Sony Playstation Marketing: a quiet place in days gone?

Wow. No this is ridiculous. They have 76B revenue for 2018. They invest 5B per year on R&D alone.

Comparing apples vs apples, MS gaming division is barely above half the revenue of Sony's playstation division.

You really should look up the real financials.

 

Sorry I misspoke -- 2018 Playstation's profits were 6.7B by mid march. I'll look up Q4 numbers, I just spoke off the top of my head. Even then, it's not going to be comparable.

MS' data centre builds are for a lot more than just gaming they would invest that amount without Xbox streaming services.

 

I didn't recall this and having read from Adam Boyes said, he was doing his well briefed PR answer. PR Questioning 101 is if you are asked to confirm something positive and you can't say yes (because it's not true) but don't want to say no then you can say it's being considered and/or that no final decision has been made.

This may well be true. Sony are of course a long-term advertiser of the Champions League so any footie fans watching this (and for at least the next couple of years - Sony's current sponsorship runs until 2021) will see plenty of PlayStation branding.

Now as for elsewhere, like ads on the internet (incl. YouTube) different people will get very different experiences because this is how ads are served now. Sony will pay Google/other ad firms to target specific demographics and if you're outside you are far less likely to see their marketing. Similarly, if you blocking ads or tracking cookies, you probably won't be seeing these ads either.

It's not totally backwards, with PS3 ("it only does everything!") they did cover some of the features but those features were far less prevalent in tech than they are now. But I'm not seeing any more MS advertising than Sony, actually I'm seeing way less because of the Champions League and Microsoft don't seem to advertise nearly as much on London transport as Sony do.

But promoting something like PS Now would need to be really well crafted campaign because it's not universally available, you still need a foot (at least a DS4 controller) in the PlayStation ecosystem and even if you want in there needs to be a bunch of caveats about internet quality and so on.

 

Looks like they announce new PSNow titles every month as well.
https://blog.us.playstation.com/category/ps-now/

 

Yup, this is the big advantage Microsoft have and if they had done more building a larger better more productive first party stable of developers they would definitely be the Kings of when streaming becomes more mainstream. That's still 5-10 years away I feel but it won't replace physical hardware for even longer than that I think

 

This chart... it can provide answers...and raise questions.

Accepting these numbers are correct, the chart has some hidden data that we can obtain!

273 millions total in 3 months and Microsoft with 15%. This represents 40.95 millions in three months. Thats 13.65 millions per month!
Since monthly payment is 10 euros, this ammounts to a maximum o 1.365 million fixed paying users. Less if we count game sales and other purchases.
So... At the very best case scenario, Gamepass on Q3 2018 had 1.365 million users!
Not really a success I would say!

BUT....

If we go by the supporting slide 2, we have that subscribers spend an average 25$ month in extra stuff. This makes the average spending 35$ since we have to add the monthly fee.
And with 35 euros month, the service would have, in this worst case scenário, 390.000 users.

In either case, if we accept these numbers, Gamepass is not doing so well, and at the very best reaching 3.5% of the Xbox user base! (estimated at 42 millions)

 

I don't think that's respective of all users (might be UK only). And it's an estimate IIRC.

So it's a ballpark estimate, but the Big 3 aren't handing their data over to this group.

The graph does not incorporate slide 2. Slide 1 is basically the revenue from subscription services only.

If we use their data points then it's
Gamepass on Q3 2018 had 1.365 million users.
1.365 million users * 35$
47.475 M Euro per month.
or 52M per month with very little operating costs - just paying back to the developers and pocketing the rest.

 

One would hope a sizeable part of that goes to the devs, and the service operate only takes a reasonable cut.

 

That part is also a large unknown.

 

Wait,wait... I don´t follow you.
In that case Microsoft would get 156 million over three months. From a 273 million total. That's way over 15%

Besides, reading a lot of articles about that study, and none seems to think those numbers are anything but worldwide. Estimated, but wordwide.

 

I have questions...

What would sony gain from spending more to promote psnow before the next phase is unveiled?

What do gamers gain from sony spending more on psnow publicity?

 

as per your original calculations:

If you assume it correctly, the 40.95M in subscriber fees in 3 months or 13.65 Million per month. Working out to 1.365M subscribers.

If you add the average in-game spend with the subscriber fee of 10 euros, as per your calculation it becomes 35EUR per month.
Then you just multiply through.

The original graph does not contain in-game spend. Its only estimating the subscription revenue. If you wanted to look at the full business case as to why a developer may want to join game pass or why MS is pushing game pass, then you'd add up all the related spend per subscriber.

It's a very effective program, netting MS approximately 600M in revenue per year at that point in time.

 

The same reason why MS gained from promoting Xbox when they had nothing to promote.
To assure their customer base of their commitment to the service. How many articles did I have to read and rumours about MS dropping or selling xbox, especially after the disaster of XBO launch... and since Scorpio we've never heard of such discussion.

Had they stayed silent all the time, perhaps more people thought that was going to happen, and would have left even earlier for Sony.

 

It's more like digital vs physical. It's a third model. They don't care how you choose to play your games. There's no reason to publicize one more than the others. I think that's what they're going for next gen. How you pay is different but since it's a service model who cares? Continue to pay if you like it, stop paying if you don't. Just like psplus. They don't have to convince anyone about how to consume their games, just making the options available.

PSVR needs a lot of publicity because gamers invest into it and devs invest into it. The publicity is substantial. It needs critical mass to be healthy. Same for any console ecosystem.

 

I see your point... You seem to believe all the indicated income is from the monthly fees only, and as such acepting my first calculation.

Then you multiply that by the 35 (in game purchases value+ monthly fee) to get the total income.

Regardless of that, 1.365 million users on the service is way bellow what I expected...

 

This. About 20 exclusives, of which some are on pc or are coming to pc. For a 7 to 8 year if not longer life-span, a manufacturer could offer more then those exclusives. Lets say that about half interest me, if even that. If its only this PlayStation's advantage. MS is working heavily on the AAA/exclusives disadvantage they have now, the disparity between MS and Sony could be smaller next generation in that regard.

I think it started with cross platform gaming, censorship, PSN+ not being that interesting as it was, BC and PS2 emulator. No E3 etc showing, state of play being that dislikes that sony has to re-upload it. There's also people wanting more new IP's rather then successors. We don't really hear that much from Sony if they are improving on things, its too silent.

MS has a problem with exclusives this generation, but atleast they are signaling they are improving upon this.

 

The graph would be overly confusing if it contained in game spend which is option and mixed it with subscriber fees (no optional) and grouped them together as being subscriber revenue. Not saying it couldn’t be that graph, but I can’t see it painting the picture currently.

1.365 million users may or may not be low. Unfortunately without target numbers I do not know. I think it’s pretty successful. They drummed up 600M in revenue with a single initiative annually if we assume they don’t net any more subscribers.