I recently wrote an article that featured a quote from Sony Entertainment Europe’s CEO Jim Ryan regarding his thoughts on Microsoft’s plan to bundle-in Fifa 14 with the overseas pre-orders of the Xbox One. His response “why should we do that” left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why an executive would be so aloof about the concept of giving gamers a little perk after dropping hundreds of dollars on a high-end piece of hardware.
Well, now it’s becoming clearer. The reason is simple; they NEED you to buy a launch title.
Sony’s plan to regain their losses during this 2013 launch season centers around PlayStation owners not only purchasing a console, but a subscription to their PlayStation Plus Network ( which is needed for online play on the PS4) and at least one launch title. Starting to make sense why Sony’s not just giving them away, right?
If you don’t already know, most game companies lose money on the sale of their hardware, as they typically sell the consoles for less than what it costs to manufacture them. This is why the companies push launch titles so hard, as the software is where the real profit comes in. It’s worth noting, however, that this time around, Sony expects to lose much less on the sale of its next-gen console than it did with the launch of the PS3, according to Sony executive Andrew House.
Source: Eurogamer