PlayStation's live service mishaps spotlight the one area Xbox is dominating its rival

[Windows Central]

As PlayStation's live service ambitions are stumbling, it faces renewed challenges from a multiplatform Xbox.

PlayStation's live service mishaps spotlight the one area Xbox is dominating its rival : Read more

 

[Lurking_Lurker_Lurks]

Way back when the Bungie purchase announcement came from Sony, I had thought (especially based on the details of the deal), at least in regards to gaming it was largely a future proof for live service efforts. I still think that, but clearly one experienced studio, which is itself having reported issues currently, isn't going to help transition Sony to live service games overnight. Really that's just not possible. Live service games are far harder and more of an investment than publishers give them credit for. I don't think Sony will never crack the code, but it will be a while off.

Sony had made single player narrative driven games their bread and butter, and it has worked tremendously to keep fans happy and provide them a level of critical prestige. However, even Sony knows that they are projecting power more with issues on the horizon. Unlike Nintendo they aren't controlling costs and unlike Microsoft they aren't doing a ton to expand on other platforms, but like both consoles in the market they aren't exactly seeing masses of new gamers. Xbox has always done really well with social multiplayer games and down the line live service games. That was before purchases like Mojang (Minecraft) and ABK (pretty sure all ABK does at this point is live service one way or another). At the same time they've bolstered their single player showings and have really rounded out their first party lineup.

Sony is still getting there and in the meantime development costs keep increasing and first party releases have really lapsed. It's not even just first party live service exclusives which have struggled. Third party ventures like Babylon's Fall (I was excited for this one myself and quickly saw why Platnium Games' scalebound never went anywhere) barely lasted as well. The issue with live service is that you have to hamper down and support the game long term and you have to do this regardless of if it is an instant hit or not (and most aren't) to just build an audience. Those are difficult expenses to justify. Sony should be incredibly glad gamers are as entrenched as they are, and that they are attached to exclusives with Xbox's multiplatform strategy not going over well among gaming journalists and vocal gamers online. Because in a lot of ways their business practices as a gaming company are very shaky right now. I was not aware of just how much money had gone down the drain internally with all the canceled live service projects. Studios like the one for Concord were specifically bought for a live service game and then got shutdown when said game failed to deliver. Microsoft buying ABK and having the likes of COD is a whole different beast, but what should be really worrying for Sony is that Microsoft can release a game like Sea of Thieves on Playstation that is several years old at this point and dominate PS charts. A different console fan base less fixated on exclusives would probably really question whether it's a good move for SONY to allow Xbox games on PlayStation.

Once away from the "console wars" nonsense, opinions about certain games become clear with how they perform on the platform, and Sony only gets a 30% cut. If Microsoft can manage to properly shove Xbox logos front and center across all their first party games (including COD) or have a unified Xbox interface on all first party games (including COD) then as a brand they might really shake things up on Playstation itself. The reality is that on the PlayStation store right now, a LOT of the top games are Xbox owned. Meanwhile on the Sony side they've released a handful of true new single player games (as in not counting remasters) and have canceled or pulled the plug on a ton of live service games. I don't think the company is going anywhere and again I do think one day they'll evolve to match the gaming landscape as it is (for better or worse), but the massive divergence in strategies and positions of Xbox and Playstation should be noted. Using metrics of console exclusives Xbox is shooting themselves in the foot, and yet looking on the business side for growing as a gaming company one could say the same of Sony who continues to drag their heels on multiplatform releases and fumble with live service and multiplayer games.

 

[fjtorres5591]

Sony's issues remind me (in a less deadly way) of their zip-zagging strategies in the ebook reader "wars" as ebooks hit the mainstream. Early on they were market leaders and the benchmark for competitors. When Amazon introduced KINDLE they made sure to replicate all the Sony features and add one all their own (direct wireless store access) all at a Sony comparable price. Then B&N, late to the party, switched the business model to near-cost hardware and walled-garden content store. Sony stuck with their model selling a "premium, higher quality" reader at what became double the prive of the competition just as the reduced hardware costs evolved the market from a high end niche to a mainstream low-cost segment.

On the content side Sony had started with a proprietary ebook format and a walled garden store but pivoted to an interoperable format and open store, expecting the market to go open like PCs just as Apple and the big multinational vendors "coordinated" to protect pbook sales and limit ebooks to a high end 25% of the book world. (The DOJ took note and acted.) This effectively killed white label interoperative ebook stores, leaving Sony and Google as the main backers of the open commercial format.

So, to summarize: when the market wanted cheap access to mainstream ebooks, Sony sold a premium product and once the market plateau'ed they belatedly pivoted to a cheap basic flag-bearer (and decent enough) reader just as Amazon, Kobo, and B&N were introducing high feature premium models.

They lost sight of the real world market and over-valued brand value.
The hardware was good but not great and lacked the features the market valued while proving features the market didn't value at that time. Which they then dropped as the competition offered them.

They zigged when they should've zagged, and vice versa. In the end they just dropped out of the consumer reader market.

Gaming?
Flash back to March 1999 when Sony introduced EVER QUEST the first commercially successful MMORG usi g a 3D graphics engine. Successful being an understatement. It spawned several derivatives but sony sold off the division and IP in 2015 as it committed totally to the PS4 and one and done single player games.

Just as DESTINY opened the door for Live Service games to eat massive chunks of the entire gaming market.

Two years later, Sony started work on what became Concord. And five years later they started funding a dozen live service games and bought Bungie.

Since then, a range of live service games from the likes of Square-Enix, Sega, Ubisoft, EA, and other have been started, cancelled, or died a quick death. And Sony has, so far, cancelled 8 of the promised 12 and closed several of the associated studios with big layoffs at Bungie and elsewhere.

So, just as with ereaders, they lost sight of the market, zigged when they should've zagged and wasted a ton of money between the Concord disaster, a clear overpay on Bungie, and whatever they had invested over three years on the other cancelled projects.

It won't be deadly as with ereaders, but it has put the company Playstation cash cow, in a tight corner. And the faux pas comes at a bad time as game development (and studio burn rates) are increasing continuously, Nintendo and MS are expanding they content offerings, and PC gaming content sales are booming, while at the same time Sony's flagship exclusives (first party and paid third party) are seriously underperforming. Recent public bookkeeping is calculating that even the top selling exclusives have only tapped 6-8% of the PS installed base. Their highly touted 2024 GOTY game may have hit 2%. Maybe.

Consider that something like 2/3 of all money spent on Playstations is going to third party games and a majority of that is going to the legacy multiplatform live service games.

As for XBOX, has anybody even bothered to count the number of successful live service games in the XBox Catalog? Or tried adding up the number of active users?

Finally, MS has long targeted releasing 4 first party exclusives a year and came close last year, depending on how you count their releases, and look to possible double that this year.

Sony is promising one first party exclusive teach year. Not just this year. And a lot of their third party satraps aren't taking their exclusivity bribes anymore. Their games are too expensive and selling too slowly, if at all, to forgo Nintendo and Xbox any more.

Finally, considering it takes 5 years or so to cook up a AAA game these days the studios that were working on the cancelled projects are unlikely to resurface this decade. That is about a third of Sony's studio count.

Yeah, XBOX is dominating in one area.
And a few more the gaming media has forgotten to consider.
XBOX is not stopping there.

 

[fjtorres5591]

One more thing...
THE XBOX Ahab just announced she is leaving the FTC this month.
With Ubisoft hanging by a "SHADOW-y" thread and exploring a sale of IPs and units, don't be surprised to see Spencer keeping his checkbook handy. SPLINTER CELL comes to mind...
Maybe RAYMAN...

And let's not forget Microsoft's mobile goals.

 

[fjtorres5591]

Sony is still getting there and in the meantime development costs keep increasing and first party releases have really lapsed. It's not even just first party live service exclusives which have struggled. Third party ventures like Babylon's Fall (I was excited for this one myself and quickly saw why Platnium Games' scalebound never went anywhere) barely lasted as well. The issue with live service is that you have to hamper down and support the game long term and you have to do this regardless of if it is an instant hit or not (and most aren't) to just build an audience. Those are difficult expenses to justify.

No need to look further than FALLOUT 76, which looks nothing like the NPC-less PvP launch disaster and its recent five year anniversary brag of 20M activer players. (Thank Amazon and five years of regular updates, buff, nerfs, and pivots).

Beyond that, bear in mind that Sony's exclusives are being exposed as all PR and critic hype with so-so sales. Yes, 6 million sales for Spider-Man2 is pretty good, but less so when you factor in the development cost and Disney fees. Hence, no DLC and an early PC port.

Sony wants live service games because 30% of the third party games their faithful are actually playing is not supporting them with the net they need to keep the pipeline full. The time to invest in live service was 2014 not 2017, much less 2022.

And going after live service now, for 2026-28 at the earliest, might be more good money after bad considering game trends. There is good reason MS has been fretting over TENCENT rather than Nintendo and Sony. Consider RIVALS the canary in the coal mine if you weren't already aware of their reach.

Sony may be misreading the market yet again.