The Sony press conference at E3 yesterday can be called a huge success. They showcased some amazing games coming to PS4 in its first year and sent an important signal to the industry: Sony speaks out against restrictive DRM and used game policies. It seemed to be a good day for gamers, but there was a major downside that was addressed only passively. Online gaming on PS4 requires a PS+ subscription, which will cost you "less than" 5$ a month (most likely 4,99$ and of course 4,99€ in Europe). That is 60$/€ a year. Even if unfortunate for gamers, this move could have been predictable since payed online is already a reality at Microsoft and will continue to be with the Xbox One. The situation we're now in is a battle of standards on one hand (DRM vs. no DRM) and, on the other hand, the acknowledgment of a common standard (pay to play online). Not such a good day after all it seems, but like it is often the case, there are two sides to it.
Let us start with the less obvious one, the positive side. I won't lie to you, I'm not an online gamer. I don't buy FPS games and the only games I played online were DUST 514 (because it is free) and MGO (because it was awesome). Some of the best games on PS3 didn't even have multiplayers (Deus ex, Valkyria Chronicles, Ni no Kuni, Skyrim, etc.). On the other end of the spectrum there are games like Call of Duty that mostly sell because of their online multiplayer modes. The success of this franchise was frowned upon by many as it led to a flood of generic shooters with a color palette consisting of shades of brown. The positive side of payed online might be that it could become a "diverse games tax". Sony will be making a lot of money with the subscription fees of FPS fans. This will allow their studios to take bigger risks and creating more innovative games. The "good" side is that maybe less people will play online this way and that publishers will be forced to focus on making good singleplayer games. It might even lead to the revival of local multiplayer and co-op. On the other hand, that didn't happen at Microsoft with the 360 and frankly I highly doubt that will happen with the PS4. The "positive side" is more of a euphemism here. The only positive thing that will happen is an improvement of performance and services on PSN, but it comes with a price.
The negative side should be more obvious. Sony is making money with something that could still be free, even if not as good as the competitors networks. This way consumers will start to think that paying for online gaming is the norm and there is no alternative. As a consumer this is a huge blow and an unfortunate turn of events. Microsoft was always criticized for it and Sony shouldn't be an exception. It could also lead to the creation of even more generic online shooters, as Sony will also be making money thanks to them. Finally, it simply sucks if you like to play online and liked the free PSN service.
What do you think? Are you willing to pay for possible improvements or would rather have free access to online gaming? Let me know in the comments.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
The money MS gets from Live allows them to pay-off 3rd parties to screw Sony from getting timely dlc, or gives ms the advantage to buy whole games exclusively from 3rd parties.
Also we will need better servers, as downloads will be much bigger, more data transfering over the net (due to f2p games and mmo's announced for the ps4).
If Sony is gonna compete, they need to make more money. MS is greedy and lazy. They pay off others instead of making their own games. Sony needs money to advertise their games (lack of money might have played a part in why sony didnt advertise ps3 games much)
So if sony is going to be able to squash ms, it will cost money.
If u dont want to pay, then stick to your ps3 or pc. The company needs to make a profit, and this is a great way to do it. Because charging people only $399 for a console this powerful probably wont make sony much money. But the subscription cost of ps plus can help them break even and even make a profit. PLUS we get free games monthly.