@SplooshDmg Yeah that's the thing. PS4 Pro happened because Sony was selling 4k TVs and the PS4 looked like garbage on them. They had to do something, and the Pro wasn't really all that much. It's biggest asset was covering for just how bad the PS4 was in general. X1X happened...for more complicated reasons. A because 4k TV and the X1 was even more horrible looking than PS4. B because Sony did so they had to respond. C because they needed something to invigorate the dead brand. And D because they needed to send a clear signal to customers and partners alike that they're back, they're serious, and they're committed to the business because everyone including me assumed they'd never make a console again. Switch clearly proved you can go on for 7+ years without improving the hardware and still sell a full house... Sony's watching. I'm sure MS is watching. Why R&D new consoles if the market says you don't have to? It's not like demand for the current SKU is slowing any time soon. And Phil said back when X was still "Scarlett" that they don't want to have to do a mid-gen again and that's part of why they went all out on "Scarlett". It sounds like doing a mid-gen kinda sucks, internally. Makes sense. Split focus, new R&D costs, having to absorb the costs of a launch and all the man hours involved. Dev complexity, new dev kits.... It doesn't sound like they want it any more than we do.
It's not like phones that you sell shinier hardware and reinvigorate interest every year. Apple doesn't need to worry about the software ecosystem and 5+ year dev partnerships to turn a $100M software project around.
Cost cut, revised slim models that run cooler, smaller, and have more storage are a given. But an actual performance tier.....I'm not sure that'll happen this time. I'm hoping not at any rate. If PS5 can get a die shrink so it doesn't need to be mounted as a rooftop unit, they can do away with the weaterproofing and really cut costs.
@SplooshDmg I feel 2022/2023 is where we'll properly see if Xbox's strategy is working. All those people who stocked up on 3 years of GPU by buying 3 years of Gold and upgrading to GPU for $1 will be having their subscription expiring around then.
@SplooshDmg Yeah, I mean Xbox sales were low enough in general that how many X1X sold probably doesn't even matter. Between that and all the X1X patch work, I assume the entire X1X was a financial loss from the outset that was rolled into the R&D/Marketing cost for XSX, because that's really what it was. It was a 4 year scramble to rebuild the entire lost generation into a launchpad for XSX, and most of the work for 1X made up the baseline for XSX. I remember Phil defending WiiU at some point saying "I wish we had those kind of numbers" lol.
For Sony, I don't remember numbers but I don't really think the Pro sold that well. Not badly, but probably not enough to warrant the cost in producing it. The peanut gallery likes to look and say "why wouldn't they make a newer tier and sell it for more and make more money upgrading people?" But that overlooks all the costs involved, as well as disruption to the existing business that may cost more both directly and in opportunity cost than just sticking with the same hardware. Especially when that new tier doesn't really sell that well.
Plus, 4k aside, last gen had the problem that it was the most conservative generation since the SegaCD. They were launching right out of the "Great Recession", were afraid to take a loss on hardware at all, Sony was practically on the verge of bankruptcy, had a shaky Playstation after PS3 almost ruined them, and needed to dispose of their Cell architecture quickly so they put out an incredibly lame barely an upgrade console. And with Matrick, somehow, inexplicably, MS managed to put out a console that was even worse.... I kind of see X1X and PS4 Pro as the same as the Switch. A "Do over" to pretend the first 4 years of the last gen never existed at all, except nobody actually bought the do over. Seriously those consoles were terrible. What we really got was an Intel version of a PS3/X360 with more ram and a slightly beefier GPU. Pro/1X is the console those should have been at launch.
If they truly did away with generations, had rolling upgrades forever like phones and PCs that were otherwise minimal, it could work, but I don't think "mid gens" really benefit the industry much and probably do the opposite. Nintendo's done it on their handhelds forever, but that's Nintendo, and even they didn't really do it this time around, they just have an improved kit for the same console.
This gen we're starting out with console that would cost a fortune to replicate on PC right now, and are only behind on the GPU since PC made a leap at the same time. But it's also kept from being widespread adoption because the PC GPUs are even scarcer than the consoles and cost double. It's a wildly different scenario.
I still am not sure where to place the whole "growing global gaming market" and it's future. I can't help but see another Wii spike, except spread across all 3 companies. Look at what the top 10 games in play time on PS5, and you have Fortnite, and CoD up there. With the ultra-niche Demon's Souls making #7 and Miles at #6 or 8, which has very little replay at all, it tells us just how far away #1 and #2 are from probably #4 and below. I think there's more people buying the hardware, but I'm not sure that new market translates well to software. Seires S's business strength will really come down to how well it sells GP. Fortnite isn't going to make it much cash. No purchase, No gold, and just a cut of royalties. The price will certianly make it attractive in secondary markets like India, but I'm not sure how well it will translate into software sales, which is the real meat and potatoes to the bottom line. Games are still crazy expensive in those markets. People will buy few and stick to F2P largely. And piracy, of course in many such markets, though digital only prevents even that for the most part. Again it comes down to the ability to push GP I think. So far I don't think we're seeing more units shipped. In fact we're seeing less. It looks like a lot of retailers got their last shipments in Sept-Oct. More units may have been produced, but they're sitting on container ships or docks somewhere if they were. Sony's moving some by air freight, so they're getting faster resupply, and probably producing more.
One thing that I think the game release delays, the slow fulfillment of console demand, the cost of development, and the profitability of reselling old games, BC, GaaS, etc will change is the pace of the technology arms race. Until now it's been about games targeting bigger, better, faster, shinier, newer. Move away from the old tech and the old games and sell newer shinier fancier games. But now, I don't think there's much push to move onto newer and better. PCs are stuck on HDD and old GPUs because SSDs are static in extreme price (and most consumer SSDs have terrible write limits and in many cases write slower than HDDs) GPUs cost more than scalped consoles, and scalped cost more than whole PCs used to, the consoles are hard to get, Sony's sticking with last gen largely through 2022, most publishers are, too, MS is pushing forward but mostly because they don't even have much of a last gen install base, the jump expected in PC hasn't happened. I think the industry is a lot more content staying where it is and less eager to race to the next tech advance, now. Last gen was different. They wanted to run away from Cell & PPC as fast as they could to Intel so cutting off the old consoles was a boon, not a hindrance.
If the chip shortage lasts into 2023 (Intel has said that's basically the earliest hope now), that means these consoles will be "new" to most 2.5+ years into launch. Sony probably won't push generation defining games until then. And most publishers will follow that lead. And few would be willing to re-buy new hardware as an upgrade at that point with most being a year or less into new hardware. Yeah the rich people that buy any new tech will, but even as whales it's probably not valuable. Especially if the hardware is sold at margin or even at a loss ,it doesn't help at all. And launching a mid gen beyond year 4 really wouldn't make sense unless they're going for a 10 year gen.
This is probably make or break in that they have to decide are they doing gens or not after this. If yes, they have to decide to make this a 10+ year gen with a mid-gen, and drag it out, normal gen with no mid-gen for 7 years, or decide to abandon the gen without it ever really maturing and just move on with a short gen of 5 years or so. Or if they're leaving generations they can just start rolling out modest updates every few years and nobody with a current console really benefits much from the next revision. Windows 10 is the last Windows, and Surface has no versions. Why not treat the same with Xbox....until the next numbered version?
@Grumblevolcano Somehow I doubt that all the people who did that total more than 5% of the total GP market, worldwide. That's one of those "One Simple Trick" things that internet dwellers do and the mass market wouldn't even think of.
@SplooshDmg True about multiple generations, but I think that's the steady, regular growth, over years, not the sudden boom in numbers recently. I think one has to be careful with the numbers, and I think hardware is the wrong metric to track since F2P and the like demands hardware equally but doesn't really feed the ecosystem and associated companies the same way. And we rarely see regional numbers. Of course total global numbers are higher if you're selling in more countries around the globe, but it doesn't really mean there's a particular growth in the existing market. Software sales is probably a much more reliable indicator, and regional software sales moreso.
I'm sure a lot of people are playing BC games, but I'm not sure many BC games would be games that would rank top 10 in total play time, really. Certainly not the top 5. Any game big enough to really hit that list almost certainly has a PS5 version. Unless Days Gone is suddenly competing with CoD for play hours.
The 2 new games figure probably came from me but it's a hard number, yeah, just take the attach rate / install base across any platform and you'll almost always end up around that number. Obviously the install base numbers can be inflated, such as with RROD/YLOD causing more consoles to be sold than were actively in use, and the PS2 being bought by many as a DVD player, Wii as a Netflix player, etc. But as an average the number is solid. True there's a 30% cut in the store on mtx and with so many players f2p makes a lot of money, which I still find weird. I've never once been tempted to buy a cosmetic anything in a video game. Horse Armor was the first I'd heard of it. I mostly don't redeem my preorder goodies in a game, ever....it just...never even makes sense to me that it exists at all. It's not like I don't see how it makes money, by the numbers, it's that I don't understand why anyone buys any of it at all, or sees it as desirable. I mean, cool, they're subsidizing my products for me. The best meal is a free meal as long as it's not poisoned. But....just....why?
@BlueOcean LOL, that's a lot of Nintendo gear for a Nintendo hater
I know. The members of the NSF on NL are totally nuts.
It was interesting reading your hardware inventory. Some things I already knew. I was very little when my father gave me the SNES (now it's also yellowish but as you know we have the best-looking model! 😝). I have kept all Nintendo consoles except the portables ones that I've been selling, same for the Xbox One and Xbox One X. I felt a bit bad getting rid of the Xbox One X because it was Xbox One (my first Xbox) perfected. Oh, I also have a (modded) SNES Classic 😍.
@SplooshDmg "XBox = Minecraft" And just like that I feel like booting my WiiU.....
Anyone who has this avatar is definitely fiercely daring:
echsbokz haz no gaemes! Evil "gamer" Phil is buying all the studios and keeping games from gamers!(TM)
@BlueOcean The multicolor SNES may be the "real" Super Famicom, but I'm partial to my boxy purple box. The whole aesthetic and color scheme really brings back the whole sense of time of that era. And it was a much nicer era than today! Back when that released cars looked like this:
So it fit the American aesthetic of the time. You look at an NA SNES and you know what era it came from. The Genesis OTOH looked spacey and futuristic. It' looked like the 80's version of "sci-fi" as it would appear when populated by studded leather jackets and mullet-fros
Oh, I did forget my SNES mini. I didn't really get it as a console so much as an ornament. And a bit of recompense. I still had my original NES and SNES boxes (they were humongous!), but they also got caught in the floods that took out the Atari so they're quite mildewed now
@NEStalgia Actually, that car and the American version of SNES also look great! The American 90s are awesome and worldwide popular thanks to Hollywood 😁. Asia in general has always been the tackiest thing ever (white, round, shiny...) but I love the Mega Drive design. Sega was a great console designer and although I never had a Sega console, my friends and cousins did (and PS2). Sega was even more popular than Nintendo here.
I wanted to get the Mega Drive Mini but it was sold out everywhere! That really annoyed me because SNES Classic was available for years. Even today, I still try to find a Mega Drive Mini (the European version) but it looks like Sega just made a batch. In Japan and USA it seems to be available (at least, online) but here they are impossible to find.
@BlueOcean Haha, yeah, I really liked that era's design. Everything is so generic today by contrast, it had personality back then. Around the late 80's "European" style cars started arriving even from American mfrs....people mostly did not like them.... it was like selling Halo to Fortnite kids...
I do love that Megadrive design. It was 80's tacky. But I adore 80's tacky. Neon colors, that spaceship black. The ridiculous "too cool for school" look. Even the fonts. That's why I'm glued to Yakuza 0 I think. It's the Japanese version but it's all 80's tacky everywhere and I'm like "I'm HOME!" But every time I see the Genesis I think of the Gravitron ride at amusement parks and carnivals. The real 80's version, not hte remake, the one that looked like the front of a Metallica record. Record.
It's weird that I didn't really want the Genesis Mini, but wanted SNES Mini. I still have both original consoles. I think it's because the SNES yellowed and the Genesis still looks new
@NEStalgia I bought Yakuza 0, I still have to play it (it or any)! Even as a kid, I was a bit shocked because of some of the text on Mega Drive: headphones, volume, numbers... perhaps because I was comparing it to SNES and it looked like a Discman. Master System II is the console that really looks like a spaceship, don't you love that? I'm a bit obsessed with getting the Mega Drive Mini because I don't have the original console. Any chance that Sega restart production to celebrate Sonic Origins (my most anticipated game of 2022)?
I've realised that I'm a Sega fan without Sega consoles but aren't Sega fans on Xbox anyway?
@BlueOcean Yakuza/Judgement is such a great series! I said on ps few weeks ago that if I were stranded on a desert island with just one series it would probably be the one. Sploosh and I were talking about it a while back and agreed that it reminds us of classic bioware design from the kotr/Jade empire era.
It's a massive time sink, especially 0 if you do everything. I'm at 120h I think? The economy chapters can really take time, especially the cabaret/hostess one with the cooking mama/overcooked style mini game to grind. It's just a great game with a great sense of humor, and not many series can pull off being half a serious mob drama and a comedy all at once.
Idk why Sega produced so much less mega drive minifor the uk then they did Genesis for the us and Japan. Especially since uk was one of their strongest locales and and Japan one of their worst. I sort of don't expect them to produce more though. Or maybe they just didn't sell out here and Japan because the only people that cared about it are a minority niche among old gamers? They don't seem super committed to the idea, and the revenues from doing what Nintendoes with nso+ are probably far bigger than the minis.
I think Sega fans are just on PC now 😆. There's a split between franchises to Nintendo and Xbox, but Sega seems to be as PC focused as Bethesda and cdpr these days! Except for Judgement. There's this whole legal entanglement with the lead actors talent agency that won't let his likeness appear on PCs where the internet will to impure things with it....
I forgot how much better than the S it truly is. It's like a generational divide. I like the s, it's cute, it's amazing for the money, bit it's not just A little below the x is a lot below the foliage, draw distance, Poppin,etc in Forza is light years apart. Yakuza 0 is worlds different when not blurry and jaggy. With s I have a machine to play in in emergencies but it's not a real stand in.
They did somehow put several screwdriver gouges in the back of the case, and not near any screws. They removed the full product label on the rear and replaced it with a new one with the service date on it. Lots of prying of things. They put it through a qa checklist which is nice. Hopefully it won't break again but who knows. It's just nice having it back. And in time for Halo too!
Otih I've learned to appreciate the PS5 more now as well. Though I'd started using it more before the x died anyway.
@SplooshDmg Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong but I see that Xbox's strategy is essentially getting things to the point where the Xbox brand is Game Pass rather than the current setup where Game Pass is just one part of the Xbox brand.
@NEStalgia I think the whole NSO mess is an investor forced decision, that includes the extremely slow dripfeed of content like the Expansion Pack only getting 1 game next week.
@Grumblevolcano I've seen that theory before, but I don't really see it. I mean maybe from a brand recognition standpoint that's where it will end up going, but there's a lot of "X" logos and the color green everywhere for them to be looking to step away from the Xbox brand. If anything it seems closer to the Wii era when Nintendo tried hiding the Nintendo brand in gray-on-gray, and "Wii" became the brand they were known by to the masses, the brand that was prominent on packaging, etc. Game Pass is the differentiator from the competition, and the principle feature that unites all their products, but it can't fully stand alone unless they're planning to move streaming only, but they haven't even announced plans to allow streaming of purchased games (I assume it's inevitable) and a lot of the focus of Game Pass seems to be to encourage said purchases. The market and technology is at minimum a decade from that becoming universal, let alone doing it at 4k HDR etc, that would detract from Windows Store which is a big part of their strategy in general, it would diminish PC hardware and Windows sales which has always been important to the "WIntel" model. They've done a lot to strengthen "Xbox Game Pass" as the brand rather than just "Microsoft Game Pass".
It's obvious Game Pass is the most important single piece of the Xbox brand, but I don't see them making it the actual object of the brand any more than IE/Edge is the actual object of Windows. A main pillar, but not the total package. Xbox definitely doesn't refer to physical consoles anymore, but it's a catch-all for all Microsoft gaming products and services available across all platforms and formats. Plus it's a simpler, much more recognizable brand. I could see it changing to Game Pass as the more recognizable name maybe 20, 30 years from now when game streaming is as standard to games as Netflixing is to movies with the concept of buying hardware to play a game on being a thing kids have never heard of and can't imagine why old people did that, and a brand restructuring going with that. By that time Mario and Zelda will be Peacock exclusives, free with Xfinity Triple Play, and Ratchet & Kratos: Horizon of Tsushima feat. Spiderman will be on Netflix, Hulu, and AppleTV.
EDIT:
NSO....I really have no idea what the thinking behind that is. Maybe it's investor forced, but it's really just so weird at this point. That expansion pack is the worst gaming product since the UForce for NES. But people will buy it because it says Nintendo. I can't imagine how much of the mass market cares at all about playing Genesis games and N64. Not enough people cared about it when it was cutting edge, so I can't imagine people care about it out outside a tiny niche (and if you care about Sega games you already have them on like 3 other platforms.) So it's basically just an expensive subscription for a single game DLC that costs less than the subscription alone. But I'm betting one year of being part of NSO+ will net Sega more money than the entire Genesis/Mega Drive Mini product line...
And since it probably doesn't exist in the UK I should mention Peacock is the Comcast-NBC-Universal streaming service they just launched and are trying really really hard to make happen. Like really, really hard. And Nintendo is deep deep in bed with Comcast at this point, making both their theme parks (Universal Studios), and their movies (Illuminations is a subsidiary). Comcast is the US cable and internet pseudo-monopoly largely responsible for most of the US being on what the rest of the world considers 90's internet speeds at high prices with low bandwidth caps, preventing streaming from working well, and all around politically connected lobby group representing one of the US's worst companies at their absolute worst. And yes, we actually have a streaming service/TV network called Peacock, named after the peacock logo that the NBC tv network has always had, and completely ridiculous as eventually one can assume common vernacular will shorten it to "oh, are you watching that show tonight? It's only on the 'coc....." err, mod unfriendly...I'll leave it there...
@NEStalgia I'll read and reply later but I forgot to include the PS4 (launch model) in my list. I don't know how did I forget if it's the only PS I have and it's louder than the vacuum 😂.
@SplooshDmg You mean a niche of people that have been convinced to sustain themselves on Monster Energy Drink, Burger King, and Taco Bell, alone are jittery and hysterical? I demand evidence of this baseless claim.
What I don't get is Microsoft's general direction is providing more value, by basically subsidizing gameplay like an insurance sales model where everyone pays the blanket fee and shares the risks (and has anyone ever said insurance isn't profitable business?) - they didn't reinvent gaming so much as the games sales model. I understand why the industry wants to push back on that, especially where existing fianciers are depending on current payouts, but how on earth is the games community against that? Instead of hating on MS for doing that, shouldn't they be demanding Sony and Nintendo DO do that even if we know it's not practical to expct it of them? Especially in light of Nintendo's expensive subscription to a single DLC + 90's Sega games? Some people do just that, but not the internet mob at large.
@BlueOcean A loud PS4 is better than a 100% silent series X though!
EDIT: Also, of interest, I'm not sure whether it's standard procedure in a repair to wipe the SSD just as a default step, or if they actually replaced the mainboard with the SSD onboard and not (or not only) the PSU. But the SSD came back formatted requiring me to setup the console like a new console through the app when I started it and download games again.
@SplooshDmg I think a fair amount of the skepticism about Game Pass performance is down to Microsoft always shouting from the rooftops about their big accomplishments (like FH5 and Halo Infinite player numbers recently) but have been silent on Game Pass numbers since January. It may give the impression that Microsoft aren't happy with the current subscriber numbers this year.
@Grumblevolcano I thought they gave numbers a few months ago, and it was still an impressive number, but it fell below their astronomical projections. The whole thing reminded me of Squeenix who always sets projected sales that everybody and their dog knows have no chance of ever happening and then they act disappointed and surprised when it doesn't.
I think their continued focus and push on GP, and improving its value shows their confidence in their subscriber numbers. Not that they didn't seem confident in Zune... TBH, with Sony now trying to move into the GP competition game, I think like with console hardware itself, both companies may be willing to loss lead and subsidize for a while to one up each other and get their subscriber bases up so long as that subscriber base keeps converting into extended purchases of games and mtx. For MS that comes in the form of studio purchases and adding big new games to the service and for Sony that might come in the form of adding massive amounts of content to sweeten the pot. Maybe Sony gets the Ubi games service included where MS doesn't, etc.
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Topic: Uhh guys, my series x just died
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