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Except it really is. I don't see how businesses don't understand how this sort of anti-customer predatory behavior, MBA stuff, is directly driving reduced sales. The PS5, for instance, has only managed 96 million sales. For contrast the PS2 managed 160 million sales to a smaller market with much fiercer competition.

And I'm one of those tens of millions opting out. The PS2 felt like a great consumer-focused value. Modern consoles feel like opting in to get kicked in the balls and squeezed for every single penny they can get out of you.

The reason modern consoles aren't selling 300million+ units is because of myopia. And the worst part is that it's a vicious cycle. They see their sales shrinking so the penny pinchers and MBAs get even nastier squeezing the ever-shrinking userbase even more resulting in less sales meaning they need to squeeze those that remain even harder and so on.

At seemingly no point is anybody asking 'Hey why do our sales keep falling even though the potential market's way larger and the competition is pretty meh?' I guess that doesn't look as good on a powerpoint slide as trying to kill the used game market and pretending it will have no knock-on effects.

by ryandrake2 hours ago|

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Gamers are notorious for accepting whatever abuse game companies and studios want to inflict, and then keep buying and buying. All the horrible anti-consumer technologies and business practices from DRM to games that are released unfinished, to kernel-level anti-cheats and rootkits, all are routinely done with video games because the industry knows gamers are fanatics and will put up with anything.

If gamers want to stop this, they need to stop rewarding these companies with their money.

99% of gamers who are mad about physical disk distribution going away will still buy the digitally distributed games.

by somenameforme1 hours ago|

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The whole point is that they aren't accepting it. In terms of sales PS2 > PS4 > PS5. That alone is already a big issue but it becomes just comically bad when you consider that the world population is about 33% larger than during the PS2 era, gaming has become completely normalized, and that the competition in modern times is mediocre.

by IanCal1 hours ago|

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Have profits gone down?

by vrsgjye1 hours ago|

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[dead]

by nemomarx2 hours ago|

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The next console is going to cost at least 1000 dollars, right? There's simply no way to sell hardware at 300 million units now. So I think their strategy is to abandon the mass market and sell to price unconscious consumers who will also pay more for games.

by wtetzner1 hours ago|

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But what's the point of even releasing the next console? The current console generation has barely gotten started, and developers have barely taken advantage of the new hardware.

Maybe they need to look at releasing a cheaper console and making more quality games instead of constantly pushing so hard on graphics. Graphics help sales to an extent, but it's clearly not the whole story, given the popularity of the Wii or Switch. I think the people in charge no longer understand gaming, and are really struggling to produce games that will draw in large crowds again.

> So I think their strategy is to abandon the mass market and sell to price unconscious consumers who will also pay more for games.

Kinda seems like it. I'm curious to see what happens with that, because even people who so far have been willing to pay more will stop being customers if they can't produce an experience that's worth paying for. Maybe I'm in the minority, but the first-party PlayStation games all feel very samey to me.

by nemomarx1 hours ago|

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For the ps6, they were already done with design and they'd need to let that go to waste to not put it out. I doubt it'll have many exclusives though - it's probably a ps5 pro pro thing.

But I'm also not sure they can sell a cheaper console. PS5 prices just rose and they'll rise again next year - so that level is already going to cost 800 dollars to consumers. You can't really sell hardware to anyone until ram prices come down it seems.

They could release a ps4 level console but I'm not sure it would be that cheap to source parts for... There are rumors of a handheld so that might be cheaper.

Basically console gaming is about to get impractical and they'll try and find a path to stay alive. That's my read.

by angoragoats2 hours ago|

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I feel this in my bones and it's a great way to frame it. My last Playstation console was a PS2 and I've also opted out of recent generations. Historically, for me, one of the benefits of a console was that you could just pop the game in, and it would always work, simply and easily.

DRM, online checks, DLC that should have been part of the base game, digital-only games, etc have ruined all that, and if that's going to be the trend everywhere I'll just stick to a PC and Steam where I have a library of games built up over the decades.

I have a Switch and feel that Nintendo provided a decent experience on their recent systems, but with the advent of "game keys" or whatever they call it on the Switch 2, they've flipped to being even worse than the digital-only systems. At least Sony isn't (yet?) trying to sell you a license on a disc to try to fool you into thinking you own a physical copy.

by nemomarx1 hours ago|

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You can resell game key cards, at least? They seem better than digital copies to me. And first party games are still on cartridge for the most part.