Uh oh! PlayStation president Andrew House departed recently and has been replaced with John Kodera, a Sony veteran whose previous roles include running Sony Network Entertainment. He’s largely a services guy, which bodes well for future expansion of the oft-maligned PlayStation Network – but it also means he knows a thing or two about microtransactions.
As part of a financial conference call to tie in with the company’s recent sales results, the platform holder talked about how significant the PlayStation Store is becoming to its revenue stream. And it noted that it’s making a helluva lot of money via the sale of microtransactions (or in-app purchases) in third-party games. Sony, of course, takes a cut each time you buy FIFA Ultimate Team packs or similar items.
However, it was noted that on the first-party side, the platform holder’s not really making a whole lot of money from in-game purchases, and under the leadership of Kodera it will be exploring this area. The platform holder obviously already offers microtransactions in games like MLB The Show 17, but it’s not exactly a common theme.
This statement worries us. Last night’s Paris Games Week 2017 press conference yet again highlighted the strength of Sony’s exclusive output, but if the manufacturer’s going to start selling us web refills in Spider-Man and beard shampoo in God of War then, quite frankly, it can do one. Not like this, Kodera – not like this.
[source konsolentreff.de, via dualshockers.com]
Comments 32
Bring back Andrew House!
This isn't going to end well!
He's off to a good start then.
I don't like it, obviously, but I am more worried that this might start to follow game design trends. Sony have funded some wonderful games that buck market trends like Horizon, Nioh, GOW, SOTC etc. Will games start to be designed to be open world grind fests? Sony need to fund the games that other publishers wont take a punt on.
@get2sammyb If you watch Pachtor Factor 81, Michael Pachter said he thinks that Andrew House was pushed aside, the reason being that investors and shareholders think that Playstation should have been even more profitable.
@HungryWolf Hah! Well, that's an insane and frightening theory. I'll have to watch that, is it on YouTube?
Awful awful move.
Unprecedented market domination makes companies greedy you know.
All aboard the Nintendo train. Choo choo.
@fchinaski Nonsense. It's nothing to do with market domination, all of the publishers are doing this.
And this is the reason why: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/10/microtransactions_arent_stopping_big_games_from_selling_well_says_npd
@themcnoisy Good luck with that! Nintendo will just sell you a $15 toy to unlock your extra costumes instead.
Who doesn't want to spend £35 on digital hats for an add on multiplayer mode, hell yeah!!!
@HungryWolf @get2sammyb in terms of profit yes, can you imagine the money they could make from a pro controller, it's insane they haven't bothered.
We'll have to see how this plays out, but a lot of first party games don't lend themselves to this business model.
If it changes what kind of games we start getting I'll be worried.
I told ya.
Oh pee off, John. Leave those single player games alone.
''Bring back Andrew House!'' Those were my exact thoughts when I read the headline...
Hello Darkness (Not Kingdom Hearts) my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again.
Seems pretty much inevitable to see this rubbish infiltrate all the big games now. Decisions are made solely on how they will affect revenue and not for any love of the media and I think we just have to bide our time until the model collapses. In the meantime I'll just continue to refuse to support games adopting this model and instead put my money into the games that actually are made for the players...
If this is the way Sony ends up going, I will have to consider skipping on the not yet announced PS5. Plenty of retro goodness out there to keep me content for years to come.
Dammit, this guy also is responsible for PS Now, the worst thing related to PlayStation recently, a service that is available on PC and not Vita, now he is praising microtransactions?
Is this guy wants to ruin PlayStation and console gaming or what?
What's next? "We don't care about exclusives, all of our games will be available on another devices." -.-
BRING BACK HOUSE! Er not House Music but Andrew House! I can't stand all this DLC CR*P and Microtransactions CR*P :-/ + When people were clapping yesterday at SONY's Show for the DLC stuff that made me SAD Especially half of games like Destiny getting the other half of the game you should of got in the first place
Noo get back here andrew house, don't leave us..
Come back Andy
@HungryWolf I watched the episode man, thanks for the heads up. Good to know Pachter liked and respected Andrew House.
@get2sammyb Yeah I didnt buy the ticket, more like loitering around the timetable with my backpack eating a prepacked sandwich.
They're also going to start reporting MAUs apparently, which is fine so long as they still report hardware and software sales as well.
Anyways, ugghh at microtransactions.
One of three things will happen by then, 1) MTs become more accepted that it won't matter. 2) It only goes as far as multiplayer games or 3) MT go away in majority of AAA games due poor sales.
This is really worrying. The fact that the majority of gamers (those not inclined to read gaming news and keep up with the industry details) aren't concerned about the prevalence of microtransactions means we're going to be targeted more and more. From the industry perspective, there's no reason not to make games filled with microtransactions if the majority of gamers are fine with it. They'd be mad to leave all that money on the table. Those of us that do care will probably be edged out on principle, relying on indie games to get our fix. If only there were enough of us to make a stand
You know what doesn't have microtransactions? Vectrex. So I already have a fallback strategy in case this new guy, let's call him Not-Andrew, decides to screw things up.
He should take note of the Disney, EA SWBF2 snafu
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