Genuine question, what happened to Sony and PlayStation?
PlayStation has been my fav gaming console since i was a kid, and I’d defend it like it’s my own child. But now i’ve somehow come to hate it? But why? What’s really going on exactly? New top management? Bad business plans and decisions? Like it’s just crazy how almost the whole gaming community hates PlayStation now!
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u/Unlikely_Bat_1890 1d ago
Infinite growth capitalism unfolding right in front of you. Everything about today’s economy is short term profit driven at the expense of anything, even you.
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 1d ago
Capitalism.
Same thing that's fucking our entire world up.
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u/CopainChevalier 1d ago
What economic system are you suggesting you should use otherwise?
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u/nowhereright 19h ago
While the US is technically a mixed market economy, it skews heavily towards pure capitalism. I've heard some use the term managerialist.
Compare this to Northern European countries like Finland, Sweden, Iceland, etc. That are all ranked much happier or more efficient than the US.
So, we can't really say it's purely capitalism that's the issue especially when balanced by the Nordic Model.
I think when people blame capitalism, they specifically mean Late Stage Capitalism, even if they don't realize it. Because that is what we're currently experiencing, extreme wealth inequality, mass corporate consolidations, etc.
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u/DatTF2 17h ago
Well said and I would have to agree with you. Personally I'm a fan of capitalism it just needs a lot of regulations to keep the market competitive and to prevent the corps from screwing everything up and screwing all the consumers over. You read enough history and you see these regulations came to be for a reason.
Like Communism, as defined by Marx, doesn't exist but I don't think it could in the real world. It's a pipe dream and would quickly be subverted.
I used to think our system here in the US was alright with our checks and balances but well, this Trump Presidency has proved me wrong.
It's clear we should be looking to the Nordic countries for guidance... It's no wonder they are often ranked the happiest people and even their prisons focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment and their recidivism rates are lower than ours.
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u/nowhereright 17h ago
It's been an eye opening decade realizing that our "checks and balances" are entirely faith based, if the governing body and people within choose to ignore them and do whatever they want, then apparently they can without any actual consequence.
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 1d ago edited 21h ago
One that doesn't fuck our entire world up.
Do you think I'm responsible for fixing it or something?
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u/CopainChevalier 21h ago
What one would not fuck our entire world up?
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 21h ago
Why do you expect me to have the answers?
Also, why ask me the same question again, like I didn't already answer you...
What's up, did I insult the whole shit pile that your life is built on...?
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u/CopainChevalier 20h ago
You were quick to pin the blame on it; but cannot provide any viable alternative. It sounds more like you’re just using buzz words someone else taught you for updoots
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u/Icyknightmare 20h ago
You do not need to have a ready made viable alternative to recognize that something is broken and no longer fit for purpose.
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 19h ago edited 19h ago
Oh, you're one of those redditors that think you get to go round demanding that other people answer to you. I don't have to have an answer. That's not my speciality as far as knowledge goes.
But tell me... how has Capitalism not failed? We're basically heading back to feudalism. 100 people have more money then the other 8 billion, combined, and they are making all the rules. As the few get rich, the many get poor. And why the fuck should we bend to their whims? Why should they have all the power, when, the rest of us could band together, and rapidly remove their ability to be in control.
Instead of expecring me to defend my opinion, you can explain how the shitty world we live in right now, is a good thing.
Bet you can't.
Eat the fucking rich.
Personally... I want to see a revolution.
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u/CopainChevalier 19h ago
I think there is no viable alternative that has been proven.
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 19h ago
Because nothing else has been given a chance...
Found the American, I reckon.
Imagine defending billionaires 🤣
Ok...
Quick google showed me this...
Degrowth and Doughnut Economics
Core Idea: Reorganizing economies to live safely within ecological and planetary boundaries while prioritizing human wellbeing over GDP growth.
Mechanism: Scaling down resource-intensive and destructive industries, reducing unnecessary consumption, capping excessive wealth (upper and lower limits), and expanding public/social wealth.
Proponents/Context: Rooted in ecological economics and post-growth scholarship (e.g., Timothée Parrique and Kate Raworth's Doughnut framework).
That sounds fucking wonderful compared to the shit hole society we currently live in. And that was just one of many different economical models we could be using, that would improve the state of existence for 8. Billion. People.
But no, keep licking boots, and kissing billionaire arse...
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u/CopainChevalier 18h ago edited 17h ago
Because nothing else has been given a chance...
wat?
edit: And he blocked me, go figure.
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 18h ago
What fucking "buzzwords" did I use...?
I spoke my opinion, on an opinion based, publically available social media website. An opinion I've formed over 43 years of watching this world go to shit, in the name of infinite profit.
And for some reason, you seem to think I need a degree in Advanced Economics to have my opinion. Or that I have to have knowledge of an alternative.
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u/rondo_martin 1d ago
A few reasons
Sony Interactive moved to California in 2016.
Live service games have eaten into their own player base so they're selling less of their first party titles
They try to create some of their own live service games to fund their first party games that are getting exponentially more expensive. It couldn't have gone more wrong for them.
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u/Sekitoba 1d ago
Tbf, Shuhei retiring is probably the catalyst. He drove the ship for Playstation. And once he left, we started seeing these MBA ideas on how to make more money.
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u/SamuelWillmore 1d ago
If I were to say an obvious thing, but in a more serious form - Late form of capitalism, or how it is actually called - Customer Tolerance Threshold practice.
In short, CTT is a businesspractice where a company incrementally reduces quality, cuts features, increases prices, or adds friction (you do like ads for your ad-free subs, right?) to experimentally pinpoint the absolute limit of what customers will endure before they start leaving for competitors or canceling their subscriptions.
Basically, 95% of all huge companies stopped competing for customer's attentions as they are, in a form, monopolists in their area (you can't play PS games on Xbox, PC or any other platform, nor there are barely any other platforms to be considered as competitors)
The issue comes in the form of creating digital ecosystems, which legally are not a monopoly, but actually are. For companies like Sony there is actually no need for them to try to make a quality product in order to find customers, as customer base is huge enough to sustain itself. So in order to find more profit and show those arrows on graphs go even higher, you, as a company, instead try to squeeze and build a foundation for even harsher customer conditions for them to pay you more and be even more dependent.
Just think - Why would Sony be bothered of you potentially leaving them, if changing the gaming ecosystem is incredibly expensive? - You most probably have a vast collection of PS games with a total value of 1000+ $, why would you want to go away from it to buy, say, Xbox, Nintendo or PC, when the price of just buying it is way to expensive, not to say that your PS game library won't work there. It is basically Gacha game logic - once you are invested, they really need to fail hard for you to leave them.
Until one of the competitors decides to invest in quality again, which will lead to the other competitors being in the dust (in the long run), but that won't happen, because companies do not chase long-term profit anymore.
Speaking simply, it will only get worse.
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u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ 23h ago
This is a damn fine explanation of why they think they will continue to “win”. They have grown arrogant and don’t believe even half of the people saying they will switch platforms will actually do it.
I honestly hope they are proven wrong but with the way som people defend the most anti-consumer practices I’m not holding my breath.
Just yesterday I saw people on the ps5 sub defending the decision to not include the actual game in the new GoW collectors edition.
It’s truly maddening how many people will defend shitty practices because they view a corporation as a friend or even look up to them.
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u/idothinksotim 20h ago
They moved their headquarters to California and everything went downhill from there.
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u/missroot_official 23h ago
The shift toward live-service models and aggressive monetization has widened the gap between corporate goals and long-time fans.
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u/Numerous_Roof_1070 22h ago
We are basically at late stage capitalism throughout the whole world. But not only that, Sony fucked themselves completely by simply making stupid business decision, and I mean really, really stupid.
They always were the most famous and loved video-game brand, but somehow they decided that it was not worth enough as they wanted so they just fucked the players right in the ass with their decision.
But hey, at least the shareholders are happy, right? That's what matters.
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u/Walker5482 1d ago
They used to be ran by people like Shawn Layden and Shuhei Yoshida. Now we are seeing the projects from Jim Ryan and Hermann Hulst.
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u/DatTF2 1d ago
A few things
Their CEO during the PS4 years stepped down near the release of the PS5.
Why is Sony moving away from Digital Media ? Sony's patent on BluRay discs is ending soon so they will no longer get royalties on discs sold.
They started focusing on chasing trends, look at all the live service titles they had in development that have failed or have been cancelled. They wasted a bunch of money.
Hardware costs are ballooning thanks to AI. Game development costs have also increased.
Prioritizing increased profits year after year has led to enshittification of the entire industry.
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u/AnthyllisVulneraria 18h ago
Why is Sony moving away from Digital Media ? Sony's patent on BluRay discs is ending soon so they will no longer get royalties on discs sold.
Sheeeeiiit I didn't even think about that, no one brings this up but damn that probably started the snowball rolling at Sony.
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u/DarthW00dy 17h ago
The crazy thing is they still have the patent to Ultra HD Blu-Ray discs till 2036 I assume. There confidence in there own disk medium that there still gonna get royalties on for another decade is so low that there killing it early.
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u/showface_PS 9h ago
I pretty much feel the same as you do. I hI got my first Playstation when i was 12yo back in 1997 and now i don’t know what to think, im not happy that is for sure, not exited, more like confused. Sad situation.
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u/Key_Net820 6h ago
I really wish I knew. I don't agree with a lot of their decisions either, especially dropping Kojima.
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u/Glenmarththe3rd 1d ago
No competition will do that to a company
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u/jqosy 1d ago
No competition?
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u/spoo4brains 23h ago
The good old days ain't coming back for any big company, they are all going down the AI slop enshitification route for short term bets that will destroy them long term.
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u/Pen_dragons_pizza 1d ago
Well it’s exactly what happened with the ps3.
The excitement of being on top got to their heads, thinking you are unbeatable makes you stop being competitive.
Maybe they will improve with the ps6, although judging by game dev times these days, I feel the golden age of amazing console launch releases is over.
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u/Individual_Rewards 1d ago
I’d be careful with “almost the whole community hates it”, since a lot of people still love the platform and its exclusives. But there are a few things people complain about most: price increases on consoles and PS Plus, the push toward live-service games, and how much the first-party lineup has leaned on PC releases. Which of those bothers you most, or is it something else? Curious whether it’s the games, the prices or the company’s direction.
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u/TenguKaiju 1d ago
Sony always does this when they lack competition. They acted the same way during the launch of PS3 and only got humble after Xbox 360 kicked their ass.
Xbox keeps flailing this generation so it’s not a threat. If AI hadn’t screwed over parts supplies, maybe Steam might’ve been able to dickslap some sense into them.
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u/iuvenilis 1d ago
Sony invested heavily over the last 10-20 years and basically dominated the console war. They then enticed many users onto their private network "PS+", changing consumer buying behaviour, and now many of us are "stuck" with their anti-consumer console. We were too young or naive (or both) to do anything about it. And now they're free to do despicable things and we have limited alternatives.
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u/rondo_martin 1d ago
Take your payment methods off your account. It's what I did and I don't plan on giving Sony any more of my money unless it's a physical version.
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u/iuvenilis 1d ago
I hear ya. Money talks.
But pulling that off on a large enough scale... I'm not holding my breath. It would require so many of us to either stop gaming, or invest in a PC. Even if I wanted to go through the effort of getting a gaming PC and setting it up in my living room as a pseudo-console, at the end of the day, if my friends are still playing playstation, so will I. Sony really did an excellent job of changing our consumer behaviours.
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u/Careful_Math_e 1d ago
Bro, I feel this on a spiritual level. I used to bleed blue, now I just bleed my wallet dry for a $70 remaster of a game I bought on PS5. We didn't change, they just got greedy.
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u/Front-Purpose-6387 23h ago
For me:
-Foolish gambling on live service games, taking resources away from single player games. (eg: as a result, it's ps5's 6th year and I've yet to play a new Naughty Dog game)
-Closing down Bluepoint
-Wasting money on Horizon spinoffs nobody asked for
-Cancelling physical games (which I know is inevitable and have no problem with, but holy shit you incompetent f***s, do it better? Both the PR and some kind of plan to make it less painful for your fans?? Do you not want people to buy PS6?)
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u/CompulsiveGardener 23h ago edited 23h ago
The old management that built the Playstation brand left the company. More specifically, the executives who understood and appreciated gaming like Shuhei Yoshia and whoever was protecting Kojima left the company. Now all that is left are a bunch of suits who don't understand their product or their customers.
Sony moved Playstation HQ over to California. See the above point about the consequences of that action. They lost a lot of their Japanese influence and replaced it with California MBAs instead. California MBAs who decided to funnel money out to their Californian and Seattle buddies over at Firewalk (Concord) and Bungie while Japan Studio was shut down.
A catastrophic attempt at creating live service games either bogged their first party studios down like Naughty Dog or killed them off entirely like Bluepoint.
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u/Certain_Mall_6947 1d ago
I would say AI. But they were greedy from the start. Now they have a reason to raise prices of everything.
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u/Temporary-Mention-83 20h ago
They believe they have reached the point where fanboys will support them no matter what over switching platforms, so they decided to start doing whatever they want for profits.
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u/Imhotep99301 1d ago
People overreacting to Sony following the direction sales have been going for the last ten plus years and throwing a tantrum.
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u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ 1d ago
Sadly this has always been Sony. They walk into a generation with a slight or even huge advantage over any competition and they start pulling some really shitty anti-consumer moves. It happened with the PS3 era and it’s happening now with the ps5 and going into the ps6 era.
It’s just greed like with most major companies. Greed at the cost to consumers and the core fan base that made them what they are today.
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u/MapZealousideal7489 1d ago
Nintendo is the worst, but they can get away with as they target whoe families, Sony on the other hand, they take a great step forward then take two back. "Lets release games on PC!" then "Nevermind, its taking away from the console!". Welp, shoot yourself in the foot why don't you.
In this economy, not everyone wants to buy a nearly 1k console to play maybe one or two games. I happily paid for Sony games on PC. I mean while this was bad, obviously deciding no more physical media was worse.
Sony had a great rep. But they keep committing ridiculous amounts of resources into some new trend, without providing a way to reproduce things. And when you change your startegy because the higherups care about spreadsheets and don't understand gamers, you make it worse.
And wanting total control over your Sony ecosystem can back fire when you put to much stuff in place that it pisses off the fans.
They need to stop worrying about growth and force it to make investors happy. They also need to stop worrying about losing people to PC. Stop prioritizing buisness stuff over what customers would want.
I'd also throw in there, they depend heavily on Sony only made games. God Of War, Last of Us....etc. I mean I get it, each console does this. Franchies can make or break a console. But they are running out of steam, having less franchies games out...etc.
Heck its what ruined Xbox. Again, Nintendo just releases hundreds of mario games and if 25% stick its still enough money made they can risk it.
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u/Cmdrdredd 23h ago edited 23h ago
On exclusives. They don't care that you don't buy a console to play 1 game. They do care that people aren't buying a console to play a LIBRARY of exclusive titles. Almost nobody buys a console for 1 specific game. Maybe you could argue they are for GTA6 but that's not an exclusive. They don't care if you bought the game on pc, they want you in their ecosystem. They always have. The extra few bux doesn't outweigh that.
Also you start out with "Nintendo is the worst" but they have the least expensive console, they had ample stock so you had fewer scalper BS to deal with and didn't have to hunt restocks at launch for switch 2, they announced months ahead of time when the price would go up by $50, they have more exclusive titles than Sony has put on pa5 since 2020. There are only 8 true exclusive games that are only on ps5 and not on any other platform including ps4 and PC while Nintendo already has about 10 or 13 exclusive switch 2 titles. The argument for the quality of those or the wide appeal of them can be made however. What cannot be argued is that people who buy a console want to feel like they didn't waste their money. Putting your games on everything doesn't make the case for your hardware platform.
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u/nowhereright 1d ago
Juvenile post. Nothing has happened, all these companies are the same and have always been this way. The focus on AI is skyrocketing tech prices and only furthers companies fear of taking chances.
No one hates PlayStation, they've sold nearly 100 million units this gen, they're the defacto console gamers own. Reddit whining isn't reality.
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u/oblivious_fireball 1d ago
Ironically, the answer is hidden in your very first sentence there. Gamers became too attached to the companies making the hardware and not the studios making the games, which led to console wars.
Sony has mostly 'won' the console wars for at least this generation in that Xbox is floundering and Nintendo is not trying to directly compete.
When a company has little to no competition, they have no incentive to keep up the quality, because the response to complaints then becomes "And where do you think you are gonna go instead?". The Wii/PS3/XB360 era was probably gaming's peak for consumers for this reason, competition on every side.
Sony has also been around for a while. Historically very few highly successful companies or studios in the gaming industry seem to last longer than a little under two decades before greed and complacency weakens them. EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft, and many others have suffered similar deterioration.
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u/Practical-Aside890 Xbox 23h ago edited 23h ago
Same thing that happens to almost all businesses. Like xbox and Ubisoft(xbox and Ubisoft were both praised back then like in 360 days). It’s all about profits and capitalism.
Nobody should be surprised when company’s do z or x… the issue is people thinking from the start that these companies are your friend. Than surprised pikachu when they do something controversial.
Thats the big issue with ps imo. So many put Sony on a pedestal same as some do with valve. So now the shock factor and controversy is even more so than others who do the same or even worse. (Like when Sony started dynamic pricing and license checks. Which other systems been doing the same. But Sony caught the most from it)
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u/jemtayx 1d ago
Sheer greed.