A reader is convinced that the runaway profits of the PS5 have convinced Sony that doing as little as possible is the most reliable route to success.
There’s a popular meme that’s lasted quite a few years now, that’s usually applied to China and states simply: ‘Does Nothing. Wins.’ I don’t want to get into the sphere of global politics but it’s pretty clear what it means, in that China’s influence continues to grow simply as a result of letting the US make mistakes, while it sensibly stays out of it all.
I think you can probably see where I’m going with this, but replace China with Sony and the US with Microsoft and I think you’ve got a pretty good summary of the current video game generation.
I’ve been thinking about the comparison for a while now, but it seemed even more obvious this week, when Xbox blundered its way through another vague and unconvincing hardware annoucement, while Sony did absolutely nothing… except reveal that the PlayStation 5 has been more profitable than all the other PlayStation consoles combined.
If we discount the PlayStation 3 (which is the only one not to make a profit) I think I can say with some certainty that nobody is ever going to count the PlayStation 5 as their favourite Sony console. It’s increase in power has been almost entirely unproven and the promises about it were pretty sketchy anyway.
It’s also had far less first party games than the PlayStation 4, despite that being the peak of Sony’s internal development – the sort of thing you might have expected them to build on for their next console. Add in the disaster that has been their attitude towards live service games and you’d imagine that they are being badly punished for their inactivity, not to mention their unwillingness to discuss any of this in public.
Instead, doing nothing has worked out incredibly well for them. Not discussing things in public, which is always a risk, is going great so why bother doing anything else? The lesson the PlayStation 5 seems to have taught is that the less you do the more profit you make.
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This is because Sony now makes so much money from PS Plus and microtransactions that it literally doesn’t have to bother with anything else. With Xbox no longer being a serious rival in terms of hardware, most people play AAA games on a PlayStation 5 and so all those skins and cosmetics and other rubbish from super mainstream games like Call Of Duty and EA Sports FC are being bought on PlayStation 5s, with Sony getting a cut of all of it.
The majority of Sony’s profits are not coming from anything to do with the things core or hardcore gamers like, it’s all casuals wanting to play multiplayer games online, while wasting hundreds on microtransactions and complaining that all other games are too expensive.
Sony doesn’t need to engage with less casual fans because they already making money hand over fist. In fact, ignoring fans seems to make more (much more) money than even offering the odd olive branch.
You want to know why Sony is so obsessed by live service games? Particularly online shooters. It’s because they need PS Plus for you to play them and they’re easy to fill with cosmetics you pay for with microtransactions. They’re the opposite of single-player games, which is why we’re not getting more of those and yet Concord’s failure barely seemed to phase them.
Sony has not stopped making proper games entirely. Ghost Of Yōtei is out this year and clearly they can afford the odd prestige single-player game to show off with and win awards. That sort of thing helps make the PlayStation 5 look more appealing, but with no competition in terms of high end consoles there’s barely any choice anyway – it’s PlayStation 5 or Switch 2 now and I think it’s pretty obvious what the average COD and FIFA player is going to go for.
It’s all pretty bleak and depressing really. Good games will continue to be made – this year has been great so far – but not by Sony, or at least not more than once a year or so. The PlayStation 5 has been ruined by its success and, just as everyone predicted, a single format future, with no serious competition, has made Sony complacent and lazy. Unfortunately, the future is now and it’s not very good.
By reader Ashton Marley
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