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.