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Jim Ryan: Sony wants cross-play in more games – Policies are consistent across all publishers and partners
- Thread starter nolifebr
- Start date
have very little reason to believe a single word this man says at this point.
very used cars salesman energy from him over the past 3ish years.
very used cars salesman energy from him over the past 3ish years.
So you're saying Tim Sweeney should charge more if you buy a fortnite skin on other platforms to make up this difference?
That to you is the same as a progressive taxation? Some big brain thinking going on here.
There's probably more info. behind the paywall.
Sony wants cross-platform multiplayer in more games
PlayStation notoriously dragged its feet in allowing multiplayer games with multiple devices.www.axios.com
Just like crossplay at Sony.
You know on to of this being greedy as shit, it is also shady in that you are forcing a publisher to give sales information for a competing platform.
Don't understand why so many sport games don't have cross-play when most of them probably have a lot more users on PlayStation. The first cross-play sports game that this thread seems to forget is one that Jimbo is in charge of so when he says he wants to see more, I'm sure he's not lying.
A big ol' nothing burger of an article. Two sentence quote from Jim Ryan and then the Epic Vs. Apple court evidence and the Gearbox/Randy Pitchford tweet. We still do not know what the issue is between 2K and PlayStation regarding the crossplay support for Borderlands 3 but leave the facts to fit an anti-Sony narrative. Until the facts are known, I think people should'nt read between the lines, but what do I know either... Sony bad.
I'm saying PlayStation is the road and Epic has to pay a toll. Don't get hung up on the literal mechanics of a tax system. Sony is protecting themselves from providing a gigantic userbase only for Epic to sell all the MTX on their own storefront. And most importantly, they aren't charging merely for the implementation of cross-play, which is what countless people have claimed and continue to believe despite being corrected. That's the point I came in to discuss in the first place. Whether it's wrong for a platform holder to charge publishers for access (which they already do by taking a huge cut of digital sales) isn't something I care to debate.
I've said it before, but at this point, there's really no excuse for any AAA game to not have crossplay at this point. I'm talking strictly crossplay and not cross-progression or anything else.
The Borderlands 3 issue is a weird one and I imagine either
A. Sony wants a guarantee about their platforms cut
B. There's something about how that crossplay works that goes against the style Sony wants.
A lot of games are having cross-play now, but not as many as could be having it. So there's definitely a speedbump somewhere.
Remember Crossplay isn't even new, disregarding stuff like FF11 on PC, 360, and PS2. You even had developers testing PS3 and 360 crossplay, just they weren't allowed to actually implement it.
Though funny enough back then it was " "Microsoft won't let Sony players play against them." lol.
The Borderlands 3 issue is a weird one and I imagine either
A. Sony wants a guarantee about their platforms cut
B. There's something about how that crossplay works that goes against the style Sony wants.
A lot of games are having cross-play now, but not as many as could be having it. So there's definitely a speedbump somewhere.
Remember Crossplay isn't even new, disregarding stuff like FF11 on PC, 360, and PS2. You even had developers testing PS3 and 360 crossplay, just they weren't allowed to actually implement it.
Though funny enough back then it was " "Microsoft won't let Sony players play against them." lol.
I imagine they do want cross play in more games, considering that means more devs paying them the cross play fee. If they actually wanted cross play in games they wouldn't have that fee
Most multiplayer games have MTX you buy and of course the player will expect their purchases to show up if they log in on another platform. So this policy is not narrow, it applies to most multiplayer games.
Also, the vast majority of multiplayer series hit a critical mass on a non-playstation platform. For the entire time that Playstation has been around, PC (or xbox) did a better job catering to the gamers that are into online play. Either by having popular, exclusive multiplayer games or just by having better online infrastructure.
It's not like they did anything in particular to cause those games to succeed.
There's no story here. It's a milquetoast statement in regards to what was likely a direct question.
I don't really believe Ryan that they "encourage" it, because if that was the case they wouldn't have been digging in their heels for as long as they did, as Sony had a perceived business interest in not supporting it. He's just reiterating the known status quo in corpo-speak: They'll let you put crossplay in your game now, if you agree to their contract. There's nothing new to applaud or get mad about.
I don't really believe Ryan that they "encourage" it, because if that was the case they wouldn't have been digging in their heels for as long as they did, as Sony had a perceived business interest in not supporting it. He's just reiterating the known status quo in corpo-speak: They'll let you put crossplay in your game now, if you agree to their contract. There's nothing new to applaud or get mad about.
It goes older than that. Quake3 had it on the Dreamcast in 2000. Though granted crossplay back then was just conceptually "it's the same master server list, and the same netcode" (which also means Quake3 on the dreamcast is probably the oldest console online multiplayer still running :V), and UDP/IP is UDP/IP no matter what platform you're on. What changed after the fact was security and encryption policies, for better and worse.
This. Most publishers already do as evidenced by other games and TT will hop onboard themselves if not already. Business is business and I'll those folks worry about it.
Should be standard in ALL multiplayer games going forward. I don't care who is holding up what, work it out and get it supported.
Jim Ryan is a number's man, so he primarily cares about the bottom line. That is why that taxation exists so publishers are compelled to pay the largest console holder a fee if players mostly choose to pay on other platforms while play on PlayStation. What is beyond his own calculations, and therefore a limitation to PlayStation's strategy, is that he (and SIE management at large) must understand that publishers want to get value out of cross-platform play. If they can avoid a taxation by axing cross-play support, then they will do that. The management at 2K/Take-Two has a similar mindset to Sony. If they don't get anything out of cross-play, why bother? Bungie and Fortnite have a player-oriented strategy where consumer satisfaction precedes potential profit margins, so cross-play exists in spite of that taxation they pay. Hopefully, Ryan sees this flaw in his calculation, but since the largest games support cross-play with minimal issue, thus giving Sony an extra profit, it probably won't be until he and the executives that authored this clause leave the company or change strategy. Whichever comes first.
"Taxes" imply the person paying is in control in some way and receives a benefit. The fee Sony has in place is more accurately described as a fine.
That's not really the case here. You don't have any control over which of your customers spend money. If Fortnite's console split is 70/30 PS/Xbox (for example) but the Xbox store makes buying V-bucks way easier, then maybe the revenue split is like 50/50. Oops! Now you have to pay Sony because you're not within 15% (IIRC) of the playtime split. Through literally no fault of your own.
I can understand why some companies aren't big fans of signing up for a fine that they have no control over triggering.
I mean what he says isn't wrong. They are consistent. Every publishers needs to agree to the greed clause. If they don't, then that's in them. I feel that's what he is basically trying to say here.
Expect it doesn't. Case in point Borderlands, which is imo about said clause.
Sony sucks now, they don't care about connecting PlayStation users with a consistent player base. It's quite clear they prefer the walled garden. Unless of course the small devs want to give Sony their money.
Jim Ryan just drags me down, he's god awful at his job & makes me feel bad constantly about supporting Sony, but, I'm invested.
PS needs some damn personality.
Jim Ryan just drags me down, he's god awful at his job & makes me feel bad constantly about supporting Sony, but, I'm invested.
PS needs some damn personality.
There is no fee for Crossplay in itself. But there is a clause for MTX revenue and also the demand that you as a publisher give away all the relevant information (Including information about MTX on competitor platforms). I guess neither the clause nor Sony wanting all the information like they are some secret service of a government (just joking), is something publishers are happy about .
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The compensation is not for crossplay, it's for cross-progression in games with microstransactions and only when people spend time on playstation but the money is being spent elsewhere, which is a pretty fair way to avoid issues of a publisher selling currency cheaper elsewhere and directing their player base to buy there... Imagine a free to play game being MASSIVELY successful on PlayStation and the publisher directing players to their own website where they can buy MTX for 20% less.
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He isn't bad at his job. He's just more of a Bobby Kotick as far as leaders go. His company is making hand over fist.
I've seen this argument brought up a second time now and I don't agree with it. If they were worried about Fortnite selling MTX on their website for the game, then they could easily introduce a clause that MTX has to be sold for the same price as competitors. Done. No need to know all the secret
information of publishers and no need to have such a shitty clause.
We can turn this all around. In Germany for instance, Nintendo and Xbox offer their respective Reward programs to entice people to purchase from their stores. PS doesn't do that in Germany, so how about they offering better services and entice people to buy on PS store instead of other stores?
So basically it applies to most multiplayer games and most cases where somebody prefers to play the game on a non-playstation platform due to performance, features, controller, etc.
Does this apply to cases where you buy vbucks or whatever directly from the publisher for a discount? Apparently that's uncommon but it's like the one situation where it's not about avoiding competition with other platforms.
What do you mean? His job is to make me a PS1-PS3 BC solution for PS5. And no, I do not accept PS Now as a solution. Get on it, Jimbo! 😤😤
Sure, but if you 'want' something, then maybe extra roadblocks aren't consistent with that wish.
I don't care if the policies are consistent or not. I care that they are not reasonable. Forcing developers to pay a fine over something they don't have any control over is ridiculous and it needs to change.
Yep and I wasn't defending him, because as you said extra roadblocks aren't helping.
Let's take FF14 for example. This is a game where Xbox (among others) were the issue, because Xbox had the rule that every cross play game has to offer the user the option to turn cross play off. The problem for FF14 is that this is a MMO and a user turning off cross play would mean SE would've needed to have extra servers justs for Xbox in those scenarios. That's a struggle for a MMO.
So that was a roadblock and I always wanted it to be removed. Now that seems to be the case, because Yoshida at SE said that nothing is stopping the FF14 port anymore, other than available ressources in the dev team. For those that didn't know, they are hard at work on the new expansion releasing this year and on the PS5 port.
I am one of those who will criticise all these companies, because I want cross play to be a no brainer for publishers and devs alike. I want this to be a standard, because that benefits gamers.
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I wouldn't go this far lol don't really have any real opinions of or beef with Jim Ryan myself, but comparing him to Bobby Kotick, who is both severely overpaid by CEO standards yet regularly laying off large swathes of staff, while also making practically all of Activision's studios rally around Call of Duty development seems a little forced.
Either way, this stance on cross-play and cross-platform revenue is shit and needs to change. Understand why they would do it but Xbox had similar concerns about cross platform revenue shares with Fortnite yet allowed it and don't have a similar clause. The clause is so specific that I doubt it even gets triggered much so ultimately feels like pointless posturing.
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