Jason Schreier says Sony is backing away from putting single player games on PC

Comments

• Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  I’m acutely aware of how anti-consumer it is, but I always found it strange they ever started putting singleplayer games on PC.

  Yes, it’s some revenue for the game itself, filtered through Valve’s 30% cut. But from what I gather, most of the reason the console offering works is because people who’ve finished God of War will learn about some new forever F2P game, and decide to play it on that same PlayStation, thus getting all the microtransaction revenue. None of that environmental connection really happens on PC.

  That especially hurts because the cost and risk for singleplayer games hasn’t always been great. Sure, we look positively at Hollow Knight: Silksong, but that often ignores the 95 other indie failures for every Silksong. At the least, a publisher like Sony that’s put out enough big hits can pull that failure rate down, but they’ll still put out stinkers; and the whole “environmental buy-in” helps to pay for that failure rate.

  But, if people can get their well-produced games anywhere, the insular cycle encouraging people to get PlayStations kind of falls apart. Not many people will buy them specifically to play FortNite (though they will, in the end). It was good for PC consumers for a time, but I feel like PC releases were very much motivated by short-term profit. You can also see how, since singleplayer games fit in a longer-term industry plan, it may explain why we don’t see many of them anymore.

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• Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Refusing to release titles to the PC isn’t going to make me run out and purchase a console. There are tons of games on PC. My backlog is long enough that I can live happily without whatever kind of bullshit Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox are trying to peddle. Assuming I did care about a specific title, and it’s being gate locked by console exclusivity, I’ll fucking pirate it. Sony, Microslop, and Nintendo can all get fucked.

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  • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They keep forgetting this, Xbox thought it too. We are with our digital libraries, I’m not going to go buy a PS5 because of one game. The hardware is only the portal.

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  • tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I also kind of think that the strongest argument for console gaming is competitive multiplayer, not single player.

    The fact that the consoles are closed and locked down inherently provides resistance to cheating and such, where the open PC world tries to replicate the stuff via kernel anti-cheat stuff. The console world having (well, more-or-less) one option when it comes to hardware means that everyone playing against each other has a fairly-level playing field — same input hardware, people don’t get an edge from having fancier rendering hardware.

    For single-player gaming, those console strengths become weaknesses — for single-player games, it’s preferable for the player to be able to do things like freely mod games, upgrade hardware to get fancier graphics, provide a lot of options as to what input stuff to use, etc.

    If I were a console vendor and I were worried about the PC as a competing platform, I’d think that I’d try to emphasize my competitive multiplayer games, not single-player.

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    • Don_alForno@feddit.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If I were a console vendor and I were worried about the PC as a competing platform, I’d think that I’d try to emphasize my competitive multiplayer games, not single-player games.

      Step one: Don’t charge extra for online play.

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• 58008@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Welp, looks like I’ll need to get myself a PS5 then.

  Said no cunt ever

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  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    GTA6 is likely going to be the only reason I’d get one, because the rest of the exclusives have been pretty lacklustre.

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    • greybeard@feddit.online ⁨24⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      GTA6 is just a timed exclusive, but also remember that Rockstar are union busting assholes.

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• WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They’re going to learn that the days when publishers could strongarm gamers are over. There are too many games on too many alternatives, so it’s too easy for gamers, faced with unnecessary hoops through which they’re required to jump, to just say, “Well fuck that then - I’ll play something else.”

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• kromem@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I wonder how much of this is related to the posturing from the new lead of Xbox about returning to exclusivity over there.

  We were so close to one of the dumbest things in gaming for decades finally going away.

  (Also, nothing Sony does from here on out will surprise me in its stupidity after they shuttered Bluepoint.)

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• UnspecificGravity@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Its REALLY easy to just not buy their shit then.

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• tidderuuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Sony: “Exclusivity will increase sales!”

  Customers: “I can’t afford your exclusivity”

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I can afford it, and I’ll bet I’m far from alone, but I’d essentially be buying a dedicated computer that can only play a handful of games, and it would play them worse than my PC could if they’d only make the game available there. There’s no shortage of stuff to play, so it ends up just being a bad value even when you’ve got the money.

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    • Big_Boss_77@fedinsfw.app ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Exactly. I could walk in and buy the entire ps5 library right now and a pro or max or wtfever they’re shilling now days… but why would I? Why would I shell out cash for an inferior environment, inferior hardware, and an inferior experience?

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• LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Sony turned so anti-consumer due to their PS4 dominance that even with a fairly modest digital library of games I still bailed to PC when the PS5 came around.

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  • False@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sony has always been pretty anti consumer. I’m addition to the root kit thing, they have a history of pushing their own propietary crap as open standards. Sometimes successfully (blu ray) and sometimes not (memory stick). They also removed the “other OS” (Linux) option from the PS3 midway through the console’s life cycle.

    I’m sure there’s more examples, but they’ve been a bottom tier brand for a long time due to this for me.

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  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sony turned so anti-consumer due to their PS4 dominance…

    no, that’s just Sony.

    anyone remember that time Sony installed rootkits on PCs that played their music CDs?

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• warmaster@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Their loss. Stupid move.

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• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  but I don’t know how that squares with incoming PC ports for Death Stranding 2 and the sequel to Kena.

  These contracts have been set years ago. So that’s not evidence of the contrary. Sony could be in a phase now where they not take on new PC projects.

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• Azal@pawb.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’ve owned exactly 0 playstations. The last new(ish) system I had was an N64. Could afford a laptop that could play games but also do schoolwork or have a console, so stuck with computers ever since.

  The only time I’ve played Sony based games is when they’re on PC. So… guess Sony is losing my money. I know it’s not much, but interesting to get rid of the small revenue stream in hopes to get people back on console but I guess I don’t understand how fishing for whales is the winning task.

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• SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  My guess is they’re watching the PC parts supply issues due to AI and have decided they will use their institutional weight to also hoard parts to push consoles back to the forefront since it’s harder to pirate on consoles and easier to resell the same game on new console generations.

  Sony is and has been a big institutional player and I would not be at all surprised to see them moving on hoarding parts themselves.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They’ve been practically waiting for a way to kill the PC industry and take the profits from it.

    I have nothing but anecdotes to base this on, but charging for PS+ in an era where Steam offers a similar service for free has seemingly been one of the biggest drivers of converting people into PC gamers. Back when Xbox first charged for Live, it at least offered a far better experience than what you’d find elsewhere, but only a few years later, that was no longer the case.

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    • tobz619@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I am one of those anecdotal people. I want to play the Last of Us Factions online, I refuse to pay for PS+, therefore I do not play my PS5 at all. Every other game already has a PC version that runs and looks better and supports modding…it’s a no-brainer.

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  • Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You’re seriously overinflating the size of Sony (or seriously underestimating the cost of hoarding parts). Sony market cap is 130 billion. Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft combined are expected to spend 600 billion in 2026 to buy up hardware for their data centers. And that 600 billion is just 4 companies for this year (they spent almost 400 billion last year). There are bunch of other deals that also lock up hardware production like the Stargate project which also plans on spending 500 billion to build data centers. And bunch of unknown deals, like Apple definitely has some deal that guarantees they get their hardware.

    Hoarding all the hardware is extremely expensive and Sony wouldn’t even make dent even if they wanted to.

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    • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Even if they cannot hoard that much themselves, anything they hoard will contribute to the death of the PC space and I don’t think Sony is just going to let their consumer electronics division, which has been a huge part of their brand for decades, go quietly into that good night. They might not have as much money to spend on it, but they’re not going to just stop making PS5s and other consumer electronics devices. That also means that if there’s PC hardware shortages for the foreseeable future, that they’re waiting for those shortages to strangle the PC gaming industry and revert a lot of those PC gaming converts back to console.

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• mrfriki@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I like playing Sony games on PC from time to time but it they don’t release anything more on PC that is OK too, I have plenty of other stuff to play anyway.

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• darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The only way this makes sense is if Sony feels they’ve cornered enough of the market to be able to recoup the enormous costs of AAA development. I don’t see how that’s possible without a huge price increase of the console and games.

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• TORFdot0@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The PS5 Pro is way overpriced and the regular PS5 doesn’t really have many exclusives over PS4 so it’s not a big surprise they can’t move consoles

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• ZephyrXero@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  This makes a lot of sense if the next Xbox is just a glorified PC. Right now Sony releases some of their games to PC, but never to Xbox. Multiplayer titles really are the ones that make no sense being exclusive because you need that extended network effect

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t think keeping the single player games exclusive makes much sense either. Sony’s bread is buttered by taking the same 30% Valve makes on each game sale. If they’re only converting you for single player games, you’re buying…what…5 games on the platform, lifetime? And they’re all Sony published? Realistically, on PC, you’re probably already playing everything else on PC with no subscription fee that they would want to get a cut from. I think Sony has reached everyone they’re going to reach, and you’re just leaving money on the table by not bringing those games to PC, even if they come late.

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    • ZephyrXero@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The exclusive games lead to more sales of other games. If they get rid of exclusives they might as well just give it up and end the PlayStation brand.

      PC may be fine for you, but it’s still a shit show IMO. Maybe Valve will fix it. Gaming on Linux has gotten way better since the SteamDeck came out, but still not good enough to get me to switch. Maybe the Steam Machine will eventually turn the tides. But hell, they take 30% too, so really no different than Sony from a developer’s perspective

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• HorreC@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Is this just because they are like while we pump the number you have to pay for a PS (because of ram plus premium) and they are like, lets milk them while we have a sacrificial goat?

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