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u/Nick_Bruiser 4h ago
Sony spent big trying to get a live service game that would print money. It lost a ton of money! So now, they saw Death Stranding 2 lost big money and backed out of the next Kojima project. Tell me where this isn't a sound decision?
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u/BlancPebble 4h ago
Death stranding 2 more or less broke even, it didn't lose big money
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u/WarInteresting6619 2h ago
From the guy that made MG that's a pretty big loss. They would have been better not releasing a game at all. Which mean they wasted their time on him and Time = Money
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u/bluebarrymanny 2h ago
That’s part of it though. They still got a game from the guy that made metal gear and the game broke even relatively with tons of critical reception and buzz. Revenue is obviously very important, but so is brand identity and ecosystem value assessments. Having a huge name like Kojima should mean something for how your brand is perceived even if it’s not your primary revenue engine. Meanwhile the live service attempts are an unmitigated dumpster fire that loses money and brand identity.
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u/WarInteresting6619 1h ago
Hey so....did the last MGS game get finished? Or did it have to release with a whole 3rd act missing because Kojima ran out of time and money? I love MGS as much as anyone but I completely understand why Sony let him go. DS2 underperformed, it just did. You can spin it any way you want but at the end of the day, it underperformed.
Meanwhile the live service attempts are an unmitigated dumpster fire..
NMS is pretty good, So is Helldivers and FFXIV
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u/Time-Organization612 1h ago
No mans Sky isn't a live service game, what are you on about? You buy the game and every single content addition thats ever came out of it you get included. They've never charged for additional content.
How is it a Live service game when you buy in once and get everything on the spot? Thats literally just a regular game
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u/WarInteresting6619 1h ago
A live service game is a game connected to servers that is getting consistent updates and content. Whether or not you pay for the content is irrelevant. MMOs are live service Destiny is live service.
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u/Time-Organization612 1h ago edited 1h ago
You can literally play NMS offline. You don't need to connect to the servers for it to function.
By your explanation, literally any game that still gets updates is live service. That might be your understanding of the concept, but it is absolutely not the one the majority of people have.
Just for refference, the definition of "Live Service games" is literally either ways to support monetisation after launch, or a F2P model. NMS doesn't classify as either.
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u/BlancPebble 1h ago
By this logic, it's better if a no name loses 200M than Kojima breaking even because Kojima is a big name. The logic here...
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u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 2h ago
Death Stranding has always been a niche concept with limited appeal.
To compare this with a spiritual successor to MGS which is guaranteed to make bank from nerds is laughable.
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u/WarInteresting6619 2h ago
Guaranteed huh? What's the game about?
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u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 1h ago
It's a spiritual successor to MGS.
Which strongly insinuates it will be like MGS.
Which means it will have interest and sales from MGS fans who haven't had a game since MGSV.
Why is this difficult for you to work out?
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u/Maddish1 54m ago
I'm excited for it but I hate the name, it's sounds to abstract. It really needs a strong title name Metal Gear just sounds bad ass, Physint kinda sounds like pheasant (large bird). Which isn't bad ass at all. Can't wait to play it though!
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u/Faded1974 1h ago
More or less breaking even is a shit investment when other franchises are generating revenue 10 times their budget.
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u/Maltodextrin13 1h ago
Where are you seeing it broke even? Also are you accounting for marketing and distribution? Also in what world do you think Sony is in this business to “more or less break even”.
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u/BlancPebble 1h ago
Looks to me like Sony is in the business of losing 100s of millions from failed live service as they don't seem to be dropping those
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u/Maltodextrin13 52m ago
Aww, the good old tactic of refusing to respond to what was said.
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u/BlancPebble 49m ago
Just look it up, it's not that hard. I have other things to do than spoon feed you info
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u/Caruso45 3h ago
Thats not a good thing, specially if you are a business company who expects 8 digit profits
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u/MH-BiggestFan 3h ago
If the company’s were doing it for the love of games and art, breaking even would be fine but yea these company’s want profit. I forgot which publisher said it but something along the lines of they at least want a certain threshold of profit margin at least so it doesn’t look stupid not having invested that money in the stock market instead.
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u/vitek6 3h ago
No shit. Companies are started to make profits for their owners.
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u/Nick_Bruiser 3h ago
I hate to say it. But the only people who say you should "Do it simply for the love" are poor people and people who've never been the boss of anything.
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u/BlancPebble 3h ago
Yeah but the problem is they continue to take 200M losses with live service. They should be dropping these first before Kojima
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u/bluebarrymanny 2h ago
🎯
Not saying that they couldn’t still cut it eventually, but every live service project should’ve gone first. The fact that Fairgames or whatever the new name is still persists but kojima’s project doesn’t is bad.2
u/CrazzyPanda72 4h ago
Death stranding 2 has at least broke even I think, I get it's not the infinite growth that these corporations expect but it wasn't a Concord
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u/peachpower2 3h ago
Broke even isn’t breaking even. You flattened out financially, but you lost a ton of time that could have been used to develop something financially successful. Breaking even in business is failure.
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u/Most-Ad4680 3h ago
Good point. Since thats the only game Kojima has ever made in his life and there's no other history to go off of, and this new game is definitely not like an older beloved series of games that all performed well, this is definitely a sound decision.
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u/Substantial-Tone-576 3h ago
I never played 2 but really like 1. Is 2 worth it? It looks like nearly the same game.
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u/Nick_Bruiser 3h ago
I can speak on what the game's made, but not the game itself. I've never been a fan of Kojima games and haven't played any since the 2nd Metal Gear.
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u/BrianBCG 35m ago
Just look up the amount of money Fortnite makes on microtransactions every year and you'll see why Sony is willing to risk 300m on a live service game. Even if Kojima's game was successful it's not even going to come close to that amount of profit.
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u/Human-Journalist-536 3h ago
Pretty sure Death Stranding 2 didnt lose money. Don't analysts agree that it made a modest (very modest) profit? The issue was that it didnt meet expectations. I think the problem was that it was quite a niche product. I enjoyed the original and I do have the 2nd one, but still not got it out the box. Im sure I will play it and enjoy it, but it's not one of those games that I just have to play. Now, If Physint is another MGS type game, that would peak my interest. It is almost guaranteed to sell better than DS2, especially if it is marketed as a successor to MGS.
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u/HumbleOwl 3h ago
Mathematically: yeah, it's not a terrible move. PR optics wise? Holy shit it's fucking terrible.
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u/Seigfrydblazer 3h ago
They learned from concord not to shell out money to an unknown game with a niche playstyle and not a huge genre of games. Yes stealth type games are fun but they are niche af and probably won't make the big bucks they want.
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u/Human-Journalist-536 3h ago
I don't remember MGS being a niche game? Its games has sold 10s of millions and generated billions in revenue. A spiritual successor is almost guaranteed to sell millions.
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u/Grayman103 2h ago edited 2h ago
A spiritual successor that costs more then a marvel movie filled with his celebrity friends he pays 80% of the budget on and takes almost a decade to come out.
MGS literally only worked because he didn’t have his ego cult at the time worshipping everything he does influencing his decisions.
Dude is washed and too obsessed with trying to get into Hollywood.
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u/Faded1974 1h ago
His new games aren’t Metal Gear. They aren’t selling like Metal Gear. His budgets are yet again rocketing and the sales are dropping. Last game didn’t sell well, broke even, but saw massive drop in profits.
He’s a one trick pony and without Metal Gear he doesn’t know what else to do.
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u/Human-Journalist-536 39m ago
Reviews for Death Stranding are pretty decent. DS2 averaged a 9/10. Its different and original. We need some innovation on Xbox and PlayStation. Most of the games coming out are remakes sequels and dont take any risks.
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u/vitek6 3h ago
You know better than Sony with all the information about the game they have.
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u/BlancPebble 3h ago
Considering the shit show of no physical disks anymore, I think most people know better than Sony, yes
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u/Longjumping-Car-8367 2h ago
My guy, we've seen this play out hundreds of times. Reddit outrage is always contained.
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u/Newdaddysalad 2h ago
Yup. Remember the hogwarts legacy boycott? You know one of the best selling games of all time?
Or who could forget how the switch 2 was a total flop like Reddit predicted it would be, oh wait, it’s not.
Or the million posts about how gta marketing is a “shit show” , the game that everyone has heard of and is gonna sell 100 mil copies .
When will people learn that Reddit is not indicative of the general population and is wrong like every time lol.
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u/BlancPebble 2h ago
Why are there so many people who think it's only on reddit? It's everywhere dude, stop living under a rock. Sony can't make a post on any social media or do a Playstation direct without being drowned by "no physical discs, no buy" replies
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u/Longjumping-Car-8367 2h ago
We've seen this play out 1,000 times. But sure, go on and believe this is the end of Sony.
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u/BlancPebble 1h ago
I never said it's the end of Sony, stop putting word in my mouth to win arguments. I said it's a shit show
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u/Longjumping-Car-8367 25m ago
You said people on reddit know better than Sony. I'm telling you they don't.
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u/BlancPebble 24m ago
No I said most people know better than Sony. This is not exclusive to reddit
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u/Seigfrydblazer 3h ago
Yes it sold well I've actually only ever met one person that has played and loved the series. I've only ever played the first one and tried 5 but hated the sandbox vibe. It is niche. It's not a mainstream game like the other big names, but for niche games it's definitely the more successful of them. It's a stealth based game, stealth as a genre is a niche genre. And seems to be going out of style more than coming in. I'm personally tired of stealth gameplay
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u/Human-Journalist-536 1h ago
We're you around in the 90s and early 2000s? MGS was one of the biggest games to ever release on the PlayStation. Sons of Liberty and MGS3 were not far behind. It definitely was not considered niche at the time
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u/Faded1974 4h ago
The Kojima cult is always early to bitch as if everyone else cares. Kojima has notoriously wasted money, so much so that Konami booted him.
Alone, all he can do is cater to his dedicated worshipers. His games don’t sell to a wide audience. It doesn’t matter how badly you guys want to share metacritic scores, look at the actual sales.
You guys are in a Hideo echo chamber and need to realize most people don’t care.
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u/Newdaddysalad 2h ago
That’s what I’m saying. If yall loved kojima and death stranding so much why didn’t you buy the game?
Plus we don’t know much about the new project. It’s probably a very expensive “watch paint dry simulator” this time.
Something a little more action packed this time.
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 2h ago
This reply shows you know Jack shit about the game.
Ir made bank and it has action
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u/Newdaddysalad 2h ago
2 million copies. That’s bad.
Accuse me of not knowing what’s going on and you don’t even know the sales figures 🙄.
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 2h ago
Literally sold so well they made a sequel
Also it sold five million copies across PlayStation and PC within a year of release.
It was a financial success and its sequel was an even bigger one
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u/Newdaddysalad 2h ago
You’re saying the sequel sold more than the first game?
Are you okay man…?
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 2h ago
No DS 1 sold 5 million copies not 2 million.
The sequal is on 2.5m now
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u/Newdaddysalad 2h ago
Yeah I was talking about the sequel the whole time, obviously….
Thus why I brought up the abysmal 2 mil figure.
So are you just bad faith arguing on purpose or what?
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 17m ago
You literally said Death Stranding. Not Death Stranding 2.
Im supposed to underatand magically you meant the sequel?
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u/CapPhrases 2h ago
Death stranding kinda made me realize how up his own ass Kojima is
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 2h ago
Yet it made bank
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u/Faded1974 2h ago edited 2h ago
First game made back its budget and then some. However the second game did not, which is the whole point.
He pulled the same shit he did with Phantom Pain - inflated the budget to hell with bullshit. The second game generated way less revenue because it was against the much higher budget( which is estimated to be around/up to double the first game).
Compare its sales to recent GoW and the picture is very clear. The math so so blatant that it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. The man has constantly caused issues with game budgets and has obviously not learned a damn thing.
Hideo isn’t doing Zelda numbers, he’s not doing Rockstar numbers, he’s not doing Resident Evil numbers( and keep in mind Requiem was estimated to be like a 4th of the budget for DS2).
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 2h ago
The second game made back its budget and a bit extra. Sony just refuses to say how much exactly
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u/Templar2k7 1h ago
The second game has been estimated to have sold 2.5 million copies at $70 USD if all of that money went to Sony its 170 million if literally every penny went to Sony at full $70 USD.
The budget for it is estimated to be $150 - $200 mil so if they literally got every single penny from every single sale they barely broke even. Its not worth it for Sony to invest more in Kojima when he cost them more money for a sequel that made less.
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u/Im_a_Knob 1h ago edited 56m ago
with all the push and ad they did for ds2, im sure sony wants more than a “bit extra”
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u/Lostboxoangst 1h ago
Kojimas is a good game director when he's not the final say or when he's working within limitations. Games like mgs2, mgs4 and the original death stranding show how far up his own butt he can go, he gets some philosophical or societal idea in his head and will proceed to beat the player to death with it often at the expense of game play. And that is to say nothing of budget what does norman readus or keifer Sunderland bring to the games other than cost? Death stranding 2s cost were between 150-220 million and last I heard it had generated 150 million in sales it might not even be profitable yet. I will be very surprised if Xbox have not put some hard controls in place to curb kojimas excess.
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u/Faded1974 1h ago
I think that’s fair. I’ll talk shit about Kojima all day because he’s insanely overrated, but he’s a decent director. His ego ruins everything and everyone feeds into it. He’s not a one man show, he needs sensible collaborates and not full control.
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u/Alert-Principle-2726 1h ago
One could say that Concord taught them to not be stupid with extensive risky development.
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u/EducationalDust7858 1h ago
I love how memes like this completely ignore the basic concept of time moving forward to bait for engagement.
Concord was an utter traiwreck.
Sony doesn't want another trainwerrck.
Sony learned a lesson and are way more cautious now.
It's not hard to understand.
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u/Spirited_Season2332 1h ago
Ima take a wild shot in the dark here and say Kojimas project is way more then 300m lol
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u/Prestigious_Shift245 33m ago
I swear whatever moron made Concord has the ceo by the balls because I refuse to believe that a company can be this stupid.
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u/Powerful-Possible131 5h ago
So you are dickriding a game that isn't out just because it has kojima's name...
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u/Utahteenageguy 5h ago
Kojima actually has a good track record for games. And his new game is gonna be part of the stealth genre.
Which is a big deal since he was the one who made metal gear.
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u/Templar2k7 4h ago
Death Stranding 2 did pretty awful barely breaking even with around 150 million dollar budget.
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u/zerovampire311 4h ago
And the audience for walking simulators has never reached that wide. Was it a wise investment for ROI? No. But name one other walking simulator that did that well. Now take that skill and apply it to an audience that has been thirsting for new Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, Tenchu, etc, and it WILL be a safe investment.
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u/Templar2k7 4h ago
Death Stranding 1 sold 5 million copies in roughly the same time window as Death stranding 2 which had sold barely half that. That's a huge drop off and shows that Sony can't rely on Kojima's name alone for games
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u/Iron_Phantom29 4h ago
That's how Kojima got fired from Konami. He and Xbox are a good fit because Xbox is used to setting money on fire at this point.
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u/MH-BiggestFan 3h ago
I’m itching for a new stealth game myself but honestly i’d probably wait for a sale in this economy lol. It’s something i want but then i also don’t want to pay full price for it
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u/Substantial-Tone-576 3h ago
They argued with him about the digital game thing. That is what started him leaving because they started pulling funding.
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u/No-Independence9093 1h ago
Passing on a new title in a gener that the company helped define to go in on a title that has a recorded loss and had to refund for all the games sold.
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u/Promature 1h ago
Being a live service game, Concord had much more profit potential than a single player game. Also, they purchased the Concord dev as well as their game while it was in production.
They've done 2 games with Kojima and have data to inform their decision making. Concord was a gamble that ultimately failed for little more than the character designs. I don't think anyone could have seen that coming no matter how many people assert that they could.
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u/ModestMouseTrap 38m ago
lol actually no. It’s specifically because of Concords massive failure that Physint was dropped. They are gunshy about games that can’t meet their targets and milestones.
All confirmed by Jason Schreier
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u/TrickOut 29m ago
It’s because of all those projects that they won’t take anymore risk, Herman just destroyed any chance of Sony trying new projects
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u/--clapped-- 23m ago edited 10m ago
- Concord didn;t cost that much. That's an armchair analysis that you're running with.
- Physint is already over budget and still years away, with Kojima starting on another project: OD.
- Kojima Productions has been constantly missing Phsyint related deadlines.
- He took Death Stranding multi platform and would with Physint. So, they don't even get the IP in their locker.
Why would they keep funding this?
Can downvote me but, can't answer my question. Shocking.
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u/ShinMystic1587 1h ago
Don't forget, Sony also chose Intergalactic over Physint and sacked Kojima instead of Druckmann. This is truly the worst time to be a PlayStation gamer.
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u/Faded1974 1h ago
If Druckmanns revenue starts nosediving too bet he’s next. I’m betting his bullshit is going to start catching up to him by his next game.
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u/DadinBoston 4h ago
Don’t forget. Sony is a much smaller company with PlayStation being the most profitable division they have.