Sony just wanted another tax break.
Man, I’m always surprised by the crap ragebait peddlers latch on to with these boring-ass investor presentations.
And I always feel the need to correct the record, which only pisses me off further.
So, for anybody interested, this is an investor scripted thing, they mostly are deflecting questions from investors that they don’t have answers to. At one point they say the Switch 2 won’t eat into their business because they have a different controller. It’s all filler nonsense.
The quote is somewhat out of context, in that they say there was an overly competitive market, but also that Concord didn’t stand out enough to compete. As much of a non-statement as that is, it’s not wrong.
Surprisingly, the ragemongers gloss over much more worrying stuff in there, like the confirmation that despite increasing subscription prices they are seeing more people buy into the expensive tier, not less (and you’re all ruining it for the rest of us, please stop). And they imply they will keep increasing prices, too.
They also point out that more than 50 percent of Helldivers’ revenue came from microtransactions now. Again, you’re all ruining it for the rest of us, please stop. They also confirm they will conitnue to milk that and “maximize revenue”.
On better news, they pretty much confirm they are making a PS6 when somebody suggests they should go PC and cloud only, so there’s that. They also confirm they want to keep making at least one big single player game per year and that they are actively looking into new IP.
If you read between the lines of investor presentation, they also kind of acknowledge that Marathon got bad feedback from playtesting and they’re trying to salvage it. Although, of course, they never say that outright.
This article sucks, and it made me listen to half an hour of investor executive nonsense and that makes whoever linked it not my friend, either. On this, too, you’re ruining it for the rest of us. Please stop.
Thanks for the summary! You should do these for all investor meeting thingies.
Hah. I feel extremely attacked.
I was going to say I wouldn’t do that if you paid me, but… no, yeah, I’ll do it if you pay me.
Certainly not for free, though. It’s mind-numbing in the worst possible way.
Well, theoretically speaking, you can start posting them and set up Patreon account? I am sure there’s some kind of niche for this in game journalism, but no idea if it’s big enough that it will actually be worth the time.
(Or we can just get cm0002 to post some article like this and send you the link every time there’s a new investor’s call. 🫣 )
And right there you’ve shown a better understanding of the incentive system driving the Internet than most of these executives ever have.
I guess mining endless nerdrage for useful content it is.
Thanks for the encouragement, though. Like, sincerely. No snark in that one.
Not sure I agree on the “better news”. I’d love if they gave up on making consoles and put more stuff on PC, tho if they pivoted to cloud only that would indeed be the worst outcome. :P
That said, sure, the ideal outcome would be PS6 and releasing games on PC. I don’t want a new console but I respect people who do.
They are putting everything on PC and they claim they will keep doing that, so… ideal outcome it is, I suppose.
I do think that’s better news. PC master race bros typically say consoles are holding PC gaming back, but this is the opposite of reality. PC gaming has benefitted a lot from having a set target hardware spec inherited from consoles. From controller standardization to performance optimizations, PC gaming would be much worse off without a console fixed target.
In unexpected ways, too. If you remember the bad old days of PC exclusive games they either targeted unattainable hardware as a tech demo or they aimed at the garbage tier lowest common denominator, which is how you ended up with games looking like World of Warcraft and The Sims for decades.
I love PC handhelds, but I certainly would hate for every PC release to be built primarily for those and laptops with mediocre iGPUs.
They also point out that more than 50 percent of Helldivers’ revenue came from microtransactions now. Again, you’re all ruining it for the rest of us, please stop. They also confirm they will conitnue to milk that and “maximize revenue”.
The thing is, Helldivers is priced, delivered and supported in such a way that it’s worth spending that money on.
In Helldivers 2 it is possible to earn premium currency simply by playing the game, and at a fairly reasonable rate. You can basically grind out every bit of content in the game if you want. And even without any of that “premium” content, you get a huge library of weapons, cosmetics and strategems to play with, many of which are better than the premium stuff.
Plus the warbonds are very fair compared to how most games price extra content. In a world where you can easily spend twenty dollars or more on a skin, here’s what a typical warbond - priced at $10 - includes;
- Two or three full cosmetic sets
- An emote or victory animation
- Three primary weapons
- A secondary weapon
- A grenade
- A booster (special power for the squad, not an XP booster; Helldivers does not have any form of XP booster, everyone grinds at the same rate)
- Enough premium currency to cover 30% of your next warbond
(Newer warbonds have gotten a little slimmer in terms of weapons and skins, but now tend to include new strategems as well; it’s a slight downgrade in terms of bang for your buck, but still very good compared to the industry averages)
On top of that, the game itself is very reasonably priced, incredibly fun, and constantly getting exciting new story content. Which means you buy this thing, enjoy the hell out of it, and end up thinking “Man, I’ve still got this money left over that I would have spent on a full price game, why not spend it on some cool shit? Look at all the cool stuff I could get for just ten dollars and I’m still coming in at way less than the price of a new Battlefield game.”
That’s how it should be. That kind of behaviour from a developer should be rewarded. Arrowhead are doing pretty much everything right when it comes to crafting a brilliant product and treating the fans of that product with respect. We can’t stop Sony learning the wrong lessons from that, but if good games don’t succeed they certainly won’t ever learn the right ones.
No, it is not!
Helldivers is fun enough, and I agree with you that the base game content is solid enough to sustain the experience.
That doesn’t make it any more valuable or engaging to spend money on more cape textures through a battlepass grind.
I would much rather pay for actual content than hope that whales and subscriptions subsidize it. Granted, I also see next to no appeal on grinding Helldivers’ missions and volatile metagame progression, so the entire design is not for me.
But for as long as you can make increasingly cheaper content to keep extracting ten bucks a month from people you will get companies trying to extract a hundred. You’re… you know, ruining it for the rest of us, please stop.
I would much rather pay 90 bucks for Donkey Kong than 45 for Helldivers 2 on account on a subset of whales subsidizing the rest of the package.
My one exception is fighting games, where I find paying for more characters down the line is flexible enough and has enough connection between meaningful content and investment that it supports a very long additional content tail. But pure cosmetics in a battlepass? Yeah, no, I’d rather not.
Salute for your service
isn’t this just another way of admitting it is a skill issue?
Are you fucking serious?
Ah yes Sony, the company famous for being reasonable and of sound mind body and spirit.
Oh wait actually:
They certainly killed a big chunk of the player base and the hype it was building.
Even people who liked the game couldn’t play it for long.
Still is dead to me. I heard you can bypass the requirement and don’t need a Sony acct again, but it’s just not worth the trouble.
You don’t have to “bypass it.” When you install the game, during the settings process it asks if you would like to create a PS account and you just click no, or skip IDR what the word on the button was. Then it never asks you to do it again, but you can still link it in the options menu if you wanted to later on.
You tried to charge money for a live service game, a genre that has endless options that are free.
Who picked that live service market, Sony?
It failed because it was an under competitive game.
Nothing about it stood out other that it’s extremely unappealing characters. People were roasting them for weeks.
The colour palette they used was low contrast, so in a quite literal sense nothing really stood out. It’s a mystery why they made the game’s presentation like that since the game was otherwise sound.
It’s like they deliberately chose the most repulsive colour combinations possible. It’s so bad that it can’t have been a mistake. They took colour theory and then methodically did the exact opposite of it. Then they combined this with some of the ugliest character designs imaginable. I think the artists thought “ugly = unique and unique sells!” I can vomit a strawberry daiquiri onto a piece of paper and create a “unique” piece, but that doesn’t make it appealing and customers are certainly not going to buy it.
The most frustrating part of this for me was the overwhelming feedback before launch that they should have scrapped the designs and started again. Either they began focus testing FAR too late, or more likely, they ignored it. Either one was fatal. Then Marvel Rivals came along with attractive character designs (but arguably generic gameplay) and dominated in the market. Proving this had nothing to do with saturation. They just made a bad game and refuse to admit it.
lol, lmao, etc.
Blame others, go ahead. Helldivers 2 is doing great and Arc Raiders has people excited.
Trash oh and bigger Trash… Sadly only Trash gets released
Shocking new discovery: water is wet!
