• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sony president: PSN has 118M MAUs, half are on ps4

Shows a few things:

Lots of room for growth on PS5, sell them PS5s
or
Lots of people love PS4s, sell them a PS4 handheld
No way that Sony is going back to two platforms strategy, specifically now that development costs situation and forget about a hybrid system from Sony.
 
PS5 Pro around Xmas time will see a good number of regular PS5's hit Ebay and the second hand market, probably also a price cut of the regular PS5 at the same time... convert some of those less motivated or less affluent PS4 owners to upgrade.

Yep I'm probably going to sell my PS5 slim. Maybe not on Ebay the fees are crazy these days. Probably FB at a police station. There's a small chance I keep it though because my son harasses more and more every day. Would also open up the opportunity to play with my wife and son on some online games.
 

Alebrije

Member
Since PS3 /360 the gap between Old and new generation is less notable , this generates That a Lot of users don't jump to new gen. Plus globally a Lot of countries have hight inflation rates after COVID, so a Lot of people dont invest on a new console and it's ecosystem that is more expensive.
 
You reap what you sow. You make cross gen stuff you train the people to skip generations. You put stuff on gamepass you train the people to not buy games. You make F2P stuff, you train people not to buy games.
I get Sony was somewhat guilty of this too, with Spider Man:MM and GoW but I really think the main culprit here is the third party games. Casuals ain't gonna move off of PS4 while games like CoD, Apex, fortnite, 2K, and GTA are still completely fine on PS4. I do think when GTA 6 releases next year, you could see a MASSIVE increase in PS5s sold, especially with the way Xbox sales are just tanking.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future

Steam hasn’t given MAU numbers since 2021 when they had 132M

84994_2_steam-had-more-monthly-active-users-in-2021-than-playstation.png


But they have since broke their records for daily active users a few times so it’s probably significantly higher now
I have it on good authority that companies only stop reporting data when it is bad - so Steam's MAU has to be lower than 132 million.
 

midnightAI

Member
You reap what you sow. You make cross gen stuff you train the people to skip generations. You put stuff on gamepass you train the people to not buy games. You make F2P stuff, you train people not to buy games.

Sony also announced that they are now focusing on MAUs instead of sales. Where have we heard that before? I think its a slippery slope that will come back to bite them. Take the fucking loss on consoles and get these fuckers to buy the new console. You are already posting record profits every year. Im sure you can take the hit. Slim needs to be $299 asap and they need to stop porting games to PS4.

This whole MAU nonsense is basically complacency in disguise. no, you are in the business of selling consoles. You HAVE to sell more consoles. Especially now when Nintendo is literally refusing to release a console 7 years after launch of switch and MS all but conceding the market to Sony. Playstation should be selling more than ever and now they are behind PS4's sales, albeit by just half a million, but their projections for next year would set it back another million. Why? There is no switch 2 to fear and no xbox to fear for the remainder of the year. You should be cleaning up.

Drop PS5 slim to $299 and Sell the Pro to $599-699. They need those people to buy the new hardware. It is literally their business. Without it, the people would eventually stop upgrading and the sales of their first party titles would drop and it will have a knock on effect elsewhere.

I mean, cool and all, except that the PS5 is tracking very similar to the PS4, so people arent skipping the generation (and as far as first party goes they are now skipping PS4), not bad when you consider the financial crisis that is going on globally.

They will drop the price of the PS5 when its financially viable to do so, they wont want to lose money on the hardware (that's a beginning of the gen thing) and that's likely when the Pro is released

What you will get with the whole cross gen stuff is people waiting until the price comes down mid gen (so around now) and that's the whole point of keeping cross gen going up to this point. It doesn't mean some people will skip the gen, they'll just wait it out until the price comes down.
 
Last edited:

bender

What time is it?
That actually seems heathy considering lifetime sales of the PS4 are roughly equivalent to current MAUs. It's been obvious for a while but cross generation is the new norm.
 

Steam hasn’t given MAU numbers since 2021 when they had 132M

84994_2_steam-had-more-monthly-active-users-in-2021-than-playstation.png


But they have since broke their records for daily active users a few times so it’s probably significantly higher now
I read somewhere that MAU for Steam is between 140-150 million can’t find the source now and Nintendo (Switch) MAU is 124 million according to their last official report.
 
It does show that a new console gen isn't needed anytime soon.
I'd say it shows that games should have been designed for the PS5 from the start, so people would have had a reason to upgrade. All of our games suffered for it. The main benefit of the PS5 is the solid state storage speed, and it was basically negated by every game still being broken up into chunks so they would run well on PS4. Lifting trees, crawling through holes, and sliding through cracks should have gone extinct three years ago.

All us PS5 users get is that bullshit, plus a ton of PS4 games running at 4K. You can count on one hand the number of PS5 games that actually require a PS5 to render correctly, thanks to every game being neutered by cross-gen.
 
I mean this makes total sense, Sony consoles have had long tails and long support.

Sony didn't stop making PS1s until March 2006, they didn't stop making PS2s until January 2013, the PS3 lasted until May 2017.

PS1 - 12 years
PS2 - 14 years
PS3 - 11 years
PS4 - is turning 11 this fall.

They'll likely turn the spigot off for PS4 production in the next 18-24 months, especially with the PS5 Pro around the corner.
 
Last edited:

Killjoy-NL

Member
I'd say it shows that games should have been designed for the PS5 from the start, so people would have had a reason to upgrade. All of our games suffered for it. The main benefit of the PS5 is the solid state storage speed, and it was basically negated by every game still being broken up into chunks so they would run well on PS4. Lifting trees, crawling through holes, and sliding through cracks should have gone extinct three years ago.

All us PS5 users get is that bullshit, plus a ton of PS4 games running at 4K. You can count on one hand the number of PS5 games that actually require a PS5 to render correctly, thanks to every game being neutered by cross-gen.
PS5 released in the middle of a pandemic. Almost the entire world was put on hold, there were drastic shortages and the world-economy took a nose-dive, so cross-gen games were the only viable option at the time and most games in development had to take that into account.

Given the development time nowadays, it's only logical that we didn't really see proper current-gen titles until 2023.
 
Last edited:

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Turns out ps4 isn’t a system “of the past” and until Sony axes its store, online connectivity it’s still a viable console today.
 

Crayon

Member
Part of Sony and Nintendo's success over time is because of supporting the previous console as long as they can. People who wring every drop from their ps4 will probably feel good about getting a ps5 when the time eventually comes. This is going longer and stronger but the same thing should apply.

In fact, the long cross gen isn't all bad for me. If ps6 comes out and doesn't do enough $500 tricks, I can put off buying it for a long time.
 

DryvBy

Member
I wonder how I'm counted on this. At night I'm on the PS5 but during the day during work, I'm playing something on PS4 while on breaks/lunch. My kid plays on PS4 Pro in his room with my account family sharing Plus for GTA for kids (Wobbly Life).

But most of the time I'm on my PS5, not my 2 PS4s.
 

jm89

Member
I wonder how I'm counted on this. At night I'm on the PS5 but during the day during work, I'm playing something on PS4 while on breaks/lunch. My kid plays on PS4 Pro in his room with my account family sharing Plus for GTA for kids (Wobbly Life).

But most of the time I'm on my PS5, not my 2 PS4s.
I'd think someone who has their psn account active on a ps5 would be excluded from the ps4 numbers.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
Well it's just an anecdotal, but a lot of my friends kept their PS4 hooked on a different TV, so their kids can play and leave the PS5 alone, most games kids play today work great on PS4 so, I guess that a lot of PS5 owners still have their PS4's active.
 
I wonder how I'm counted on this. At night I'm on the PS5 but during the day during work, I'm playing something on PS4 while on breaks/lunch. My kid plays on PS4 Pro in his room with my account family sharing Plus for GTA for kids (Wobbly Life).

But most of the time I'm on my PS5, not my 2 PS4s.
I guess I am several MAU for Sony. Me on PS5, me on PS4, me still on PS3 occasionally, me on my alt accounts on PS4 or Plus stream when I am self boosting some MP trophy, PS3 there as well, but PS5 not yet until it joins PC streaming.
I doubt they remove duplicates, licenses that are used by in theory and often certainly actually multiple people to create some unique user number.
 
Last edited:

nush

Gold Member
PS4 Pro + cross gen releases. Give me a reason to upgrade to that big weird shaped console with even more expensive games Sony. Higher resolution, HDR and framerate don't cut it.
 

magnumpy

Member
hopefully that just means that "next gen" or PS5 gen hasn't really started yet. maybe GTA6 will get that going...
 

JayK47

Member
I'm still on PS4. The only game currently on PS5 that I am interested in is Stellar Blade. One game is not enough for me to get a PS5. Considering the directly most first party PS games are going, I may never upgrade. I picked up my PS4 to play Uncharted games. The last Uncharted game was on PS4. So yeah, what a weak generation this has been.
 

RCU005

Member
Does this really surprise them? Everyone practically had to move on from PS3 and even Sony wanted to end that generation. (Not because it ended badly, but it was hard to develop for and third party complained). So then, everyone started buying games for PS4, Sony started releasing PS4 exclusive games by the first year.

The PS5 is practically optional. Almost every game is on PS4. I imagine many people don't care about graphics and performance, and only care about the game still available for the console they already own.

SIE was also "scared" that the PS5 didn't get as successful, so they didn't want to abandon the PS4 so quickly, but the consequence was that the PS5 is boring in general. Add to that, that they moved to a live service strategy (which hasn't been so great to them internally) causing very few game releases this generation.

In short, this gen sucks when it comes to PS Studios. Many great games from third party, though.
 

AmuroChan

Member
Well it's just an anecdotal, but a lot of my friends kept their PS4 hooked on a different TV, so their kids can play and leave the PS5 alone, most games kids play today work great on PS4 so, I guess that a lot of PS5 owners still have their PS4's active.

Yep, that's my situation as well. I use the PS5 and my two kids use the PS4. So to Sony, that's two PS4 PSN users who didn't upgrade, but in reality my household already has a PS5. It's just that I'm the only one using it and my kids are still using the PS4.
 
We are half way into the gen. Did you guys think gamers would convert to PS5 overnight especially when the PS5 is still going at full price without a price drop? LOL @ the doom posters in here.

This news is a nothingburger and isn’t anything out of the ordinary or unexpected. Most people don’t upgrade to new hardware until there’s been multiple price drops and definitely don’t move to new hardware in droves at the middle of the gen.
 
Last edited:

Three

Member
Yep, that's my situation as well. I use the PS5 and my two kids use the PS4. So to Sony, that's two PS4 PSN users who didn't upgrade, but in reality my household already has a PS5. It's just that I'm the only one using it and my kids are still using the PS4.
They can probably get other telemetry data if you've set them up as kids accounts controlled by your account but your kids are still users at the end of the day. When they grow up and they buy their own games or consoles they're more likely to buy a PS if they have a library and account of their own.
 
Last edited:

AmuroChan

Member
They can probably get other telemetry data if you've set them up as kids accounts controlled by your account but your kids are still users at the end of the day. When they grow up and they buy their own games or consoles they're more likely to buy a PS if they have a library and account of their own.

Right, but the point is that they're not upgrading nor are they buying their own consoles anytime soon, and the reason is not because the PS5 has no games or doesn't offer the value as many have suggested in this thread. Our household did upgrade to a PS5, but two of the three PSN users aren't using the PS5 because they're not allowed to LOL.
 

00_Zer0

Member
dont see the issue here? just like people who game on old PC and did not built a new one or upgrade?

I 100% agree. I am a PC gamer and the only console I own is a Nintendo Switch. I am still rocking a Ryzen 3700X and a Sapphire RX 5700 XT RDNA 1 GPU. My system also has 32 GB DDR 4 Ram. It also has a 1 TB NVME SSD, a 2 TB NVME SSD, and a 4 TB hard drive. This was built all the way back in 2019, and I slowly upgraded through the years to what it is now.

I have two more upgrades to go before I build a whole new computer from the ground up.

I own a 5800X3D CPU I have yet to install, and then a future GPU that I will be getting in the next one or two years or so. It will most likely be a used 4080 Super or the upcoming RDNA 4 depending on Ray Tracing performance and price. After upgrading to these final two parts I will get 3-5 more years out of it. There is no need for me with the games I play to get the latest and greatest that is out there. I am not a huge AAA gamer and don't have the FOMO that so many console and PC gamers experience, because I am not about dropping thousands of dollars for the latest and greatest.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom