Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida has suggested that Sony will struggle to recoup the huge budgets invested in its first-party games without porting them to PC.
They definitely can’t do what they did during the PS2. Their games back then cost a few million dollars each to make. Now they cost several hundred million. The math works out very differently.
They certainly feel they have to spend hundreds of millions. I agree those budgets can come down, but you need something desirable enough to make the console purchase feel worth it, and Astro Bot didn’t do the trick (with a budget in the tens of millions, not to say that budget is the only variable here).
Sure but the PlayStation audience is pretty much full of mainstream gamers that play FIFA and CoD and the occasional grand blockbuster games. Sony basically gave them the expectation that games will become grander and more realistic looking every generation, because that is the edge Sony has over Nintendo. They are not the type that will play low budget indie games or even games with heavily stylized graphics. Sure GenZ has been raised with Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox but they are also the generation that doesn’t really pay for games. Sony’s audience is the millennial who grew up thinking Nintendo is for kids and only realistic looking games matter.
They definitely can’t do what they did during the PS2. Their games back then cost a few million dollars each to make. Now they cost several hundred million. The math works out very differently.
you make it sound like they aren’t in control of every single aspect of the development.
They control the budget.
Games don’t have to cost several hundred million. A fun game is a fun game whether it cost $200 or $200,000,000 to make.
They control the budget but don’t control the results.
Concord anyone?
They certainly feel they have to spend hundreds of millions. I agree those budgets can come down, but you need something desirable enough to make the console purchase feel worth it, and Astro Bot didn’t do the trick (with a budget in the tens of millions, not to say that budget is the only variable here).
Sure but the PlayStation audience is pretty much full of mainstream gamers that play FIFA and CoD and the occasional grand blockbuster games. Sony basically gave them the expectation that games will become grander and more realistic looking every generation, because that is the edge Sony has over Nintendo. They are not the type that will play low budget indie games or even games with heavily stylized graphics. Sure GenZ has been raised with Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox but they are also the generation that doesn’t really pay for games. Sony’s audience is the millennial who grew up thinking Nintendo is for kids and only realistic looking games matter.