Comments 1,566

Re: Sony Steps Up PS5 Shipments in an Effort to Avoid Shortages Amid US Tariff Uncertainty

ChrisDeku

Tariff’s are basically a type of ongoing Prisoner’s dilemma. The problem with the Prisoner’s dilemma if that if you’ve managed to make it to a state of equilibrium where everyone is choosing “Co-operate” then there will always be that one guy who thinks “ Ok, I’m going to screw everyone over for my own gain”. However this doesn’t actually work in trade because decisions are not one off decisions made in private, they’re made openly and everyone can respond to it. So now we just spiral down into a worst case equilibrium because that one guy thought he could beat the system when the system is unbeatable.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

@Gryzor

Also, Bamco’s current “Ni No Kuni II” sale on Xbox sits at double the price of the PSN-version, which makes little sense from a publisher’s point of view

It does make sense because it's a newer game on Xbox. When games get ported to new systems they tend to start back again from the full price. It released on PS 5 years before xbox.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

@Godot25 there's no "proper discount". PSN credit on sale means every single product on PSN is discounted all the time.

The example with Cyberpunk completely misses the point. That's because of digital stores sales cycles, something I already said should be addressed. Almost no one is buying cyberpunk at full price on a digital storefront, people wait for the sales price to cycle back around. Cyberpunk ultimate edition on xbox store has a sales price of £38.99. Also worth noting that this edition is currently £37.69 on PSN and with a 14% discounted credit it would cost you £32.41. So even though keys can be bought for Xbox it hasn't driven down the price on the official store anymore than psn(less actually) and the discounted PSN credit allows you to double up on savings and proves a more efficient system in this case.

This is the key point: key selling only leads to small gains in cost, it doesn't fundamentally alter the underlying market conditions. Legislation by lawmakers can target the underlying market conditions, and can make the stores more consumer friendly in numerous ways. This is massively more effective than the effort of forcing third party stores.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

If I want to buy PS Plus cheaper (for example), I need to pay full price wait for Sony to drop prices of PS Plus two-three times per year. But if they sold PS Plus memberships through digital codes, I would be able to save more and more often like I used to in the past

You can literally buy PS Plus at a discounted rate 365 days a year. You go and buy PSN credit from Shopto at like 14% off then go buy PS Plus on PSN. If you buy it when PS Plus is on sale on PSN you're actually getting a double sale. £100 for PS Plus Extra for a year at 30% off on PSN is £70 and you got £70 credit at 14% off, making an effective price of £60.20.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

@Gryzor

Valve, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo significantly jacked up the prices, cause their shops have effectively become monopolies

None of those companies increased prices. The publishers of the games increased their prices. Making more storefronts wouldn't change this bahviour. A publisher sets prices independently of how many storefronts exist. That's why it's important to make decisions that actually effects the real underlying market conditions.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

@Nalim Thats because major discounts need to align with store wide sale events. That's one of the points that I believe needs to be addressed. In the instance you mentioned I would guess they applied the maximum allowed discount outside of the specified sales event period. Historically it has been hard for indie developers to discount frequently on PSN because there aren't a lot of sales for indie games and it can be hard to fit into other sales categories.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

@Godot25 Buying credit at 15% off and using it to buy PS Plus is exactly the same. The added benefit is all purchases end up going through the PS store checkout process, and are all governed by the same rules and restrictions, and it's much easier for market intervention in this way.

I said it it leads to a lower price, but not a lower rrp. It doesn't effectively change how the market arrives at prices or makes decisions. The publisher will make the same money if it sells you a key at a discounted price or full rrp through psn. That's just a retail discount with the storefront taking the hit to their profits. Massively changing the system for such a small price reduction is not particularly valuable when you can just have one store and directly intervene with it as a lawmaker.

Most of the price difference is just about digital stores being on sales cycles rather than permanent price decreases. That's something that can be fixed directly or indirectly by making the stores more transparent on prices.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

@get2sammyb You’d definitely see some price reductions, but it wouldn’t be a significant change to the market. I think it is a lot better to force the marketplaces to be more consumer friendly and have policies that target how they operate. With one central place to sell it does make it easier to legislate for consumer friendly policies. Keys sold by third parties tend to bypass any protection and legislation. I.e. Steam offers refunds, but if you buy a key you are out of luck. So I believe it’s fine to only have one store, as long as that store is forced to be as consumer friendly as possible through direct legislation. Let’s see Sony forced to have things like automatic return windows. Maybe one day there can be a way to sell digital games to other sellers through a marketplace that gives a cut to the platform holder.

Re: PS5 Maker Faces Lawsuit Over So-Called 'Sony Tax' on Digital Games

ChrisDeku

This is a fundamentally flawed argument because Sony doesn’t set the prices of any third party games. The publishers are free to sell at whatever price they want, to reduce the permanent price any time they want, and to put it on sale during specific sales periods.

Having codes available wouldn’t fundamentally change the market, just have all the exact same prices but with a small discount applied after price setting. The base pricing would all be the same though.

The areas to target would be allowing auto-returns within a certain playtime(2 hours seems reasonable) and allowing publishers to discount prices at any time they want with complete freedom, and not be tied to specific sales. Also, another idea I just thought of, the marketplace should be forced to show people the lowest previous price of the games. So if a game had been discounted to $30 in a previous sale then that price would be listed as the previous lowest price. That makes sales prices more transparent and is less likely to capture full price sales from people that don’t understand how the digital marketplaces operate.

Re: Sony Hits Back Hard at Bungie Lead's $200 Million Lawsuit

ChrisDeku

@themightyant I'm not sure about wanting to fire him, because they specifically put those offers together to retain key staff and he was the director of Marathon.

Unless Marathon was going poorly and needed a rethink then it seems he was one of the staff they deemed important to them.

Re: Sony Hits Back Hard at Bungie Lead's $200 Million Lawsuit

ChrisDeku

@Ultimapunch You would never see a complaint like this from a Japanese Studio because women in Japan are trained to take this kind of harassment and never complain by their oppressive patriarchal culture. Also, pretty much every studio in Japan forces all employees to sign NDAs that makes it illegal to talk about anything within the work culture.

So, only anonymous reports exist and mostly Japanese studios are still the worst in the world for crunch culture(in Japan it's considered very rude to leave the office before your boss) and the average wage is about 50% of a US/UK dev. A Japanese new graduate at a big developer(Capcom, From, bandai namco etc) actually makes less than the UK minimum wage, so less than someone working in macdonalds.

Re: Xbox Games on PS5 Is a Win for PlayStation Owners, Says Yoshida

ChrisDeku

@batosaims https://www.mobygames.com/game/217251/helldivers-ii/credits/playstation-5/?autoplatform=true

I'm not counting how many employees are listed from Sony but it's literly hundreds across SIE and Creative arts. Nixes employees are also credited and SNSystems(make Sony development tools).

Also half a dozen outsource studios are listed, ones that commonly work with Sony and have direct relations with them, based all around the world, and Arrowhead would never have the resources or connections for this kind of support.

Re: Xbox to Put PS5 Logos in Future Showcases, Says Phil Spencer

ChrisDeku

@batosaims You can’t wrap you’re head around a corporation being economical with the truth because they like making easy money? The ghost of Tsushima directors cut let them repackage the game as a full price($70) PS5 game and it had generated almost $150m in its first 6 months. There are new games that don’t generate that kind of revenue.Alan Wake 2 took 15 months to hit break even at €80m.

Re: Xbox to Put PS5 Logos in Future Showcases, Says Phil Spencer

ChrisDeku

@batosaims lol yeah bundles are why they sold 20m copies 😂

I guess halo was never bundled, that must be why it never sold even close to 20m. If only Microsoft knew the secret, they could release some games that sell more than 1/5th of them.

The insomniac leak even showed how much revenue games make.Theyre all making profits in the hundreds of millions. Horizon: Zero dawn cost €45m to make and generated close to $500 m net revenue. Miles morales cost $81 dev cost and it made $231m in digital sales only in its first 2 years.God of War: Ragnarok had done $279m in digital sales in its first 6 months only, likely over $500m with physical.

Anyone who thinks those games don’t make massive amounts of profit are living in a fantasy world.

Edit: also from the insomniac leak, I almost forgot, the insomniac profit share from Sunset overdrive(Microsoft published game) $567. I didn’t miss out a zero. 567 bucks.Their 15% cut of Spider-man net profit got them $46.59m btw.

Re: Bad Handling of Demon's Souls PS3 Meant Sony Missed Out on Dark Souls Publishing

ChrisDeku

While this was a huge misjudgement from a video game professional I can see how it would be easy to think that about Demons Souls when you’re playing it completely blind without being assured that the game is actually very good, or being able to fall back on positive reviews to smooth out your misapprehensions. You really need to put trust in the game and believe in where it is going and what it is doing.

Re: Xbox Games on PS5 Is a Win for PlayStation Owners, Says Yoshida

ChrisDeku

@RiverGenie your opinion is irrelevant in deciding how good the output of the PS5 is, if it's based on subjective opinions then people can just say any old nonsense. Like I can say the Switch has zero good games and I'm not interested in objective opinions so I can't possibly be proven wrong.

Thats not how the real world works.

Re: Xbox Games on PS5 Is a Win for PlayStation Owners, Says Yoshida

ChrisDeku

@Vaako007 So if Sony had cancelled all the PS4 versions then they'd count as PS5 games but since they released them they don't count?

What a ridiculous comment. That's Sonys output during this generation. You can't just delete them because they allowed them to also be released on PS4. As if that somehow invalidates them as creative output that people can enjoy.

You're effectively saying that Breath of the Wild or MK8 don't count as switch games, or that Xbox never released a game on the series X/S for 2.5 years after it's release.

Re: Xbox Games on PS5 Is a Win for PlayStation Owners, Says Yoshida

ChrisDeku

@Toot1st You listed 2 games that came out before the Xbox Series X/S was out, Flight Sim and Gears Tactics and games like. If you’re including games that ported later then the PS5 has like another 5+ games in that time GoT:Directors Cut, Death Stranding: Directors cut, The Last of US ptI, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, TLOU ptII Remastered etc.

Also Diablo IV was published before MS even owned that company, and a bunch of other games were 80-90% developed before they were bought by MS. That’s not exactly testament to MS’s ability to get quality out of it’s projects.

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Performance on PC Has Not Been Amazing

ChrisDeku

While we are talking about PC ports and the value they bring to Sony it’s worth pointing out that in 2 of the last 4 quarters Sony got more revenue from “Other Software”(games on platforms other than PS) than from Physical Software(which includes royalties from all third party physical games sold on PlayStation).

Re: Xbox Games on PS5 Is a Win for PlayStation Owners, Says Yoshida

ChrisDeku

@Vaako007

Of course it’s a win for PS gamers. As Sony’s output has been rubbish this generation.

I guess if you repeat a lie often enough people will start believing it without question.

Here’s the games that Sony released since the start of this gen(OpenCritic score of 80+)

Demon’s Soul’s - 92
Spider-man: Miles Morales - 85
Astro’s Playroom - 84
Sackboy: A Big Adventure - 80
Returnal - 86
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - 88
Horizon: Forbidden West - 88
Gran Turismo 7 - 87
God of War: Ragnarok - 93
Spider-man 2 - 90
Helldivers 2 - 83
Stellar Blade - 82
Astro bot - 95

Here’s the games from the first 4 years of the PS4(only 80+ games)

Resogun - 85 (small indie-like)
Infamous: Second Son - 82
Helldivers - 82 (PS Vita game with simultaneous release)
Bloodborne - 91
Ratchet & Clank - 86
Uncharted 4 - 93
Gravity Rush 2 - 81
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 89

Xbox went 2 years of the Series X/s where they released zero major titles, 2020 and 2022. Probably only FH5 and Indiana Jones can be considered great games, and the later didn’t sell well and had mediocre player numbers.

Then you can look at big third party publishers like Ubisoft, EA, ABK(before buyout) and what exactly have they been producing this gen? What do their list of great games look like? Sony’s output has been absolutely stellar for over a decade now, people are just trying their hardest to live in an alternate reality. 6 out of the last 12 years a Sony published game won the most GOTY awards.

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Performance on PC Has Not Been Amazing

ChrisDeku

@Loamy PC ports make money over time, the peak numbers are generally quite unimpressive for a lot of games, especially games ported over later. RDR2 only peaked at around 55k player at launch but sold 10m+ on Steam. It has a big multiplayer component to make it more attractive though. Steam is big into games with co-op play and certain genres are popular like RPGs, strategy games, simulation, survival craft etc. Single player Story driven games are still a growing market and a lot of people don’t buy day one and wait for a sale.

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Performance on PC Has Not Been Amazing

ChrisDeku

@Godot25

So overall, game will reach higher CCU on Steam than previous game of same studio

Ignoring the fact that the Outer Worlds was a one year EGS exclusive. Pillars of eternity was over 40k peak concurrent users and that’s a niche old school isometric RPG.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a reasonable comparison, being that it’s the same genre and from a similar studio that’s now under the umbrella of a massive publisher. That game hit 89k concurrent users.

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Performance on PC Has Not Been Amazing

ChrisDeku

@Godot25 Gamepass has around 5-7m subscribers on PC, Steam has around 150m monthly active users. Gamepass is basically tiny on PC .

EGS might be a small part of the market but it’s much larger than the MS PC store, which basically no one in the entire world ever uses unless they also have an Xbox console and want the cross buy version.

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2's Performance on PC Has Not Been Amazing

ChrisDeku

@Loamy Thats average player count, Avowed is nowhere near that number.

Spider-man 2 massively undrrperformed due to the terrible port but it still had a peak player count of 28k. Avowed is around 17k and western RPGs are massive on PC(games like spiderman are not) and it launched day one.

Avowed did considerably better than Indiana Jones, Hellblade 2 and Forza Motorsport yet I don't see articles on Pure Xbox about how poor all the Xbox games do on Steam and that gamepass is destroying software sales of first party games.

Re: Xbox to Put PS5 Logos in Future Showcases, Says Phil Spencer

ChrisDeku

@StevenRogers12

More importantly Sony games usually don't sell well or make a lot of money which is why Sony ends up bundling them

Stop being a troll. God of war(2018), Uncharted 4, the Last of us, Spider-man, Horizon Zero Dawn all sold 20m+. That's more than any halo game has ever managed in history. About 3x the best selling Gears of War game.

God of War Ragnarok sold 15m in one year, Spider-man 2 sold 11m in 6 months, Helldivers 2 sold 12m in 3 months. Ghost of Tsushima was at 14m units at last reveal. These are expensive premium games, not $10 indie games that even if they sell 30m units they might net like $100m after everything. God of War Ragnarok sold 15m units in 12 months, all at full price or minimum discount and without having to pay 30% to a platform holder, that's probably like $800m net. That's why PlayStation divisions is about to register a $3b+ operating profit for this financial year.

Re: Despite Strong Criticism, Days Gone PS5 Is Climbing Up the PS Store Pre-Order Charts

ChrisDeku

@bindiana

I am sure Dead space remaster sold

It sold really poorly and the cancelled the remake of the 2nd(rumour with solid sources, EA deny) and rejected the Dead Space 4 pitch

The resident Evil 2 remake completely revitalised the series after 6 dragged it down and 7 initially failed to hit its launch target. The entire remake series would probably not exist if this one had did poorly.

The SH2 remake will probably mean that more games are commissioned after it's success.

Re: Xbox to Put PS5 Logos in Future Showcases, Says Phil Spencer

ChrisDeku

@Skorge1091 You're an utter clown who has no idea how the video game industry works

"studios that worked with Sony "

I love this copium, all Sony did is sign a check, if these studios had gone to EA Take Two any publisher they could have done the same, Sony did nothing that no one else couldn't have done

Yeah, that's why those studios make amazing award winning games ever year rather than just yearly updated sports dreck, right? Sony published the games that won the most GOTY awards in 6 of the last 12 years, I'm sure that's just random luck. Just like how every company that works with them makes the best games of their careers. Nothing to do with Sony having the largest network of support studios and infrastructure in the world. Visual Arts Group, huge support studios around the world, Ice team(engine support), Xdev worldwide, massive internal motion capture studio that even companies like capcom pay to use.

Was Starfield, Hellblade 2 or Avowed the best games those companies ever made?

Re: Xbox to Put PS5 Logos in Future Showcases, Says Phil Spencer

ChrisDeku

@Skorge1091 what a load of utter nonsense. So every game that would exist would be “rushed out” because they weren’t owned by MS? Right, ok, lad.

The Spider-Man game wouldn’t exist without Sony because they made it in totality, some other Spider-Man game might exist, just like the ten other Spider-Man games that are total garbage. Getting a great game instead of dreck is not zero sum.

Helldivers is owned by Sony 100%, and always has been. Helldivers 2 wouldn’t exist without Sony.

Returnal wouldn’t exist without Sony picking it up. Housemarque was making a live service game that looked terrible, it even had an open beta, It was called Stormdivers, and it was cancelled when Sony picked up Returnal.

These are exactly the kind of studios that worked with Sony and stepped up from small studios to major players, making their biggest most ambitious games ever.

Doom, outer worlds, Indiana jones etc. is just studios continuing to make the exact same games they’d have been making already and at the exact same scale and ambition.

Stellar blade would exist without Sony sure, no one is really claiming they were instrumental in the creation of this product. Most people negatively refer to it as “a paid third party exclusive”

Re: PS5 Fans Are Pondering the Point of Days Gone Remastered After Graphics Comparison Emerges

ChrisDeku

@EfYI here is a quote from Jeff Ross, the game Director(the other guy that got let go with Garvin) from an ign article

When asked by Jaffe if the ideas for a co-op mode would have been implemented in a sequel, Ross said: “It’s one of the things that we had in our pitch, yeah. It was the idea of a shared universe with co-op play.”

https://www.ign.com/articles/days-gone-2-was-pitched-as-a-shared-universe-game-with-co-op

Re: Those Classic Final Fantasy Remakes Are Reputedly Still in Development

ChrisDeku

@PushSquareUser Yeah, my ideology is Concord, you got me.

I feel like you will never be able to grasp the fact that I couldn’t care less about Concord or even remotely understand why it’s “woke”. It’s just not an important thing to me. it’s quite clearly some insane obsession of yours though. That’s why you need to get out into the real world and talk to real people. Your current thinking is not healthy, you sound like a crazy obsessed chud who watches those ragebaiting YouTube videos then review bombs the games they tell you to hate. Think for yourself for a second. Your state of mind is not healthy.