CHINA is making this happen. Things are more clear to me now.
Then if it's mainly China, why aren't the PC ports confined to the Chinese region? Why bother with English, German, Polish, Spanish, Japanese etc. Steam releases at all? Why not region-lock the ports to China so users in other regions can't play them?
It feels to me that China is more an excuse for them to do these ports globally, but the dynamic between consoles & PC in various global markets is very different than it is in the Chinese market.
IMO SIE are applying a one-size-fits-all approach to a strategy that should only be curated for a specific growth market, and I'm not convinced there won't be long-term repercussions for the strategy they've chosen down the line.
Sure bub. We've seen the sales numbers. You're not doing a fuck with that idea.
Printing money now, sacrificing appeal of the platform in the future. In fact, despite "printing money" by shilling to a competing platform (because that worked out sooo well for Xbox), their profit margins are far lower than the PS4's.
No amount of that helps me as a PS gamer.
Not just that, there are hidden costs with doing PC versions that don't get talked about, such as:
1: Longer development times, meaning console players have to wait longer to get games at all
2: Less games, when you consider there are various 1P titles which were developed due to GAAS (which was pushed due to PC) that have since been cancelled. Regardless of the reason, those are cancelled games that PS5 owners can't play now, but were also games designed for PC with Day 1 in mind.
Arguably speaking, if those were traditional/non-GAAS titles, they would've been designed specifically with the PS console audience in mind and had a better shot at actually releasing, rather than getting cancelled.
3: Increased costs. The amounts listed for Nixxes or whoever to finish a port are not entirely accurate to determine the cost for bringing out a PC version. Some people do not consider that if a console game gets a PC version a year or two years after release, if it's a major AAA game...then part of the testing, scope etc. has to be designed with PC in mind from the get-go. The development pipeline absolutely has to be scoped out for handling parallel PC development, even studios like ND stated they retooled their pipeline to implement expediated development for PC versions of games.
Those are all costs that factor into the initial budgets which most assume are only for the PS5 version of the game; truth is those costs are attributed to PS5 because that's where the game releases first. It is not possible to build a native PC version of a modern AAA single-player epic in 1-2 years, and yes while some aspects of game development are done on the PC platform, that does not necessarily mean they're being done on Windows, it sure as heck doesn't mean they (1P studios in this case) are running Windows x86 binaries with full DX12U support from the jump, and it doesn't mean they aren't using console-based SDKs for running compiled builds or debugging.
I put that last part in because
yurinka
in particular loves to harp on the "games are made on PC anyway" thing but never seems to understand that it doesn't outright mean console-exclusive games don't have Windows binaries/x86-executables and DX12U compliant versions running optimized Windows code with Steam support years ahead of any PC commercial release of the game (if ever).
Once you go into steam ecosystem there is no turning back
Yes, also this. I wonder if SIE and Microsoft forgot about the migration of gamers from PS3/360 to PC near the end of 7th gen (a thing that affected Xbox much more than PlayStation, btw...in part because PS started getting major 1P exclusives in the last years of PS3...interesting....), because a decent number of those people didn't return to console once they left.
That would only work if you held back a long time. Longer than the current 2-3 year turnaround time.
Exactly. 1-2 years is nothing. Even 3 years is barely an inconvenience more and more as time goes on. There are
so many games nowadays, not to mention massive GAAS titles that help tide over waiting times for ports 1-2 years after the initial release. And prospective PC gamer is spoiled for choice so waiting that time period is no issue.
They'll wait, then expect the game to be significantly cheaper once it arrives (despite it being a new release on their platform), and even then, try getting it for cheaper through a key reseller or sailing the high seas.
And then likely not even get through 10% of the game either because their rig is trash or a new release comes out sucking away their time.
I've said the same thing for years. You have....
1. PC gamer that doesn't own consoles and will never buy a console
2. PC gamer that also owns a PS5
3. Console only gamer who will never own a PC
The first example, you are losing money by not offering them games. The 2nd example, you might even get them to buy it twice. The 3rd is going to buy your games on console. It's win/win/win. You might upset hardcore console gamers that want exclusivity but they aren't not going to buy your game because it's on PC. It's easy money.
1: Most of those types of PC gamers are not Steam users, and for those who are, they are likely in markets like China or South Korea, not the U.S. Yet SIE's PC strategy has been focused on global Steam releases, which makes no sense if you have an understanding that most of these "PC gamers who'd never buy console" are in places like China and South Korea. Why not make specific region-locked translations for those markets on Steam and have the games be console-exclusive outside of said regions?
2: The sort who would buy twice are only a small subset of those who'd probably presume a PC version is expected in a certain time frame, and may choose to wait for that version before buying. For these type, there are
two types: that which you've said, and the PS5 owner who also owns a PC. The latter is more likely to do what you've actually described, the question is what percentage would they make up?
Anything below 50% is a net loss for SIE IMO, because it means a large portion of #2 who will be paying you less (70% vs 100%), potentially much less, on a platform which isn't really a part of your ecosystem in terms of full integration and synergy (Steam).
3: This one is tricky because you have to understand the different customer segments. You have the hardcore enthusiast (your high-ARPU customer), core enthusiast & high casual (usually your mid-ARPU but a small percentage might bleed into high-ARPU segment), then your casual & mainstream (your low-ARPU customer, on average). The hardcore enthusiast is usually where the highest concentration of early adopters is at, they're the ones who set the sales pace that snowballs into people in other segments to buy the console down the line.
That's one factor; the other factor is price. As price comes down, then you'll get larger amounts of the mid-ARPU and especially the low-ARPU segments to buy the platform. It doesn't mean there aren't some casual or mainstream who aren't early adopters, just that they would make up a statistically minor segment of actual early adopters. The price coming down over time lowers the barrier to entry, but the momentum established from launch up to then generates the value and confidence to buy the platform by those other segments, once price is there.
It's a major reason why Xbox Series has failed this gen: they tried rushing the low-ARPU segment to the market in too large of volume way too early (Series S), and couldn't establish a content pipeline to drive mass adoption by the high-end ARPU early on (Series X). So even when prices came down very low for an entry point the masses could get with, they ignored it because they perceived little value in the platform by that point.
And that’s the idea.
If PC gamer gets hooked on Spiderman he might buy PlayStation for the next one and avoid waiting for it to come out on Steam.
How well has this worked out
really? Do SIE have stats for what percentage of Spiderman 2 customers are new users from Steam buying a PS5? How would they have a way to do that if they didn't have PSN integrated into Spiderman 1 & Miles Morales on Steam? How are they going to do that now when PSN is optional for non-GAAS titles?
If they don't have a means to actually measure that claim, then it's just a theory backed up by faith.
You really have no idea how much Helldivers 2 is selling or how much the ports are. Too many people are obsessed with measuring CCUs as a measure of success for single player games or think that Single Player games only sell at launch. Launch sales on PC are not like console, early adopters will jump into games, but the bulk of the people will buy on discount over time. That's probably why Sony didn't bother delaying Spider-Man 2 and why they have limited marketing for it.
Steam royalties are under 30 percent, but let's call it a steady 30 anyways.
A port isn't going to cost more than 5 million dollars. At 50 dollars a copy, break even is reached at below 150,000 units... That's even assuming the port costs the full 5 million, when it's probably less.
Nixxes has 87 employees on LinkedIn, let's round that up to 100. Most port projects are completed in 6 months. If we assume that the average salary of a game developer at nixxes is 100,000 euro per year (would be on the high side, salary range is between 55k and 100k euro) and every employee at nixxes is an engineer (they're not). That would mean a 6-month project would cost you at most 5.2 million USD (salary, plus fixed costs).
The goal here is to get some ROI to get profit to cost ratio more manageable.
If a game costs 300 million dollars to develop and you want to recoup 50 million dollars on PC. 1.57 million units at 50 dollars gets you down to 250 million dollars from 305 million dollars.
So what do you need to do in order to get 250 million on console? Well since you're getting 100% of the cost you break even at 3.57 million copies.
Sony's AAA model is MUCH safer once you incorporate PC sales.
If SIE's AAA model was so much safer by incorporating PC sales, then why have numerous AAA GAAS that were in larger part developed due to wanting Day 1 PC...
cancelled? We're not talking about no-name games, either: TLOU2 Factions, Spiderman GAAS, GOW GAAS etc. This isn't even touching on the reasons why those games were cancelled; I know the reasons are different for each one, I know in some cases the studios decided they wanted to do more non-GAAS and couldn't do both. But it doesn't change the fact that multiple AAA games from them have in fact been cancelled, and they were all games pushing for Day 1 PC.
We can even touch on some of the XDEV stuff if we want; prioritizing PC Day 1 didn't do much for the Until Dawn remake, now did it? While it's not a AAA, Day 1 for LEGO Horizon didn't help that game perform any better at retail. And I don't even need to touch on Concord considering it's failure has been discussed to death.
I would also touch on your misconception with port costs but I already did that when replying to another person.
The people who are upset keep saying wait for the other shoe to drop, but they can't explain why MAU keeps rising. At 129 million and growing, we're looking at Sony being on pace to sell much more than the PS4's 117 million units. If MAUs increase by 6 million units again next holiday season, we're looking at 135 million units, if it increases by 6 million every year until 2028, we're looking at 141 million units potentially, which is significantly more than 117 million. We're talking about 66 million units sold over the next 3+ years. GTA6 plus price drops across the PlayStation family will get us close to that. PC is having no tangible impact on PS5 sales and are unlikely to have an impact on PS6 sales.
MAU is increasing because they're selling more PS5s, they still have a very active Helldivers 2 community on Steam, and they still have PS4s out there. Keep in mind, MAU is a measurement of Monthly Active Users; the way in which it's measured doesn't necessarily mean it's concurrent. It could be cumulative, it could be tracking for a minimum period of 10 hours or 10 minutes. No way to know without clarification, and that goes for ALL companies using metrics like MAU by the way.
You're also conflating MAU with units sold; MAU increasing doesn't mean the rate of systems being sold is 1:1. You can have multiple user profiles on a single PS5 and each of those could count as a MAU for all we know (the same is very likely the case on platforms like Xbox; even with Steam a single person could have multiple profiles and if they log into each one in a given month each would get counted as 1 MAU).
Also worth mentioning, is there is
0% chance PS5 sells 66 million systems between now and 2028. FY 2025 (ending March 30) and FY 2026 (ending March 30, 2027) will probably be the peak years for PS5 sales, and yes a lot of that is going be due to GTA6. But it also assumes that GTA6's PC/Steam port is at least a year after the console versions. If it comes earlier, say mid-2026, and also the next GTA Online is out around then, well that is probably going to deflate a decent portion of console sales, which IMO negatively impacts the chances of PS's FY 2026 matching FY 2025 in volume of unit sales.
MAU can of course keep increasing as you think it will, because MAU is a separate metric not necessarily tied to consoles being sold. If more PS4 owners buy PS5s, or more Xbox owners end up buying PS5s, or even if more PS4 owners use their systems in more active ways, all of that increases MAU. If Helldivers 2 saw an explosion in new players, that'd count towards MAU. The player communities for MLB The Show and GT7 will help increase MAU, etc.
www.forbes.com
It's historical revisionism at best (and it's usually coming from people who never, ever played PS3 MP games).
