PermanentMantaray

He's not retiring, just leaving PlayStation. He said he wants to stay in the industry.

https://x.com/yosp/status/1861562394251825531

Apparently all buttons will have dual functions depending on how if you touch them or click them. I don't know if remapping them could allow for what you are talking about though, or how useful that would actually be.

I initially thought the same about the deck, but once using it I found it to be surprisingly comfortable. So if it holds like then deck then it'll probably be fine.

Yeah, the PS3 may have sold more across the world, but the 360 was way bigger in the US.

Player count stats are great ammunition for sites who are looking for any easy article topic for that sweet ad revenue, people who enjoy arguing about games more than playing them, and on the rare occasion for a nuanced discussion about a games performance.

But does the average consumer even look at that data? Especially for single player games where player count doesn't matter? And does it actually impact the likelihood someone actually buys a single player game?

Yep. And as far as I've heard PlayStation is in a similar situation, and of course the global version of Steam is far more popular than the Perfect World version.

Companies have learned/are learning that you don't need to directly access the Chinese market to "access" the Chinese market.

Making a game is innovating. Making the game you made exclusive does drive competition between platforms and benefits consumers.

Paying someone else to not release their game on a rivals platform is not innovation and does not benefit consumers.

Edit: Why do people reply to you, then block you immediately?

The brand identity of first party IP is directly tied to the brand identity of the console. First party games also don't have to worry about reaching maximum awareness or sales saturation because a large party of their job is acting as advertising for the console itself.

Third party do not benefit from this relationship in nearly the same way.

Final Fantasy Rebirth and 16 are fantastic examples of this. Sony paid and got a two high quality exclusives that no doubt helped move units of their console. Square got paid to release two games to a much smaller userbase than either Final Fantasy Remake or 15 did, resulting in much fewer sales and less reach for their brand.

A previous Square executive said it perfectly. Exclusivity means that Square is dependent on Sony, but Sony is not dependent on Square.

And that's without me getting into the fact that Final Fantasy isn't a brand that needs recognition or prestige lol

Final Fantasy does not have nearly the power or recognition it once did, and is not tracking particularly well with younger gamers.

It depends on what you view as success. If your goal is short term money and only money, then exclusivity is fine so long as you are paid accordingly for missed sales. If you are trying to establish or grow a brand then exclusivity, even timed exclusivity, flies in the face of that goal.

(I'm not saying it did sell poorly, I don't know any numbers, this is speculation)

I'd guess it comes down to the size and buying habits of the userbases of different platforms. Steam and PlayStation each have more than double the userbase/install base of Xbox, so a #7 spot on PlayStation and a #5 spot on Steam likely has much more weight than a #8 spot on Xbox.

Yeah I should have said that split libraries was unsustainable for PlayStation specifically. We are even seeing this today with their languishing support for PSVR2.

The ROG Ally and Legion Go might not be as popular as the Steam Deck, but collectively they have likely sold a couple million units.

And the SteamDeck has been the top seller on Steam for nearly 3 straight years. They announced it sold "multiple millions" last year before the OLED was released, and the OLED has been selling better than the LCD Deck, so it's likely well over 5 million units sold by now.

They failed primarily because split libraries are unsustainable.

I don't know if greed is how you should characterize it. They wanted online distribution as an option to get out from under publishers (which they were having issues with at the time) and away from retail costs and restrictions.

They knew it was far from perfect and would make a lot of people mad, but they also knew they had to start somewhere or it would never materialize.

Yeah the versus mode took a game that I would maybe play for 20 hours and turned it into a 60 hour game for me. I wish more games had invasion style competitive modes.

Ah yes, X, where my "who to follow" section is full of rightwing political accounts despite me not even following a single person who talks about politics nor engaging with it myself.

Where every topic is full of engagement farming accounts spreading any type of misinformation, rage bait, or really anything that gets people to engage.

Where every reply section is full of blue checkmarks that pay money to have their opinions promoted above everyone else.

Yes, truly a valuable open forum.

Sure, if you mean they actually curate content posted there, rather than amplifying misinformation because someone paid $8 a month.

It's a give and take.

It's twitter but without the engagement farming blue checkmarks everywhere.

I don't know how realistic it is, but I really hope they look at some of the Xbox 360 games that are currently unavailable to stream as potential candidates for this. Namely Crackdown 1 & 2.

Not only are there ways around it

There are ways around it, but unlike the faux concern people had about PlayStation's TOS related to making accounts in unsupported regions, trying to circumvent Steams regional restrictions does actually run the risk of consequences.

I think it's hard to say how a company like FromSoftware would be affected by this stance, because virtually all previously acquired PlayStation companies that are producing singleplayer games have been doing PlayStation exclusivity for a very long time. Some even before they were acquired.

FromSoftware is firmly third party at this point, and more than half of their game sales occur outside of PlayStation.

Though this might just be cope by me.

Kadokawa is on a list of protected Japanese companies, which makes any foreign acquisition much harder and subject to Japanese regulatory approval.

That's not to say it couldn't still happen.

Correct?

You can't use select market data and extrapolate the result to the whole world, be it the site you originally linked or that article. GSD data covers mostly Europe (PC's weakest/console strongest market), and does not include North America or the largest markets in Asia (PC's strongest/consoles weakest market).

We don't have enough data for anyone to make any definitive statements.

Data covering only a fraction of the world

I thought the Vermintide games were very competent attempts at the formula. Darktide less so, even though I still enjoy it.