the platform holder and the game publisher earn some extra revenue that even if it may be small, at least is something from a game that wasn't generating revenue anymore.
Sony, Netflix, FB and so on also have their own server hardware, cloud software and data centers. And like them, MS (like other cloud server competition or any cloud app or website) also uses 3rd party outsourcing data center companies who work for everybody. And like them, MS also pay electricity, internet bandwidth, maintenance, physical servers, etc for xCloud, XBL etc. All these things are what costs a shit ton of money and are paid by everybody including MS.
Azure, ASW etc is only the software that these cloud apps or websites (xCloud, PS Now, PSN, FB, Netflix etc) use to manage all these things. They save money on these licenses but they still pay the big money like everybody else (even if its paid by other MS division).
There is a big difference between Netflix and Gamepass: Netflix achieved a (still growing) monster userbase of hundreds of millions of users and is heavily dominating their market in terms of market share, to a point they are generating a market shift from theatres to streaming services, from tv to streaming services, from retail dvds/bluerays to streaming services and from cable subs to streaming services. It also made others to join them creating similar streaming services (Disney +, HBO, etc) making the streaming services market share stronger and accelerate the trend of moving cinema, tv series, tv shows and documentaries to streaming services. These markets are shifting to that and Netflix is leading the change so once the shift gets completed if they continue as market leaders they will dominate that.
Meanwhile in gaming game streaming continues being irrelevant and since latency is way more important in gaming it will continue being something relatively small for many years until the related technology evolves enough. And game subscriptions represent a tiny part of the whole gaming revenue, around half of it being from mobile games. Even inside the game subscriptions market, with a different strategy (not focusing on putting there important day one games) Sony seems to generate more revenue and with less cost. In the future Gamepass may (or not, which is my bet) lead the gaming market drive a change in the gaming market, but as of now they don't even lead the game subscriptions.
Regarding the costs difference between GamePass and PS Now, I explained above.
I assume the price of each exclusive depends on each case and multiple factors affect not being them if the platform holder is MS or not: its length, if it's also released on PC, the marketing effort in the 1st party side, the potential sales lost in the other platforms where is not going to be (temporally) released, if the deal includes to put the game in their subscription, if include it in the subscription is at launch (so sacrificing sales even in this platform) or later, if included in the subscription for how long they include it there, if forbids to include in other subs at least temporally, etc.
Yes, it's only a personal opinion.
Yes. In fact shareholders asked to get rid of it while ago but didn't do it. I assume they saw potential there to improve its performance.
I'd bet they are above 60M, which may not be as big as PS4 or Switch but is good. And yes, they had some critically acclaimed and commercial hits in the game side. Regarding markets I'd expand that to North America and Europe where again, even if not dominant they did a good job.
We know their key numbers via them or via market analysis firms and we know they are huge. There other ones that we don't know them, but triangulating them with the ones we know it's fair to assume they are also huge.
I think that their costs of acquisitions and cloud related stuff may be in other divisions, so without considering them the limited numbers they show from their game division will improve. And they could tell their investors that with their gaming division they provide content and extra revenue to stuff more important for MS like Windows or Azure, and if Windows and Azure continue doing it well they will be ok.
I think that if the game division has some issue wouldn't be with their investors, would be with their executives. And wouldn't be now, would be several years from now if they see that their GamePass focused strategy doesn't recoup their investments, doesn't achieve a good gaming market share and instead continues needing to throw billions on it to keep it alive.
Yes, out of the three obviously Nintendo is the one more focused in gaming. Followed by Sony, who even if they have a very diverse portfolio of businesses in the recent years a good chunk of the money they generate is from gaming. For MS gaming is only a small part of the money they generate in many areas.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Then uh maybe don't mention it?
Did say it was pretty good among 3P publishers as a whole, there's no need to bring up obvious examples that would've outdone that like Epic or Take Two, those should be known quantities. Some of the others tho like Square-Enix you are just throwing in as guesses, never mind that they have lost at least $100 million on games like The Avengers which would impact total revenues if not units sold (which also just goes to show that "units sold" is not the best measure of a product or ecosystem's financial health, not on its own anyway).
Also in regards to Skyrim, the game came out in 2011 and 7th-gen was done by end of 2013, and it is one of the "evergreen" titles in the industry or at least was for a very long time. I'd think a heavy/significant chunk of its sales came after conclusion of 7th gen's market relevance. A lot of those were likely also mainly on PC (since there's no particular barrier with back-compat there, meanwhile neither PS4 nor XBO had BC with their prior systems out of the gate).
Well then the same can be said for Microsoft not putting most future Zenimax releases on PlayStation platforms.
You need to keep in mind that a platform holder investing money into marketing and promotion for a 3P AAA release (or games in general) does not guarantee bigger sales and revenue, especially if the game itself is dodgy and that is known among gamers before release. And as an inverse argument, other platform holders can (and will) do the same with 3P releases on their platform they have co-marketing rights to, in order to generate more sales & revenue that way for their ecosystems. Again, in the case of Zenimax those sort of things will be done to further justify the investment of the initial acquisition and removal of key content from other rival platforms.
Well that aught to be a forgone conclusion. TBF tho PS4 and PS5 benefit from a larger industry compared to when the PS2 was active, I just wish there were a way of calculating sales and revenues for "industry size inflation" the way there is for currency.
We're both making guesses but at least I'm trying to use some basis of data to convey it.
Okay, fair enough
Perhaps primarily, but not exclusively. They also acquired various technologies that will be used not just for GamePass but also their cloud hardware and software, and likely in their various other products in some form or another. By your logic, we can also state that, cumulatively, Sony have invested at least $1 billion, perhaps 2, into content for PlayStation.
Because another thing to keep in mind here is that, to MS anyway, GamePass and Xbox as platforms are one in the same. Even if I personally feel a bit different about that for the meantime, that's how they see it.
You conveniently forgot about the subscriptions. Let's just stick with the 18 million users for now. Even supposing that upwards 20% of them are doing the 'conversion trick' (which is quite high so I'm being very liberal there), that is still 14.4 million who are not. Now, also perhaps being a bit heavy here, let's say the media of those paying the regular rate is $10 (actually the medium would be $12.5 but we'll stick with $10).
Per month, that is still $144 million in subscription revenue, and annually would work out to $1.728 billion. Now let's say another extreme, some 20% of those users don't stay subbed the entire year, so that total drops to 11.52 million users. That still works out to $115.2 million a month in sub revenue, or $1.3824 billion annually.
Keep in mind, that doesn't account for actual 1P software sales (which would still be decently high even if reduced thanks to GamePass), or 3P software sales especially for games that don't go to GamePass Day-and-Date. This year, Microsoft have or will have published 9 games. Assume an average of 1.5 million copies for each of those sold at full price due to inclusion in GamePass. Assume an average price of $50, and assume in 2021 they publish exactly 9 other games. That is 13.5 million units for $675 million in sales revenue. Added to the subscription figures, that's a little over $2 billion in pure 1P revenue between the subscription service, and the game sales.
However the more important of those two are the subscription numbers, because that is essentially all profit for them. And all of this doesn't really take third-party content into the equation at all.
"In many cases"? The only big Day 1 releases of late were Outriders & MLB. Other than that it's been smaller indies, most with small budgets. We know this because The Medium made back its costs of $8 million on Day 1, similar with The Ascent, and those are two of the bigger Day 1 Gamepass releases this year. For AAA 3P games like Scarlet Nexus, those have come a lot later after initial availability, and probably aren't more than $50 million in worst cases, not to mention, it's not that many.
Also keep in mind that this is similar types of costs assessment companies like Sony have to do, as well. Those timed exclusivity deals cost money; when they co-fund games that also costs money.
Partially missing 3P sales, and see my numbers above for what the subscription revenue already brings in (on a low end, at that).
You literally have not once done any calculations or tried using any data points to back up your speculation :/. Also to my knowledge PS Now doesn't allow you to download native versions of the games to run locally, and doesn't provide a discount for purchase of software on the service.
There's some validity to this part of the argument, and I do think it's probably something MS should reconsider for the bigger 1P releases (maybe still putting them there Day 1, but on a per-game VOD-like contractual subscription basis, meanwhile regular GP for smaller indie releases and legacy 1P/3P content). So I'll say this is a good aspect of their service.
Except this isn't as big a concern with smaller indie titles (which make up the majority of Day 1 GamePass releases) because their budgets are magnitudes smaller to begin with, and a good number of them are not what would be considered massive sellers. Covering 'lost sales' of those due to them being in GP Day 1 doesn't amount to anything near it would for a 3P AAA Day 1 release, which haven't honestly been that many for GamePass (whether that's good or not is another discussion).
Never mind that a game isn't simply going to lose all sales potential just because it's in GamePass Day 1. The way you describe how Sony does things for PS Now is pretty much exactly what Microsoft does for GamePass for roughly 80% of the games there; they weren't getting stuff like GTA, RDR2 or the such Day 1.
Well it's a good thing in your book that Microsoft does this with at least 80% of the games available in Game Pass, then. Keep in mind GP's role has basically absorbed what Games With Gold used to be (and now that service kind of sucks, tbh).
Why are we bringing Sony and FB into this? I mentioned Netflix; Netflix might have custom server hardware but they rent that from Amazon, that's still a particular distinction here that a company like Microsoft doesn't have to do (so they save a lot in those type of costs as a result). Sony currently has a lot of their own hardware and software for that market, but they also have an agreement with Microsoft to look into and potentially use Azure-powered technologies in the future, likely with Sony-specific customizations on the hardware front (i.e the PS5 server-related patents, etc.).
But including them or Netflix in a conversation of companies that have 100% ownership and control of vertical integration of their server hardware/software stacks like Microsoft or Facebook is kind of laughable, being perfectly honest.
Okay, and? These are just common-sense things that come with managing large cloud server infrastructures. However those costs must not be prohibitive if these companies are generating dozens of billions in revenue per quarter and netting dozens of billions in profit with those factors you mention accounted for. This isn't much different than the costs all the platform holders have to do in paying dev salaries, royalties, marketing and promotion costs, packaging costs (for retail), distribution, warranty coverage on hardware and services, customer support, etc.
So what is so special in specifically mentioning the regular expenses associated with maintaining a cloud server? Also these companies get tons of government grants and privileges in reduced rates for doing these cloud infrastructures at mass scale, not to mention the constant pushes for more energy-efficient technologies to reduce things like the electricity costs you bring up.
What is "the big money"? Again, you haven't done any calculations and aren't using any data to back these claims up. Also, those costs are always going to vary from company to company, use to use. And what you're describing in other divisions offsetting the costs for another division for this or that, that's something all massive companies do. Sony's been doing it for decades, it's called leveraging your resources.
Didn't they lose a shit-ton of North American subscribers recently? Lol. Also, I wouldn't credit Netflix in generating that shift; COVID played a much bigger part there than Netflix ever could. And now that restrictions are starting to ease up, it looks like theaters in at least some areas are picking back up.
Are Netflix "really" leading the charge? Disney+ saw faster growth in a much smaller period of time, and with a model not as based in debt as Netflix's. Most of the relevant, tentpole streaming content seems to be coming from Disney+ and HBO Max, less so Netflix. And, again, you have to look at net revenues and net profits, not simply market share, to stipulate who really is "leading", because Netflix subscriptions are much cheaper in certain parts of the world (India, for example), and different subscription services will charge different rates.
Based on what? See this is where your limited view of measuring success hurts you. Can you prove it's irrelevant on PC? On mobile? How is it irrelevant for games that are leveraging the technology to enhance the play experience for the end user, such as Flight Simulator? Don't you realize that games and film are two different types of media and have different perceptions around them that will largely impact how they are viewed and adopted, moreso than the quality of the services themselves?
Latency is only of strict importance for competitive gaming or games where tight timings are required. Most other game types can make due with the latency and, more importantly, the vast majority of gamers aren't going to notice that latency while playing. Resolutions might be the bigger issue, because streaming compression can impact the image clarity more harshly, but that is something which will improve over time (and upscaling hardware and software techniques can hash a lot of that out at the user side).
What data do you have to point to in order to prove this? Because just speaking logically, it's hard to see how a (at the high end) 3.2 million active-user/normal-paying service is generating more revenue than a (at the low-end) 11.52 million active-user/normal-paying service. That's not even statistically possible, even scaling costs because most of those costs do not scale linearly with userbase size (as in, maybe some scale higher than the userbase rate, but many others only fractionally increase relative to higher userbase increase).
Well if you include mobile subscription of course it doesn't, but what non-mobile subscription would you want to refer to that leads it? PS Now? We already know that's not it. PS+? That's not exactly the same model as GamePass, a closer equivalent would be XBL Gold. NSO? Again, not a direct equivalent, and in terms of QoL features and value that is arguably the worst of any of the platform holders.
You didn't explain anything, you just threw some guesses around and left it at that. I've backed up my speculation magnitudes more than you have ever bothered to do here, it's starting to look a little ridiculous xD.
I was just going with uncovered figures from Capcom releases (Monster Hunter, etc.). You can glean what you want from those.
Some shareholders did. Others did not. So that was another factor in addition to seeing possible potential to turn things around.
Well last real estimates were around 50 million or so, from what could be extrapolated at the time. But it is probably fair to speculate they are around, but not vastly over, 60 million total between the XBO versions and One X. And again, that's saying a lot considering how many things didn't go right for them last generation.
And we know Microsoft's gaming division revenue figures because they share those. Which, ultimately are half of the most important numbers (the other being division profits, which I wished they shared tbh). Other things like units sold don't matter nearly as much when the division revenues can be seen; we can simply approximate unit sales from those.
You think, but you don't know? Do you even have any data to point to that could support your reason for thinking that? What's to say other companies, even other platform holders, aren't doing this as well to some degree?
Gee it's almost as if they want these divisions to synergetically work together and some could take a hit in operating costs to bolster the revenue and profits of others. Almost sounds like a corporation with a lot of different parts.
So what is the point in 'worrying' about this right now? There are still way too many things needing to play out in order for us to start speculating this. Bringing those concerns up right now does absolutely nothing; for all we know five years from now the PlayStation division could be in the red and dragging Sony down. Nintendo could have another massive Wii U-tier flop on their hands. We simply don't know any of this, and it's incredibly naive to speculate on those possibilities right now.
Which by logical conclusion would signal it's an area they don't put a lot of investment resources into, relative to other parts of their company (altho they are clearly investing a lot more into it compared to last gen). Yet here you are thinking GamePass as some massive financial burden upon them that must be impacting them in some significant way
yurinka
Member
It was personal opinion/rough estimate about gaming, 99% of this forum is about that.
We don't know if they lost or won money with Avengers until now, and even less what amount of money it will win or lose until the end of its lifetime. But yes, at launch it didn't achieve their expectations, but SE is a huge corporation that released tons of other products and makes a lot of money. In fact in the top grossing gaming companies ranking if we only look at the ones who make console games it's in the top 10.
This is why they make big marketing deals with top publishers/devs and top IP and not with random games from random people. They bet on what they think it will sell, but like everybody they can be wrong due to a gazillion things they can control.
Yes, all platform holders do it. And depending on the size of the audience of their digital store, youtube channel, social media accounts, website, events viewship, etc. can do a better or worse job only with their organic channels other than in simply paying for ads.
Bullshit. If you have any data that contradicts my points show the receipts. If you don't show it it's because it doesn't exist and like me you're only making a personal guess/estimate based on distant, somewhat related stuff to make a guess.
Yes, primarly but not exclusively. And yes, MS (and also Sony) acquired some tech stuff that will be used for gaming and in other areas. And yes, Sony spent way, way more than $2B in recent years in content for PlayStation growing internal studios, acquiring tech stuff for PSVR investing, making R&D on cloud & network related stuff (we saw many related patents), securing 2nd and 3rd party exclusives of all kinds, making marketing deals for multiplatform games and signing games for PS Plus or PS Now.
The difference is that their division made $25B this year so for them is only to reinvest a small part of their revenue the same division generates, keeping it as a healthy business.
PS network services (Plus+Now) revenue this FY was $3.61B, Plus+Now have almost 50M combined.
The most important numbers are revenue and profit. Other things like subs, MAU, units sold etc. are important indicators but less relevant due to the tricks you mentioned, pricing, etc.
Again this is bullshit and you know it. I can say the same about your numbers.
PS Now subscribers can download and play locally/natively all PS2 and PS4 games available in PS4 or PS5. I know there are extra discounts for PS Plus subscribers, regarding PS Now now I'm not sure but there aren't discounts. But well, in any case most games included there are super old games so they are already dirt cheap.
Every month there are many indie games released. A handful of them get selected to put their game on Gamepass and they get paid a fair deal, they are happy with it. But what happens with all the other ones if everybody gets a Gamepass sub and stops buying indies or buy way less? They get shit because only a few ones can be chosen every month.
Right now the platform holders are gatekeepers for indies highlighting their games here or there, giving there more or less visibility on their stores. But if a service like Gamepass ends being the Netflix or Spotify of the videogames the platform holder will be even more a gamekeeper to decide who gets the money and who dies.
Not all, but will highly impact. Even sales of games not included there because people busy playing Gamepass games buys less games. Do you remember the days where in the sales rankings people were comparing what version of a multi game was the best selling one? Or when they had MS exclusives? We'll see that less and less.
True, because their 1st party output has been pretty low in recent years. But in addition to 1st party MS puts there many indies day one plus some somewhat big new or almost new 3rd party (Sony now also does it too but less).
Yes, many people got Gold or Plus for the games, I see GP and Now as an evolution of them and I think they will be eventually merged in each brand. Because at the end even if they offer more things most people get them for the games.
I included these examples because they are cloud based platforms with their own hardware for servers. Most apps or websites use PC based normal server racks as hardware but some of them customize them for their needs. They are mostly the same, PCs (obviously there are diferent models with different specs).
In the case of PS Now they have server racks with modified PS3 and PS4 (and soon PS5) hardware to put them in server racks and work for the cloud instead of to operate separatedly connected to a tv. When MS copied PS Now to do the same with xCloud, they also did the same but putting Xbox based hardware instead.
These server racks can be managed with dedicated software to manage them remotely, which can be AWS, Azure and many other ones. Typically when you pay Azure, AWS or whatever you also hire a certain number of virtual/phyical servers that over time you can increase or decrease as needed. Even customizing the amount of CPU, memory, HDD, etc.
And then on top of them you run the software made by you, your cloud app or website (PS Now, Netflix, FB, whatever).
Yes, they made an agreement to share cloud gaming R&D stuff so I assume they'll allow each other to use their patents, tech, techniques, etc.
MS and FB don't have the control of everything. Owning Azure MS only controls the software to manage the server cloud. So with owning it, they only save a small part of all the costs involved on having a giant cloud based service/app/website.
Like all the other ones (Sony, FB, Netflix etc) MS still has to pay the server hardware, data centers renting for the outsourced ones not owned by them (even if like Sony, FB and so on they have their own data centers, everyone also pays to use 3rd party outsourced data centers around the world) & maintenance and huge bill of internet bandwidth and electricity.
The main costs of having a huge ass cloud app/service are these common ones that everyone including the owner of the server cloud management software, not the server management software itself. So even if MS owns this software they don't save a huge deal because they still have to pay most of the related costs because aren't theirs and everybody has to pay for them.
It's a huge cost, and the reason of why they don't have thousands of datacenters spread around the world offering game streaming for free and instead they only support streaming to a few dozen of countries with an 'expensive' pricing.
Covid lockdowns caused a spike in all markets related to the entertainment at home. From sales of sofas and tvs to internet usage, all platforms of gaming, porn and many more ones, being video streaming services one of them too. After the lockdowns all these markets obviously went down back to normality. The opposide with obviously everything related outdoor entertainment.
But yes, outside the covid related bump and then going back to normality, Netflix is the king of its market and the main reason of why all cinema, tv, etc markets are getting absorved by video streaming services these years.
Yes, they always have been.
Disney came to steal the success Netflix was getting and was causing their revenues in theaters, retail sales and so on go down. Netflix grew slower because was the pioneer so had to slowly grow and build the userbase and technology. Disney obviously came later, copied everything Netflix did before and put a more aggresive catalog with all they have. So yes, they are growing faster but still are behind.
Pretty much the same story of MS and Sony. With the difference that I believe Disney Plus will end becoming more successful than Netflix.
All the graphs and comparisions I find on google images are by subs/viewers everybody seems to use that to compare them:
When I said game streaming is irrelevant for the gaming market because it's a tiny part of its userbase and revenue and will continue being the case in the next several years.
Yes, it will improve over time and for some already is ok when you live relatively close to a data center and have a good (wired) internet connection. But as of now and during the next few years will be unplayable for most players and will only be available on a few countries.
Sony's revenue from Plus+Now added to the whole MS 1P sales+3P sales+subs revenue, even ignoring most of this revenue isn't for cloud gaming is a tiny percentage of global gaming revenue which is around $175, and around half (maybe even slightly more) of this global revenue is from mobile gaming. Or Asia. Or F2P. And revenue from mobile, Asia and F2P are the fastest growing ones. According to reports from Newzoo, IDG and similar.
I was talking about game subscriptions: you pay a subscription and get games. In console makes more money with Plus+Now, in mobile I assume Apple Arcade is more successul than the Google one. In PC there's Prime but not sure if to count it because I assume people gets Prime mainly due to other reasons.
I provided a lot of data and did some guesses, just like you. But at least I'm not a flat earther.
Because tell me, how many people stream using xCloud? Can you even tell me how many people pays for Game Pass Ultimate even if only a portion of them will use streaming? Or can you tell me what revenue generates Gamepass? Or can you provide the revenue of Gold + Gamepass combined to compare it against the Plus+Now one?
No, you can't because these numbers aren't public. You can only make a personal guess, just like me. So you have absolutly nothing other than your personal opinion and personal guesses to say that Gamepass, xcloud or whatever is important because you have zero data to back your claims.
Even if you count the entire Gamepass userbase, it's tiny portion of the total ~2 or 3B gamers.
Same goes with revenue, you don't know the amount of money made by Game Pass Ultimate. Or even by the whole Gamepass. Or at least MS subs to compare Gold+GP+GPU vs Plus+Now. The closest thing is the whole gaming division revenue that includes 1P+3P+subs and not sure if even PC too.
And well, you'll have difficulties to get that number because while ago they decided that instead of providing the revenue number they were going to mention only the change in a %.
Do you know the revenue generated by their game subscripions? Or in particular GP? Or more in particular GPU?
Do you know how many of their subscribers pay the full subscription?
Do you know the amount of consoles they sell?
Do you know the sales of any MS game released in recent years?
Do you know the sales or revenue generated by their 1P games?
We don't know these and many other numbers. We mostly have their division revenue and their 1P+3P+subs revenue, which compared Sony are pretty much under them. Plus GP subs which doesn't tell us anything about the amount of them having GPU or even if they pay the full subscription.
MS has another divisions and as far as I know they don't have Azure inside the gaming division so it would make sense to include could related costs or investments there. But I'm not sure, this is why I said 'I think'.
I know that once they spent like a biliion dollars or something like that to replace faulty RROD consoles and didn't charge that to their gaming division. So probably could do it with other things.
Them getting tired of it and shutting down their game division in a few years or reworking it to make gatcha F2P mobile games xDD
But again, I assume that when they greenlight huge investments they also consider that are long term bets so won't expect to get results in a couple of years.
They spent $10B only in acquisitions and betwen getting big and small 3rd party games for GP plus putting their games there day one they will avoid earning some billions more during this generation.Which by logical conclusion would signal it's an area they don't put a lot of investment resources into, relative to other parts of their company (altho they are clearly investing a lot more into it compared to last gen). Yet here you are thinking GamePass as some massive financial burden upon them that must be impacting them in some significant way
I don't say it's a massive burden, I say that someone seeing them spending many billions and their plan to recoup them isn't clear they may worry about it even if they have trillions.
Topher
Gold Member
What does MS have to do with it?
iHaunter
Member
lh032
I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
i think he is talking about the zenimax acquisition, which future games will not be available on Playstation.
Batiman
Banned
Topher
Gold Member
Was my question not clear? Sony didn’t acquire these studios to take anything away from MS so what does MS have to do with it?
it is a simple question.
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HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Then uh maybe don't mention it?
Did say it was pretty good among 3P publishers as a whole, there's no need to bring up obvious examples that would've outdone that like Epic or Take Two, those should be known quantities. Some of the others tho like Square-Enix you are just throwing in as guesses, never mind that they have lost at least $100 million on games like The Avengers which would impact total revenues if not units sold (which also just goes to show that "units sold" is not the best measure of a product or ecosystem's financial health, not on its own anyway).
Also in regards to Skyrim, the game came out in 2011 and 7th-gen was done by end of 2013, and it is one of the "evergreen" titles in the industry or at least was for a very long time. I'd think a heavy/significant chunk of its sales came after conclusion of 7th gen's market relevance. A lot of those were likely also mainly on PC (since there's no particular barrier with back-compat there, meanwhile neither PS4 nor XBO had BC with their prior systems out of the gate).
Well then the same can be said for Microsoft not putting most future Zenimax releases on PlayStation platforms.
You need to keep in mind that a platform holder investing money into marketing and promotion for a 3P AAA release (or games in general) does not guarantee bigger sales and revenue, especially if the game itself is dodgy and that is known among gamers before release. And as an inverse argument, other platform holders can (and will) do the same with 3P releases on their platform they have co-marketing rights to, in order to generate more sales & revenue that way for their ecosystems. Again, in the case of Zenimax those sort of things will be done to further justify the investment of the initial acquisition and removal of key content from other rival platforms.
Well that aught to be a forgone conclusion. TBF tho PS4 and PS5 benefit from a larger industry compared to when the PS2 was active, I just wish there were a way of calculating sales and revenues for "industry size inflation" the way there is for currency.
We're both making guesses but at least I'm trying to use some basis of data to convey it.
Okay, fair enough
Perhaps primarily, but not exclusively. They also acquired various technologies that will be used not just for GamePass but also their cloud hardware and software, and likely in their various other products in some form or another. By your logic, we can also state that, cumulatively, Sony have invested at least $1 billion, perhaps 2, into content for PlayStation.
Because another thing to keep in mind here is that, to MS anyway, GamePass and Xbox as platforms are one in the same. Even if I personally feel a bit different about that for the meantime, that's how they see it.
You conveniently forgot about the subscriptions. Let's just stick with the 18 million users for now. Even supposing that upwards 20% of them are doing the 'conversion trick' (which is quite high so I'm being very liberal there), that is still 14.4 million who are not. Now, also perhaps being a bit heavy here, let's say the media of those paying the regular rate is $10 (actually the medium would be $12.5 but we'll stick with $10).
Per month, that is still $144 million in subscription revenue, and annually would work out to $1.728 billion. Now let's say another extreme, some 20% of those users don't stay subbed the entire year, so that total drops to 11.52 million users. That still works out to $115.2 million a month in sub revenue, or $1.3824 billion annually.
Keep in mind, that doesn't account for actual 1P software sales (which would still be decently high even if reduced thanks to GamePass), or 3P software sales especially for games that don't go to GamePass Day-and-Date. This year, Microsoft have or will have published 9 games. Assume an average of 1.5 million copies for each of those sold at full price due to inclusion in GamePass. Assume an average price of $50, and assume in 2021 they publish exactly 9 other games. That is 13.5 million units for $675 million in sales revenue. Added to the subscription figures, that's a little over $2 billion in pure 1P revenue between the subscription service, and the game sales.
However the more important of those two are the subscription numbers, because that is essentially all profit for them. And all of this doesn't really take third-party content into the equation at all.
"In many cases"? The only big Day 1 releases of late were Outriders & MLB. Other than that it's been smaller indies, most with small budgets. We know this because The Medium made back its costs of $8 million on Day 1, similar with The Ascent, and those are two of the bigger Day 1 Gamepass releases this year. For AAA 3P games like Scarlet Nexus, those have come a lot later after initial availability, and probably aren't more than $50 million in worst cases, not to mention, it's not that many.
Also keep in mind that this is similar types of costs assessment companies like Sony have to do, as well. Those timed exclusivity deals cost money; when they co-fund games that also costs money.
Partially missing 3P sales, and see my numbers above for what the subscription revenue already brings in (on a low end, at that).
You literally have not once done any calculations or tried using any data points to back up your speculation :/. Also to my knowledge PS Now doesn't allow you to download native versions of the games to run locally, and doesn't provide a discount for purchase of software on the service.
There's some validity to this part of the argument, and I do think it's probably something MS should reconsider for the bigger 1P releases (maybe still putting them there Day 1, but on a per-game VOD-like contractual subscription basis, meanwhile regular GP for smaller indie releases and legacy 1P/3P content). So I'll say this is a good aspect of their service.
Except this isn't as big a concern with smaller indie titles (which make up the majority of Day 1 GamePass releases) because their budgets are magnitudes smaller to begin with, and a good number of them are not what would be considered massive sellers. Covering 'lost sales' of those due to them being in GP Day 1 doesn't amount to anything near it would for a 3P AAA Day 1 release, which haven't honestly been that many for GamePass (whether that's good or not is another discussion).
Never mind that a game isn't simply going to lose all sales potential just because it's in GamePass Day 1. The way you describe how Sony does things for PS Now is pretty much exactly what Microsoft does for GamePass for roughly 80% of the games there; they weren't getting stuff like GTA, RDR2 or the such Day 1.
Well it's a good thing in your book that Microsoft does this with at least 80% of the games available in Game Pass, then. Keep in mind GP's role has basically absorbed what Games With Gold used to be (and now that service kind of sucks, tbh).
Why are we bringing Sony and FB into this? I mentioned Netflix; Netflix might have custom server hardware but they rent that from Amazon, that's still a particular distinction here that a company like Microsoft doesn't have to do (so they save a lot in those type of costs as a result). Sony currently has a lot of their own hardware and software for that market, but they also have an agreement with Microsoft to look into and potentially use Azure-powered technologies in the future, likely with Sony-specific customizations on the hardware front (i.e the PS5 server-related patents, etc.).
But including them or Netflix in a conversation of companies that have 100% ownership and control of vertical integration of their server hardware/software stacks like Microsoft or Facebook is kind of laughable, being perfectly honest.
Okay, and? These are just common-sense things that come with managing large cloud server infrastructures. However those costs must not be prohibitive if these companies are generating dozens of billions in revenue per quarter and netting dozens of billions in profit with those factors you mention accounted for. This isn't much different than the costs all the platform holders have to do in paying dev salaries, royalties, marketing and promotion costs, packaging costs (for retail), distribution, warranty coverage on hardware and services, customer support, etc.
So what is so special in specifically mentioning the regular expenses associated with maintaining a cloud server? Also these companies get tons of government grants and privileges in reduced rates for doing these cloud infrastructures at mass scale, not to mention the constant pushes for more energy-efficient technologies to reduce things like the electricity costs you bring up.
What is "the big money"? Again, you haven't done any calculations and aren't using any data to back these claims up. Also, those costs are always going to vary from company to company, use to use. And what you're describing in other divisions offsetting the costs for another division for this or that, that's something all massive companies do. Sony's been doing it for decades, it's called leveraging your resources.
Didn't they lose a shit-ton of North American subscribers recently? Lol. Also, I wouldn't credit Netflix in generating that shift; COVID played a much bigger part there than Netflix ever could. And now that restrictions are starting to ease up, it looks like theaters in at least some areas are picking back up.
Are Netflix "really" leading the charge? Disney+ saw faster growth in a much smaller period of time, and with a model not as based in debt as Netflix's. Most of the relevant, tentpole streaming content seems to be coming from Disney+ and HBO Max, less so Netflix. And, again, you have to look at net revenues and net profits, not simply market share, to stipulate who really is "leading", because Netflix subscriptions are much cheaper in certain parts of the world (India, for example), and different subscription services will charge different rates.
Based on what? See this is where your limited view of measuring success hurts you. Can you prove it's irrelevant on PC? On mobile? How is it irrelevant for games that are leveraging the technology to enhance the play experience for the end user, such as Flight Simulator? Don't you realize that games and film are two different types of media and have different perceptions around them that will largely impact how they are viewed and adopted, moreso than the quality of the services themselves?
Latency is only of strict importance for competitive gaming or games where tight timings are required. Most other game types can make due with the latency and, more importantly, the vast majority of gamers aren't going to notice that latency while playing. Resolutions might be the bigger issue, because streaming compression can impact the image clarity more harshly, but that is something which will improve over time (and upscaling hardware and software techniques can hash a lot of that out at the user side).
What data do you have to point to in order to prove this? Because just speaking logically, it's hard to see how a (at the high end) 3.2 million active-user/normal-paying service is generating more revenue than a (at the low-end) 11.52 million active-user/normal-paying service. That's not even statistically possible, even scaling costs because most of those costs do not scale linearly with userbase size (as in, maybe some scale higher than the userbase rate, but many others only fractionally increase relative to higher userbase increase).
Well if you include mobile subscription of course it doesn't, but what non-mobile subscription would you want to refer to that leads it? PS Now? We already know that's not it. PS+? That's not exactly the same model as GamePass, a closer equivalent would be XBL Gold. NSO? Again, not a direct equivalent, and in terms of QoL features and value that is arguably the worst of any of the platform holders.
You didn't explain anything, you just threw some guesses around and left it at that. I've backed up my speculation magnitudes more than you have ever bothered to do here, it's starting to look a little ridiculous xD.
I was just going with uncovered figures from Capcom releases (Monster Hunter, etc.). You can glean what you want from those.
Some shareholders did. Others did not. So that was another factor in addition to seeing possible potential to turn things around.
Well last real estimates were around 50 million or so, from what could be extrapolated at the time. But it is probably fair to speculate they are around, but not vastly over, 60 million total between the XBO versions and One X. And again, that's saying a lot considering how many things didn't go right for them last generation.
And we know Microsoft's gaming division revenue figures because they share those. Which, ultimately are half of the most important numbers (the other being division profits, which I wished they shared tbh). Other things like units sold don't matter nearly as much when the division revenues can be seen; we can simply approximate unit sales from those.
You think, but you don't know? Do you even have any data to point to that could support your reason for thinking that? What's to say other companies, even other platform holders, aren't doing this as well to some degree?
Gee it's almost as if they want these divisions to synergetically work together and some could take a hit in operating costs to bolster the revenue and profits of others. Almost sounds like a corporation with a lot of different parts.
So what is the point in 'worrying' about this right now? There are still way too many things needing to play out in order for us to start speculating this. Bringing those concerns up right now does absolutely nothing; for all we know five years from now the PlayStation division could be in the red and dragging Sony down. Nintendo could have another massive Wii U-tier flop on their hands. We simply don't know any of this, and it's incredibly naive to speculate on those possibilities right now.
Which by logical conclusion would signal it's an area they don't put a lot of investment resources into, relative to other parts of their company (altho they are clearly investing a lot more into it compared to last gen). Yet here you are thinking GamePass as some massive financial burden upon them that must be impacting them in some significant way
It was personal opinion/rough estimate about gaming, 99% of this forum is about that.
We don't know if they lost or won money with Avengers until now, and even less what amount of money it will win or lose until the end of its lifetime. But yes, at launch it didn't achieve their expectations, but SE is a huge corporation that released tons of other products and makes a lot of money. In fact in the top grossing gaming companies ranking if we only look at the ones who make console games it's in the top 10.
This is why they make big marketing deals with top publishers/devs and top IP and not with random games from random people. They bet on what they think it will sell, but like everybody they can be wrong due to a gazillion things they can control.
Yes, all platform holders do it. And depending on the size of the audience of their digital store, youtube channel, social media accounts, website, events viewship, etc. can do a better or worse job only with their organic channels other than in simply paying for ads.
Bullshit. If you have any data that contradicts my points show the receipts. If you don't show it it's because it doesn't exist and like me you're only making a personal guess/estimate based on distant, somewhat related stuff to make a guess.
Yes, primarly but not exclusively. And yes, MS (and also Sony) acquired some tech stuff that will be used for gaming and in other areas. And yes, Sony spent way, way more than $2B in recent years in content for PlayStation growing internal studios, acquiring tech stuff for PSVR investing, making R&D on cloud & network related stuff (we saw many related patents), securing 2nd and 3rd party exclusives of all kinds, making marketing deals for multiplatform games and signing games for PS Plus or PS Now.
The difference is that their division made $25B this year so for them is only to reinvest a small part of their revenue the same division generates, keeping it as a healthy business.
PS network services (Plus+Now) revenue this FY was $3.61B, Plus+Now have almost 50M combined.
The most important numbers are revenue and profit. Other things like subs, MAU, units sold etc. are important indicators but less relevant due to the tricks you mentioned, pricing, etc.
Again this is bullshit and you know it. I can say the same about your numbers.
PS Now subscribers can download and play locally/natively all PS2 and PS4 games available in PS4 or PS5. I know there are extra discounts for PS Plus subscribers, regarding PS Now now I'm not sure but there aren't discounts. But well, in any case most games included there are super old games so they are already dirt cheap.
Every month there are many indie games released. A handful of them get selected to put their game on Gamepass and they get paid a fair deal, they are happy with it. But what happens with all the other ones if everybody gets a Gamepass sub and stops buying indies or buy way less? They get shit because only a few ones can be chosen every month.
Right now the platform holders are gatekeepers for indies highlighting their games here or there, giving there more or less visibility on their stores. But if a service like Gamepass ends being the Netflix or Spotify of the videogames the platform holder will be even more a gamekeeper to decide who gets the money and who dies.
Not all, but will highly impact. Even sales of games not included there because people busy playing Gamepass games buys less games. Do you remember the days where in the sales rankings people were comparing what version of a multi game was the best selling one? Or when they had MS exclusives? We'll see that less and less.
True, because their 1st party output has been pretty low in recent years. But in addition to 1st party MS puts there many indies day one plus some somewhat big new or almost new 3rd party (Sony now also does it too but less).
Yes, many people got Gold or Plus for the games, I see GP and Now as an evolution of them and I think they will be eventually merged in each brand. Because at the end even if they offer more things most people get them for the games.
I included these examples because they are cloud based platforms with their own hardware for servers. Most apps or websites use PC based normal server racks as hardware but some of them customize them for their needs. They are mostly the same, PCs (obviously there are diferent models with different specs).
In the case of PS Now they have server racks with modified PS3 and PS4 (and soon PS5) hardware to put them in server racks and work for the cloud instead of to operate separatedly connected to a tv. When MS copied PS Now to do the same with xCloud, they also did the same but putting Xbox based hardware instead.
These server racks can be managed with dedicated software to manage them remotely, which can be AWS, Azure and many other ones. Typically when you pay Azure, AWS or whatever you also hire a certain number of virtual/phyical servers that over time you can increase or decrease as needed. Even customizing the amount of CPU, memory, HDD, etc.
And then on top of them you run the software made by you, your cloud app or website (PS Now, Netflix, FB, whatever).
Yes, they made an agreement to share cloud gaming R&D stuff so I assume they'll allow each other to use their patents, tech, techniques, etc.
MS and FB don't have the control of everything. Owning Azure MS only controls the software to manage the server cloud. So with owning it, they only save a small part of all the costs involved on having a giant cloud based service/app/website.
Like all the other ones (Sony, FB, Netflix etc) MS still has to pay the server hardware, data centers renting for the outsourced ones not owned by them (even if like Sony, FB and so on they have their own data centers, everyone also pays to use 3rd party outsourced data centers around the world) & maintenance and huge bill of internet bandwidth and electricity.
The main costs of having a huge ass cloud app/service are these common ones that everyone including the owner of the server cloud management software, not the server management software itself. So even if MS owns this software they don't save a huge deal because they still have to pay most of the related costs because aren't theirs and everybody has to pay for them.
It's a huge cost, and the reason of why they don't have thousands of datacenters spread around the world offering game streaming for free and instead they only support streaming to a few dozen of countries with an 'expensive' pricing.
Covid lockdowns caused a spike in all markets related to the entertainment at home. From sales of sofas and tvs to internet usage, all platforms of gaming, porn and many more ones, being video streaming services one of them too. After the lockdowns all these markets obviously went down back to normality. The opposide with obviously everything related outdoor entertainment.
But yes, outside the covid related bump and then going back to normality, Netflix is the king of its market and the main reason of why all cinema, tv, etc markets are getting absorved by video streaming services these years.
Yes, they always have been.
Disney came to steal the success Netflix was getting and was causing their revenues in theaters, retail sales and so on go down. Netflix grew slower because was the pioneer so had to slowly grow and build the userbase and technology. Disney obviously came later, copied everything Netflix did before and put a more aggresive catalog with all they have. So yes, they are growing faster but still are behind.
Pretty much the same story of MS and Sony. With the difference that I believe Disney Plus will end becoming more successful than Netflix.
All the graphs and comparisions I find on google images are by subs/viewers everybody seems to use that to compare them:
When I said game streaming is irrelevant for the gaming market because it's a tiny part of its userbase and revenue and will continue being the case in the next several years.
Yes, it will improve over time and for some already is ok when you live relatively close to a data center and have a good (wired) internet connection. But as of now and during the next few years will be unplayable for most players and will only be available on a few countries.
Sony's revenue from Plus+Now added to the whole MS 1P sales+3P sales+subs revenue, even ignoring most of this revenue isn't for cloud gaming is a tiny percentage of global gaming revenue which is around $175, and around half (maybe even slightly more) of this global revenue is from mobile gaming. Or Asia. Or F2P. And revenue from mobile, Asia and F2P are the fastest growing ones. According to reports from Newzoo, IDG and similar.
I was talking about game subscriptions: you pay a subscription and get games. In console makes more money with Plus+Now, in mobile I assume Apple Arcade is more successul than the Google one. In PC there's Prime but not sure if to count it because I assume people gets Prime mainly due to other reasons.
I provided a lot of data and did some guesses, just like you. But at least I'm not a flat earther.
Because tell me, how many people stream using xCloud? Can you even tell me how many people pays for Game Pass Ultimate even if only a portion of them will use streaming? Or can you tell me what revenue generates Gamepass? Or can you provide the revenue of Gold + Gamepass combined to compare it against the Plus+Now one?
No, you can't because these numbers aren't public. You can only make a personal guess, just like me. So you have absolutly nothing other than your personal opinion and personal guesses to say that Gamepass, xcloud or whatever is important because you have zero data to back your claims.
Even if you count the entire Gamepass userbase, it's tiny portion of the total ~2 or 3B gamers.
Same goes with revenue, you don't know the amount of money made by Game Pass Ultimate. Or even by the whole Gamepass. Or at least MS subs to compare Gold+GP+GPU vs Plus+Now. The closest thing is the whole gaming division revenue that includes 1P+3P+subs and not sure if even PC too.
And well, you'll have difficulties to get that number because while ago they decided that instead of providing the revenue number they were going to mention only the change in a %.
Do you know the revenue generated by their game subscripions? Or in particular GP? Or more in particular GPU?
Do you know how many of their subscribers pay the full subscription?
Do you know the amount of consoles they sell?
Do you know the sales of any MS game released in recent years?
Do you know the sales or revenue generated by their 1P games?
We don't know these and many other numbers. We mostly have their division revenue and their 1P+3P+subs revenue, which compared Sony are pretty much under them. Plus GP subs which doesn't tell us anything about the amount of them having GPU or even if they pay the full subscription.
MS has another divisions and as far as I know they don't have Azure inside the gaming division so it would make sense to include could related costs or investments there. But I'm not sure, this is why I said 'I think'.
I know that once they spent like a biliion dollars or something like that to replace faulty RROD consoles and didn't charge that to their gaming division. So probably could do it with other things.
Them getting tired of it and shutting down their game division in a few years or reworking it to make gatcha F2P mobile games xDD
But again, I assume that when they greenlight huge investments they also consider that are long term bets so won't expect to get results in a couple of years.
They spent $10B only in acquisitions and betwen getting big and small 3rd party games for GP plus putting their games there day one they will avoid earning some billions more during this generation.
I don't say it's a massive burden, I say that someone seeing them spending many billions and their plan to recoup them isn't clear they may worry about it even if they have trillions.
Oddvintagechap
Member
All these purchases are so boring. And borderline unnecessary. I guess thats what happens when Tencent takes anything noteworthy.
Topher
Gold Member
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TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
So console war bullshit? Yeah, that's what I thought.
TBF,
Batiman
's post was pretty reasonable. He was making the point that, unlike MS, Sony buys devs that previously made PS exclusives, so Sony's acquisitions aren't taking anything away from gamers who play exclusively on Xbox.MS on the other hand, in buying Zenimax, the entire deal is predicated on removing content from non-Xbox platforms; with the added benefit of buttressing their GamePass service.
From that perspective,
Batiman
's post is the polar opposite of console wars (unless you're an Xbox fanboy).
Topher
Gold Member
TBF,
MS on the other hand, in buying Zenimax, the entire deal is predicated on removing content from non-Xbox platforms; with the added benefit of buttressing their GamePass service.
From that perspective,
Alright, that makes sense. I read it differently initially but I can see it from that perspective as well. So apologies to
Batiman
lh032
I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
I personally believe most of us don't care about acquisitions , until Microsoft acquired a third party publisher, like Zenimax. (which is nothing wrong with it)So console war bullshit? Yeah, that's what I thought.
People are begging for more acquisitions because they want to "protect" their favorite game studio from acquired by other companies.
The above doesn't apply if you game on more than 1 platform.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
If you think there's nothing wrong with gaming first parties buying up entire multiplatform gaming publishers then I have a bridge to sell you.
...oh and I'm a Nigerian prince.
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lh032
I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Its obviously unfair for the consumers like us that game on one platform, but its not illegal.
.....................Lets hope Sony willing to spend big and acquire a publisher as well : P
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TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
You suddenly went from "there's nothing wrong with it", to "it's not illegal".
Well, that's a cognitive shift if I ever saw one.
Errr.... hell no.
Let's hope that neither Sony, MS or Nintendo decides to fuck over the industry and gamers by buying up all the third party publishers under their individual walled gardens.
It adds nothing to the industry, to gaming nor to we the gaming consumers. It's only about taking away content. Fuck that!
The billions of dollars used for acquisitions should be being funnelled instead into funding the development of new games and new creative studios with fresh ideas.
Consolidation will only lead to fewer games, and with every major third party cutting their annual release count due to ballooning budgets, that means even fewer games and thus even less choice for gamers. That's freaking horrible.
kingkaiser
Member
The only thing I am asking myself right now is, if they do a Bloodborne Remaster first or jump straight to making a Bloodborne sequel.
lh032
I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
TBF,
Why does this matter, though? In one way or another platform holders have always taken content away from other platforms. In Sony's case they've relied on timed exclusivity to do this. I see the argument that, somehow, those are more justified because the games eventually come to other systems, but the point of timed exclusives is to exploit FOMO and capitalize on the period where game sales are the strongest and, by proxy, the impact of a game's release is the strongest.
So while those games may (or may not, via extension of exclusivity windows i.e FF VII Remake) come to other platforms down the line, if a user on that platform wanted to play the game when it initially released, only to see it was exclusive to the other platform for X # of years, then that is a user in Platform Ecosystem A who has now potentially left for Platform Ecosystem B to play that game, shifting platform marketshare. That's the entire point of timed exclusivity deals, and is effectively similar to a platform holder buying a publisher through an acquisition if the point is boiled down to "games are being removed from one ecosystem".
And, IMO, you do have to look at it from some better nuance. On a technical level MS may have essentially removed certain (not all, as we can see from continued support of FO '76, TES Online, DOOM Eternal, Quake, Skyrim etc. on PS and Nintendo systems) key future releases from the PS ecosystem, but at least their strategy provides a means for players to access those games through other devices they more than likely already have, such as their PC, laptop, or streamed via their phone & tablet. Let's just be honest here and say that the vast majority of PlayStation people have at least one of those devices, and as such, they haven't really "lost" access to anything. They just can't play those games on their PlayStation console specifically.
But on the flip side, if this were Sony who acquired Zenimax, not only would all of those games be locked to PS4 & PS5, but there'd be no guarantee of any for PS Now, thus removing PC & mobile streaming as options (in addition to Xbox and Switch losing out). You'd also likely not see Day 1 PC releases, removing that as a realistic option, so in that scenario more gamers are actually "hurt" by loss of access across various devices, versus what we have with Microsoft having acquired them.
I mean there is still the PC platform which I think isn't an Xbox platform explicitly, and there is also mobile & tablets via streaming. They also still have some native releases for PS & Switch, even if that won't include the bigger future titles like Starfield, TES 6 etc.
Still though, this strategy essentially isn't much different from how Sony buys timed exclusives to buttress the PlayStation platform, and more or less has the same effect, because of what I mentioned earlier.
Also if we want to be real here, since buying acquisitions and buying timed exclusives are effectively the same in terms of what they accomplish (and the motivating factors for doing them), there's more than enough historical evidence to show that some of Sony's timed exclusives have come at the expense of taking away games that were established with other platforms. The current KOTOR Remake is a perfect example of this, although some eyes could be raised to at why Microsoft didn't bother to pursue that themselves given the history of that franchise with OG Xbox. Street Fighter V, while co-funded by them, has always been a multi-plat IP, and the previous game in the series was mostly identified with the 360, especially in the tournament/FGC scene.
So there's a lot more similar between Microsoft and Sony's approaches here than there is different.
Oh yeah,
yurinka
you don't get to call me a flat-earther (were we talking geology?) and expect me to entertain an actual response do you? Lol hell no. Hold that.
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
MasterCornholio
Member
War of the essays.
GasTheWeebs
Banned
What's left to remake?
The Eradicator
Member
I'm not a huge fan of all these acquisitions going on, but I don't really mind these smaller, 2nd party acquisitions. Sony acquiring Bluepoint doesn't change things for any other platforms, so no real harm. Microsoft acquiring Undead Labs was a similar move.
What I don't like is these 3rd party purchases. I'd be totally fine if we never see another Bethesda-level purchase.
What I don't like is these 3rd party purchases. I'd be totally fine if we never see another Bethesda-level purchase.
skit_data
Member
The Remakes
Papacheeks
Banned
War of the essays.
Should change name to “THICC RESPONSES ARE THE BEST”
James Sawyer Ford
Member
That's an extreme stretch. Where is your data to back that up?
Why would I want to play Starfield on an 8 year old PC or Tablet?
Most people do not have gaming PCs equal in power to XSX or PS5.
So yes, the purchase of Zenimax probably had a huge impact on one-console (no high end rig) gamers, to which the population is MASSIVE. So your point is completely off base from reality.
Unknown?
Member
This is some extreme mental gymnastics.Why does this matter, though? In one way or another platform holders have always taken content away from other platforms. In Sony's case they've relied on timed exclusivity to do this. I see the argument that, somehow, those are more justified because the games eventually come to other systems, but the point of timed exclusives is to exploit FOMO and capitalize on the period where game sales are the strongest and, by proxy, the impact of a game's release is the strongest.
So while those games may (or may not, via extension of exclusivity windows i.e FF VII Remake) come to other platforms down the line, if a user on that platform wanted to play the game when it initially released, only to see it was exclusive to the other platform for X # of years, then that is a user in Platform Ecosystem A who has now potentially left for Platform Ecosystem B to play that game, shifting platform marketshare. That's the entire point of timed exclusivity deals, and is effectively similar to a platform holder buying a publisher through an acquisition if the point is boiled down to "games are being removed from one ecosystem".
And, IMO, you do have to look at it from some better nuance. On a technical level MS may have essentially removed certain (not all, as we can see from continued support of FO '76, TES Online, DOOM Eternal, Quake, Skyrim etc. on PS and Nintendo systems) key future releases from the PS ecosystem, but at least their strategy provides a means for players to access those games through other devices they more than likely already have, such as their PC, laptop, or streamed via their phone & tablet. Let's just be honest here and say that the vast majority of PlayStation people have at least one of those devices, and as such, they haven't really "lost" access to anything. They just can't play those games on their PlayStation console specifically.
But on the flip side, if this were Sony who acquired Zenimax, not only would all of those games be locked to PS4 & PS5, but there'd be no guarantee of any for PS Now, thus removing PC & mobile streaming as options (in addition to Xbox and Switch losing out). You'd also likely not see Day 1 PC releases, removing that as a realistic option, so in that scenario more gamers are actually "hurt" by loss of access across various devices, versus what we have with Microsoft having acquired them.
I mean there is still the PC platform which I think isn't an Xbox platform explicitly, and there is also mobile & tablets via streaming. They also still have some native releases for PS & Switch, even if that won't include the bigger future titles like Starfield, TES 6 etc.
Still though, this strategy essentially isn't much different from how Sony buys timed exclusives to buttress the PlayStation platform, and more or less has the same effect, because of what I mentioned earlier.
Also if we want to be real here, since buying acquisitions and buying timed exclusives are effectively the same in terms of what they accomplish (and the motivating factors for doing them), there's more than enough historical evidence to show that some of Sony's timed exclusives have come at the expense of taking away games that were established with other platforms. The current KOTOR Remake is a perfect example of this, although some eyes could be raised to at why Microsoft didn't bother to pursue that themselves given the history of that franchise with OG Xbox. Street Fighter V, while co-funded by them, has always been a multi-plat IP, and the previous game in the series was mostly identified with the 360, especially in the tournament/FGC scene.
So there's a lot more similar between Microsoft and Sony's approaches here than there is different.
Oh yeah,
DaleinCalgary
Member
If they did enough recreational drugs they might be able to come up with a sequel storyBloodborne sequel without Fromsoft?
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
I mean I just find it kind of funny because a running narrative last year was there'd be no need for anyone to get a new Xbox since everyone apparently had beast-mode PC rigs. Guess that narrative has finally died off for good.
You might be speaking for your own use-case and that's fair enough but a lot of people are going to be okay with those options. The GTX 1060 is still the most common dGPU option in PCs IIRC, that's a card from 2016, five going on six years. And we know the PC versions of these games will be optimized for an array of technical specifications, so if players there are okay with lowered visual quality then they might not be bothered to play via PC.
You're underestimating how many PC gamers have or will eventually be getting setups to equal the current consoles in capability within the next year or so. The 1060 was roughly on par with PS4 Pro in terms of raw TF, and that is now the most common GPU card at least among Steam users.
Nothing extreme or contorted about it. All I post are facts and informed opinions
