- Expanding their IP cross-media (with TV, movies, and anime)
The Last of Us TV show was shit.
- Expanding their IP cross-platform with late PC ports for their exclusives (and some multiplatform releases, like Bungie's games, and the MLB games)
Objectively good for everyone but the most diehard fanboys.
- Long term cross-gen support for games
Mixed to good. It made business sense to utilize the PS4 install base and is also nice for owners of older PS4 hardware to still be able to play the latest games. It's impressive seeing some of these games run on 1.84 TFLOP hardware. However I wonder if any compromises needed to be made to the PS5 versions to allow it to happen. Sony also went around concealing some PS4 version's existence in the worst possible way eg. a GT7 port being announced a long time after the game's reveal as a PS5 exclusive.
- Charging for cross-gen upgrades
Scrooge-like behavior when so many publishers do it for free.
- Raising the price of games to $70
- Premium pricing model - expensive console, accessories, and games
- Raising the price of the PS5 two years after launch
With inflation it's no more expensive than it was last generation. The console is identically priced to the nearest competitor in most regions, who also raised their prices too. Rumor is there is going to be a price cut soon anyway.
- Having fewer sales on their games, and for much lower discounts than before
Haven't noticed this. The Days of Play and holiday sales are still decent enough.
- Investing in an expensive VR platform that is not wireless and not standalone
PSVR2 is an excellent piece of hardware. Its only issue is that it needs a bit more exclusive software (something which people complain about if Sony don't do, but also complain about if they showcase PSVR2 games at their conferences).
- Securing timed exclusives from third parties
- Investing heavily in marketing and branding deals for major third party multiplatform games
Platform holders have been doing this since time immemorial.
- Re-releases of classic and older games - on the PS5 alone: The Last of Us Remastered, Spider-Man Remastered, Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Uncharted 4, Uncharted The Lost Legacy, a Demon's Souls remake, and a rumoured re-release for Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part 2
Good. More consoles should make games available on newer hardware. The movie industry released films on VHS then DVD then Blu-ray and now UHD, yet movie fans don't get ass mad about it in the way some gamers do.
- Expansion into GAAS games
- Trying to close down legacy stores, but backing off on it after community uproar
- Closing down studios like Japan Studio
These are my main grievances with Sony, but also major ones.
Expansion into GaaS at the level they are doing is going to be a colossal failure. The offerings shown so far range from the generic (Helldivers 2) to the putrid (Fairgame$). The only thing i'm looking forward to is Marathon, which isn't even exclusive. The fact that Sony are investing in
12 of these titles over the next few years is disconcerting both from a quality POV but also because some level of cannibalization between the titles is inevitable. There is barely enough time and money in the world for players to be interested in Fortnite, Minecraft and Warzone, let alone another dozen of these service games. They will be a distraction for a few weeks before their player count sinks to 0 and they get abandoned, like so much of the other GaaS shite released.
The attempted closure of the legacy stores was shameful. It was a purely cost cutting measure to save some bandwidth with zero respect for those platform's rich history. It paints an apocalyptic picture of what the digital-only future will look like, where thousands of games will be routinely lost to time as soon as the platform holders decide they've outlived their usefulness in ten years time. It's hardly surprising though when their own CEO Jim Ryan's opinion of old games is: "why would anyone play this?"
The closure of Japan Studio was another nail in the coffin of the Sony legacy and arguably the darkest day in the company to date. The once Japanese company has now been almost totally usurped by Westerners. Their only Japanese studios left are Polyphony and Team Asobi, who are dedicated to just making a couple of games for the platform. Some of the best and most creative IP in gaming are now basically lost, and what do we get in their place? Korean vaporware looking shit, a GaaS obsession, and buying up unproven studios which have so far only shown a logo (Haven, Firewalk, etc).
An English studio putting a bunch of kanji in their name isn't going to fill the gap left by killing off Japan Studio.
