Steam users are the base everyone desires to get to but no one wants to pay the toll to Valve for building the platform gamers want.
“we’ve built a platform that at least give piracy a run for its money, and used it to develop a massive user base so conditioned to buying from us that they happily joke about how 50% off a game they won’t play is cause for them to buy four times as many. Please, join us all in the baffling orgy of commerce, all we ask is 30% of the treasure.”.
“We will, but we’re gonna try to get the users to come to our platform with less content and maybe a $500 buy-in so we can have a bigger portion of a smaller pie”.
“Lol, go for it”.
“…”.
“…”.
“Why are you being anticompetitive?”
The hilarious thing is that Sony could open their own pc storefront selling steam keys, keep their 30%, and the only restriction would be maintaining price parity with the same game on the Steam storefront.
For a. Company like Sony that already has all the payment processing and customer service knowhow, this would be far easier for them than most.
Yet they can’t or won’t bother because suits are fucking stupid.
Shit, I assumed that valve somehow got a cut of games from keys as well, but looking it up (briefly), it looks like you’re entirely right and they don’t.
That makes it even more bonkers that companies keep trying to siphon off the market share, since you could just take your market proceeds as bonus revenue as long as valve got their share of what they sell.
I’m assuming that’s a big chunk of how things like humble bundle make their money?
Pretty sure generating buttloads of steam keys for resale on a different platform to keep valve from taking their 30% is a violation of steam’s TOS?
God preach here. "Our storefront works half the time, is clunky, bulky, filled with flashy ads and no substance, allows no customization, you can’t add your own games, you can’t run it on Linux, and our games will always assume you’re trying to pirate or hack even when we know you just bought the game. Switch over now! You’ll love it!
A simple fact that consoles require a monthly subscription to play anything with friends is why they will never reach PC gaming.
I paid for hardware, I paid for the game, I pay for the internet; fuck your subscription just to join an online server you contribute nothing to.
I quit their system when they changed things around and my life hasnt changed, Indont even play online.
Tbh the way things have gone, I went and bought a PC, got some emulators and got all my catalog on to the system and any nintendo exclusives or PS exclusives I buy second hand. I have hated this generation between the ps5 and switch everything underwhelmed
FWIW there are exceptions to that. On PlayStation, you only need a subscription if PSN handles the online component of the game. Companies that manage their own online services don’t require it. Genshin Impact, Final Fantasy 14, Warframe, Fortnite, etc. can all be played without PS+
I thought I remember Xbox doing the the same thing for free to play Xbox games a couple years ago
I don’t own an Xbox so I am not quite sure, but I don’t think it applies in quite the same way, namely that in order to play Final Fantasy XIV on Xbox, I read that you need a Gamepass subscription in addition to the game subscription itself, which is not a requirement on PlayStation.
But for truly free to play games, maybe.
What does he think the mental process is? “Oh Spiderman 2 dropped I’m going to buy a PS5 and play that immediately”?
Nah, the process is, “Oh Spiderman 2 dropped? Oh it’s console exclusive? Guess I’ll play looks at the hundreds of unplayed games in my steam library The same 3 games I always play while I wait.”
Fixed title:
PlayStation’s CEO drastically overestimates the PC crowd’s wallet capacity, thinks PC gamers will buy an inferior, overpriced, locked down PC that can only play specific games on a non-replacable proprietary OS with planned obsolescence for when the PS6 comes out
I’ll never not be a PC gamer but calling PS overpriced at the moment is wild. Compared to the cost of PC components right now 5 or 6 hundred is not ridiculous. That’s cheaper than mid to high tier GPU alone.
You are forgetting that you have to pay to play online. Your $500 console is an $800 console if you use it for 5 years. You can build a roughly PS5 equivalent PC (RX 6700) for more like $650-700 which is less overall.
Plus it’s a computer so you can also use it for normal computer things, and the games themselves are generally much cheaper with a huge backlog and sales all the time.
I did forget that. Also that price point is awesome, I just dumped a ton on a fresh build. I didn’t want to minmax on it but it’s cool you can get it that low and still have that level of quality. Gotta hate NVIDIA.
My PC game library goes back literally 30+ years. (I think the oldest game I play occasionally is Eye of the Beholder, 1991. The original doom is still good and from 1993)
That has value.
This is an excellent point. The availability of games.
On PC, you can play pretty much every game ever, with varying degrees of legality, whether directly, or indirectly using an emulator, with the only exception to this being very modern titles on consoles which do not have an emulator for PC yet, or that are still locked in a bullshit exclusivity deal.
Meanwhile, PS/XBox is limited to whatever Sony/Microsoft deems appropriate to have on their console.
On console you live and die by someone else’s rules, on PC, the sky is the limit.
The Eye of the Beholder series really bring back childhood memories, even if i didn’t finish any of them - furthest i got was in EotB 2, and i after being stuck for a while in an area with those cultists i gave up. i didn’t even understand english back then lol
Perhaps in isolation, but given that most people need a PC, would you rather:
a) buy a subpar PC for productivity and a console that’s going to be wasted money in a few years’ time, and you need to invest even more money on a new console (unless you never want to play new games again), and/or pour a bunch of money into scam subscription online services to get games (or even play them at all if they’re online)
b) buy a good PC with money you would have otherwise spent on the console, that will last effectively until the hardware dies, and even then you can upgrade it instead of buying a new PC
I agree the LLM and cryptobro insanity has screwed the GPU market, but in the long run even at the current prices PCs are still a better deal.
and that’s accounting for a theoretical PS6, used PS5 rn is probably <$400.
Edit: typo
I have spider-man 2 on my gamecube, why do I need a ps5?