The counter intuitive multiplayer paywall and Sonys GaaS future.

[BananaKing]

In the PS4 era it was simple for Sony. Buy a game, and if you want to play online, pay a fee. Wanting to play online pushed the consumer to pay the fee.

But then F2P blew up. Fortnite makes billions. Warzone makes billions. Destiny, PUBG, Rocket league all went F2P. And these players don't pay for PS+, Sony doesn't want them too, because the more players a F2P game has, the more money it makes.

Which brings us to Sonys GaaS future. Sony said they have 10 GaaS games in development. Clearly they want success in that area. But what will their business model be like?

Release them as F2P to reach the maximum audience possible? Thus ignoring PS+ and not supporting it

Release them as traditional games, minimising their potential reach and success, to support PS+ and increase subs?

There is of course the rumors of project spartucs, Sonys revamped PS+ system. Could we see these GaaS games released on PS+ day 1 "for free". Thus having a huge audience and still pushing PS+?

[kitler53]

sony makes a "f2p game" but then "gives" them away on ps+.   never mind that in order to play it you must have ps+,.. the fact that those people without ps+ have to play $40 for the privilege of not being able to play the game anyways makes me feel good about the value of the subscription.

it's exactly what MS is doing right now with gamepass with things like halo.   make people pay a subscription for their free to play games...

[BananaKing]

Halo multiplayer is F2P and you don't need a subscription

[Legend]

Will these games also be on pc? f2p suffers when fewer people can play, so one way or another I think ps+ is coming to pc.

Maybe just make it so every microtransaction is 10% off if you have plus. It's a start.

[kitler53]

Will these games also be on pc? f2p suffers when fewer people can play, so one way or another I think ps+ is coming to pc.

Maybe just make it so every microtransaction is 10% off if you have plus. It's a start.

if sony makes a GaaS game and it's not on PC day-1then sony is really dumb.   i get keeping single player games like horizon and GoW exclusive for at least a year but community driven games that need to "go viral" need to be multiplat to take root.   these games either take off or are dead within a month.

[BananaKing]

Will these games also be on pc? f2p suffers when fewer people can play, so one way or another I think ps+ is coming to pc.

Maybe just make it so every microtransaction is 10% off if you have plus. It's a start.

I think their games will be released on PC as well. But again, what will the release model be?

Whats the value of PS+ if most multiplayer games are F2P going forward?

[the-pi-guy]

I'm really curious about what Sony's plans are with this. How do other platforms factor into this? What is their monetization plan for this?

A lot of Gaas are so successful in large part because they're everywhere. That often includes mobile even. Releasing some of these games day 1 on PC seems like it would make a lot of sense. I would also be curious if they had plans even beyond that.
It feels like they Bungie to have their own Mojang and to help build another one (or more). It would be interesting to see if their plans were to roll out to PS5/PC first, and then roll out anything successful to more platforms.

As for monetization:
There's so many avenues for going about it, whether or not there's a buy in cost, whether the transactions are micro or large scale content (like Destiny's expansions), whether PS+ is part of the monetization plan.
So there are at least 8 ways right there that Sony could handle monetization.


I feel like Sony is going to try taking a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach. Not that they will half do it or anything, but I feel like they're going to try a little bit of everything.

They do have Destruction All Stars and arguably Gran Turismo, currently.

Gran Turismo will be a buy in, and they'll have a fair amount of cars available for sale post launch.
Destruction All Stars started as a buy in, rumored to go free to play.