The whole world uses both for various things. Even the countries that "officially" use metric. Specific global industries still use imperial. Canadian and British people are perhaps the most famous for combining the two, but most of Europe also mixes things in here and there.

And of course the whole conversation is Euro-centric and ignores the historical use of traditional measurement systems in Africa and Asia, but somehow that never gets brought up.

What makes you think the PS5 isn't growing how they need it to? It's outselling the Xbox and it isn't close. In a less direct comparison, it's outselling the Switch. It's outselling what the PS4 did, and that was successful. I don't understand where this sentiment that the PS5 is struggling is coming from. The second half of your first sentence even mentions that they're really dominant right now.

I also don't understand "PC overtaking any one console"... Like, how is that even a comparison? When was the last time there were more consoles than consumer PC's.... The SNES era? I'm not even sure about that, you might need to go further back.

Even if you want to talk about just gaming, that's tricky to even start to compare. The closest I can think of is that according to this Steam averaged 120 million monthly users last year. According to this, PSN averaged 118 million monthly users in Q4 2023. That's pretty much dead even. I don't think it makes sense to add other platforms to the PC side without adding in Nintendo and Xbox to the console side, in which case... Consoles have more users and it's not close. And they both are just a fraction of the mobile gaming market anyways.

Sony has absolutely proven that they can generate the unique exclusives that sell consoles. That's.... Why they have the best-selling console right now. Their strategy is working. You could say this about plenty of other consoles at points in the past (PS3, WiiU, 3DS, GameCube, N64, Xbox One). If you even said this a couple years ago about Sony struggling to manufacture PS5's fast enough that might make sense. But they're currently dominating the home console market. So I don't understand why you think they're struggling or need to drastically change the way they do things?

Just to clarify- what strategy are you predicting that they will change?

That was explaining the delayed releases for PC, not saying they would never come to PC.

In this example Ragnarok came out in 2022, so there probably isn't much meat left on the PS5 bone with this one.

ITT: a bunch of people saying "I won't".

You're probably in the minority. There's 16k subscribers in this community and, currently, about 30 million active users on Steam. Most of them have never heard of Lemmy, and heck a lot of them probably were never on Reddit. The PS5 has sold 50 million units- that's over 3,000 PS5's for every subscribed account here.

A lot of users here have PC's that approach or exceed the PS5's capabilities. You have fancy expensive monitors, a nice desk and chair, a gaming mouse and mechanical keyboard. The people this CEO is talking about don't. They may have an old desktop from the pandemic, or a laptop. They might just use their kitchen table as a desk.

Or, heck, they might not even have a desktop or laptop at all. It's still early, but there have been studies suggesting that Gen Z and Alpha are using PC's less and doing more of their computing on phones and tablets.

Overall I thought it was great that Sony started releasing their games on PC (and especially through Steam, usually with pretty decent PC ports). It's great to give consumers more options. Delaying the PC release probably means more time for the devs to work on the port (Sony's PC ports have been mixed on launch, but even the bad ones have gotten fixed pretty quickly afterwards, and it's been a while since the last one). Delaying PC versions seems like a pretty reasonable compromise.

Sony absolutely did sell consoles directly to consumers. That's how I got mine lol.

Sony has absolutely no interest in enabling scalpers. They gain nothing, and in fact lose out on revenue because of it themselves. The PS5 initially sold at a loss, with the assumption that buying games, accessories, and subscriptions will turn the whole ecosystem profitable for Sony. Scalpers arent buying subscriptions. They probably aren't buying games because the digital market makes the supply close to infinite. They probably aren't buying accessories because the supply was similarly not restricted. So the only thing scalpers are doing is giving Sony a loss, delay the consumer's ability to buy anything that's profitable from Sony, then taking more cash out of the hands of consumers that, arguably, might have been used to buy more games/subscriptions/accessories. Sony has absolutely nothing to gain and quite a bit to lose from scalping.

Scalping affects all kinds of industries. It's only even possible when demand exceeds supply at a given price point. I have no reason whatsoever to believe Sony was purposefully restricting supply (it was in their best interests to produce as many units as possible).

Any further action restricting scalpers would be the responsibility of retailers. Sony can't just force Target or Wal-Mart to incur additional expenses to start tracking who is buying PS5's and restricting those. Even when retailers do it, it's usually a joke to work around. Heck, the minimum-wage employees tasked with enforcing such rules might be the ones doing some scalping to try to supplement their income.

The only way to eliminate scalping is to make it unprofitable. One way of doing that is... Just don't buy from scalpers. But consumers cannot organize and behave rationally like thaf- the free market is often a downward spiral of bad decisions, and a lot of casual consumers just don't care about spending a couple hundred dollars more.

The other way is to raise prices. If Sony and Wal-Mart are selling something for $500 and a scalper can flip it on eBay for $900, getting $400.... That means that consumers are willing to pay $900 for that item. Perhaps it should have originally sold at retail for closer to $900? But then the narrative would be that Sony was overcharging- that the PS5 was a luxury item for rich people only. Even if it sold out, the stigma would stick for the whole generation (like the PS3).

Sony made a product everyone really wanted and charged less than they could, and you want to blame Sony for actions of all the people between you and them?

You said the experience of building a PC was great (it can be- I've built several myself), but aren't you forgetting about all the shortages, supply machines issues, and scalping that happen within that industry as well? I never saw pictures of cryptofarms with tens or hundreds of PS5's hooked up. NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD have all received criticism for not doing enough to prevent scalping for various product launches over the past few years- are you bringing the same energy to them?

Nintendo arguably has restricted supply artificially with things like Amibo and there were allegations they did so with the Wii as well. Are you boycotting them?

It's perfectly fine to just... Not want a PS5. PC's are good too, and a lot of people have both.

I think there are populations of both patient and impatient gamers on both.

The absolute worst platform is Nintendo. You might as well buy the game on launch because it's still going to be the same price 10 years later. Or even more expensive in some cases.

Consoles have been moving to digital, but they still have physical games. I can't go to a local store or eBay and buy used Steam games. At the same time, Steam has great sales that do a lot to offset that.

In general I think media hypes up new releases, and there's blame to go around omamong publishers, media outlets, and media consumers for that. But most online discussions on games are going to default to new releases unless it's a specific "patient" or "retro" community. So it's easy to underestimate how many people are fine waiting a couple of years. Or how many kids are waiting until their birthday or Christmas to play a game.

Sony has been paying that toll and, per the article, plans to continue to do so.

Am I missing something here?

What do you mean by "shifted to". Was there ever a time when these were more common on consoles?

The game widely attributed to starting "micro transactions" was MapleStory, a windows MMORPG. PC games adapted online features like digital-only delivery, DLC's, and micro transactions before consoles even had the capability to do so figures out. Even before online capabilities, I remember going to game stores in the 90's and seeing "expansions" for PC games, which is what we used to call DLC back when it was physical.

When think "microtransaction", I think of a handful of different games immediately. MMO's, which are much more common on PC (chat features, complex inputs requiring a keyboard, add-ons or other enhancing programs running in the background). Simulation games (the Sims, Truck Simulator, Farming Simulator, Cities Skylines, Civ, etc) that usually are much easier with a M&KB than controller. Multiplayer battle games like MOBA's or shooters (Valve has DOTA 2, TF2, CSGO and most others are either PC exclusive or multiplat). When I think of Sony in particular, I think of their cinematic single-player experiences. Which may have some DLC, but I don't associate with predatory micro transactions like cosmetics or P2W schemes.

Consoles have tons of that too nowadays, but it seems like kind of weird to act like PC users are somehow less interested or susceptible to predatory pricing schemes.

Both pale compared to the mobile market though.

https://www.techspot.com/news/103189-ps5-becomes-sony-biggest-money-maker-crushing-past.html

Seems like almost every business area of PlayStation is doing well. Hardware, subscriptions, DLC, other micro transactions... The PS5 just became officially their most profitable generation.

They're looking to maximize revenue and profit by expanding into the PC market. It's great to see because it gives consumers more choice. That absolutely should not be interpreted as any sort of sign of weakness for the PS5. The PS5 seems to be doing better than the PS4 did, and the PS4 did well. They have crushed Xbox to the point where people are speculating Microsoft might want out of hardware. The Switch is harder to compare against because it's near (really should be past) the end of its life, but the PS5 has been selling at a faster rate.

PC gaming is just starting to get back in track after a few down years for hardware sales (largely related to supply shortages and price gouging, especially GPU's). But it's starting to turn around, and it seems like Sony wants a piece of that. The question should not be "why is Sony pushing PC ports", but "Why is Nintendo not porting to PC".

Square-Enix has been mismanaged for decades and I don't think is worth paying attention to.

Is the CEO underestimating patience or is the author overestimating?

It's not as if PlayStation is struggling right now. The PS5 seems to be selling pretty well.

Not to mention that consoles and PC's are indirect competitors. A lot of people want to use a controller form their couch without jumping through hoops. Gen Z is trending away from desktops and laptops entirely in favor of mobile devices.

Is this an argument that humans did not evolve to eat meat? Because those teeth... Well let's just say the teeth shown aren't what you expect from an herbivore now, is it? Put those on a cow and they would look just as strange.

Economists are pretty famous for fighting amongst themselves. The vast majority of economists don't agree on anything with each other.

The loudest economists tend to agree with each other. The ones whose views and supported policies happen to result in more wealth being funneled to capital holders. For some reason those people are the ones who get interviews on TV and articles published by major outlets. I wonder why that could be?

I'm not saying every "indie" economist on the Internet is valid as there's plenty of bad ones too. But the idea that deflation is terrible certainly deserves scrutiny. Just look around... Is the populace happy with the results of the current systems and policies?

To quote one of the most famous economists, Hayek, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design"