BrutalGamer Bringing you Brutally Honest feedback from today's entertainment industry.
The PS4 is cookin’ at retail, but the company on the whole is looking at it’s fourth successive year of financial losses.
Nobody would argue that the PlayStation 4 has been a success. Aside from just being a great little system, the console benefitted from some early stumbles from Microsoft and has really taken advantage, returning Sony to console glory here in 2014. Sales in the neighborhood of 7 million consoles out the door though, are a small dent in what’s a companywide defect for Sony.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the challenges are so steep that executives like Kaz Harai (who every PlayStation gamer should know) have had to not only skip their bonuses from the conglomerate, but also take as much as a 50% pay cut in order to try and make things even out. And, as MCV points out, even if the PS4 hits the 20 million unit goal for 2014 (which would be a terrific turnaround) it still would be performing at a 45% loss next to what the brand was doing at it’s very top of the charts performance back in 2007.
In a time when Nintendo’s financial hardships have been making front page news on many gaming blogs and sites, Sony’s problems have been largely ignored. I would say that’s since they have little to do with the gaming end of Sony’s spectrum, but as you can see, even that’s not without issue. If the trend continues, you can probably expect a lot more critical eyes start to focus on the mega-company.
Source: MCV
It is a little odd how the the media tends to zero in on NIntendo’s troubles. Granted, much of Sony’s aren’t game related, the Vita itself is still struggling somewhat. It continues to flourish in Japan, but sales everywhere else are somewhat lackluster.
I think it’s pretty telling too (for the entire industry) that the number one console right now is actually selling at a 45% worse clip than the number one console in 2007. That’s worrying.
Development is just getting too expensive, and I think that publishers are slowly coming to that realization. It’s not very sustainable for this industry to continue going on like it is; granted it’s no crash of 1983, but this issue is still concerning. Maybe it’s a good thing that the 8th generation isn’t as large of a jump as the 7th. If we can taper off a bit, and maybe hit a ceiling as far as graphical power goes, development costs could decrease.
Maybe the industry just needs to be forced into that sort of position.