Sony Interactive Entertainment

“Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut” is confirmed to be released on the PC platform in mid-May, sparking a lot of discussion about “platform exclusivity” in the industry, but “Ghost of Tsushima” is no longer exclusive The decision still dissatisfied some PlayStation fans, and some people went to the Steam discussion forum to express their protest by calling for refusal to buy.

In “Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut” Steam forumin addition to many players raising opinions such as “What about “Bloodborne”?” and calling on Sony to open up more exclusive games, there are also PS fans who think “Sony betrayed us”, and there have been many discussions recently against Sony’s decision.

In fact, after last week’s news that “Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut” was about to leave the PlayStation platform and be exclusive to the PC, overseas media successively revealed the views of some industry insiders on console exclusivity, which is obviously in line with the voices of protesting fans. different direction.

according to VentureBeat In an interview with Shawn Layden, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), when the topic of blockchain games and mobile platform market development was extended to console games, it was mentioned that Phil Spencer (current president of Xbox) brought some games to the Sony platform or other platform decisions, Layden believes that an exclusive strategy will not help broaden the market.

Layden: When a game costs over $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles tendon. It reduces the market you can access, especially if you’re in a world of online service-based games or free-to-play games. Another platform is another way to open the pipeline and let more people join. We all know that in free-to-play games, 95% of people will never spend a penny, so the core of the business is conversion. You have to increase your chances of winning by opening the funnel. Helldivers 2 already demonstrates this on PlayStation, launching on PC at the same time. Again, you have to make the funnel wider to let more people in.

For single-player games, it’s a different story. But if you’re spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell to as many people as possible, even if it’s just 10% more. Based on the global game console installed base – if we go back to the PS1 era, no matter what time we look at it, the total number of game consoles will never exceed 250 million. Currencies appreciate over time and it seems to me that we are just trying to make more money from the same people. This happened during the pandemic which caused many companies to overinvest. Look at our numbers going up! And we have to catch up to that rocket!

After the interview, Layden also explained the current situation of the game industry. He mentioned the recent inflation and the layoffs of major overseas companies. He believed that during the epidemic, many major companies invested a lot of resources in developing games for people who were trapped at home. Now after the epidemic, the growth curve Therefore, he believes that the layoffs of large factories are only to solve the problems that occurred a year ago, rather than to solve the problems we are facing now.

In addition, Peter Moor, who was the president of SEGA America (witnessed SEGA canceling the DreamCast console and switching to a third party) and served as a senior executive of EA and Microsoft, is also here IGN The interview revealed that he believes that modern people play games differently compared to the past. An IGN reporter asked him if he thought “Halo” would be released on the PlayStation platform, and he expressed positive affirmation.

Moor: Look, if Microsoft says, wait a minute, we’ve made $250 million on Halo on our own platform, but if we treat it as a third-party game we could make a billion… you have to be careful. Thinking, right? I mean, you have to really think about, should we keep it? This is an IP, it’s not just a game. How do you take advantage of it? These conversations happen all the time in everything we do, how do we make it valuable in all aspects?

Halo has had its ups and downs, but without Halo, Xbox wouldn’t be the Xbox it is today. But yes, I’m sure those conversations are happening. Whether they will come to fruition, who knows? But there’s definitely something going on, I’m sure.

In fact, this is not the first time that Sony has been criticized by fans for moving first-party games to Steam. Previously, when “The Last of Us Part I” was released on PC, players also came to the Steam discussion forum.Criticize Sony。

However, with the passage of time and changes in consumer habits, the console exclusivity policy has indeed begun to loosen restrictions on exclusive works in the game industry in recent years. This has also continued to bring issues about how the game console market should move forward in the future, and the player community is not only A witness to many changes, he is also the driver of changes in the decisions of major manufacturers, because sales figures speak for themselves.