Many people on the various posts about the Sony leaks have been wondering what exactly all this means and why Sony is having issues. This post is designed to break some of the scattered info down to create an idea of where Sony is headed.
To understand anything about modern Sony, one needs to understand 3 key things:
The PlayStation 5 was released a little over 3 years ago, in that time 12 exclusives have been released.
The Game & Network Services (gaming) division is Sony's largest division, making about 26 billion USD of the 88 billion they made across the whole company in FY2022. It is also the primary driver of the company's growth. The Music division and the Imaging and Sensing division are also growing, but not nearly as quickly. The Electronics Products & Solutions division is a good source of revenue, but it's basically stagnant.
In April 2016 (April 1st lol), Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) was created to operate PlayStation (and pretty much the entire gaming division). This ended up effectively moving the HQ of the PlayStation part of the company from Japan (the HQ of SIE's two predecessors) to San Mateo, California, the HQ of the newly formed SIE.
Sony's PlayStation brand has always been a very strong performer in the gaming market, ever since the PS1. It has had it's ups and downs, but has always been a good source of revenue and growth that's been able to capitalize on the continuously growing video game industry. This is best shown with the fact that PS5 has sold way more units than the Xbox series X and S, about twice as many.
However Sony is actually 2nd in a 3 player race, Nintendo is absolutely crushing both Sony and Microsoft in terms of console units sold. The Switch has sold 3x more than the PS5 despite only being twice as old. In fact in 2023 the Switch has been estimated to have sold an extra 10 million units over the PS5, so the Switch's advantage is not all because of it's age.
The main reason is that many Japanese developers and customers started to switch to the Switch, this will be explained later.
No big deal, right? Sony can at least keep a lock on the American AAA market and claw back over the next few years, right? Well, that was probably the plan, until Microsoft did the unexpected: they changed the entire industry.
Microsoft has always treated Xbox as a side business, never really getting the full backing of the entire company. This is because Microsoft is 24x larger than Sony in terms of market cap. Even if Xbox had an overwhelmingly dominant position in the current console business, it wouldn't really be a huge deal.
Thus, Sony always remained safe knowing that they were too small and insignificant to be crushed by Microsoft, and that they also had a very strong Japanese following (of both customers and developers) that would never go team Xbox. That is of course until two different developments occurred:
Microsoft decided that the console business isn't important... but the entire gaming industry is. They determined that if they could get a large slice of the entire gaming pie, not just console money, they would be able to make tons of money.
The Japanese turned on Sony, and started to move to Nintendo.
Both of these developments are best explained separately, so I'll be making 2 different posts that will cover each side of this 2 pronged assault on Sony's lunch.
Which should I write about first:
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We all have an idea of M$ basically eating up the gaming pie with game pass. I'm interested in the Japan drama.
Still have no idea why people bought that waste of space. It does less and plays less than a computer desktop equivalent. How have sony fans not have necked themselves by now?
And gimme my demon's souls remake
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Ps5 and xboner still kick the frick out of any equivalently priced PC and will probably for their entire run. You can get them for <$450, which is what you'd pay for a graphics card alone on the pc.
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After all these years, consolestrags are still r-slurred.
You're paying a premium for its convenient GUI. Nevermind that you can do the same on Windows with a desktop. It's the fat laziness that counts.
Where "consoles" really shine are on shitty mobile devices like Switch and your phone. People's standards really are that low. We've basically got games that play themselves; you just have to tap the screen anywhere every minute.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
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Lol no. Look up console specs and get back to me on how you're building a comparable PC for even $1000.
PC pays a premium for greater control over their experience. Console players get a discount to have virtually no control.
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I already did this days ago when someone was sperging to the contrary about this. Don't feel like finding it, but you probably can if you look for "optiplex."
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Well two years ago my number was around $1800. Post GPU or GTFO
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NO.
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Surveys Richerd Stallmun
Warms my heart. homelessness services australia? Neither are the 500 Chrispeay Kreaymi βpoints of accessβ the American chain is planning to open across France over the next year.
Stuff like this always fascinates me because all those kangaroo frickers are acknowledging this as true and being the reality of how poore people there are treated, but I know those frickers will still act like Australia is somehow actually way better to the poore than us. Like even in my small town in the South we have enough support systems that only the absolutely most insane and methed out of our homeless can't find food and shelter for the day. How do they not realize that either these stories are absolute fiction or that their sense of superiority is completely unwarranted?
console pc? INDONESIA
sound. fighting://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/light-hearted-news-social-media-drawing-gen-z:~: Young
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Don't get me wrong I use PC cause I'm stacked enough it doesn't matter, but the value on consoles this generation specifically is insane. It's inarguable. A $200 laptop and a $450 console performs much better as a combo than a $650 PC, it's just how gpus are priced now.
Maybe after nvidia comes down from their high a bit more it'll be competitive. 6060s will probably beat consoles pretty handily.
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I can beat the price of a console with a refurb Optiplex and superior GPU for <$600, but most people in the market can't, so there's that. You raise a good point about tradeoffs: having a laptop + console instead of a desktop. I think most console enthusiasts simply take the hit in lower graphical performance (or they're used to it). Years ago, when I was playing PUBG on xbox, I hated the occasional drop in framerates. It caused me to lose so many little skirmishes because everything is stuttering, but xbox people are so used to it, they don't seem to really notice or care.
A lot of this debate seems to boil down to how much lower console users' standards are for performance, while believing that their console experience is superior or normal. They do win on ease-of-use albeit.
!vidya, console v PC shit.
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Idt consoles are the lower experience right now though. At least not meaningfully. Afaik they both handle 4K60fps, or HD at 120 fps. PC obviously gets access to the indie market but that's rarely the cutting edge of graphics. For PC the benefit is more in being able to multitask, stream, and use steam.
PC is obviously the premium experience but it is very much a premium that you pay for. Peripherals included (cause you already have a tv for your console), a decent PC from scratch is gonna run you $1k-1.2k these days, and it'll probably perform just a little better (maybe) frames wise than a console. Someone mentioned upgrading being cheaper than consoles, but even that's not really true. At a $300 price point (insane deal or refurb or something) for cpu/mobo/ram and a $400 for gpu, you're looking at $700 every generation.
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It's not nearly as steady, but it probably doesn't matter since a controller moves your POV much slower than a mouse. Console games also 'dumb down' settings, environment (how much you see of the map at a time), player count, NPC/enemy spawn rates and total numbers, and so on in order to accommodate for the less performant hardware. These all count as hits in quality, but if one's expectations are already low, then it doesn't matter.
RE: price,
If people really are that sensitive, they can find deals during holidays. I don't think consoles vary much in price for these events. Obviously, paying someone you trust $100 to build an equivalent PC for $500-700 is something else. Anyway, we'd have to compare performance to get a good price comparison. It's been awhile, but I don't think xbox let's you install FRAPS.
A lot of this debate comes down to ease-of-access. People are ignorant about operating systems and hardware, but I don't blame them. It's much easier buying an XBOX X for $350 (plus $50-80 per year)*. People tend to forget about that annual subscription price too.
* 2023 S series for same price: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Xbox-1TB-Console-Carbon-Black/dp/B0C7HKS2RF. Didn't look at the difference between the two.
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Maintenance only PC is probably cheaper, ig depends on how much you pay for electricity, but steam + not paying for MP helps a lot.
Games are usually tuned down for console but like on the development front. PC gets games that are made for console and not adjusted up for PC (usually they take performance hits when ported), so it's kind of a wash there. Other than RTX, i don't think most games have PC specific performance settings.
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If it's some simple like changing configuration files on enemy respawns and how much map is loaded at a time, then upscaling for PC shouldn't be a problem. It is kinds of funny when games are limited to the performance of a $350 system.
It's an old debate, and although console makers show their hardware specs, I've yet to see a proper benchmark equivalent to PCs.
They can lower costs with mass production, but it's still the same hardware available to PCs. There's also throttling issues, as with laptops, so I always wondered about having a proper comparison in terms of performance.
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The amount of extra time, mental effort, and space it takes to maintain a fricking windows desktop, no thanks
I'd rather keep my desk for work and let Microsoft build something that lets me sit in my couch turn on the TV and it works consistently every time and I don't have to update my shit to play Starfield or whatever. And I don't have to install EA shit and use three different game stores and tweak settings and etc
I dont want to think about that shit cuz I don't care.
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You do realize it costs less to upgrade a PC than to keep buying the next new shitbox, right.
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It's fricking ugly as shit compared to the PS3 and PS4, which are black and sleeker looking. No mom is putting this in her living room lol
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nothing compares to PS2 slim :\
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At launch it seemed like a good machine for its price, I literally got one instead of being arsed to update my pc because it seemed to be a good deal. I don't know if it actually was or not, but it seemed like it.
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I bought it just for demon's souls
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Ngmi
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