Polygon writes: "LightBox Interactive, the Austin-based developer behind PlayStation 3 game Starhawk, has laid off 24 of its employees, studio founder and president Dylan Jobe tells Polygon. The layoffs are part of a "shift in product strategy" at LightBox, Jobe says, which includes a move away from traditional console development."
Sony announced its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, alongside the traditional update on PS5 shipments.
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Sony and Nintendo are both thriving and I'm happy, thank goodness for them or otherwise the whole gaming industry would be in shambles if they only had PC to rely on!
• Total G&NS revenue: 10.5 billion USD
• Operating profit: 900 million USD
• Hardware sales: 8M units shipped
• Software sales: 97M units
• PSN MAU: 132M
vs. Xbox:
• Total gaming revenue: 5.96 billion USD
• nothing else gets reported
Xbox operating costs are without a doubt eye wateringly high, way way way higher than Sony. GP is costing them an absolute fortune to operate.
That is a very solid operating profit. It's not net, obviously, but still a very healthy amount of cash you make after cost of debt and taxes (+ other expenses), and can invest into R&D and future endeavours. And give back to your shareholders or buy back shares.
It would be in Sony's beat interest to not rush next generation. Let 2029 or 2030 be the start of next generation. There is clearly plenty of demand for the PS5 and gamers are not asking for more at this time.
Yup especially with the price of tech going up. They already have the PRO to hold them over.
Exactly this. Let Xbox wither on the vine for a couple more years and there will be nothing left.
I fully agree for 2 reasons:
1. Microsoft seems to be in a hurry to release the new Xbox, if they do at all... AMD speculates a 2027 release. This will hurt them in the long run, because:
2. Datacenters are buying up ALL the RAM, and some RAM manufacturers have stopped making RAM for consumer products entirely, while the other remaining ones are scared to ramp up their production capacity to make more RAM because they're worried this whole AI thing is a bubble that is about to pop, and they don't want to be caught holding the bag when it does pop. So, for now, it costs $300-400 for 32GB of DDR5. That's the MSRP for some entire consoles.
If Microsoft drops the new Xbox now, it's going to cost them a fortune. If Sony holds their cards a moment and lets PS5 cook for a while, as it's showing no signs whatsoever of slowing down in sales, then by the time PS6 is ready to drop, RAM prices should have stabilized, allowing Sony to devote much more of their budget towards making PS6's CPU and GPU more powerful, in addition to the tech itself maturing and the available CPU and GPU parts being much more powerful for the same price point than they would be if released today. So, we'd get a super powerful PS6 in say, 2029, that won't have to cost $700-800. They speculate, based on the current specs, that the new Xbox will cost north of $1,000, and that was before the RAM shortage came into the picture. It's definitely going to be even higher now that RAM costs so much.
MS will be shooting themselves in the foot (again) if they try to drop a new Xbox now, and Sony would be wise to capitalize on that mistake by holding their cards a while longer, raking in more of those PS5 profits, and then dropping a new console as soon as the hardware market stabilizes from this AI datacenter BS.
7 years is a hurry...? Its the same amount of time between XBO and series. The same amount of time between PS3 to PS4 and PS4 to PS5. The 360 was 8 years between it and XBO.
If they do release first, and then Sony a year or two later... is it not possible for prices to come down in that time?
I think Switch 2 beat PS5 during December 2025 that is why the gap decrease to 1m units. Because during black friday, I know PS5 sales is 2:1 against the Switch 2.
And I just want to add that the PlayStation 5 is currently 1.94 million units BEHIND the PlayStation 4 when you align launches. While Switch 2 is 10M ahead against the Switch 1 when you aligned covering it's first 7 months.
No one wants the Switch 2 to do badly.
PS5 being less than 2m behind PS4 is not a big deal; PS5 had to deal with COVID and ongoing supply and pricing struggles that clearly still exist today. Sales of software are incredibly strong, and the size of the community is bigger than its ever been.
PS5 is well on pace to exceed its early (2021) estimates of 110m by end of life even if that's 2027. PS5 will hit 100m before November and then sell another 6-8M in November + December.
PS5 is doing great, and so is Switch 2, it's good for everyone that they succeed, pitting the two against each other is more damaging than anything related to the sales of the two consoles individually.
@repsahj
Yup because they’ve been the anti consumer they are for so long and needs to be humbled 😆
I'd be lying if I said I didn't regret my purchase a bit. I mainly bought it for Mario Kart World, but I find it pales in comparison to 8. I'm annoyed that Nintendo charged money for a super barebones 'upgrade' to Jamboree, no new minigames? No new boards? Just some gimmicky low res camera mode. Oh and Midtroid Prime 4 let me down as well, yet to go back and finish it.
I don't want the Switch 2 to fail, it's contributing to a healthier console market with the death of xbox consoles. I'll get use out of mine long term, but some of Nintendo's decisions like the ones above just annoy me lol.
@respahj the only thing I want Nintendo to badly is the 80$ games so they lower the price.
A new patent registered by Sony suggests the company is exploring the idea of personalized podcasts on PS5, hosted by PlayStation characters.
Okay this is actually really cool too. What is being proposed here is that the AI will generate you a podcast that is focused on the games tht you play or have wihlisted. This means you always get topic relevant to your tastes. Just don't screw it up with a bunch of ads.
AI is very cool, it's just all the real cool stuff is being drowned out by companies exploiting it as a marketing buzzword, generative AI slop and companies using it to cut corners and save money.
This is a terrible idea. Firstly the characters voices originate from real voice work. Secondly, the ai could end up saying questionable things. Thirdly, some voice actors use their regular voice when acting.
I know it's cool to hate AI, but we only hate AI because of idiots that misuse it or exploit it to take away peoples jobs. THIS is a GREAT application of AI, instead of having a human being voice actor sitting there for hours talking in character while having people writing scripts or coming up with topics etc, it can all just get POOFd into thin air and you can enjoy unique and entertaining content that harms no one.
Not sure if intentionally being funny lol. isn't this like quite literally taking away people's jobs? I think SAG-AFTRA may disagree about this harming no one.,
The thing is that this isn't even something that's necessary to create as a job. Without AI it just wouldn't exist period, it wouldn't be worth the effort. So what I mean to say is, having AI utilize the voice actors (with their consent of course) to create unlimited "podcast-style" content is not only super lucrative (which people will call exploitation), but it creates an entire form of entertainment that requires a "Set it and forget it" mechanism where you don't have to babysit it or hire and fire or train or anything.
TLDR: Without AI this wouldn't even be considered at all, so I'd rather have this than not have it at all.
i hate this
i hate all of this. dont just use peoples voices for AI slob that u dont pay for
Insider Gaming has learned that the ongoing price increases in RAM due to the rise in AI could delay the next generation of console releases.
What is even the incentive of upgrading to the next-gen after this console generation we've had? Graphics are plateauing, prices at an all time high, studios skipping entire generations or simply releasing just one game for it...
Its a mess
How do you gauge each generation? There has been a lot of really good games this gen. I only care about the games. First party hasn’t been the best but the generation isn’t over yet
jznrpg,
Thing is, every generation before this one has had something that defined console identity. Very little beyond bigger/more detailed games and performance modes are really there.
I feel the last generation that cared very much was gen 7; Capcom's darkest era, but I have to give them props for being really experimental at the time. We saw plenty of new games that still tried to do something new. Outside of Metaphor and Clair Obscur, this gen has been pretty forgettable if you ask me. I'm sure a lot of it is the corporatization of the industry and the creative talent has to keep making sequels and spiritual successors because the cost of development is out of control. But even then, plenty of these experiences are experiences we've had already. And the thing is. Switch 2 and PSVR2 could really be doing incredible things, but it's just not there. Xbox I just don't see the value or point anymore but that's just me.
Why has is been the worst? I've been gaming all my life and this gen. has been one of the best.
Not to mention that just like this generation, the next one will also be shared between the current and next gen console at least for a couple of years. So the few titles that it will had, just like this one, will run on the console you already have.
I think people have to remember the pandemic at start of this gen and how it effected game development. This next gen we will see the PS4 etc support dropped and truly see the full utilisation of SSD's improvements to ray and path tracing and the impact of AI upscaling etc will be where the biggest improvements will come from.
My sentiments exactly, next gen has got to prove it's worth before i buy into it this time. This has been the weakest generation in my 30yrs of gaming. From the drawn out cross gen garbage, to so many games getting stuck in development hell or canceled, to the ABSURD levels of trend chasing to the point of self destruction, this gen just wasn't worth it
I'm pretty sure I've already read a story that said Playstation is only halfway through this console's generation and that PS6 is a way off.
Im good with next gen being pushed back to 27/28. It feels like this gen has only just begun.
Covid-19 held back everything at least 2 years worth. Although many people disliked, i think only UE5 can generally distinguish this gen from the previous one.
UE5 is definitely impressive, but I would also give the nod to the current version of Decima, at least the way it looks for Death Stranding 2.
That's normal how you think. Time goes faster when you're older and i bought my PS5 since day 1 release and now it's 5 years old. I don't mind a year delay to release PS6 in holiday 2028.
Regardless of RAM price increases, I strongly believe there’s still a lot of potential left for the current gen. I’d be fine with at least 3 more years.
Whenever it comes out is fine with me. I still have backlog for the next year at least
That is too bad, always sad to see people laid off, and its even worse when a decent console game developer switches to IOS development.
Starhawk was fun, had zero advertising and deserved better. Hope those guys find work soon.
I think marketing is the Bane to Sony's Batman. It's breaking its back by not promoting...well, anything. It's shit like this that makes me convinced Insomniac's decision to go 3rd party was in the best interest of the studio. Look at Resistance 3. One of the best, if not THE best, shooter of 2011 and Sony barely promoted it. They set good and great games up to fail. I love PlayStation and the games the 1st parties put out, that's why I'm so critical. It's great to have "all these exclusives" but what's the point if 2 or 3 are marketed?
this brings me back to my point that although sony is a great company, some games like starhawk under preform on the console. whereas if this game would have been released on the xbox360, people would have bought this game in droves considering the audience of xbox360 doesn't have a game similar to this. these guys were great developers, hope the laid off find work in the future.
RIP Warhawk :-(
One of the few developers that actually made multiplayer games that went beyond the cookie-cutter experience and yet it falters.
You'd think with all the people that complain about online shooters all being casual and generic, Starhawk would've done better. Sadly most big publishers will just see this as another reason to play it safe.