They released old games on PC at super-premium price points, abused the market with account requirements, infected some of their titles with malware, and they are surprised that revenue is not as good as the consoles the games were originally released on years ago?
Surprised Pikachu Face
Would you have a source for the malware claim? I’m aware of the rootkit thing from 20 years ago but I’d not heard anything about malware in recent PC releases. I am a bit unplugged from news in general these days so I probably missed it.
Oh! Yeah, fair.
I think if I only made 300 Million dollars in three years, I’d probably wonder what on earth I was even doing with myself as well. What is even the point? 😔
It’s a tragedy is what it is.
Do they have a gofundme or similar?
So by Sony’s logic, €0 in PC profit per year is better than €100 million per year. Solid strategy.
Revenue != Profit
True in the article headline they say earnings, while in the article text they speak about net revenue. That’s what I get for skimming again. Point stands though, they’re essentially reducing their own market volume, so it is still a loss.
One could apply the same reasoning to nintendo and it becomes more immediately obvious why that revenue stream may have cannibalized their console sales and diverted resources from more important endeavours like the world shattering Concorde…
It’s only a loss if their expenses are greater than their revenue. We don’t know the full financials so it’s really not possible to say whether or not it’s a loss. It’s hard to believe it was a loss, but we don’t know.
Poor Sony.
A lot of the buyers on the PC won’t have a PlayStation so as long as it cost them less than 300 million to create the ports etc then it’s still a profitable endeavour for them.
Yes but a lot of people will buy a PlayStation just for the exclusive games. I know lots of people that do exactly that.
Which inevitably leads to them buying a bunch of other PS games.
Which means more subscriptions and higher profit margins where they don’t have to pay Steam’s outrageous commissions.
I don’t know why you are being down voted as that is their business plan, they hope PC gamers will think “oh I should get a PS for those other exclusives”.
I just don’t think most PC users will bother, ans this is probably why Sony are stopping releasing to PC as it’s not bringing as many people into the eco system as they hoped, if anything it may be having opposite effect.
Ah yes the outrageous commissions that almost every store has? Psn has 30% so does xbox…
They could easily make their own store with the original prices and increase the price on Steam to cover those 30%.
Ah yes the outrageous commissions that almost every store has?
Correct.
The question is really how much did they profit. Was it a cheap investment to bring games to PC, and gain a significant but not overwhelming return? If so, it’s a big win.
Or was it expensive as fuck to bring games to PC and not much profit - in which case we lose out as PC gamers.
I’m tangentially curious how much of that revenue is solely Helldiver’s 2.
In addition to that, its likely Sony thinks putting their games on PC is cannibalizing their console sales. There might be a little bit of truth to that, I’m sure there are at least some PC gamers that buy a PS5 just for the exclusives.
They probably did the math and this is the answer they came up with. Did they do the math right? Probably not. I think the huge majority of PC gamers won’t buy a PlayStation anyways.
which makes the platform less than half as lucrative as the PS4 and PS5
Left out the most important part of the title…
Yet unlike the PlayStation hardware, they spent absolutely nothing on hardware research and development.
So the only cost is what they may have spent to have studios develop PC ports. Even then it’s minimal compared to the past with all the console hardware being x86 based and effectively just semi-custom PC hardware to begin with.
I don’t think there’s a realistic way to measure that.
First of all, comparing sales of five-year-old games on PC to what’s going on in console land is unfair. Also, just how much does it cost them to port a game to PC and sell it? It’s gotta be cheaper than making the game to start with.
A significant portion of that $300 Million is pure gravy. I’m unlikely to buy a PlayStation, but I’ve bought four Sony titles so far and will likely buy a couple more. If they want my money, they need to come to where I shop.
comparing sales of five-year-old games on PC to what’s going on in console land is unfair.
Sony does not care about what’s fair, they care about how much money they make.
Then they should release them at the same time not years and years after.
That’s how to make you happy, not how to make money.
Good god every time I have to interact with you it’s like you’re intentionally obtuse/trolling.
The argument you’re apparently not getting is no shit their PC sales are lower than whatever magic figure they think it should be, the one time they released a new game at the same time (Helldivers 2) it sold phenomenally well on PC too.
Every other game they have done is years after release on PS and obviously any hype has already died down. It’s obvious why that would reduce sales figures comparatively, it’s not a new game anymore and the only ones picking it up are people who were interested enough long enough to grab it on PC.
Like me, I bought Spiderman 1/Miles Morale’s/2 because I love Spiderman games lol, but not nearly enough to go get a console.
I’m fine not getting any more PS games, it’s just a lost sale for them though 🤷
Good god every time I have to interact with you it’s like you’re intentionally obtuse/trolling.
Okay well I’ll do us both a favor then and block you because every time I interact with you, you accuse me of “trolling” for no reason other than you don’t understand what I’m saying.
Nah, your answers here are either from a point of true or feigned ignorance, I agree with the other commentator. So feel free to block me too, because I also think you are not engaging in good faith.
Of all the greedy things sony has done, retreating from PC is not one of them. Seeing as Valve will likely blow anyone out of the water with the gabebox, I too would be shitting in my pants if I were sony. In fact, the steamdeck has likely cost sony millions in lost revenue given it’s a much more apetizing console than anything Microslop, Nintendo or Sony have to offer.
What is absolutely fucking untenable is sony not mandating Bungie support for linux in D2, considering a native version already existed for stadia and enabling BE for proton is not rocket science. Bungie is riddled with incompetent Microslop leftovers even after passing through AB before reaching Sony’s hands. D2 is dying a slow painful death, and were Bungie to enable proton play, I’d eat my hat if the population on steam didn’t double overnight!
Steambox is basically irrelevant. The issue is next Xbox will play PC, and therefore play PlayStation.
All 5 of them.
That’s all that’s keeping people from choosing other platforms. If you can play sony and Microsoft games plus PC library, then why buy Sony which only does Sony.
So, in other words, they’ll have 300 million less sales in the next 3 years. Because, let’s face it, the only reason they went PC is because they don’t have grown room with the PS brand alone, otherwise, Playstation being more profitable it would have been their only choice so far.
Still waiting to have a reason I own a PS5
Peeps at Sony probably prefer to treat their PC port business as a tease to bring more PC consumers to buy a PS5. With the ramnarok and all that it’s some machiavellian perfect timing.
Will go ahead and share this in relation to another comment thread I’ve chosen to block instead of replying: https://www.reuters.com/technology/sony-facing-79-bln-mass-lawsuit-over-playstation-store-prices-2023-11-21/
Not that I support this kind of lawsuit anyway. Before digital storefronts such as Valve’s Steam, development studios would earn a much lower cut from game sales.
Is the decades old standard 30% cut for digital storefronts fair? I believe that should be negotiable. Some haven’t and probably will never offer a quality or quantity of services that even comes close to those that came before them, so they could and should take a lower cut instead of increasing prices and commisions because they’re fully invested in AI slop.
Now then, I know Valve lets devs generate Steam keys for their games and gift/sell them outside of Steam without Valve ever taking a cut from those sales. That’s usually why people can buy legitimate PC keys on several sites like Humble or Fanatical at lower prices. Does anyone know if Sony allows this as well?
By the PS5 release date, I was over the cinematic AAA narrative style of game. That’s what Sony makes so I don’t have urgency to buy them. Really only interested in them when they’re really cheap and primarily to play a little to show off graphics to myself before I go back to playing games with graphics where uncapped I get like 300+ fps. Since the start of the PS5 gen, the only Sony game I’ve purchased so far is Ghost of Tsushima. Was only planning on Yotei but that’s off the table now
