Sales is up compared to last year but still doesn’t meet target? Hmm… this infinite growth thing is harder than I though.
Especially when you’re not gonna get repeat sales “I really like my PS5, I should go buy another!”
We did this with the Xbox series S actually, so that model does have some merit, just not at the 500 USD price point.
Kind of what happens when you start talking about a new version when the last one still really isn’t getting games.
Look at the “new releases” and the majority are PS4 or early that get “remade” and a new release date, or just straight shovelware.
You forgot jacked the price on games up because reasons
Eh, the MSRP isn’t a big worry for me, that makes sense
What sucks about PlayStation pricing is they keep MSRP except for sales for way too long.
Like, I saw last year’s Madden for $12 and almost got it, then it went off sale and back to $70 like a new one isn’t coming out in a few months.
Rather than off sale prices slowly going down
Are you blaming Sony for EAs game pricing?
…
You think it’s just EA games?
I already got a PC. Why should I buy another big bulky thing just to play a few extra games?
You shouldn’t buy a Tesla…
No one suggested you buy one of those, but no one suggested you buy a PS5 either.
What the actually fuck were you attempting to say? Because all I can get is that you are a fan of word salad.
Not gonna lie, when they were first released, I really wanted to get one, but their scarcity and price made me wait, and wait, and then the lack of games I cared for made me kinda rethink buying one. I got a steam deck instead and love it. All the old games i had before, I could still play and newer games that i wanted go on sale quite often, plus its portable. I honestly dont see any big reason to buy a console anymore.
Yeah the best games for the PS5 this gen are the PS4 ones with how rather lackluster the PS5 first party options have been. Naughty Dog hasn’t even made a game that isn’t a remake this entire generation. Weakest new exclusive and new IP gen so far.
I blame Jim Ryan. PS should have never greenlit so many GaaS projects. Almost all of them were cancelled . Sony needs to focus what it does best: quality, single player games.
There’s not really been good exclusives compared previous gens. Feels like it has been dominated by remakes of last gen games, or just sequels. Not really lot of noteworthy new single player IPs that came out.
Most telling is that Naughty Dog hasn’t even come out with a new game this entire generation that isn’t a remake.
This isn’t really news. The PS5 is 4 years into its cycle by now.
Missing its sales target means that Sony expected it to sell more by this point in its cycle. The console model is breaking down.
Everyone set way too ambitious targets post-covid, they don’t want to admit that because it makes it look like the c-levels are clueless idiots
“Sonly sold slightly less than their extremely optimistic projections” —> “Consoles are done for” is quite a stretch lmao
Well, I didn’t stretch that one piece of information into that conclusion. Sony’s basically telling their investors that. Their expensive exclusives are not fueling growth in adoption of the platform the way they used to, making their margins far slimmer, even when their competition in Xbox is basically squeezed out of the market. I believe Circana estimated that peak spending on console hardware was all the way back in 2009, when there were three extremely successful consoles in healthy competition with one another. If their old model was still working, they wouldn’t have broken into the PC market to begin with. With the PC sales of Helldivers 2, that game is 7th in revenue for PlayStation published games; without the PC sales, it doesn’t crack the top 20. New management at Sony is embracing these market realities. Consoles used to be the dominant platform for AAA games, and they no longer are, and that makes plenty of sense when you realize how many of consoles’ advantages have been eroded over the years.
Consoles are not intended to turn a profit on their own. Game sales are intended to turn a profit. There will always be a demand for an easy-to-use box you can buy for less than a PC and plug in and play games. The console is a loss leader, the games are the real profits. Why wouldn’t they publish on more platforms? They lose money on every console sold.
I’m glad competition is so strong in the PC market.
I’m well aware of how consoles typically make money. So is Sony. The thing is, their games are getting more expensive to make and take longer too. That means there are fewer of them, which means there are fewer reasons to buy a PlayStation, which means there are fewer games sold to profit from. They historically haven’t published on other platforms, because their bread is buttered when you feel like you need a PlayStation and buy your games there, even the ones available elsewhere. There’s always demand for an easy-to-use box you can buy for less than a PC, but in the past decade, consoles have become more complex, PCs have become easier (and/or the know-how for using them became more commonplace), and the gap in price between the two has shrunk, especially when you consider long-term costs like subscriptions for online play or having to buy remasters of games that you could just have on PC and run at better resolutions and frame rates, things that consumers have become to savvy to.
Oh yeah, and of course Microsoft is doing even worse, sounding like their next console will just be a dressed-up Windows PC.
I think a lot of this sentiment is more true for the previous generation (PS4, XBOne) because those consoles could barely keep up with PCs at the time. The current generation of consoles have gotten so good that the average consumer would have a hard time telling a console and PC game apart. This is, of course, because the modern consoles are just gaming PCs themselves, with very tight integration.
Just think about your average dad who buys a TV at best buy. Now think about how he’s going to be so impressed by the on-by-default HDR feature on the PS5, and how he can also be sold on the home theater aspect where the device can play 8K Blu-Rays if he wants.
I’m not arguing that consoles are the best thing, or that they’re going to be the same forever, I’m just saying they have their place and I don’t think they’re going away.
There’s overhead to making consoles the way that they’re made now; not just R&D and manufacturing cycles, but think about the cert process, for instance, that doesn’t exist on PC. That overhead only makes sense at a certain scale. Economic factors are just changing how feasible it is to make a console the way that they’ve always been made, plus multiple countries’ legislation is finally breathing down these companies’ necks to destroy walled garden ecosystems, and Microsoft is attempting to get out ahead of it. The Steam Deck isn’t quite as easy as a traditional console, but it’s damn close for a competitive price, and it’s just a computer. I think we’re all expecting Microsoft’s next box and potential handheld to just do that but with Windows, and I honestly don’t know how Sony will adapt, but they’re in the process of adapting.
I expect they’re going to genericize, and kinda embody the “home theater PC” model. Anyone can sell one… but only a few companies can afford to make them good enough and cheap enough.
Or as shareholders phrase it, the PS5 lost eleventy zillion dollars, and heads must roll.
It is a nearly 5 year old console. The 360/3 era was 8 years and widely agreed to be a bit long
