Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

How do you convince Sony to invest more in the PC market? Or will it always be an after-thought to extract low-cost extra returns on the original game investment? Or is it a side-effect of the transition and, moving forwards, all games will be cross-compatible and reasonably PC tested during development?
I don't think people properly realize just how much Sony did actually invest in the PC market. Consider that we now know that they had essentially changed the course of almost ALL of their studios to pivot to GaaS games, which we can assume were all essentially either planned to, or at the very least rumored to launch on PC day and date with PS5. Obviously they've shifted their plans a bit and backed off of a huge number of them since then.. but when you realize just how hard Sony actually was trying to pivot their studios, it becomes clear. Almost all of them had these types of games in development. Hell, Naughty Dog even made an news article on their website about how they were integrating PC development into their studio culture and how it would ready them for future multiplatform development. We know that Sony Bend did the port of Days Gone internally, and a lot of these studios are capable of simultaneous multiplatform development.

I maintain that these single player game ports, which cost essentially nothing and are almost guaranteed to make them money over long periods of time, are being done to "get the catalog" onto PC to give them enough content to launch their own store and bring PS+ to PC, and then eventually go day and date and put more grunt behind the platform upfront.
 
I think they are laying the ground roots for a complete market shift as there is no viable path to a console beyond PS6. Until that time, I don’t expect any meaningful differences in the quality of their PC software.
Why would there be no viable path beyond PS6?

Let's take iphones as an example. You could say that the last 7 iphones are just minor upgrades one after the other. But people keep buying them nonetheless.

Even if a PS7 is a PS6 with racing stripes 7 years later, they are going to make it anyways. It's not like Sony could make the PS6 and just sell it forever.

Also, as much as the semiconductor situation is depressing right now, a new technology will arrive some day. And if it doesn't, humanity is done with technology lol.
 
Why would there be no viable path beyond PS6?
Maybe he thinks streaming services will have taken over and a dedicated machine that just games isn’t the way forward when you’ll be able to stream from your TV or tablet?

I think PS6 is a bit too early for that that. I don’t see that happening before the PS7 when a much larger part of the world will have access to high speed internet.
 
I think it is mainly the semi-conductor cost is what gets in the way of future consoles being as they have been in the past. The base price will be much higher and it may not be worth it anymore to subsidize as a result as it will only get the price down by so much - realistically. So instead, each console is sold with a profit margin even at launch. At which point, why bother making something custom?
 
Why would there be no viable path beyond PS6?

Let's take iphones as an example. You could say that the last 7 iphones are just minor upgrades one after the other. But people keep buying them nonetheless.

Even if a PS7 is a PS6 with racing stripes 7 years later, they are going to make it anyways. It's not like Sony could make the PS6 and just sell it forever.

Also, as much as the semiconductor situation is depressing right now, a new technology will arrive some day. And if it doesn't, humanity is done with technology lol.
Consoles don't have the same wide spread desirability of an Iphone, and endless waves of uninteresting games mired in old, cross gen technology won't help change that. PS5 sales have declined from PS4 due to an inability to cost reduce and a lack of compelling software. These issues will only worsen with PS6. Following that, the silicon technology will not exist to make a PS7 worthwhile to even produce. Humanity won't be done with technology, tech just wont be affordable enough to produce a low cost, mass market gaming box that offers sufficiently more powerful processing.
 
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