Sony to Allocate 60% of PS5 Game Development Spending toward Live Service Games

Tsing

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Sony plans to allocate 55% of its PlayStation 5 game development spending toward live service games for the year ending March 2024, and as much as 60% for the year ending March 2026. The new numbers come from Nikkei Asia, which reported yesterday that Sony has assembled a 300 billion yen (~$2.13 billion) war chest that will go toward game R&D, with one goal being 12 live service titles running by the fiscal year ending March 2026. Some of today's most popular live service games include Diablo IV, Fortnite, and Destiny 2, but while those have done very well, the segment continues to draw criticism from some for microtransactions, online requirements, and other reasons.

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SONY keeps furiously flushing more and more money down the toilet in hopes that eventually it will start burping it back up. No, it won't.
 
Well, can't think of much else to do with their money. Sony didn't want to encroach into non game/ pc software which is weird to me since hardware wise there is zero difference. They also don't want to encroach into pc gaming by encouraging or mandating keyboard and mouse support, which is also weird to me. Both of these risks to take are not billions of dollars , but relatively low stakes, likely yes low return, but if successful it would be more about elevating the usefulness of hardware already there. Yet they are about to sink billions into high risk. Well really they only need one project to be hit so theres that. I don't understand as to why no try to do more with the hardware, and no I don't want to hear about how to softmod or developer mode of some such crap, its never the same.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Maybe they should have tried to buy Activision/Blizzard.
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Well, if they wanted a successful live service then buying a company that already has one is probably the easiest way.

It is totally crazy to me that companies would gamble away money like this on awful live service games that have a million in one chance of turning into perpetual money cows.

Especially knowing that single player story driven games if not trash are sure investments. Of course they don't make 100x ROI, but isn't consistently making money better than chasing that unicorn with failure after failure?
 
MadMummy76 said:
Well, if they wanted a successful live service then buying a company that already has one is probably the easiest way.

It is totally crazy to me that companies would gamble away money like this on awful live service games that have a million in one chance of turning into perpetual money cows.

Especially knowing that single player story driven games if not trash are sure investments. Of course they don't make 100x ROI, but isn't consistently making money better than chasing that unicorn with failure after failure?
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If they fail all 12 which is very possible, I am not sure Sony has too much of a future, I am not saying they will be gone, but both companies Nintendo and Sony are being effectively being cornered by MS. As big as they are, they are cornered and MS as maneuvered very well into the future. Nintendo is cornered into portable hardware , Sony into standard hardware and not much else. MS extending into cloud, and GAS, ( i should say more aggressively than sony ) while they offer powerful hardware they also extending into a hardware less relevant future. Nintendo's switch trick might buy them one more cycle, perhaps 2 but depending on how things evolve, depending on how a company like ms goes ahead, fact is simply having a powerful phone can knock the switch advantage, I don't know. I am not saying I like this, but in general I am surprised how people just move on to less ownership and more cloud no problem. Like how they embrace MT games no problems too. Its a bit surprising to me to be honest.. That is why MS has cornered both Sony and Nintendo in my view.
 
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I won't even pretend to know why people put up with predatory microtransactions or subscriptions. The only type of in-game payment that I find acceptable are the ones that add content. Not unlocks, but adds, that is a very important distinction to make.
 
Uvilla said:
Nintendo is cornered into portable hardware
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Hmm, maybe. But Nintendo’s value hasn’t been in the strength of its hardware for a long time now. Nintendo has very valuable, long-running IPs and has been decent stewards of guarding the quality of games they are used in. Mario, Zelda, and others are the real value of Nintendo, and as long as they continue to focus on quality, people will buy pretty much whatever hardware they have to to play them.
 
MadMummy76 said:
I won't even pretend to know why people put up with predatory microtransactions or subscriptions.
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I never had an issue with a subscription in MMOs. It provided customer service and support on a live community-based game and kept the servers online. I vastly prefer it to the F2P whale model where they lock randomized chances at upgrades behind cash shop items.

I guess I could see where the money was going and I didn’t take issue with it. Unlike, say, XBGold which always just seemed like a fee I had to Microsoft to enable multiplayer on servers run by the developer anyway.
 
Brian_B said:
Hmm, maybe. But Nintendo’s value hasn’t been in the strength of its hardware for a long time now. Nintendo has very valuable, long-running IPs and has been decent stewards of guarding the quality of games they are used in. Mario, Zelda, and others are the real value of Nintendo, and as long as they continue to focus on quality, people will buy pretty much whatever hardware they have to to play them.
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Was going to post this. Nintendo hasn't made "the best hardware" in a long, long time yet they are still super successful due to their vast library of IPs they release on that hardware exclusively.

Nintendo isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Heck, if it wasn't for Nintendo saving the video game industry after what Atari did to it back in the 80s there's no telling where we would be now.

I just wish Sega would get back into the Arcade business. I loved their arcade games. They had some really, really good ones back in the day.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Heck, if it wasn't for Nintendo saving the video game industry after what Atari did to it back in the 80s there's no telling where we would be now.
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I think they only affected the home console industry computer games would be the same, if not better without home consoles.

But I'm biased against nintendo, I can't respect a company that regularly finds ways to sue their own fans for frivolous reasons. Plus none of their IPs appeal to me at all, they never did.
 
The best thing home consoles did was to expose PC level gaming to more users and running on completely compatible hardware. The same API's used to make xbox x games is portable into PC gaming. Interface code needs to be updated but the level of effort to port a game from Xbox to PC is VASTLY less than it is for PS or any other console. (And honestly this is probably Sony shooting themselves in the foot as their hardware is basically the same as PC. )
 
Seems Sony hasn't learned. Make a console more difficult to develop on and it'll be less attractive to 3rd party developers. Granted, the PS4/5 seems to be doing exceptionally well with its 3rd party developers, but I wonder how much of that is from Sony paying them.

We already seen where Sony tried to pay Bethesda to make Starfield a Sony exclusive and Microsoft decided to just buy Bethesda outright.

As for Nintendo, their practices and their IPs.

They do make great IPs and some of them I do enjoy as games as they are really, really good games. Zelda, Pokemon, Mario, etc... I even own a switch to play Zelda. Only game I've played on it.

I do hate that they keep trying to sue people for everything all the time. The Nintendo Switch will probably be the last console I buy from them. I'll just use the other methods to play their games now. ;) That'll show 'em.
 
... and yet, Sony Online Entertainment was responsible for one of the oldest MMORPGs still around: Everquest.
 
Ditchinit said:
... and yet, Sony Online Entertainment was responsible for one of the oldest MMORPGs still around: Everquest.
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They were the biggest name in MMOs until World of Warcraft came around, and they developed/published a lot of different MMOs over the years - I can name about 10 off the top of my head.

Most of them now are run by Daybreak Games, which is owned by a Swedish investment group.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
I think they just published the game. They didn't actually make it.
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What did they actually make? The games developed by their first party studios are also only just published by them. I don't consider them made by SONY.
 
MadMummy76 said:
What did they actually make? The games developed by their first party studios are also only just published by them. I don't consider them made by SONY.
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In the case of EQ - it was originally developed by 989 and Verant Interactive, both of which were wholly owned by SoE at the time, and were shortly after the release of EQ straight up dissolved into just SoE.

So, I guess you could say EQ (and probably dozens of other titles) wasn't made by Sony, but ... it was made by Sony. There is no where else the money trail leads to.
 
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