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The story
Hidekazu Shibata of game developer MAGES. told gamer.ne.jp in an interview that “we’re incredibly grateful we were able to release on Nintendo Switch,” sparking discussion on 5ch’s hardware/industry board. The company, known for adventure games like the Steins;Gate series, explained that it prioritizes Switch and PC because they let its older fanbase keep playing without having to upgrade to the latest hardware. At the same time, MAGES. doesn’t release packaged (physical) versions for PlayStation, prompting comments on the thread like “PS can’t even hit the minimum production run” and “profitability is an even harsher word than ‘barrier,’” which spiraled into a broader debate tied to the recent wave of third parties pulling back from PS5.
— With the Historia rollout, you’ve now built an environment where the whole series
can be played on current hardware. What kind of response have you seen from new players, and how does that feel so far?
Shibata: We’re incredibly grateful that we were able to release on Nintendo Switch.
Source: gamer.ne.jp / Original article here
What people said
Pawapuro (Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball) didn't get a PS packaged version either — this trend's going to keep spreading well before 2028.
Memories Off bombed hard on Switch, so I doubt releasing on Switch was actually successful enough to be this grateful about.
Lame how you start making up fantasies out of sheer salt.
Pulling out the key part:
"Of course we have older users, but at that age they tend to stop buying the latest consoles, which risks them retiring from gaming altogether. It's hard to ask them to buy the newest hardware, so as long as they have a Switch and a reasonably recent PC, we want to keep an environment where they can still play MAGES.'s adventure games."
Sounds like they want to plant roots on Switch (or really, Nintendo hardware) and PC, since those can pull in young new players. In other words, the implication is that they've judged PS can't bring in young new players.
???: "Just buy a PS5 already!!!!!"
I think that's slightly off
Given the part about not being able to ask people to buy the newest hardware, this reads more like a declaration that they'll make a console roughly one generation behind the cutting edge their main platform. Switch game cards being compatible with Switch 2 also works in their favor there.
Either way, the fact that they have zero expectations for PS doesn't change.
This is literally the "if you've got a Switch and a PC, you're set" line you hear all the time on gaming forums (ゲハ, game-hardware boards).
Guess developers feel the same way.
PS: "Here ya go" *quietly fades away* (sound effect for something vanishing without a trace)
Wasn't Blu-ray's whole selling point supposed to be that it's cheap? So it just doesn't sell enough to offset the cost difference from game cards?
They probably can't get enough retail orders anymore to even hit the minimum production run.
Whether demand for BD as a video format itself has died off too, who knows
They copied Nintendo and put download cards in convenience stores, but couldn't even sustain that — it disappeared too.
It's a blessing.
Nintendo hardware has never really been relied on by third parties before — once Nintendo moved to the next generation, that was the end of it.
The Switch is going to keep being used for a long time.
Honestly, even Sony probably thinks PS isn't sustainable anymore.
Judging by their recent moves, they barely seem to want to keep PlayStation alive at all.
If they keep calling these kinds of games "lame" and chasing them off, PS is going to miss the trend even in otaku-appeal content — the one area where it could actually beat Nintendo.
Indies have a somewhat different situation too…
They simply don't have the resources to go multiplatform from the start.
So they have no choice but to narrow down which hardware to target, or prioritize and release in order — and that order ends up being PC > Switch >>> PS >>> Xbox.
Well, in the end, if you say that's just the difference in expected sales, that's that.
That one's a bit of a special case, though
There was demand for a Switch version back at the crowdfunding stage, and they hit the stretch goal they set for it, so that's why it came out.
Yeah, producing a packaged version isn't something you can just do instantly for a single copy.
PS sure is good at generating buzz, if nothing else.
The "barrier" comment at least continued with "which is exactly why we have to work hard to sell it."
But "profitability" means they've given up from the start.
If anything, that's an even harsher way of putting it than "barrier."
It feels like we're seeing so much criticism of PS now that I wonder if they just stopped paying everyone under the table.
Anyone can see the software just isn't selling, so of course everyone except companies like Bandai Namco that aren't even trying to run it as a real business is going to flee to Switch 2.
It's simply because it stopped selling.
Back in the day, the Wii got absolutely trashed for being a console where only Nintendo's own games sold.
Now PS5 is in the same position, where only famous IPs and AAA titles sell, and it's just taking its turn getting criticized.
Honestly, didn't they just stop the under-the-table payments once the Totoki regime took over? (referring to Sony executive Hiroki Totoki)
If anything, just having Game Pass makes Xbox far better off even as the same kind of dying-village platform (限界集落, lit. "marginal settlement" — slang for a dwindling, barely-surviving community)
Worst case, even if the Xbox console itself doesn't sell, it can keep limping along blended in with the PC crowd.
PS can't even do that.
It has no way to survive.
If anything, Xbox is the better-off one these days
Its first-party lineup is solid and it has Game Pass too.
Japanese galge (dating-sim-style "gal games") never come out on Xbox at all
Xbox also gets snubbed constantly by the shmup (shoot-'em-up) crowd
Today's new shmup release, Muchi Po, isn't coming to it either
Raiden 1/2/3 got snubbed too
Guess PS5 is still better than Xbox after all.
I think that's actually the root cause of PS software stopping selling.
A slow-acting poison from Free Play, huh…
That was for real.
That's exactly the number-one example of something that isn't profitable.
It was convenient for SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) to pad their numbers with,
but from the publishers' side, those were hollow, papier-mâché figures with no substance behind them — so they turned their backs on it.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Producing a packaged version only makes financial sense if a certain minimum production run can be guaranteed — without that volume, retailers are less likely to place orders in the first place. This point came up repeatedly in the thread: “profitability,” in this context, isn’t just about differences in sales figures, but reflects a manufacturing-side judgment about whether distribution costs can be justified. Another factor at play is that Switch game cards are compatible with Nintendo’s next-generation Switch 2, giving third parties a stable, long-term platform to build on. At the same time, some in the thread argued that the free-play program PlayStation’s camp used to run in the past obscured actual sales figures, ultimately lowering publishers’ assessment of the platform — a reminder that this isn’t simply a case of companies “abandoning PS,” but a tangle of compounding factors worth keeping in mind.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, aka “Geha”) thread “[Gratitude] MAGES.: “We’re incredibly grateful we could release on Switch. There’s a profitability reason we don’t release packaged versions on PS”.”
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