Sony PS6, Microsoft neXtBox - 10th gen console speculation [2020]

Disney was hiring for Lucasfilm Games just last year. But EA has exclusive rights to develop Star Wars-based games.

 

https://www.mediapost.com/publicati...ures-looks-to-playstation-integrations-n.html

It seems really something like Sony+ (or Sony One) is brewing. Of course quality is questionable (Sony Pictures and so) but still.

 

Contract runs out in 2023

 

sources like this
https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts

 

They'll probably announce something about this later in 2021 is a personal guess. They still seem a bit staunched about day-and-date for film VODs of theatrical releases. In some ways it makes sense but I think for other, possibly smaller-scale film releases day-and-date will probably be possible.

I'm more interested to hear about the integration talks they have with PlayStation. Like it's been said a few times already, Sony'd have a really formidable streaming platform if they can merge PlayStation, television, anime, film and music into one platform, but still allow things to work outside of the platform too (i.e not all 1P games would be day-and-date, would be case-by-case basis. GaaS stuff though should definitely be day-and-date, I think they're already testing that with Destruction All-Stars).

 

Sony also has some TV division series like for example Breaking Bad was Sony Picture's title. The problem is that I am not sure if Sony is able to lock anything on their platform

• music is too big to be locked anyway (they can of course introduce their own competitor to Spotify with all the published music)
  
• anime - I also doubt that it will be available on single service. Now with animated series for Ark (I wonder who's doing that) MS probably is trying to enter that market in some form too (I mean Sega has also some small anime division). Amazon or Netflix - I don't remember - also has some anime studios
  
• gaming - 1P titles probably won't be 1 day on the service, until much later time - after all PS games sell a lot for now. Maybe in the future they will start coming the same day

All in all, Sony is very entrenched media because it was the media company from the very beginning they entered console race.

 

These are good points, but I think some of this depends on Jim Ryan, because he definitely "feels" like a different type of guy to head the PS division compared to others in the past, even if he's been involved with the division for a while in other capacities. He's extremely business-oriented and doesn't seem to have a problem with trying new approaches if it means more money, even if it might irritate fans (i.e the "we believe in generations" stuff early this year when it turned out MM, Horizon, Sackboy etc. were also coming to PS4).

So I wouldn't put some or even all of this beyond happening given how vital PlayStation is to Sony these days. However, it also depends on how much the Japanese upper branch are in agreement with his plans. Ironically it kind of mirrors Tom Kalinski's role with Sega back in the '90s, however I'd say Jim shows (or can show) he is able to get more of his Japanese peers to take to what business propositions he has than Tom was with Sega at the time. Though, with PlayStation there are other divisions with their own heads a guy like Jim would have to appeal to, which would not be easy especially with a few like Sony Pictures.

 

Jim is interesting guy, that's for sure. I do think that Sony will probably try something - whether it is anime + movies, maybe music + movies, maybe with games. Whether it will work out or not - remains to be seen. But what I am sure that Sony's brand won't be enough to bring a lot of subscribers there and don't have trust in Sony Playstation community in that regard.

Sony will need the content. Even Disney has some issues with that. It really feels like Streaming Wars are about the resources of the company - how much is it willing to put for the content. It is a very tough race.

 

Under Jim they had the most successful console launch ever with the best launch games in playstation history.

The more people hate on him, the stronger he becomes: it's how he gets his power

 

I understood that reference.

He's definitely not a "likable" guy in terms of gaming personalities but hey, he gets the job done and that's what is most important.

Personally I think it'll involve some of everything, because that's what they'll need in order to be competitive on the streaming front. If they won't put all their 1P games day-and-date, then pair a few of those day-and-date with a couple of movies day-and-date instead. Them purchasing Funimation and Crunchyroll, as worried as I get at times over potential censorship, that is a lot of content for them in an area we see others like Netflix and HBO Max trying to expand out into. And Crunchyroll already has original series, some of which are pretty popular, so overall it's a big add for Sony's content portfolio.

Disney's problem IMO is that they launched their service too soon, because they were kind of pressured to do so after making the massive Fox purchase. Outside of Mandalorian they had virtually no new content ready and thought they could coast off the vault. They now have to "resort" to putting theatrical releases on the service to feed it some new content, but theaters more or less going in a very rough patch is a good reason to make a shift for them. That and, the parks aren't doing so well, so they really need the streaming service to pan out. I can see them putting all film releases day-and-date with the service if they haven't said anything about doing so by now.

Sony isn't in that kind of position because while PlayStation is hands-down outperforming their other divisions, they don't have any one division as bad off as Disney's parks, for example. They also have a more varied content portfolio (in different media) compared to Disney, which also helps. That's a reason they wouldn't need to commit so much to putting all 1P games on an all-encompassing streaming service day-and-date, but to make up for that they would need to get at least some film, television, music etc. releases day-and-date on the service, and maybe use subscriptions to the service as a means of getting purchase discounts on hosted content (similar to how you get discounts on buying games currently in Gamepass).

 

Censorship is inevitable. Especially considering the size of chinese market and westerners are not the angels either. They do not do hardcore censorship - for now at least - but it will eventually happen. But Crunchyroll purchase was a very nice investment from Sony.
Netflix also has anime studios though. Funnily enough I did not know about that until recently.

Even with that Disney was able to get 80+ mil subscribers at once. But their media IPs have a huge history and wide reach too. Also it is cheaper in comparison to Netflix (though.I am not sure about prices). I do believe that Sony can get big numbers in streaming, that why it is very interesting what are they going to roll out. Anime is growing after all. I presume both fumination and crunchyroll have no more than 10 mill combined.

It will depend on price but I do curious how it's gonna work if Sony will roll out a service with some gaming - after Disney's example is proof that you don't need to be first to get a sold number of subscribers - and some additional services included. Sony has a lot of possible scenarios there. I do wonder why they haven't created music streaming service yet. It is curious that their recent TV announcements from gaming IPs will perform. All in all, it will be interesting.

 

Well, the comforting thing to take here (at least for a good while) is that a lot of these anime deals from Western companies only pertain to distribution rights, not the actual production studios themselves. Though I do think in the future some of these studios will try being eyed for purchase. Netflix has done a number of anime productions by basically funding certain studios, it's kind of hit-and-miss.

Castlevania for example I've heard good things on, same for the version of Cutey Honey I believe they funded or partially funded. But they made changes to Saint Seiya that fans didn't like, and while they seem keen to do more Japan/Western productions, they need to be better than, say, Cannon Busters (which is decent but too unfocused and a lot of clashing ideas plus some bad pacing and lack of some character development). Still a bit crazy that the best Japan/American anime co-productions I can think of are IGPX and Afro Samurai, those were over a decade ago!

IIRC Netflix is a HEAVILY debt-based model. They basically do what Amazon does, but I don't know how sustainable that is going into the future. It's starting to pay off nowadays but they need a lot more hits to make up for the debt they've incurred with their business model.

Crunchyroll was actually bleeding subscribers for a while last I checked, because they tried doing some original content pitches like High Guardian Spice which weren't well-received, then some controversy with Elation Studio (funding among other things, HGS) and their funding practices, disgruntlement over Crunchyroll not using subscription money to fund Japanese studios like promised, the Rooster Teeth fiasco, etc. Funimation's also probably been hit, though less so, because of that Vic stuff which happened and then a few of their DBZ VAs getting into their own controversies.

If you're interested in terms of anime subscription growth, it's some of the YT channels like for Bandai worth keeping an eye on as they get a lot of support. Several anime studios are considering doing their own domestic YT channel platform to sidestep companies like Funimation who keep censoring their dubs and subs; I hope that channel works out for them and I'd like to support it, but I need to find more info.

 

I disagree. When he got there everything was already done. PS5 is successful thanks to the strong Playstation IPs, strong launch lineup and great overall next gen design by Cerny and Sony internal teams (including Japan Studio for everything Dualsense).

He actually did some harm to the brand with his bullshit statements as soon as he arrived and even before with he is strong anti BC stance.

 

yeah no, he actually saved the entire PS5:

https://www.gamesradar.com/jim-ryan-had-to-stop-sony-engineers-from-making-a-dollar1000-ps5/

 

The difference that in Amazon it is a division and the most of the enormous income comes - I presume - from the store and AWS. So they can have loses. And yeah I agree Netflix should soon become profitable.

AWS is similar to MS - MS is using its gaming business you commercialize Azure more and get more exposure. It is becoming de-facto gaming platform - just like AWS being defacto video streaming platform. MS uses it for Xbox Live, it used it for MFS, various online games are coming to Azure like PUBG, Ark and recently PSO2. Also it wants to popularized XCloud which also uses Azure.

Oh, interesting. Did not know that about that. But well - anime - is one of those things that full of controversies all the time.

I think it is mostly due to brand itself and a right price. Just like with IPhone - playstation would sell one way or another. I believe it is even better positioned than Nintendo even.

 

Hyperbole and ClickBait article headline. From the actual article:

Ryan discussed his role in reigning in some ideas, especially when it came to chip technology. "Technology people will say, “Here's a really cool chip that's gonna make a great gaming console," explained Ryan. "And I might have to say, “Yeah, but that really great gaming console is going to sell for $1,000."

 

Another Sony exec feeling the need to kick the ghost of Kutaragi, I'm not impressed and it means less than nothing.

 

If it was not their most successful console launch then sure, hate all you want

 

It's probably gonna be a while before I continue my own 10th-gen speculation, because I've been redoing almost all of it xD. It's not just about the specs tho, but what new input experiences that might come and what a company might do fitting with their business strategy and prior efforts.

Like for example, it's pretty easy to see what type of hardware designs Mark Cerny prefers to lead on, or how Microsoft is gradually integrating the console, consumer devices (Surface) and cloud (Azure) hardware needs into a more unified design. So that's something I'm taking seriously while revamping my own speculation, though I guess a lot of the technical specs will probably stay around the same, maybe.

xD, starting to see why guessing this stuff six years out might be kind of ridiculous, but it's also so fun to do. Can't help it .

 

Agree with the original post except a larger emphasis on ML accelerators. Holiday 2026 would be perfect. Minimum of 32GB of HBM memory. 64GB would even be better. But with the way things are going right now, ARM CPU and GPU could be the way to go for next gen. Apple is going to shake everything up with their Apple silicon. I'm sure engineers at both companies are watching closely what Apple does. ARM processors would provide much better performance per watt.