I'm saying PS5 is doing perfectly fine even with 2-year-old PC ports. "Destructive value in the long-term," yet despite everyone and their moms knowing GOWR and HFW would be ported to PC, they both sold more than their predecessors. It's been over 3 years since Sony has begun porting games to PC. When will it start hurting them?
They sold more than their predecessors...at launch. We don't have updated sales figures. Well, we kinda do for HFW and while it's outpaced the original's first year of sales, it wasn't by a gargantuan amount. Also FWIW Sony haven't actually committed to a public statement or stance that all their games are going to PC, the way Microsoft did. Nor do they need to or IMO, should they ever do so.
No, statistically, you're completely wrong. The PS4 virtually had 0 BC and kicked the shit out of the Xbone. Backwards compatibility is a nice feature to have but only a minority of console users play old games as demonstrated by their most played games. You don't see old-ass games except for multiplayer titles.
PS4 & XBO sales were pretty close in America & UK around launch, and exclusives-wise I'd say XBO had the better lineup for the first year or so consistently. Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Halo 5, TitanFall, Quantum Break and so forth vs. say Killzone: Shadowfall (which looked better than Halo 5 but didn't play as well), Infamous: Second Son (solid game, underrated even maybe), Resogun (solid game but indie-like with a somewhat bigger budget), Transistor (similar), Knack (lol). It got a port of Ultra Street Fighter IV in 204 but Killer Instinct was a brand new fighter at that time exclusive to XBO. PS4 didn't start consistently outdoing XBO in exclusives until around Bloodborne's release in 2015.
So the first two years were pretty close in terms of library wit both systems, and sales splits weren't as terrible for Xbox then as they are for Series today. Especially in markets like the U.S and U.K, where it stayed kind of competitive and even held up better post-2015 than what Series is looking to accomplish going forward this gen.
PS4 couldn't do BC for technical reasons, but it would've been there had Sony not switched to x86-64. BC might not get used by most people but most of the ones who use it, use it a lot. It's also just a natural pro-consumer feature to have, it helps with preservation over time.
Yeah, those 10 gamers who love PS5 games but will wait two years to play them sure matter a lot.
I think it's more than that and you can love a game while still not having FOMO to play it Day 1.
All irrelevant drivel. Show us where the PS brand is hurting. Show us those customers who flocked to PC and abandoned their Playstations. You can't and you two have been parroting this nonsense without anything to back you up.
Can't show you that because there's no fiscal data to show it. But I'm talking about what precedent it can set long-term if the trend continues, or accelerates.
And we already have a platform on the market which perfectly shows the damage such a strategy provides when pushed to its peak: Xbox. Look at those console sales. Look at the measures MS had to go to inject revenue growth into the division (massive M&As). You don't think de-valuing the console by making all their 1P games Day 1 on PC (and on Steam, no less) played a part in where the brand is at today?
Sony is porting these games exactly because they KNOW there's a subset of gamers who don't care enough about their games to buy a console but might buy them if they become available. These are the ones they're reaching; people who would have never become their customers in the first place and this is reflected by reality, something you two love to ignore.
Yet through that strategy long-term Sony could be converting some current console enthusiasts to shift to PC for the next go-round, if they know the 1P content will be there and don't really mind waiting a bit to play it. So it can have a deleterious effect in converting high-ARPU console enthusiasts into mid or low-ARPU PC gamers buying their games off Steam (prob through a sale).
But in doing so, not buying as much (or any) 3P software off PS Store, or subbing to PS+, or buying DLC and cosmetics for games off PS+, let alone skipping the console. That type of conversion is an L, not a W.
PS5 is selling well. PS5 exclusives are selling well. Their PC ports are doing meh number for the most part. Them damaging their brand by doing PC ports is pure fanboy cope.
No it's not. It's called Xbox. Just look at where Xbox is today; their PC ports aren't the only reason the console is struggling to sell, but it contributes to it.
We're just trying to make sure Sony don't fall into that same trap especially since, unlike Microsoft, they have no vested interest in the PC market (dominant OS, dominant graphics SDK, lucrative OEM licensing contracts, lucrative military/medical/scientific/business licensees, etc.).
For Microsoft, if every Xbox gamer decided to drop the console and go to PC, they'd still have to use Windows for their OS. That's still a customer Microsoft retains to a significant degree in their vertical ecosystem. That person still needs a PC that runs Windows, so either they buy a license for a DIY build, or buy an OEM box whose manufacturer pays Microsoft for a license. That person does all their purchases off Steam? Valve still has to use Windows APIs for the storefront, launcher, etc. They can try shifting Steam players to Linux but the vast majority will never leave Windows.
Sony has no vested interests like that on PC, and they rely on console revenue as a significant part of total corporate revenue. So running the risk of converting high-ARPU console enthusiasts to low-ARPU PC customers isn't worth it. Continuing the the ports of current-gen non-GaaS titles to PC (or accelerating that process) will make it happen.
