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　　Sony, one of the three console giants, has swiped enough traffic this year-exclusive games on PC, opposed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, PLUS upgrade membership fees to ask users to make up discounts, and was poached by XGP for the exclusive game Persona Wait, just a single piece of news is enough for players to gossip for a while, and now that the time comes to the second half of the year, Sony has no intention of stopping, and continues to "bigger and stronger, and create greater glories" on the road of brushing traffic.

　　As we all know, Sony is gradually releasing game works on the PC platform, and some past exclusive games have also been moved to PC game platforms Steam and Epic. The words "PlayStation PC launcher (PlayStation PC launcher)" were found in the documents of "Marvel's Spider-Man: Remake", and it is speculated that Sony may launch its own PC launcher.

　　It seems that Sony, who "has died" in the mouths of players, seems to want to find a second spring on the PC platform?

　　Sony is not "dead", but the console is "deflated"

　　Before discussing whether Sony is going to enter the PC game market, we still have to figure out a question: whether Sony is "dead" in the console market.

　　The answer is no, but to say the answer will inevitably make people a little shaken and hesitant.

　　In fact, although players can easily detect the ridicule behind this sentence, Sony's actual situation is indeed not good.

Not long ago, the three console giants, Wesuo and Ren, announced their financial reports, and all three showed a certain degree of decline in revenue performance: Among them, Microsoft's 2022Q4 financial report showed that game revenue was US$3.45 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 7%; Sony The 2022Q1 financial report showed that game revenue was US$4.59 billion, down 2% year-on-year; Nintendo’s 2022Q1 financial report showed sales of 307.4 billion yen, down 4.7% year-on-year. At the same time, the performance of mainframe hardware maker Nvidia has also experienced a certain decline.

　　The three console giants are "deflated" together. In addition to their own operational problems, there is a high probability that the console game market has encountered difficulties. In this regard, many analysts and practitioners attribute the reasons to the overall weakness of the game market, the delay of major console games, the decline of players' enthusiasm for consuming game consoles, and the competitive pressure from PC games and mobile games.

　　To be honest, the analysis of these professionals can be said to be straight-forward. In the past first half of the year, it is not difficult for us to feel the fact that the development of the game market has been pressed on the pause button. Although in the past two years, there have been sporadic concerns about the game market being dominated by service-oriented games, the increasingly solidified top camps, and the imminent increase of player growth, but one victory after another in revenue data will always make people feel Ignore the existence of these problems—even if some of them are deadly that could kill the industry. And we didn't realize that the savage growth of the game market, ignoring problems and consequences, would lead to "retribution" so quickly.

　　Take Sony, which represents the console game market, as an example. In the past few years, despite the trend of cross-platform game sales and the fact that platform-exclusive masterpieces have been decreasing, Sony is still the second largest player in the overseas game market by virtue of the console market. The sub-market (the first is the mobile game market), its own huge player audience, plus the quality of exclusive games such as "God of War 4", "Soul of Tsushima", "Horizon: West End" in recent years is not bad. With the popular fried chicken "Yuan Shen" landing on PS, Sony's revenue in the game department in fiscal 2021 also increased slightly by 1.2%.

God of War 4

　　But after 2022, things will be very different.

　　In addition to Sony’s own “death” behaviors such as membership discounts and exclusive poaching, the entire console game market has also begun to show signs of fatigue. The PS5 and Xbox Series X/S two “next-generation” consoles have been released for 2 years. The Switch of Lao Ren’s family is also an old machine that has survived for 5 years. Although the opening of the domestic market has provided a new sales growth point for this part of the host, the fatal flaw in the version number of the national game console, However, the sales of the National Bank game consoles declined rapidly after the heat dissipated, and it also added a lot of haze to the construction of the domestic console game ecology in the future.

　　In addition, Microsoft and Sony’s continuous lifting of the ban on console-exclusive works is also exacerbating the vicious circle of console market decline. As more and more exclusive games on PS and Xbox are brought to the PC platform, it seems that Microsoft and Sony have more opportunities to reach PC players, but in fact they are hurting the interests of console players. , and makes the behavior of buying a console more and more unnecessary - anyway, as long as players stay in the Steam and Epic malls, there is always a chance to play the exclusive masterpiece of Microsoft's Sony console platform, why buy a high-end PC whose performance is not as good as , What about host devices with relatively limited functions?

　　Of course, in response to such a situation, console manufacturers have also launched the "host first, then PC" operation, hoping to give the console a first-mover advantage, but in fact, players are obviously more willing to experience the game for exclusive rather than early access Spending money and delaying the operation of putting on the PC will cause players to quickly lose their enthusiasm for the game after the game’s first fever dissipates. By the time the game is put on the PC, the player has already gone through the entire game through the game live broadcast and live “cloud”. The willingness to re-purchase the game will obviously drop significantly.

　　In short, under the influence of various factors such as the overall weakening of the game market, Sony's operational accidents, and the trend of exclusive lifting of the ban weakening the position of the console, the future revenue of the console game market is not optimistic, although some exclusive games may be led in the coming year to regain some face. , but in the long run, with the intensified trend of exclusive games on the PC, the console is slowly losing its competitive advantage with PC and even mobile devices. In such an environment, Sony wants to deploy its own PC platform, from Steam and Epic. It is not difficult to understand that you can earn your own money back in your hands.

　　From games to devices, "combination punches" are coming

　　Since it is going to enter the PC, then it will be carried out to the end. From games to equipment, Sony obviously intends to arrange players in a one-stop manner.

　　In terms of games, from "exclusive" to "limited-time exclusive", Sony has put exclusive games on the PC in the past two years, and players are all watching:

　　In 2020, Sony announced that the PS4-exclusive game "Horizon: Zero Dawn" would be ported to the PC platform, causing dissatisfaction among many overseas PS4 players, but the game was eventually successfully logged on to the PC, and sales have led Sony's PC-side games so far;

　　In 2021, Sony, who knows the taste of the essence, will strike while the iron is hot and will also send the open-world action game "Gone With the Past" created by its first-party studio Bend Studio to the PC;

　　And when PS players realized that "Horizon: Zero Dawn" and "Gone Day" are not an exception, in 2022, Sony once again sent a "surprise" to players-only on the PS4 platform for 4 years " God of War 4, also announced that it will land on the PC platform;

　　Since then, while being cordially greeted by the PS players who bought the console for the exclusive masterpiece, Sony has also completely showdown, that is, to move the exclusive game to the PC platform, even the masterpieces "The Last Survivor" and "Uncharted Sea" "It seems that it can't escape the claws. When PS players came back to their senses, Sony had built a PC game team with a luxurious lineup by removing the exclusive masterpieces one by one from the exclusive list. Even the official website has a "PlayStation Games for PC" page, and "currently" supports players to play PC games without a PSN account.

Sony PC game introduction page

　　And that's just the beginning. According to Sony's official statement at an investor conference in May this year, they expect that by 2025, 50% of PS platform games will be on PC.

　　The dedicated PC game page, plus the words on the PC launcher found in "Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered" mentioned above, it's not hard to see what Sony intends to do - one is like Ubisoft and EA. Develop your own PC sales channels, so as not to let Steam and Epic eat most of the PC game revenue; the second is to expand paid memberships (Sony’s current PlayStation Plus subscription service is only for PS players, while the next-door Microsoft’s XGP is the most premium subscription. The service covers both PC and console users) in order to increase revenue.

　　With its own PC platform and Sony's strong developer lineup, to be honest, the prospects are still relatively reliable. However, Sony may feel that it is not enough to start from games alone. Game" style of play, perfectly copied to the PC game market.

　　How to say?

　　At the end of June this year, Sony launched its own e-sports brand InZone, launching three headsets and two monitors (compatible with PC and PS5), and said it would cooperate with various e-sports events to promote the brand’s e-sports products.

　　Although under the banner of e-sports, players all know that the word "e-sports" is e-sports when it falls on professional players, and electronic games when it falls on ordinary players, especially PC games (PC games are almost It dominates the entire e-sports market), and Sony vice president Issei Kii also said that the new brand is aimed at "hardcore" PC gamers, and hopes that the quality of the new products can conquer the player group and make them see Sony as a "PC gamer". key player in the market".

　　Of course, as a latecomer in the PC game hardware market, Sony has a very low possibility of catching up solely by the "quality" of the equipment. However, if Sony's PC hardware can be optimized for the host platform porting products or provide some targeted functions to If we improve the gaming experience of PC players, then we can still have a lot of imagination for the InZone brand. At that time, Sony, which has a stronghold in the game/hardware market of both consoles and PCs, may really let players hope that they want to "kill their breath" in vain.

　　Steam is not going up, how much potential is there in the PC market?

　　Sony is well-prepared to enter the PC, however, it may not have seized the right time.

　　More than half a year in 2022 has passed, and the game market, which had grown savagely before, suddenly began to show fatigue. However, regarding whether the game market is increasing or decreasing, and the respective revenues of the three major market segments (host, PC, and mobile), there are also some contradictions between the statistics and predictions of various institutions on the market.

　　Taking statistics and forecasts for mobile games as an example, according to data analysis agency Sensor Tower, global mobile game revenue in the first half of 2022 was US$41.2 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 6.6%. The data analysis agency Newzoo speculated that in 2022, global mobile game revenue is expected to reach 103.5 billion US dollars, an increase of 5.1% year-on-year.

Data source: Sensor Tower

　　According to the overall situation of the mobile game track in the first half of this year, except for the big IP "Diablo: Immortal" and the open world mmo "Phantom Tower", there are almost no new works worth looking forward to in the entire track, known as mobile games. The version of "Escape from Tarkov", "Dark Zone Breakout", performed mediocrely after its launch, and its popularity dropped rapidly, and "Apex Heroes" did not perform well after it was moved to the mobile terminal. The rest of the game products , or some small IP products for specific regions and groups of people, or some “skin-changing” products that have been severely homogenized on the track where they are located, it is really difficult to make people optimistic.

　　The new game is pulling the hips, and in the face of the current situation that the number of players around the world is becoming saturated and the desire for consumption is declining, even in the remaining three months, the games that have been launched continue to launch new versions and new activities to increase the turnover. Newzoo expects to reverse the actual loss situation and achieve the goal of 5% growth, but there is still no small difficulty.

　　In addition, the decline in global smartphone sales may also lay a foreshadowing for the increasingly "involutionary" mobile game market.

　　And the mobile games that dominate the market are like this, and PC games will probably not conform to the forecast results of analysts.

　　In today's game market, there are fewer and fewer developers willing to develop client-side online games. Most of the game revenue in the PC market comes from service-oriented games with an e-sports nature and buy-out game products sold on platforms such as Steam.

　　Speaking of the status of e-sports games, according to Newzoo's forecast, the Asia-Pacific e-sports revenue will reach US$590.2 million in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 17%, accounting for 42% of the global revenue. Among them, the revenue of the Chinese market accounts for the global e-sports revenue. nearly one-third.

However, according to the "China E-sports Industry Report from January to June 2022" released by the Game Work Committee in July, from January to June 2022, the revenue of China's e-sports industry was 76.497 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 10.12%. Therefore, whether the e-sports industry can finally meet Newzoo's expectations may be the same as mobile games, and it is unknown.

　　And look at the sales of PC digital games represented by the Steam platform. According to data from market research company Video Game Insights, in 2019, Steam relied on the epidemic bonus to make its revenue growth rate exceed 31%, but this figure fell back to 11% in the following year, and in 2022, although the first half of the year Sales data increased by 3.3% year-on-year, but since April this year, the sales momentum of Steam games has slowed down. Video Game Insights predicts that in 2022, the revenue scale of the Steam game market is expected to decline.

　　In this regard, the reasons given by Video Game Insights mainly mentioned the postponement of game masterpieces, players have the choice of next-generation consoles, players’ purchasing power has declined, and the Russian market has been lost.

　　Of course, Video Game Insights still has expectations for the game market, believing that Steam can achieve new growth in 2023. However, the good news he gave is actually far-fetched. For example, he believes that the average price of Steam games will increase in favor of increasing market revenue. This has to remind people of the situation in which the price of games on Steam in Argentina has skyrocketed several times during this period. Before increasing market revenue, this change will be more to dissuade players who download Steam for lower-priced games.

　　The decline in e-sports revenue, the slowdown in the growth rate of PC game sales giant Steam, and the downturn faced by the global game market, combined with the actual situation, these factors are difficult to solve simply by turning the number at the end of 2022 into "3" , and the game industry is bound to have a period of time to pay for the mistakes made in the previous barbaric growth. Under this background, Sony's entry into the PC field will use the high-quality console games to reactivate the global game market? Or will it hurt console players and thankless PC players at the same time? We can only wait and see.