PlayStation's CEO drastically underestimates the Steam crowd's patience, thinks PC gamers will buy a PS5 for exclusive sequels
PlayStation's CEO drastically underestimates the Steam crowd's patience, thinks PC gamers will buy a PS5 for exclusive sequels
Hermen Hulst wants you to play Spider-Man 1 on PC, and then buy a PS5 for Spider-Man 2
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Is the CEO underestimating patience or is the author overestimating?
It's not as if PlayStation is struggling right now. The PS5 seems to be selling pretty well.
Not to mention that consoles and PC's are indirect competitors. A lot of people want to use a controller form their couch without jumping through hoops. Gen Z is trending away from desktops and laptops entirely in favor of mobile devices.
Obviously Sony is unhappy with the performance of the PS5 considering how much they've been trying to push PC ports lately. Not to mention Square Enix citing disappointing sales for their last couple of critically acclaimed Final Fantasy games as the reason they're going to focus on multi-platform support going forward.
https://www.techspot.com/news/103189-ps5-becomes-sony-biggest-money-maker-crushing-past.html
Seems like almost every business area of PlayStation is doing well. Hardware, subscriptions, DLC, other micro transactions... The PS5 just became officially their most profitable generation.
They're looking to maximize revenue and profit by expanding into the PC market. It's great to see because it gives consumers more choice. That absolutely should not be interpreted as any sort of sign of weakness for the PS5. The PS5 seems to be doing better than the PS4 did, and the PS4 did well. They have crushed Xbox to the point where people are speculating Microsoft might want out of hardware. The Switch is harder to compare against because it's near (really should be past) the end of its life, but the PS5 has been selling at a faster rate.
PC gaming is just starting to get back in track after a few down years for hardware sales (largely related to supply shortages and price gouging, especially GPU's). But it's starting to turn around, and it seems like Sony wants a piece of that. The question should not be "why is Sony pushing PC ports", but "Why is Nintendo not porting to PC".
Square-Enix has been mismanaged for decades and I don't think is worth paying attention to.
It's not that the PS5 is doing bad (it isn't), it's that they want more money, simple as that. They saw what Microsoft was doing and they decided they wanted a piece of the pie too.
Nothing is "obvious" about that. What you present as the only possible conclusion from their actions is just your subjective interpretation. Could be true, of course. I highly doubt it (which is my subjective interpretation).
Someone realized that the investment required for making a PC port (or having the studio include it) is less than the money you can make from selling it on PC. Selling consoles (the hardware) isn't what makes them money, it's reasonably common for them to be sold at a loss, especially early in the life cycle. Profit comes from people buying games they take a cut from, which is unchanged if Sony is also the publisher (or even the developer).
In any case, if I'm right or wrong isn't even the point either (I'm probably wrong, too). The point is it's incredibly complicated, and nothing is even slightly "obvious" about it.