First-party games are always a fine example of how a development team is able to leverage a console's true ability.
Mass Damage & Consumer Foundation in the Netherlands has filed a class action against Sony for inflating PlayStation Store prices.
My personal opinion:
Manufacturers and publishers have indeed inflated the industry.
From $700 million development costs for games like Call of Duty, to digital (store) prices for games and DLCs, online multiplayer fees on consoles (why can you play Helldivers 2 online for free on PC but not consoles?) or still preventing sell/lend digitally purchased games.
Sometime in the future, this bubble will collapse.
They should know better, but they just can't help themselves and suck even the last penny out of our wallets.
Because Sony knows people will be forced to pay those prices for single player and multiplayer games, not everyone prefers PC gaming. Sony also has a monopoly on PlayStation digital games. In 2019, they stopped allowing retailers and game key sellers to sell PlayStation digital games, making them available only through the official PlayStation Store
They should be suing the individual publishers increasing the prices to $80 instead of suing the store. There are plenty of publishers still selling game for like $50 with much success (like E33). But this proves that the publishers are the ones setting the prices.... so again nothing changes because they aren't even going after the main offender. How is suing Sony going to make Microsoft not charge $80 for the next COD? Sony being the number one store in the market doesn't mean that publisher have to charge us an arm and a leg. Again the industry is laughing at us because consumers never get real representation. Just these fake platitudes that are meaningless.
"How is suing Sony going to make Microsoft not charge $80 for the next COD"
Because Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly, I can purchase Call of Duty at a huge discount from CDKeys or other gaming retailers. The only way to purchase digital PlayStation games is through the PlayStation Store.
Weird, I swore GoW, Stellar Blade, Horizon Zero Dawn, TLoU, etc. were on the steam store....uh.....
@djI3485
I'm talking about PlayStation games that you can only purchase on PlayStation. I can purchase Steam and Epic games from 3rd party retailers and key stores.
"Sony to stop selling full-game download codes at retailers"
https://www.videogamer.com/...
About time. There is zero fair reason why digitally distributed products that you cannot recoup any value when you want to dispose of them, should be priced higher than that of physical copies that entail all of the costs and the benefits of owning.
Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida claims PlayStation still believes Xbox is their only true competitor, not Nintendo.
True, they have pretty different audiences..and some People just have both at home or a PS and a PC that emulates more or less everything from Nintendo.
Xbox hasn't been a competitor since the XB360. Last generation and this generation Sony has been running circles around Xbox. As for Sony vs Nintendo Sony runs circles yes but I don't really see Nintendo as competition. Nintendo does their own thing and it works.
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Details are important. Console sales yes. Overall games Xbox seems to be doing fairly well in that department.
MS were doing so well that they had to start selling their games on their main competitors system which in turn results in around 30% of each sale going to Sony as the platform holder.
I do think tjat MS' fortunes will improve now that they are actually selling games rather than giving them away for pennies on the dollar.
Something that occurs to me is that the more success MS published games have elsewhere, the more stark it will become that selling games is much more profitable than renting them. If that becomes highly noticable, I wonder what the shareholders (who ultimately run the show) will make of a service which has stagnated for years?
PlayStation doesn't compete with third party games, they compete on consoles. They profit from third party games. If you're not comparing consoles there's no point in comparing.
I think it's all PS fans have left at this point. Console wars were always a competition for fourth place behind Nintendo, PC and mobile. If Xbox evaporates into a hybrid virtual platform, then PS will be perennially left in last place.
Strange, I recall all those FCC documents and witness testimonies saying the exact opposite... Guess Microsoft doesn't know what it's talking about?
Great analysis. Just joking.
Pretending like companies give a f about where they “rank” against each other is just super retarded. This isn’t the World Cup.
Tell me, how does “PC” compete against a brand like PlayStation? It just doesn’t make sense at all. What you just said, is complete and utter nonsense
I don't think PS cares about being in this so-called "last place" you came up with when they're making profits hand over fist.
microsoft wanted to crush sony into dust and they had the money to do it, but with such weak leadership it was always going to fail
Had the money? They still have the money but the industry has changed since xbox 360. Microsoft is the number one publisher in gaming. I'd hardly call that failing.
The industry hasn't changed though, just ms, Microsoft was the no1 publisher for a month in december 2024, the actual no1 for fy2024 was tencent if game sales are all that's being counted.
Money doesn't mean you'll be successful large corporations have entered and failed before like Nec
'If the big companies dictate what games can be created, I don't think that will advance the industry.' -Shihei Yoshida
🙄 same guy who said 80$ is a steal lol and according to him M$ shouldnt put good on a services🤣 wtf
Talks about "innovation" while all his previous company is focused on is GaaS and Remasters. Smh.
This guy is a walking contradiction.
This makes no sense at all.
What does his PREVIOUS company have to do with him and his statement??
Did he have a say on what they are doing? Could of sworn that was Jim Ryan’s fault?
Yet he was In charge and led the PlayStation to overtake xbox
Console VR was birthed because if him he pushed the whole psvr project if that isn't innovative then what is.
Doesn't matter how many alts you use to try and constuct ab alt narrative shu is highly respected in the industry and has done as much for gaming as some of the best names in the industry
@Profchaos
I don´t care what he did in the past.
Sony didn´t cared for him either as he was forced to accept a role as CEO of Indie games or get out! After everything he done for the company.
https://www.eurogamer.net/f...
I been seeing LOTS of innovative day one games on Gamepass (Including Clair Obscur) and all I´ve been seeing for Playstation first party @Full Priced is mostly (but not only) GaaS and Remasters. Deny all you want, that´s the truth.
Subscription services are absolutely awful. They have essentially destroyed the movie industry and unfortunately gaming may be next.
In the long term you will end up needing 10 different subscriptions and the prices will keep going up while the quality keeps going down.
Subscription services have f***ed the movie industry and it's work force, caused massive studio buyups by companies like Disney consolidating huge parts of the industry under one roof and have creatively sterilised the IP's they've gobbled up. The same thing is happening to gaming, MS being the main greedy piggy.
Well… if you’re talking about the US movie industry, then I couldn’t agreed with you more.
But the movie industry isn’t just the US. For some other countries, it’s been considered good. Like where i am, the movie industry here used to be terrible, now it’s a bit less terrible. Mostly this is because in the past movies only can make money mostly on it’s cinema run, but now after the cinema run they can get some funds from the subscription services. Which helps significantly.
But these movies mostly suck due to the low budgets and general lack of talent lol
I get what he's saying, but I don’t think we need subscription services to see a lot of the problems he's pointing out. All we really have to do is look at the gaming industry over the last two console generations. Even without subscriptions, the big AAA publishers have already been moving in a direction where almost every game feels like it's built from the same template. It’s all about streamlined, safe design choices that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience. At this point, you could probably ask an AI to make a AAA game from a certain publisher and it would spit out something pretty close to what they’re actually making.
Now, about the whole “walled garden” thing... that’s not some future problem, it’s already here. Consoles have always worked like that. Their entire business model is based on controlling what gets released on their platforms. Sure, maybe they’re not as locked down as the extreme examples people bring up, but the end result is similar. If you’re not making the kind of game the platform holder wants, you’re probably not getting through the door. We’ve seen it with Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, even Valve does this in its own way with Steam. So yeah, the issue isn’t new or exclusive to subscription services.
Would a subscription-only future make that problem worse? Sure, it definitely could. But I don’t think we’re heading in that direction anytime soon. Unless physical hardware truly becomes a thing of the past and everyone switches to streaming games, I just don’t see subscriptions becoming the dominant model. They’ll stick around as an option, but I doubt they’ll take over completely.
Now, what will take over completely is digital media, and that’s a whole different issue that’s going to hit us a lot sooner. PC and mobile are already basically 100% digital, and that makes up around 70% of the gaming market. The remaining 30% is consoles, and even there we’re seeing the shift. Sony’s removing the disc drive from boxed consoles, Nintendo is releasing just one super expensive 64GB cartridge for their new system, which means almost all third-party publishers will end up going digital and Microsoft is mostly digital already. You either get a digital-only or a physical box with disc that only acts as a activation key. So yeah, that future’s already knocking on the door and the damage will be enormous.
Right, because then you can’t sell individual games at $80, which is an incredible value for the consumer!
I find this statement quite telling. Apparently a certain fan base wasn't buying games at $60 or $70 dollars either. That's why the Gamepass model exists with day and date. What was the excuse then?
We as gamers want it all but don't want to pay for anything. Well, I take that back. A good chunk of them. You don't have to buy a game at $80. Wait for to go down in price. Most gamers have a massive backlog. Play those games until the one you wants drops and n price. Simple
I never buy any games at full price, it’s up to the consumer to wait for a price cut.
Generally I don’t buy above $10, normally around $5. So don’t agree with 80 70 60? Just wait a bit
Totally fair if that approach works for you, but the flip side is that some dev studios do rely on full-price sales to stay afloat—especially smaller or AA teams. The ‘just wait for a sale’ mindset can really hurt games that aren’t backed by massive budgets or publishers.
It’s also kind of a bummer to finally see a game release you’ve been hyped for, only to feel like you have to wait another year or two just to get a decent discount.
That said, I think the deeper issue is with bloated dev budgets. It’s wild seeing games like First Berserker or Expedition 33 launching at $50 while still managing to look great and make a profit. Meanwhile, some AAA studios say $70 isn’t enough to break even. That raises real questions about where the money’s going and whether the pricing problem is actually a budgeting problem.
To me, it depends on who made it and who will profit.
I bought No Man's Sky back in 2016. They gave me all updates, PSVR,PS5, and PSVR2 versions all for free.
That makes it worth every dollar I spent. Same with Balatro, Stardew Valley, Dave the Diver etc.
Yeah weird it's like a certain fan base that doesn't buy ANY games and their sales cratered that was why prices has gone up to $80...... hmmm...... they've the same one that has tried to buy up the industry and now has to release games on competing platforms to be viable now...... but you know the studio/company slipped my mind
You have a point on the bloated development budgets.
I mean look at black myth wukong’s $80m budget vs the $150-200m (possibly more) budget of concord.
I'm counting on it. Every console has passed the torch with a bang
No shit, it happens in every console generation. They get more familiar with the hardware and learn tricks to push games farther. Just look at the original Gears and Uncharted then look at the last game for that generation, its night and day.
At this point, games are beautiful. Give me better ideas, an evolution of dynamic gameplay. If CoD is gonna give us another template version of MW, I want another dev to give us a more dynamic online experience. DICE was moving in this direction, but I want more.
Game look amazing, now let's use the tech to push our experience forward.
They look fine, beautiful even. Can we focus more on quality and innovation?
Ristar (1995) looked a lot better than Streets of Rage (1991) on the Sega genesis btw.
Or just remember the differences between Ridge Racer (1994)..one of the Playstation launch games and Ridge Racer Type 4 (1998)