PlayStation 5: Thread 05

[Lebowski]

If you now bought a year of the basic tier then the offers would probably change to be 20/30% off a year of Premium/Extra?

I purchased a year of basic, but it acts like a pre-order, and that year doesn't come into effect or get added or charged until your current subscription has run out. You can get cheap PSN credit off Shopto as they're doing 15% off today.

[hudson]

State of Play this Thursday

[wakka]

Ah I get you. That's really annoying!

[Neon Ignition]

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This last one feels like an area where down the road things could really come to bite Sony on the ass

[nonny]

The way they detail their PC plan is the kind of clarity I want to see from Xbox in regards to their own strategy.

I don't really agree that any PC players would be at all swayed to buy a console to play a sequel though... they've chosen PC for a reason and they'll simply wait.

[fishbowlhead]

Live service will be day & date, Single player tentpole pc gotta wait, makes complete sense.

[wakka]

I think it's a good strategy.

I can definitely see a subset of players being converted to buying a PlayStation as an accessory to their PC in order to play Wolverine, etc, day one - and those that don't are still a market Sony are now monetising that they would otherwise have been unable to reach.

This last one feels like an area where down the road things could really come to bite Sony on the ass

I actually disagree, I think this works perfectly for Sony. This is all high margin gravy. As long as they're sitting in the middle as the primary toll collectors, it's a profitable, low risk business.

With Xbox likely to exit the market, their position as middlemen to major live services is going to have even more of a moat.

[nonny]

I hope you're right... Having the tent pole titles being timed exclusive on the console may convince some extra players to buy the console but I'm not sure they will be PC players, more so they're potentially previous generation console players looking to upgrade.

I think most PC players either have better or at least comparable hardware and are prepared to wait the 12-18 months for a games release. I mean, we're talking players who will often refuse to buy something readily available on Epic until it hits Steam...

I would love to see the expected conversion rate Sony hopes to get there. PS4 players upgrading to PS5 is much more likely.

[wakka]

I don't think that the delayed release of first party games on PC is particularly relevant to the PS4 to PS5 upgrade pipeline. People still hanging onto PS4s in 2024 were unlikely to eventually choose a PC anyway (I'm working here on the presumption that they're still playing PS4 because they're price-sensitive and not especially focused on the latest technology).

So I don't think this news should affect the buying decisions of those players too much.

What I do think it does do is help open up a new market. Sony are obviously seeing it as basically paid business development - players who buy Tsushima or similar are effectively buying an advert for the next title on PS5. They get pocket money from the sales on Steam and the opportunity to convert a small percentage of buyers to eventual PS5 owners.

The risk here - that you divert players who would have otherwise bought a PS5 to a PC instead - I think is quite low, mostly because PC is costlier but also other factors (a bit less straightforward, doesn't access the PSN which many players' friends will already be on, etc). PC players were probably always going to buy PCs anyway. You are better off trying to capture some of them as both PC and PS5 owners.

The wildcard medium-to-long term is PC handhelds, which are mostly low cost and have the advantage of being portable. But they are currently such a small fraction of the overall market that I don't think they factor yet.

[Neon Ignition]

The reason I feel there's a longer term risk it blows back on them is that they're essentially making more money on less games. The trouble with trying to maximise that strategy is that more and more studios will go under as a result - if you don't have that hit title to rely on you increasingly have no business. So for Sony, eventually those fewer games will dry up and if they don't have big hit replacements they leave themselves exposed to severe market shock.

In essence, they still need to keep the content train flowing rather than slowing, especially as the market isn't growing despite how the population is.

[Lebowski]

I don't think Ghost of Tsushima would of performed any better for them if it was a day one launch it did really well for them topping steam as the biggest new release that week with 54,000 players day one and a peak of 74 thousand players, where as when it launched on PlayStation it did 2.3 million in its first 3 days, and 9 million copies overall. the pc market feels like a nice bonus, and not their core audience.

Their massively different markets, just look at the top ten most popular games on steam, its all free to play multiplayer stuff, counterstrike 2 with its million players online now, with games like DOTA, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rust and Team Fortress 2 nipping at its heels.

[wakka]

The reason I feel there's a longer term risk it blows back on them is that they're essentially making more money on less games. The trouble with trying to maximise that strategy is that more and more studios will go under as a result - if you don't have that hit title to rely on you increasingly have no business. So for Sony, eventually those fewer games will dry up and if they don't have big hit replacements they leave themselves exposed to severe market shock.

In essence, they still need to keep the content train flowing rather than slowing, especially as the market isn't growing despite how the population is.

I see, I get your drift. From that article though, what I'm understanding is that the majority of that chunky DLC income is coming from third party games like Fortnite - the beauty of owning the platform is that you don't need to create these megahits yourself, you just collect 30% of everything they sell to players. So I don't think that income necessarily reflects Sony's own software development strategy, or at least it shouldn't, which is why I think the idea of focusing on first party GaaS titles was kicked to the curb.

Deffo agree that they need to keep the content train going. I think the best plan is to focus first party development primarily on their flagship single player games. They don't generate revenue like Fortnite or Genshin but they are a great advert for the platform.

[hudson]

I have umpteen friends who tease me with "PC master race" jibes. All own a PS5.

[nonny]

I have umpteen friends who tease me with "PC master race" jibes. All own a PS5.

Equally I've got several friends who are purely on PC and will buy Sony titles when they land but will never, ever buy the console.

[Neon Ignition]

"Well, I would get it on PS5..."






"... But I'd be thinking of PC..."




It's incredibly easy to wait for the PC version, the game has to really justify the insane RRP Sony wants for its games which is increasingly not that justifiable. The strategy does work fairly well for them though, it's definitely less consistent than MS in that the games either do well or die a death with little middle ground, but with MS it works consistently to the point that it just pushes that third party route harder.