SeaDaVie

Seems to be about 60% down year on year consistently across all territories.

With the budget probably approaching $1b I wonder if this is actually going to make a big loss.

The last playtest was great. Most stuff can’t be talked about but somethings from the test have been made public by Bungie. Like the battle pass system, which do not expire and can be completed at anytime.

The questing got a big update and were really good too.

@Striker21 So, exactly one halo game has sold more than 10m copies and you have exactly zero sources for it being a low budget game. Is that a correct summary?

Activision made a lot of money from microtransactions (that includes candy crush saga btw) and no evidence that Call of Duty mainline games make the majority of money from mtx. Correct?

Sony's record revenue and profits are not due to an increase in the number of games sold in its ecosystem

Factually incorrect. The three highest selling software years of all time in the entire industry for a single platform holder is PlayStation 2021 FY, PlayStation Current FY, PlayStations last FY. All 3 years exceeding 300m. 2022 FY was also 303m, which is probably the all-time no.4.

@LogicStrikesAgain It’s based solely on peak concurrent user count by the looks of it. 1m would still put it behind pretty much every big Sony game. I doubt it will get to 4m which is what most of the big games hit or will hit.

Bethesda have always had a hard time accepting criticism. They famously only give review copies to select outlets and they generally have review embargoes up to the release date. So for them a shadow drop is a perfect strategy. Get the game into the hands of millions before anyone gets the chance to publish a professional review. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Bethesda are also famous for making absolute technical messes.

@Striker21 I'll be sure to let everyone in the industry know what Jeff Grubb said so they can know the benchmark for their game. Regardless if it cost $1b for CoD or $20m for a Returnal.

@Striker21

The 10 million sales milestone is widely regarded as the pinnacle of modern AAA game succes

Please post a link to this source or tell me where I can find this information.

Halo was able to generate these kinds of sales despite having a very low development budget

Source please

Call of Duty is a live service, and its primary source of revenue is microtransactions across all platforms, which is why it generates $1 billion in revenue each year.

Please provide a source that states the primary source of revenue is Mtx. CoD normally sells 10m+ in its first quarter, that's close to $1b on the sticker price alone.

Do you really believe that Call of Duty's $300-400 million budget

Budgets for CoD games that are known(leaked from court case)

Black Ops III (2015): Over $450 million

Modern Warfare (2019): $640 million

Black Ops Cold War (2020): Exceeding $700 million

This is completely wishful thinking, based on the assumption that the GTA VI release will increase hardware sales by 70% or something crazy like that

PS5 shipments are around 2m behind the PS4 launch aligned and the PS4 completely collapsed in its 7th year. GTA Vi will launch in the first month of the PS5s 7th year. It only needs to stop a sharp decline, won't need to increase sales at all.

@Striker21 You also have a completely skewed perception of what good sales are for a big game. Do you know that only one Halo game in history has exceeded 10m sales lifetime, and that is considered a huge success.

The new Call of Duty game sold approximately 3m units worldwide at release across Playstation, Xbox and PC. That game cost closer to $1b to make.

Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, and Miles Morales were cross-gen titles. Spider-Man 2 and Ghost of Yotei were the only PS5 exclusives that allowed you to accurately estimate the PS5 dynamic market

How is that relevant to the current financial viability of Playstation software sales? Those games were purchased, with actual money, they weren't free.

When the PS6 launches the PS5 will also continue to sell software, and this effect will only increase with time.

As previously stated, the term "console stagnation" refers to the fact that each generation of console does not outgrow the previous one, implying that the entire console market has reached its peak in terms of hardware sales and user engagement

Except the PS5 will likely sell more than the PS4 eventually, as it's sales are not dropping off and it will sell more consistently at the end of it's lifecycle, especially with the release of GTAVI. This means it will sell more than the PS1, the PS3 and the PS4. While not having a permanent price drop, and in fact raising the price multiple times.

Nominal sales of hardware are not a key factor in determining health of the market anyway. PS revenue and profits are at record highs. Monthly active users are at a record high. Subscription money and software sales are at a record high. Your concept of stagnation based on one simple metric(that isn't even accurate) is probably what a normal person would refer to as cherry-picking stats to suit your pre-conceived narrative. Something to think about.

@Striker21 Cherry-picked stats? The literal entire software sales for the platform.

It's currently the highest platform sales of any video game console in the entire history of video games. How is that a cherry-picked stat? Do you even know what words mean?

All PS5 exclusives have moderate sales of 3-4 million each before porting to PC, with the exception of Spider-Man 2, which sold 12 million copies

Spider-man 2 sold 12 million in 6 months, that's not it's total sales.

God of War: Ragnarok sold 15m units in 12 months.

Horizon: Forbidden West sold 8.7m in it's first year.

Spider-man: Miles Morales sold 14m+ as per the Insomniac leak.

Ghost of Yotei sold 3.3m in one month. It hasn't been delisted, and is in fact still a top seller on the platform.

Gran Turismo 7 sales are unknown officially, but it's believed to be 14m+

@Striker21

The current PS5 sales, both in hardware and software, are not exceeding the PS4 era, indicating that the market is stagnant

Last Financial Year Sony sold 303.3m units of PlayStation software, which is the second highest of all time for a single year, behind only PlayStation software sales in FY2021 which covered the pandemic.

This FY, after 2 quarters, software sales are tracking up 11.34% compared to last year. This means it's on track to finish about 1m behind the 2021 Pandemic total as the highest every single year software sales total in the history of video games.

By the end of this generation it isn't inconceivable to hit 400m in a year. For some context the peak software sales for the Switch, during the pandemic, was 235.07m. Nintendo have forecast software sales of 173m units across Switch and Switch 2 this Financial Year.

The data firm points out that Sony is also on the hook to Valve for 30%

Steam only takes 30% for the first $10m earned for a game, then it drops to 25%, and at $50m it drops to 20%.

They changed to this system after Epic started their store I believe.

They made just over $600m on 'Other software' in the last financial year(this would also include MLB the Show on Xbox and the lego horizon game on Switch)

It's interesting that some people think it's not a lot as, to put it in context, that would be more than 50% of Capcom's entire yearly revenue across all platforms and all endeavours.

@Max_the_German They released Ghost of Tsushima and the Last of Us ptII both within 5 months of the PS5 and didn’t even have native PS5 versions at launch. I’m pretty sure it’s released as soon as it’s ready, on whatever platform is ready to go.

@Anthony_Daniels according to the link it's 36.1% cheaper than London when excluding rent and 47.3% when including rent

@Anthony_Daniels Cost of living in Japan is one of the lowest in the developed world actually, even tokyo is relatively cheap compared to places like London

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=Japan&city2=Tokyo

@FredBiletnikoff I meant, the original Yakuza 0 release. Sales provided by famitsu.

Clearly the point is that the titles sold tiny numbers that would barely be significant for Sega and would be beyond insignificance for most franchises.

@VanguardKaiser BO6 was on gamepass, but it might be the case that some of the more casual user base took some time to work this out.

However, the vast majority of CoD sales are on PlayStation anyway.

@Elfuggingjefe

Notable by its absence around these parts.

I get that at least some people are going to play this on console, but this is 100% a PC game. You’re only playing it on console if you have no other choice.

So, CoD is probably around 2.5-3m for its first week sales worldwide, unless it massively overperforms in the USA.

Nice to see Ghost of Yotei is not neglecting leg day.

@FredBiletnikoff The Yakuza games did tiny numbers on the Switch.

Yakuza Zero Directors Cut sold 2,935 copies in Japan in its first week, before immediately falling out of the charts.The PS version sold 236k in its first week in Japan. This is Yakuzas biggest territory and the Switch’s strongest territory by far.

Kiwami sold 4,112 and Kiwami 2 sold 5,267 in Japan,

None of them got even remotely close to charting in other territories.

Yakuza games are not even mature games, they’re goofy as all hell and incredibly Japanese and idiosyncratic. They seem like a decent title to port to the Switch.

@nhSnork You can probably afford to have more image concerns when you make $10b though

Most of the people in this thread are just the 21st century equivalent of the 80’s parents that wouldn’t let children watch Saturday morning cartoons because it would “rot their brains” or play DnD because it was satanic.

There’s a balance for everything that need to be found, but within that balance the opinions and feelings of children should be accepted and encouraged as much as is reasonable. If their favourite thing in the world is to play Roblox, then it’s not anyone’s job to teach them to play “real games”. That’s how you end up with full grown kids have don’t talk to you because they think you’re a knob, and the thing is, you kinda are.

@nhSnork Yakuza is a game where it would traditionally sell 70%+ of its sales in Japan, and only in recent years has it started to get a better audience in the west.

GTAV sold under 1% of its sales in Japan. Maybe 0.1%.

So what is the point of this comparison? The upside for one is a lot bigger(relatively speaking) than the other.

@IOI See above. Home console decline started over 20 years ago. It is a fundamental change to the Japanese shopping habits, and very little to do with Jim Ryan.

@Noone2025 Japan turned their back on home consoles over a decade ago, it has nothing to do with the PS5. It’s just a continuation of the home consoles market shrinking, and it will continue into next generation.

Home consoles released after the PS2:

GameCube - 4.04m
Wii - 12.77m
PS3 - 10.47m
Wii U - 3.27m
PS4 - 9.68m

In that same time the PSP managed 20.02m and the 3DS 24.67m. Neither of which were massively heralded outside of Japan, certainly not in comparison to the Wii or PS4 etc. Even the PS Vita managed 5.73m.

@Max_the_German

Hades 2 and Silksong are designed around the specs of NS1

No, they aren't. They are PC indie games that look exactly like the games they wanted to make, regardless of technology. They look like Hollow knight(which launched on the switch 15 months after PC) and all the previous Supergiant games that launched before the Switch existed. Those games exist in their truest purest state, driven by artistic intent; facilitated by small development teams and low product costs.

That works well for $20-30 indie games. That doesn't work as well for something like Final Fantasy. A Final Fantasy created like that is just Bravely Default or Octopath traveller, and those games aren't selling 3m in their opening week.

Monster Hunter: World sold around 16m on Steam. Monster Hunter: Rise sold around 5m. This is why the market for each game determines the appropriate model.

@dodgykebaab (BTW half of 195 is not 95, mate)

@dodgykebaab

There are 195 countries in the world, for Japan to be one of the least important in terms of sales then at least half of those countries (95) would have to spend more money on PlayStation products than Japan does.

Thats not how you determine importance. That's a criteria you just made up, and since there is no universal defined defition of market importance then it is up to the individual criteria set by companies, institutions and individuals.

I would determine market importance as growth being of primary importance, as is common in modern business culture. In this key area Japan is declining for almost every market participant. For PlayStation , whose core business is home consoles and tradition story driven video games, the decline is massive. Not only is the market declining but Japan also faces massive longterm population issues that will only accentuate current issues, and might represent an existential threat, at least to its current national culture.

Based on that criteria I would define Japan as one of the least important countries in the world to focus on. I would prefer to focus on initiatives in developing countries with almost no market for console games, in a hope to grow and nurture new gaming countries, rather than a declining country.

@dodgykebaab So you disagree with the opinion and not the use of the word?

Also, it's a subjective opinion so it can't be literally wrong. You can literally disagree with it though, but then you're just kinda using that word for no discernable reason, unlike when I used it to differentiate from a figure of speech.

I'd say that most countries are either growing markets, potential future markets or dying markets. Japan is one of the few examples of the later, at least in regards to 90% of game types.

@FredBiletnikoff less important franchise, a tester for the market?

Why is GTAV not on the Switch, please enlighten us.

@dodgykebaab That's literally how to use that word. Japan is actually one of the least important markets in the world. I meant it in the literal sense, that wasn't a metaphor or something.

Also, using Literally as an intensifier is a completely legitimate way to use the word, since the primary purpose of words is to communicate ideas and thoughts, and if you understand how the word is being used - and everyone understands the use as an intensifier - then that is successful communication. That is how language works, that's how it has worked since the beginning of time. Language changes through use, and is not determined by a person's conservative beliefs that it is fixed now and can not be changed by the natural order of things.

So, in short, don't try to look smart as you'll invariably achieve the opposite. Correcting people on the use of a word like that is generally level 0 intelligence signalling.

@Max_the_German Japan is literally one of the least important markets in the world. Even for most Japanese companies it’s not a major factor. Resident Evil will do poorly on the Switch as there is no fanbase for it and anyone with a switch as a second console will not buy it there.

Monster Hunter Rise is a strong core Japanese game with a history on handheld systems and it stll sold like 11.3m less than MH:World because western sales were like 3:1 for World.On PC it did like a 1/4 of worlds sales and the ports to consoles did awful because lots of people didn’t want to buy a game developed primarily for the Switch. It’s not just about graphics, it’s about image. Why do you think something like GTAV is not even on the switch? It’s free money and it’s a ps3 game, except it would sell poorly and they probably think the hit to their image would be greater. Yeah, that’s weird, but that’s how brand marketing works.

For companies like Capcom and Square Enix that have started relying more on the western market it is not even close for the majority of their big releases, outside of something like Dragon Quest which aligns perfectly with the Switch Japanese user base.

Traditional story driven single player games are also in decline in Japan, and they mostly gravitate towards light family games and f2p gacha games. That’s why PS software is so bad. Everyone plays Genshin Impact.

@TicklefistCP Ubisoft withdrew from the digital data sharing scheme. Assassins Creed Shadows was 2nd for the year up to that point.

Death Stranding 2 failing to make the top 20 is dissapointing. It's even behind Helldivers 2 in its second year, and the chart is based $ sales and doesn't include Mtx.

@DennisReynolds So BO7 is going to outsell BO6 even though it was 50% down or something in the UK and like 100% down on steam? I'm not following the logic. It appears almost 100% that BF6 sales, at least worldwide and it appears even in the USA, will be ahead of BO7.

@DennisReynolds Battlefield 6 launch month in the USA was better than CoD: BO6 last year. This year will almost certainly be nowhere close to BO6, so I can't conceive of a way it even gets close to BF6.

Maybe I’m too old and cynical but this looked super lame. The dialogue was beyond terrible, the over the top music was eye-roll inducing.

BF6 outsells CoD this year then, and it’s not even close - it’s a massacre. USA is the one market CoD had a chance.

@Striker21 The PS5 uses FSR, what the hell are you talking about? In fact almost everything you said is wrong. For example there is no gamepass on SteamOS, you need a workaround just to stream gamepass games. Native install is impossible.

@11001100110zero

I'm just surprised at the amount of commenters here that aren't aware of what older cards can do. A RTX 2070 or 2080 still runs lapse around PS5 and Series X.

The RTX 2080 was a $800 enthusiast level GPU.

@4fold it's not a next gen console though, it's current gen level and the digital PS5 will be $400 next week.

The overwrought anime dialogue is completely unbearable in English.

The trick with these sales is to align your subscription with one of the big sales(Black Friday, days of play, Christmas) and then every year the deal will be running at the same time your subscription runs out.

@Toot1st it’s also worldwide sales from Steam which cratered even worse than this 60% decline.

I wouldn’t so sure it will outsell BF6 worldwide.

@GameLord1 Did you forget to take your medication today?

Edit: well that was probably one of the shortest lived accounts in PS history

@GameLord1

Since Sony acquired Crunchyroll, Crunchyroll has become a bad anime streaming service. Your dear Sony uses AI to translate anime on Crunchyroll. You blame Microsoft for everything, while Sony does the same stupid things as Microsoft.

This dude actually created an account just to post this.

These Asian F2P games always start really well, regardless of quality, as there is just such a massive market for this kind of thing in Asia.

Jez Corden is not a reliable source