Holy F, what a smooth brain move. They had an IP with incredible goodwill that would have been printing money forever (think about DLCs and merchandise, maybe even a TV series), and they chose to destroy all that to increase the active PSN account numbers by <1%. Which doesn’t even have a direct financial benefit, just something they can peacock in their quarterly reports, trying to boost the stock price.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Adding all those helldiver's players into the "Sony account to PlayStation now subscription service" sales funnel is the financial goal here, likely along with selling any data they collect about you to any bidder.

This does make Sony money, but it likely doesn't make them more than an indie becoming the 7th most successful game this year, but here we are anyway.

[–] slaacaa 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I understand that sales funnel logic, but I would still argue its actual financial impact would be marginal. It’s wishful thinking from Sony that just because you got your claws into a PC player by making a PSN account, they will start buying PS stuff. The data monetization is much more direct, but still, not much additional money to be made by a few (tens of / hundred) thousand extra registrations (especially as they had to be aware of refunds happening). These are definitely valid upsides, but I don’t think they are big/certain enough to make this call, and compensate for the negative consequences.

My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

My gut / experience tells me this is mostly about the PSN account numbers, and some execs getting a gazillion dollar bonus if they can push it above certain target by the next report, even if they damage the revenues in the process.

I'm inclined to suspect the same. A move like this does not happen without a project "champion" pushing through internal resistance.

I have seen exactly this kind of shortsighted min-maxing, where an exec will fixate on some metric or goal, and just wreck everything in their path.

[–] AWittyUsername 7 points 6 months ago

A boasted stock price is a financial benefit?