Sony Sony President indicates desire to "aggressively" improve margins by releasing first-party titles to other platforms

[crispy4000]

One thing is certain to me in all this: porting most of their games to Microsoft consoles would be an Arrogant Sony move.

 

*We're still going to outsell you handily no matter for however long we do this, what's wrong with porting our games to your system a year late as well?  You clearly need us to succeed!

 

It's only true until its not.  The smart Sony move would be to act decisively to preserve their high-end console monopoly, while simultaneously expanding their brand and subscription model in other sectors.

[legend]

2 hours ago, stepee said:

 

I think the point of a single standard with no manufacturer variation (the 3D0 method) is so Sony can have their system, Xbox their system, maybe even the chips inside (bulky) tvs! And they can all play the same games, or you can play those games online. What I didn’t think about as I was spitballing are manufacturing costs. I’m not sure how that works on a supply line level.

 

But what's funny is with the last two systems, they are so close, they practically are already on the same hardware platform! It’s almost not that different of an idea besides you would have cross buy essentially - and maybe other companies would make their own XboxPS’s.

 

As for my other idea, at the end of the day I don’t think Sony or MS or anyone will be interested in consoles soon as it’s not worth the investment and cost and Cloud will become more viable and that is what they will target along with PC. 
 

So, I think actually stream lined steam boxes or something like that are the best chance 10-15 years from now for people who still want local machines but don’t want the hassle of a typical Windows pc.

 

 

If the hardware can't vary and different makes cannot be differentiated, I'm not sure why that would be an appealing business model for manufacturers. And if they do vary, then you're back to the software-hardware problem I described. It honestly seems easier to just port to the other platforms than try to find a model where this works for one neutral fixed hardware spec with (presumably) a common OS/driver stack.

 

There may come a day when just making games work across a range of hardware specs does kind of just work. PC has gotten better with time. And if it does, then I think this prospect opens up more because you can allow different manufactures to differentiate themselves with different hardware without a software problem. But we're still not there and may not be for some time. I don't see manufacture's jumping to it until then.

[AbsolutSurgen]

10 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

One thing is certain to me in all this: porting most of their games to Microsoft consoles would be an Arrogant Sony move.

 

*We're still going to outsell you handily no matter for however long we do this, what's wrong with porting our games to your system a year late as well?  You clearly need us to succeed!

 

It's only true until its not.  The smart Sony move would be to act decisively to preserve their high-end console monopoly, while simultaneously expanding their brand and subscription model in other sectors.

I would really be surprised if they did:

1)  Sony hasn't made the same level of investment in software -- they don't make most of their money selling games.  Their two biggest "annual/ongoing" franchises are already on Xbox -- Destiny 2 and MLB The Show

2)  Xbox-only user base isn't really all that big enough to drive big sales

3)  I think they believe that 1-2 tentpole releases a year helps draw people into their ecosystem -- where they make their money on subscriptions and their 30% take on 3rd party games

 

Xbox, I believe, has different ambitions than Sony.