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Microsoft and Sony Overall Business Strategy and Outlook (acquisitions, subscriptions, streaming, next gen, entertainment, etc...)
- Thread starter DriftingSpirit
- Start date
It also says they don't want to rush their new studios. Don't expect this in 2018/2019 at least. Seems like goal 2-3 years in the future, not immediate goal.
Another way to look at this could be that even if Forza skips this year, next year onwards there will be a Forza game every year again. So one AAA game per year is sort of set already.
I'll stick with Sony going forward If they go all out with the gaming device, I don't care for music/tv on it.
And their right, We Defo need more AAA in the VR space, we need more RE7/Skyrim/Borderlands 2 sized games, Not tons of shovelware that occupies the store now.
And their right, We Defo need more AAA in the VR space, we need more RE7/Skyrim/Borderlands 2 sized games, Not tons of shovelware that occupies the store now.
Note that you said it in the future-tense.
Sony is literally ahead, because they have game streaming available right now in several countries. MS and Google may or may not do better later, but currently they don't have game streaming period.
I don't know if saying ahead is the right term when the others didn't even start yet. They are there but the tech itself will be compared as well as availability. We will talk again once there is actual competition but both Microsoft and Google have an edge with their cloud technology in terms of scale.
We will see how it turns out, the market is still rather small.
I want to be a millionaire just like my dad!!
"Wow, your dad's a millionaire?" "No, but he always wanted to be."
And nope this is exactly why I don't want things like EA Access nor Gamepass. Having multiple (publisher-led) subs is not something I want to consume in gaming.
I don't see subscription services making better games for us to enjoy, just reducing risk for publishers. It won't directly lead to making incredible titles, just ones good enough to maintain subscription levels...
ps3ud0 8)
Is it? Xbox currently have 12 internal developers, some with multiple teams. Let's say a game takes 3 years on average to develop. So one a quarter, is four a year x 3 years which equals 12 developers. Definitely not pure fantasy when you account for the additional teams, future acquisitions, 2nd party deals etc.
Good lord. These are not direct quotes and only interpretations from an investor. At least try to read the whole thing before jumping to conclusions eh?
They'll have to partner with AWS (don't they do that now for PSN?) or someone else. It's unlikely they'll have the ability to compete on their own for a long time, if ever.
I'm sure MS would be more than happy to host their cloud gaming aspirations on Azure ;-)
But didn't Amazon also enter the streaming market? I mean, of course Sony can choose to use AWS but it will cost them if they are targeting millions of users. Of course you can negotiate discounts with Amazon and they offer deep discounts but you also give your IP to Amazon. They look closely how companies do their stuff in their cloud and analyse that could be done in a better way and might come up with a solution that's better ;-)
Anyways, they don't have the same infrastructure at all like Google, Amazon or Microsoft and how these three are growing, they most likely never will, it's not their core business.
Any rational person would view these as both positives moving forward. Sony will continue to do what they do best, release high quality games and decent hardware, with only real 2 outstanding questoons. 1) will the PS5 be BC, 2) will they put new titles on Playstation Now. My guess is 80% yes for 1) and 20% chance of 2).
Microsoft on the other hand look to be strengthening themselves with all the acquisitions and full steam ahead with powerful hardware (for console standards). Game Pass will continue to be highly advertised and they too will join the streaming future.
Microsoft on the other hand look to be strengthening themselves with all the acquisitions and full steam ahead with powerful hardware (for console standards). Game Pass will continue to be highly advertised and they too will join the streaming future.
Sony saying they have larger dev network than MS and Nintendo combined is interesting, did not think their internal workforce was that big.
Certainly makes all the "not enough 1P" concern trolls reevaluate their views.
Certainly makes all the "not enough 1P" concern trolls reevaluate their views.
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Ori and Battletoads are AAA? I wouldn't be surprised if MS attempts to skew the definition in their favour, but I don't see it that way.
It's not going to happen this year.
I called 1 AAA Game per quarter back when GamePass was first announced.
Why?
Because it's realitcially what they need to keep people subbed long term.
Why?
Because it's realitcially what they need to keep people subbed long term.
The type of games will also play a role here, the seasons from FH4 were just a start. I think a good mixture of strict single player games and GaaS will would be perfect.
It would be even bigger if EA access would be part of gamepass in the future but I doubt that'll happen but that would increase gamepass value by a lot.
Glad to see both platformholders work on their weaknesses to improve the overall experience with their services and consoles.
I thought these GaaS/MP games are supposed to be the things that keep people engaged and subscribed for the long term. That is unless people unsubscribe because of a lack in regularity of new AAA first-party games, and go and buy the older games outside of GP to continue playing them? I suppose it depends on what the balance of offline vs. online is for these new studios.
Yep. I was just establishing the baseline of why it makes sense for devs to want to be on the platform.
Yes. You have to contest with the entire subscription catalog. Which is a subset of EVERY SINGLE GAME on the market. Steam is a terrible example. How many games get buried on Steam every day? They solved distribution? Nah. Your solution to not competing with a subscription that provides better value cannot possibly be to simply make every game equally impossible to find.
Sony today pays quite a pretty penny to get marketing deals and dev deals with 3rd parties, and are very comfortable paying for exclusivity. What happens to the games that don't get this push? Well... we all know there are tons of games coming out each week that barely sell a copy. Sure. And yet, this is STILL way better than Steam! I don't understand how you can look at the mess that are modern storefronts and tell me that we've solved distribution and monetization on (almost) ANY platform. Maybe back in the 2000s. Definitely not now.
What's the point of having platforms then? You know which platform has almost no barriers to entry, little curation, and no discoverability? Mobile. Go on Play Store or iTunes and try to sift out any actually good stuff that isn't featured or on the top lists. How does being invisible help studios? In fact, it's even worse because this enables big publishers and large studios to steal the good ideas of smaller teams, remake them with polish and money, and market them into successes. Barriers to market are not inherently bad. The Wild West is not an anti-corporation fairytale, it's more like the prelude to the Robber Barons.
I fully understand your hesitance to let corporations make decisions for you. But you have no concrete reason for why subscriptions are bad except a vague notion that businesses are bad. If anything, Steam is probably Exhibit 1 for your argument, and yet you defend them. They've got the entire gaming community to buy into a DRM platform where you don't even own your games (lose your account and you take none of them with you). They barely support devs. They USED curate heavily, remember?, but are now fully happy to let devs pay money just to let their games die in silence. The things you are worried about have already been happening for decades in gaming, but you've been fine with it all along until now. Sounds to me like little more than a vague fear of change.
When you say "steady stream of high quality games", does that only entail AAA games or also AA/Indie games? For me, it absolutely doesn't have to be all about AAA games, but I understand that those have been missing on Xbox lately and that those are way more compelling to MS/Xbox and to the general audience.
At least we know that they seemingly aren't rushing their developers, according to the excerpt in the OP.
That makes speculations and rumors even more fun then. I'm looking forward to this year's acquisitions and studio set ups.
Assuming you have Forza and Forza Horizon rotating every other year and Halo / Fable / Gears rotating every 3 years Microsoft would only need 2 more games per year. Doesn't sound that unreasonable considering they just bought a bunch of studios and this doesn't even include 3rd party studios.
I think the key difference between the two is how they are looking to expand the market through mobiles. Sony intends to create traditional mobile apps/games where as MS thinks network and cloud infrastructure is ready to accommodate console like games being streamed to mobiles. Sony has had a number of years to attempt to break into mobile gaming with their stated strategy but haven't been successful (or maybe it was never a focus for some odd reason) so I'm not sure why things will turn out any different now. MS on the other hand is trying a new play but it does seem pretty risky. Even if the network in enough places is sufficient for streaming, would mobiles gamers want to have console like experiences on their phones? There's a big difference between mobile and console games not just in fidelity but design. Then again with PUBG and Fornite mobile being so big maybe there is latent demand in that space for console like experiences.
On game pass - MS claims it has lead to increased net dollars, I would be really interested to know how they arrived at this. While I'm sure it creates greater engagement and longer hours of playtime per game the question is whether revenue from holding on to a greater number of subscribers for long periods + MTX/DLC sales is enough to offset the lost sales of selling full priced game. I wonder if in the future, single player games would have stand alone releases while multiplayer games would go on gamepass to create a larger playing community and sustain longer engagement per game.
On game pass - MS claims it has lead to increased net dollars, I would be really interested to know how they arrived at this. While I'm sure it creates greater engagement and longer hours of playtime per game the question is whether revenue from holding on to a greater number of subscribers for long periods + MTX/DLC sales is enough to offset the lost sales of selling full priced game. I wonder if in the future, single player games would have stand alone releases while multiplayer games would go on gamepass to create a larger playing community and sustain longer engagement per game.
In regards to streaming and mobile. MS is giving developers tools to make "mobile controls" for their games when streaming so I think that's how they also try to mitigate some of that trepidation. There will be some games that are like impossible to play on mobile...like KB/M games but that's still fine.
In regards to xgp, single player games will go into the service just as multiplayer ones will. You need diversity within the subscription to capture different audiences. Ori and the Will of the Wisps will be a single player game (though it has some MP aspects in regards to Spirit Trails (time trials)) that launches on XGP. From a MS studio perspective, all their games will go into the service. There won't be a distinction of what it and what isn't.
Who said anything about GaaS or genre?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a game like Anthem or Division is GaaS but still AAA no?
But I personally don't classify State of Decay 2 as AAA. I'm strictly talking from a dev budget/quality/polish/production value standpoint. Not genre.
They'll have to partner with the same companies MS and Amazon do to build out their public cloud infrastructure ;)
And they are.
I think there's a misconception out there about what 'Azure' is or what 'AWS' is, or in terms of how MS and AWS are scaling them. In many locations they are not scaled using 100% owned datacenters. I think when people envisage what Sony would need to do to match the scale (or more importantly, the reach) of AWS or Azure, they imagine they would have to start building their own datacenters across the planet (i.e. engage in a massive capex binge)
That's not how it works.
Take a location that PSNow is in at the moment. Then look at the networks hosted at the same location - you'll more often than not find Amazon or Azure in the very same datacenters. e.g. https://www.peeringdb.com/fac/156
So the people they want to partner with, first and foremost, are the Equinixs and Digital Realtys of the world. The huge third party datacenter builders. Everyone is using them to scale their datacenter capacity. PSNow - as opposed to general PSN infrastructure - is entirely hosted from a private cloud built using these companies. (PSNow and PSN infrastructure have, thusfar at least, been totally separate... however I could see them rolling more PSN infrastructural stuff into PSNow/Gaikai's sphere of influence for efficiency going forward).
The next people I think they - and also MS - might want to partner with are ISPs. The needs of game streaming are possibly quite different to the needs that have shaped the public cloud networks to date. For the vast majority of - say - Azure customers, it hasn't mattered if they're a few hundred miles away from the end user. For gaming, this starts to matter more. A more disparate network of smaller footprints may be better than a set of large concentrated footprints. In this sense, scale is less important than reach IMO. For latency sensitive services you're better to be closer to the customer, and ISPs/telcos own the infrastructure closest to consumers. Sony has a potential headstart here in Japan, owning one of the top 3 ISPs there IIRC, but strategic partnerships elsewhere in the world might be helpful.
(Having said all that, if Sony starts serving classic emulated PS/PS2 games on PSNow from generic hardware, using cheap spot-instanced AWS capacity could be a nice spillover strategy if their own infrastructure is busy with PS3/PS4/PS5 content at a moment in time)
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Infra is just one aspect though. If infra is all there is to it Google movies would be more popular than Netflix but it's not.
Microsoft has an advantage with Azure but if I were a betting man I would not necessarily bet with confidence they would have better market share in the streaming space over Sony. It is too early and there are too many other things at play.
I think we've spoken about this subject before but even if Sony were to co-locate at Equinix datacenters there would still be significant capex involved in deploymeny of hardware dedicated to gaming as I imagine traditional servers are not suitable for the task.
How can people even twist these things? If one is providing something the other ones are not, they are ahead, period.
Oh yes, absolutely. In terms of the hardware - both the servers and the networking hardware - going into these buildings, that's all on the company leasing the space. The building comes with electricity, climate control, and the core network pipe, but everything else is more or less on you. In PSNow's case (and xCloud's), the server hardware is totally custom.
So yeah, there's capex. And of course, the lease costs. You have to hire teams to setup and maintain your stuff in these buildings. But I sometimes think people have an image of the big clouds each living in their own closed-off datacenters, built from scratch and owned by the company involved - and thus in order to scale a cloud, you have to engage in datacenter building too - and while there is some self building going on by the big clouds, when it comes to talking about how Sony might scale its reach, there is also a vast third party infrastructure open to anyone who can pay a lease. Sony is knocking on the doors of those companies to build out the reach of their cloud for PSNow. Why try to partner with AWS if in many locations you can sign a lease directly with the same companies AWS does?
I don't think everything is right in here. First of all, Microsoft of course also has its own data centers, not everything is co-location. They might offer co-location for other companies, though. And AS stats also mean nothing, it's just a router announcing an AS. From that you can hardly see what is actually hosted there. And no matter what, you pay for co-location and upstream, as well as power.
The other point you address seems to be related to rtt and hops and for that you want to be as close to internet exchanges and isps as possible, for sure. That's a no brainer but companies like Microsoft or Google already have private peering with isps.
When it comes to scale, though, you have to provide a service that is able to serve streaming for millions of customers around the world with redundancy and fail-over and in the best case also load balancing which takes a lot of hardware resources. And with Sony we are talking about a company which ends online service for games that have low online popularity to shut down servers so load balancing seems to be something that's at least not everywhere in their infrastructure.
Either way, I think it will be interesting to see how it will turn out in the end but also keep in mind there is a reason why Psnow streaming is only available in select countries, years after launching it. I doubt Microsoft or Google will take the same time as Sony to deploy their streaming products.
I don't say Microsoft will win at all, neither do I say Google will win or Amazon. For Netflix, I think they use AWS and it's totally fine for them apparently.
I just think that Sony has a disadvantage in terms of scale and availability and when you look at where Psnow is available right now and how cautious the launches were in the areas until now, it only confirms what I'm saying.
Your are arguing from the assumption that consumers generally have no idea what they want to buy that and whenever they feel like playing something new they mindlessly browse steam until some random title catch their attention. I think that kind of behavior is exceedingly rare. Purchasing decisions are made from looking at reviews, metacritic, reading blogposts and forums like Resetera, watching youtube and by word of mouth. Steam is enriched by every new game added to the catalog, not diluted, just as spotify or netflix is made better by every additional piece of content they add to their services.
Platforms are a necessary evil that serve the purpose of providing a standard "device" for games to be played on. Discoverability is provided by the community, and you combat invisibility with marketing(backed up with great products).
Win32 has always been an open platform for games, but it never went the way of Play or iTunes. Those kind of fears are unfounded, and there are specific reasons for why the mobile platforms turned out that way that don't apply to non-mobile gaming.
The amazing indie-explosion of the last decade is a direct result of barriers to developing and publishing games being torn down.
DRM on steam is entirely up to the publisher.
I'm absolutely not anti business. I am however against mega corporations and market dominance. My reason is the track record of mega corporations and how they inevitably behave badly after reaching market dominance. I literally can't think of a single one that acts responsibly. Subscription services and especially streaming makes everyone more dependent on platform owners and I don't think they should be trusted with that kind of control.
I don't really care if there are subscription services around that cater to a niche audience but that isn't really what this is about. This is about creating the Spotify of gaming and I think that would be a horrible thing for games.
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I don't think it's ISPs they'll want to be partnering with, but the mobile/cell phone network operators. I still think the console will be the place that people play in the home, and streaming will be used for when you're on the go. The idea being you can take the platform ecosystem to any device and any place. Basically the Switch philosophy but not limited to a single device. 5G is really going to be the key here, it's very low latency and high bandwidth with no need for data caps. 5G is being rolled out this year in countries like the UK and will become the norm in a couple of years, perfect timing really.
Yeah, MS has a different and wider definition of "AAA" than many people here are imagining. I thought I read somewhere that they considered a game that costs $10 million as AAA? I think many of us would consider those as AA.
It's one of those things I don't like about Gamepass: I'm not interested in a high quantity of smaller games - I want big high quality games. Their vision seems like it has more of a focus on quantity than quality.
Yeah I find that somewhat unbelievable. You're telling me that only 1 in 20 PS4s sits unused? Even after many people will have upgraded to PS4 Pro?
I didn't say otherwise. My point is there is a large third party infrastructure out there that a Sony can use to expand reach, and its an infrastructure that's expanding at a ferocious rate. Indeed some commentators see an increase in use of these infrastructure vs self builds going forward among the even the large self-builders.
The post I was responding to suggested Sony should partner with AWS or Azure to scale reach. My point is simply that Sony can go over their heads, if you like, to lease from the same companies Amazon and MS often do to enhance their reach.
At SK1 I'm pretty sure they're hosting. Otherwise PSNow could have been available in Sweden much earlier. They popped up their a few months ahead of the announcement of PSNow availability in Scandinavia (which on a side note might give an indicator of roll-out lag/speed). Their peering exchanges are on a different list.
edit - in terms of MS hosting in SK1 specifically - I'm not sure. But I know they do have azure footprints outside of their own datacenters. They have to to match the scale/reach of everyone else leaning on both self-build and leasing.
PSN isn't in the same boat as PSNow in terms of infrastructure. I actually wish PSNow/Gaikai got more control over PSN infra...
I don't think the reason has been that Sony's been technically unable to enter markets due to infrastructure. I think it's been a business decision to move conservatively. The footprint was static for a long time, then all of a sudden started growing in the middle of last year (to presumably accommodate the latest wave of countries joining the service) - they certainly can go faster than they were previously, and I think they will be going faster from here on out.
There is obviously a technical lag between a decision to enter a market, and infrastructural readiness to serve that market, and its higher for a company that doesn't have a footprint in a location vs one that does (and obviously MS is in more locations via Azure). But I think my point is that the barrier may be exaggerated sometimes. There is a large third party infra open to Sony well beyond, and in many more locations, than what they're using at the moment.
Yeah, I should say ISPs/telcos. That is, if the telcos are interested in partnerships.. in the short/mid term they may not be if they fancy their own chances as a platform holder (see: Verizon).
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Just like Netflix you need a range of content. For every Stranger Things there is a Nightflyers. Massive hit after hit isnt feasible, but having smaller content nested inbetween the massive hits gives the service value and means people dont unsubscribe between the big games.
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Ah, thanks for that. I remembered it incorrectly.
I'm sure they are. I still think releasing 1 AAA game per quarter is just a lofty goal rather than a "We must hit this goal!" type thing. They said they don't want to rush these games out, so that kinda tells you it isn't some mandatory thing. If they can accomplish it, great. If not, more than fine.
don't see how ps4 is going to hit 150m+
they are selling really well obviously but it's going to take a hard hit when ps5 launches assuming they don't fuck it up like ps3.
ps2 on the other hand sold 47m in its final 5 years but that was partially helped by the fact that it actually outsold ps3's in the latter's first 18 months even.
but the opposite was true when ps4 launched - in fact it killed off ps3 sales pretty sharp-ish. and i imagine it will have a similar slowing effect even if not quite as extreme as ps3's last couple of years.
plus i think consumers are now very used to paying high costs for devices with ever increasing smartphone costs so think the new console buzz shifting purchasing will always be so much higher towards the shiny new toy.
ps3 first 18 months: 13m sold (ps2 sold ~16m during the same period)
ps4 first 18 months: 22m (ps3 sold ~8m in same period)
they are selling really well obviously but it's going to take a hard hit when ps5 launches assuming they don't fuck it up like ps3.
ps2 on the other hand sold 47m in its final 5 years but that was partially helped by the fact that it actually outsold ps3's in the latter's first 18 months even.
but the opposite was true when ps4 launched - in fact it killed off ps3 sales pretty sharp-ish. and i imagine it will have a similar slowing effect even if not quite as extreme as ps3's last couple of years.
plus i think consumers are now very used to paying high costs for devices with ever increasing smartphone costs so think the new console buzz shifting purchasing will always be so much higher towards the shiny new toy.
ps3 first 18 months: 13m sold (ps2 sold ~16m during the same period)
ps4 first 18 months: 22m (ps3 sold ~8m in same period)
Sony's #1 strategy for next gen (PS5) needs to be allowing full backwards compatibility with the PS4 (upscaling/enhancing the games). I think having access to PlayStations entire library would be the ideal scenario but as long as they just allow PS4 games to be played at an enhanced state, they'll essentially start out the gate at a huge advantage over Microsoft.
Consumers will want to keep their existing PS4 library/trophies/friends/etc and will allow a quicker transition to the PS5 if you're able to promise all of their current games can be enhanced.
I think Sony should create some sort of "games pass" as well - just to create another revenue stream and bridge the gap between their online offerings vs Xbox. When it comes to 1st party games, Sony still reigns King. Microsoft has done a fantastic job at acquiring studios but now they'll need to prove it to the public that they'll properly fund and release high quality exclusive content (outside of halo/Forza/gears).
Consumers will want to keep their existing PS4 library/trophies/friends/etc and will allow a quicker transition to the PS5 if you're able to promise all of their current games can be enhanced.
I think Sony should create some sort of "games pass" as well - just to create another revenue stream and bridge the gap between their online offerings vs Xbox. When it comes to 1st party games, Sony still reigns King. Microsoft has done a fantastic job at acquiring studios but now they'll need to prove it to the public that they'll properly fund and release high quality exclusive content (outside of halo/Forza/gears).
I don't know if it will work, but I think they'll start skewing PS4 heavily into family territory after 2019.
They might bring a new lower cost revision - there is a significant price journey PS4 could go on still, much more than was the case for PS3 at the same point.
And I think they'll heavily push it outside the main markets.
One aspect of the PS4's success has been cultivating and 'owning' emerging gaming markets outside of the traditional large western markets. In the middle east, asia, etc. Maybe they see a longer life for PS4 there.
i think you're right on all your points here to be honest.
if they do make ps5 back compat for all previous playstations and have something like tlou2, i reckon it will have the biggest console launch ever.
Essentially it seems to me they're just aiming to publish 4 big titles a year, preferably spread across the year. Nightingale made a good post on the first page where he showed what that would have looked like this gen if there were no delays. So it is certainly possible.
As an aside. I wouldn't read too much into the next gen stuff. Both MS and Sony refused to provide timing. But that that doesn't mean they don't have a good idea internally at this point.
Final note. This was published before MS acquired inexile and Obsidian + before Sony had its recent acquisitions so do keep that in mind.
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That probably includes 3rd party collabs and partnerships.
The Xbox one title a quarter thing isn't even news or controversial, don't know why that's getting the most attention in here.
What stood out to me was Sony's comments about PS5, it been pretty much a forgone conclusion here that PS5 is coming in 2020 despite any concrete evidence to that effect. That quote makes it seem PS5 is a lot further out than people think.
What stood out to me was Sony's comments about PS5, it been pretty much a forgone conclusion here that PS5 is coming in 2020 despite any concrete evidence to that effect. That quote makes it seem PS5 is a lot further out than people think.
This.It means massive fragmentation,same like with video streaming services or PC launchers & stores...
I hope Gamepass is not the future. Because if the future of games is Gamepass model, games will be dead for me really soon.
But first for Gamepass be the feature consumers need to embrace Microsoft vision and Xbox and this is not happening worldwide.
Gamepass is a model of service that forces games into GAAS direction, even kind of singleplayer games will need to have this model.
It doesn`t make sense to make something like Last of Us a game that can easily sell 10-15 million copies to delivery on Gamepass.
I really doubt CDProjekt want to drop something like Cyberpunk at gamepass day one, because will not offer something with that quality for free.
Gamepass and Microsoft future is GAAS model. Consumers who like that can embrace this model.
But for what Sony and Nintendo creates gamepass is not the future.