Ah. I was wondering exactly what you meant. Yup. There definitely is a market for good games, new or old. I wouldn’t make the mistake of trying to correlate that to any trend in taste for indie or corporate, other than who is giving better value and a more fun experience… try not to think like corporate execs who don’t have a fucking clue what fun is and seeing gamers as consumers.
Corporate execs may not know what fun is, but they know what makes money. Right now, everything in the computer gaming market points to new games being more expensive than what the market will bear.
They probably see the PC market as too competitive to compete in and want to invest in technology which makes new games cheaper to make. So, Sony will abandon a market it can’t make money in and will invest in a technology which can hopefully churn out assets for their new games, which will lower development costs.
If the new games were any good, people would play new games. Enshittification + survivorship bias = people play old games.
There’s good news though. Sony has PLENTY of old good games that aren’t on steam. They could just release them. Making a PC port of a great game is much easier and cheaper than making a great game
If the new games were any good, people would play new games.
The real problems are that games aren’t finished when they come out. Even small games that aren’t broken generally get patches to make them somewhat better in the first year. And games tend to go on sale after around that long. So I just wait and pay less for a better game.
The combination of getting burned by Anthem straight up crashing on my hardware until after my friends were already done with it making it a complete waste of money and the horror of getting my witcher-superfan friend cyberpunk 2077 on launch as a gift and it being complete garbage made me never want to buy a newly released game again.
The thing is, they could release on Steam, and continue doing so for years, and they’d continuously build up a catalogue of older games that still sell. Sure, the first year probably isn’t going to do as well on PC as they expect from consoles. Later years will probably do better though.
Oh well though. Sony doesn’t really make anything I want to play anyway. I’m not that bothered by them making bad decisions. I’d rather them be smart about it, but honestly I don’t really care.
This could be them being smart about it. Compared to various Xbox models, the PlayStation models were generally custom designed to a specific set of hardware and software criteria that aren’t fully mirrored on Windows PC. It is a non-zero cost to convert and support.
There may be some individual success, but the aggregate may be a money losing proposition. At that point, why support a market that is only costing them money?
Compared to various Xbox models, the PlayStation models were generally custom designed to a specific set of hardware and software criteria that aren’t fully mirrored on Windows PC.
You’re talking about the devices that can fully be turned into a PC. Sure, the hardware set is a specific thing (just like Xbox, though I guess they have two versions). However, the only thing that makes it not work like a PC is the software.
Yes, it is a non-zero cost. I’m pretty sure the dollar cost isn’t the reason for it though. They care about the opportunity cost of not having exclusives. The PC ports made them profit. It just wasn’t as much as they hoped, and it made the console less desirable.
Compared to various Xbox models, the PlayStation models were generally custom designed to a specific set of hardware and software criteria that aren’t fully mirrored on Windows PC.
While we’re kibitzing about it, both the PS4 and PS5 are literally AMD x86 based PCs with AMD integrated GPUs stuffed into a plastic shell and running proprietary software. Said proprietary software is the only tricky bit, but both systems’ OS is based on FreeBSD. The OS has its own set of proprietary graphics APIs because Sony is gonna Sony, but they’re still talking to a commodity AMD GPU which could just as easily find its home in a PC.
There is nothing new under the sun for the Playstation platform since the PS3, which was arguably the last interesting iteration.
Out of curiosity, do we have access to new vs old game data on other platforms? Probably makes sense to compare these things rather than assume it is different with only one side of the data
Steam’s records show that an overwhelming majority of playing time is going to older games. The market may not be large enough for Sony to care.
Ah. I was wondering exactly what you meant. Yup. There definitely is a market for good games, new or old. I wouldn’t make the mistake of trying to correlate that to any trend in taste for indie or corporate, other than who is giving better value and a more fun experience… try not to think like corporate execs who don’t have a fucking clue what fun is and seeing gamers as consumers.
Corporate execs may not know what fun is, but they know what makes money. Right now, everything in the computer gaming market points to new games being more expensive than what the market will bear.
They probably see the PC market as too competitive to compete in and want to invest in technology which makes new games cheaper to make. So, Sony will abandon a market it can’t make money in and will invest in a technology which can hopefully churn out assets for their new games, which will lower development costs.
So then we are back to where we started, and people need to stop buying into advertising and garbage. Line doesn’t need to keep going up.
And don’t be surprised when corporations stop producing for a platform when it no longer makes them money.
Probably a good thing
If the new games were any good, people would play new games. Enshittification + survivorship bias = people play old games.
There’s good news though. Sony has PLENTY of old good games that aren’t on steam. They could just release them. Making a PC port of a great game is much easier and cheaper than making a great game
The real problems are that games aren’t finished when they come out. Even small games that aren’t broken generally get patches to make them somewhat better in the first year. And games tend to go on sale after around that long. So I just wait and pay less for a better game.
The combination of getting burned by Anthem straight up crashing on my hardware until after my friends were already done with it making it a complete waste of money and the horror of getting my witcher-superfan friend cyberpunk 2077 on launch as a gift and it being complete garbage made me never want to buy a newly released game again.
The thing is, they could release on Steam, and continue doing so for years, and they’d continuously build up a catalogue of older games that still sell. Sure, the first year probably isn’t going to do as well on PC as they expect from consoles. Later years will probably do better though.
Oh well though. Sony doesn’t really make anything I want to play anyway. I’m not that bothered by them making bad decisions. I’d rather them be smart about it, but honestly I don’t really care.
This could be them being smart about it. Compared to various Xbox models, the PlayStation models were generally custom designed to a specific set of hardware and software criteria that aren’t fully mirrored on Windows PC. It is a non-zero cost to convert and support.
There may be some individual success, but the aggregate may be a money losing proposition. At that point, why support a market that is only costing them money?
You’re talking about the devices that can fully be turned into a PC. Sure, the hardware set is a specific thing (just like Xbox, though I guess they have two versions). However, the only thing that makes it not work like a PC is the software.
Yes, it is a non-zero cost. I’m pretty sure the dollar cost isn’t the reason for it though. They care about the opportunity cost of not having exclusives. The PC ports made them profit. It just wasn’t as much as they hoped, and it made the console less desirable.
If PC game sales are cannibalizing PS sales, then there is a higher cost to creating and selling a PC port than just porting the game.
That’s literally what I said, yes.
While we’re kibitzing about it, both the PS4 and PS5 are literally AMD x86 based PCs with AMD integrated GPUs stuffed into a plastic shell and running proprietary software. Said proprietary software is the only tricky bit, but both systems’ OS is based on FreeBSD. The OS has its own set of proprietary graphics APIs because Sony is gonna Sony, but they’re still talking to a commodity AMD GPU which could just as easily find its home in a PC.
There is nothing new under the sun for the Playstation platform since the PS3, which was arguably the last interesting iteration.
Out of curiosity, do we have access to new vs old game data on other platforms? Probably makes sense to compare these things rather than assume it is different with only one side of the data