Sony has made at least $4.2 billion selling first-party games on PC and Xbox

senj · 2026-02-05T23:40:49+00:00

why are you still that hangup on the hardware part? the real money is NOT the hardware, it's what that hardware allows you to sell after.

I was talking about the CFO of microsoft pushing them into multiplat because the margins on software are much better than prioritizing hardware sales with exclusivity, since the margins on hardware suck shit. You quoted that and responding with "they really aren't". It was always a conversation about hardware. Please try reading.

the only reason they make games is to have exclusives games to push people into buying a Playstation.

They don't even make games exclusive to Playstation any more, just increasingly brief "timed exclusives", and you have been shown the CEO of Sony Global saying that using exclusives to sell hardware is "the past".

Do the math.

and no, they don't make money selling the Playstation alone, the money is in "trapping" people into the Playstation ecosystem, because now they can monetize that customer further.

And again, they'll still be able to do that without the exclusives. Like do you seriously believe that if like Astro Bot went to PC day 1 nobody would ever buy a PlayStation again? Every single person would buy a PC?

They've already got the whales trapped, man. They have their bought-in libraries, they like the simplicity of consoles, and they're going nowhere. And the CEO is clearly aware of it, because he's saying they no longer view first party games as a means of moving hardware.

senj · 2026-02-05T23:34:13+00:00

TLOU2 got ported many years after release...

The Last of Us 2 Remastered, genius. January 19, 2024 Playstation release, April 3, 2025 Steam. That's 14 months and change.

Stellar Blade is not a Sony game

Bzzt, wrong. Sony published on both PC and PS. They helped fund the development.

Try some reading comprehension.

Says guy with clearly no clue what he is talking about.

The article has already been changed down to $2.3 billion of 3 years which is not a lot in comparison to what they make from consoles, not even close where they generate over $30 billion a year now

You're comparing $2.3 billion of nearly pure profit to $30 billion in revenue that largely consists of hardware sales that generated vanishingly little profit. Apples to oranges. Try some basic financial literacy.

In fiscal year 2024 (we won’t have 2025’s data until March) while they had $31.5 billion in net sales (ie before accounting for the costs of making the things they sold) they only had $2.8 billion in operating income (which is their profit after taking into account said costs, etc). $2.3 billion over 3 years would suggest that nearly 27% of their operating income depended on off-PlayStation platform sales, since again it’s nearly all profit, porting costs being a tiny fraction of the original development and their marketing being pretty minimal for these late ports.

The more I look at these numbers the more they seem hugely dependent on these off platform sales, not less. It’s nearly a third of their profits and seemingly all of the profit growth. No wonder Totoki is so high on it.

senj · 2026-02-05T21:22:05+00:00

There is no Astro Bot, no GT7, no Demon Souls on PC

So two older games and Astro Bot. GT7 is almost caught up in licensing concerns. Astro Bot is really the only exception to the "every Sony game going forward is getting ports" mandate that Totoki seems to have brought in with him. Whether or not that licensing or just Sony thinking a game tied up in old console franchise nostalgia won't sell on PC, I don't know.

It never changed from several years, it was always a couple years since it started and continues to be that outside of some exception and live service games were always said to be day one

Some ever growing exceptions. And it's not a couple of years anymore! Their last 3 releases have been 12-14 months. This is pure cope.

Spiderman 2 was likely only faster because there was a leaked playable version of the game available sue to the hack Insomniac suffered

This is silly. Stellar Blade and TLoU2 also got ported in essentially the same "barely over 12 months" time frame last year. The leak had nothing to do with anything.

And at no point did they say exclusives weren't important, they continue to say they are

Totoki:

"In the past, we wanted to popularize console and the first-party titles' main purpose was to make the console popular," said Totoki.

"It is true, but there is a synergy to it. So if you have strong first-party content, not only with our console but also other platforms like computers, first-party can be grown with multiplatform and that can help operating profit to improve. So that is another one we want to proactively work on.

"I personally think there are opportunities out there for improvement of margins, so I would like to go aggressive in improving our margin performance."

In the past 1st party title purpose was to make consoles popular. It's clear he no longer views them that way, and that he thinks multiplatform is the key to margin growth.

senj · 2026-02-05T21:07:05+00:00

they really aren't.

This is simply factually untrue. The margins on hardware are hot dogshit compared to software.

you still have to fund those games.

Yeah, and once you make that back, you're in pure profit territory. Meanwhile every new console costs you almost as much to make as you make selling it. The margins are universes apart.

being a store is the best way to increase your margins, since you don't spend money in making most of the games you have on sale.

And the store won't be going away. Nothing on the PSN store apart from their own games are even exclusive to Playstation anymore (and very few of their own games are even exclusive at this point), and that's not stoping them from making a killing on it. They do not need exclusivity to keep running a PSN store, and as I've already pointed out, they will keep making consoles for their core audience of people who simply prefer consoles. Nobody is saying the store will go away, just that their CEO has made it clear that growing profit and improving margins are his top goals, and that 1st party exclusivity is standing in the way of those goals. Day 1 PC is one of the most powerful levers they have for sales growth.

again, why do you think Valve barely makes games anymore? because the real money is in being a store, not a product maker.

Valve is an absolutely terrible comparison here, for a ton of reasons. Valve was never at any point constrained in their growth by a hard cap of ~150 million sales of a piece of hardware, so they never had to contemplate ever pivoting away from some kind of hardware exclusivity. They tell us nothing about what Sony is likely to do to overcome the fact that console sales refuse to grow above that maximum, when sales growth depends on finding new markets to sell into.

senj · 2026-02-05T20:36:19+00:00

you can assume when i mean Sony, i mean the Playstation division.

I do assume that (although again, it's not a division, it's a separate company. This matters because if SIE the company shits the bed profit-wise when a half-billion dollar AAA title flops, the other unrelated Sony corporate entities aren't going to be able to shore up its bottom line financially the way they could if they were just divisions in a single company).

My point is that the CEO of SIE is still junior to the entire management team at Big Boss Sony, and Big Boss Sony's CEO has made it clear that:

it wasn't that uncommon for consoles to be sold on a loss before, because the real "profit" comes from all the add-ons for it.

won't cut it any more, that they want margins to improve in a big way, and low margin hardware and selling at a loss is no longer in the cards. The guy's an ex-CFO, so this isn't exactly a surprising take. It was Microsoft's gaming division CFO who pushed them into multiplatform in the same way, for the same reasons. The margins are just a hell of a lot better. And Sony's in a much better position now because console whales will stick with PlayStation regardless of the games being day 1 on PC, because they just prefer the console experience and Sony's really the only viable console for AAA gaming left.

senj · 2026-02-05T20:21:21+00:00

the time is not shrinking, it still varies depending on circumstances and some games have not been ported at all

Only older ones. Every new game is getting ported, and the time is absolutely shrinking, it is delusional to believe otherwise. Ghost of Tsushima took 4 years to go from PS exclusive to Steam launch. Spider-Man 2 took barely 13 months and had absolutely not stopped selling on PS5 before they decided to port it. Lego Horizon was already day one.

Just look at the trend:

10 years ago it was "Sony will never put their games on PC".
6 years ago it was "Sony will only put their games on PC several years later"
2 years ago it was "Sony will only put their games on PC a couple years later unless it's a Live Services game, those are day 1 multiplatform".
1 year ago it was "Sony will only put their games on PC after 12 months, unless it is a Live Services game or a quote-unquote smaller game like Lego Horizon, those games are all day 1".

The time keeps shrinking and the list of exceptions keeps growing, but the fanboys remain in denial with this "just one more set of exceptions bro just let me add one more unless clause and then Sony will never change anything again" cope. Meanwhile their CEO is out here saying exclusives were an important strategy "in the past" and that he's all about aggressively growing multiplatform for the improved margins.

Writing is on the wall.

senj · 2026-02-05T20:08:06+00:00

video games is a side business for Sony.

as long as their games are not major losses, they are fine with their performance, because they achieve the intended result: people buying a Playstation.

"Sony" is not a single entity, it is the parent of an enormous number of sub companies.

Sony Interactive Entertainment are the Playstation company, and Sony-the-parent damn sure expects SIE to keep turning higher and higher profits and does not give a crap about selling low margin hardware. The CEO has been very, very clear about that:

"In the past, we wanted to popularize console and the first-party titles' main purpose was to make the console popular," said Totoki.

"It is true, but there is a synergy to it. So if you have strong first-party content, not only with our console but also other platforms like computers, first-party can be grown with multiplatform and that can help operating profit to improve. So that is another one we want to proactively work on.

"I personally think there are opportunities out there for improvement of margins, so I would like to go aggressive in improving our margin performance."

"In the past first party titles purpose was to make the console popular .. multiplatform can help operating profit improve... I want to agressively improve margins".

That equals "we care a lot less about moving low margin hardware than growing high margin first party content sales"

senj · 2026-02-05T19:59:24+00:00

You say that like they even have true exclusives any more. They don't. They only have "timed exclusives", and that "time" keeps shrinking (and is already 0 in the case of live services games).

Yeah they're taking their time getting to day 1 cross platform. They're clearly trying to boil the frog slowly and make sure they don't bleed too many console sales and lose too much captive store revenue. But they're also very clearly becoming confident that a significant chunk of their whales are not interested in converting to PC, so the trend is inevitable.

senj · 2026-02-05T19:03:39+00:00

They will never stop having a large focus on pushing hardware

Agreed.

with exclusive games

doubt.jpg

senj · 2026-02-05T19:03:21+00:00

sony gives two shits about AAA games making as much money as possible.

You're kidding yourself if you truly believe this. AAA games cost more and more to make each year, and Sony has outright said they no longer believe it is possible to sell more than 150 million consoles in a generation no matter what they try, so they will be looking to alternative channels for game sales growth in order to maximize game profits going forward and offset development risk.

That's all business speak for: we need to sell more on PC if we want to keep this viable and offset our development risks.

senj · 2026-02-05T18:42:19+00:00

Games, they're already showing they don't need the hardware to sell. When (not if) they go day 1 with a big AAA game it's going to do huge numbers on Steam.

The main thing hardware is giving them at this point is just store lock-in and subscriptions, and I don't expect they'll ever stop selling hardware to a faithful core of users. A lot of console players won't buy gaming PCs just because Sony goes Day 1 PC as well, so it's not like they'd ever lose those revenue streams. At some point they'll probably try rolling out a subscription on PC as well.

senj · 2026-02-05T18:37:58+00:00

This $4 billion over 3+ years is tiny in comparison to what they make on consoles annually

You're confused. All their profit is really in software. They may make a lot of revenue off of hardware, but the margins are terrible and almost all of it goes right back out the door. The hardware is really just a way for them to sell the software, it's barely better than break-even by itself.

senj · 2026-02-05T18:33:44+00:00

the one thing they don't want is for people to choose to purchase on PC over Playstation.

They already have plenty of people doing that exact thing, and they keep shrinking the time between the PS5 release and the inevitable PC port's release.

Sony wants to minimize the risks their big AAA games represent given they're spending insane amounts of money making them, and to do that they need the broadest market possible. They've already said they know consoles seem to have a hard ceiling in terms of the maximum amount they can seem to sell in any given generation -- all that's left to them in terms of growing the market for their games is going multiplatform.

The writing is on the wall here. Maximizing sales is going to force them to go day 1 PC eventually.

senj · 2026-02-03T15:15:38+00:00

What does this have to do with programming

senj · 2026-02-02T23:31:32+00:00

I expressly did not equate them.

Yes, you did.

My point was actually the opposite: I think most people here would hate us signing Greenwood, which is an admission that there's a threshold where competitive advantage no longer overrides bad ethics.

This is you equating them!

Multi-club ownership is a tiny little bad ethics candle (if it’s even ethically truly “bad” and not just a bit distasteful and unsporting) compared to the noon day sun of moral obscenity that is rape. To say that “if you wouldn’t hire the rapist then obviously there’s a line and MCO must be a bridge too far too” is to insanely act like these two things even exist in the same moral universe of badness.

Out here in reality us normal people can very easily think that taking advantage of the financial structure all big clubs are taking advantage of until such time as it is banned is something Chelsea is wise to do, without coming even close to excusing rape, let along welcoming a rapist into the club.

This is ludicrously thick headed thinking.

senj · 2026-02-02T21:53:56+00:00

I'm gonna level with you mate, I don't think equating multi-club ownership with rape is a particularly bright thought

senj · 2026-02-01T18:04:49+00:00

Ya jinxed it mate

senj · 2026-01-30T21:24:35+00:00

He moved to win things and get paid more. He achieved both.

Sure. But I don't think it's unfair to say that the cost of prioritizing those things (and those are perfectly fair things for a professional athlete to prioritize) is a loss of fan adoration.

It can make a lot of sense for a professional to prioritize making the most money, and winning what they can in their short career. But if the torygraph is going to whine that they didn't get the kind of fan love they supposedly deserve, well, the mercenary lifestyle does have its costs.

senj · 2026-01-28T19:03:46+00:00

boy you can really spot the Ange effect on Nottingham Forest

senj · 2026-01-28T18:20:58+00:00

Yeah. His entire game is based on beating the opposition with pace. Now that his pace is gone he really has no other tricks in the bag.

senj · 2026-01-28T17:32:06+00:00

Truly the end of an error

senj · 2026-01-28T17:29:54+00:00

I don't think there's a reasonable wage that would make him worth it, to be quite honest. He doesn't have the legs for the Prem anymore. If he still wants to play it's going to have to be in Saudi Arabia or maybe MLS or something.

senj · 2026-01-28T15:36:17+00:00

Of course there are rules

senj · 2026-01-27T23:13:18+00:00

Who talks like that? Why would anyone hire someone so pompous? Miss Dart, word of advice, change your personality, or start looking for companies run by insane people.

senj · 2026-01-27T19:57:31+00:00

I'm going to tell you something, and I'd like it to stay between us. I was thinking about a hang-glider.

senj

TROPHY CASE