Sony Reveals New First Party Org Chart Categorized by Studio Focus

Robins said:
I still don't get why they stopped adding multi-player segments to their single player games. I had so much fun with Uncharted 2 Online.
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They barely can push games out of their studios this gen... adding MP would make it even worse

The pipeline is all fucked up
 
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bitbydeath said:
I thought Polyphony would count as Live Service?
Strange they are not but San Diego is.
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I'd say "evolving / multigenre" group may include studios that fall in at least one of these different cases:
  • Teams who are working/worked in a game that features both SP focus and MP/GaaS focus (GT7, open world game with MP elements cancelled at Bend)
  • Studios like MM or Guerrilla who worked and may be working both in GaaS (Dreams, LBP, Horizon Online) or SP only non-GaaS titles (Tearaway, Horizon 3)
  • (I'm not sure about this one, but it's to fit the 'evolving' word) studios that started as SP focused in the past but in recent time have been transitioning to have a MP/GaaS focus
But as you mention, seems weird that San Diego and Polyphony aren't in the same group. Maybe it would be better and more clear to split them into these groups:
  • Single player focus
  • Multiplayer live service focus
  • Both single player and multiplayer live service focus

DeltaPolarBear said:
Single Player games are the best kind of game for a platform owner to make. Because Live Service makes the most money when it is on every piece of hardware, and Sony can make 30% money with no risk by just hosting third party games. You know, the point of the entire business model.

Also, making live service would mean competing for dollars with the 3rd party games on your own platform anyway. You are better off making Single Player games that are in demand and have a finite goal. You make them, release them, then move on with the next game. It might not be trendy but as a platform owner you are suppose to boost the titles that make people want to buy your hardware.

Why try to beat Fortnite when you can just ask Fortnite for 30% rent?
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Excluding Nintendo, most of the money in all gaming platforms is made by 3rd party games. But Sony makes over a billion dollar per year from first party games, so it's normal that they want to continue making them.

And the majority of game revenue in PS, like in mostly everywhere, comes from live service games. So it's normal that they also want to have their own live service games. They could just sit there and get money from 3rd parties, but having 1st party games give their platform an identity and help them showcase its capabilities.

Having a very successful 3rd party game like Fortnite doesn't stop them from making GaaS, and they aren't aiming to outperform it. In the same way that there also super successful games like BotW, Elden Ring, GTAV or Minecraft doesn't stop them from making non-GaaS games and they don't aim to outperform them.
 
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yurinka said:
Excluding Nintendo, most of the money in all gaming platforms is made by 3rd party games. But Sony makes over a billion dollar per year from first party games, so it's normal that they want to continue making them.

And the majority of game revenue in PS, like in mostly everywhere, comes from live service games. So it's normal that they also want to have their own live service games. They could just sit there and get money from 3rd parties, but having 1st party games give their platform an identity and help them showcase its capabilities.

Having a very successful 3rd party game like Fortnite doesn't stop them from making GaaS, and they aren't aiming to outperform it. In the same way that there also super successful games like BotW, Elden Ring, GTAV or Minecraft doesn't stop them from making non-GaaS games and they don't aim to outperform them.
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Live Service games take time away for other games. Single player games do not. If you make 10 great single player games a year, they will all sell. The same can't be said for releasing 10 great live service games. Time is a finite resource and single players games are more time efficient.
 
GymWolf said:
And they only wasted more than half gen to understand that, i call this a victory 🕺
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That happens when you fire Jim Ryan a year ago.

DenchDeckard said:
Just my personal taste.

Horizon is awful. Ragnarok was OK to fine and Ghost was fine apart from boring as sin in places.

Sony first party AAA games are basically ubisoft games and we all know it deep down.
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Now you know damn well you're lying! Cut the crap.
 
Luipadre said:
see you on PS6. Whole gen wasted

go fuck yourself middle finger GIF
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Buy the switch, I felt the same with my Xbox One and decided to buy a Wii U. The clock is ticking and you have to do something instead of wasting time.
 
DeltaPolarBear said:
Live Service games take time away for other games. Single player games do not. If you make 10 great single player games a year, they will all sell. The same can't be said for releasing 10 great live service games. Time is a finite resource and single players games are more time efficient.
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Single players also take time from other games, but less. But yes, player's time is a finite resource and GaaS are monopolizing it, so this is one of the reasons of why all big publishers want to make more GaaS now. The other one is that most of the top grossing games are GaaS and that GaaS generate the majority of the game revenue.

And the percentage of playtime and revenue spent on GaaS keeps growing, so for the long term they must invest on GaaS.

In the case of Sony, the investment in GaaS didn't negatively affect the development of non-GaaS, since they also increased the investment in non-GaaS, and made related studio acquisitions and hirings to turn studios (like ND, SSM or Guerrilla) who were working in a single SP game at the same time to become multi-game studios.

And no, not all great games sell (independently if SP or GaaS). Some sell well, other ones tank and other ones do just ok, even if being great.

For them there's another key difference between GaaS and non-GaaS: when very successful, the amount of money that a GaaS is way higher and continues making moeny over years, being less focused on launch. Which gives them extra stability and rely less on if specific game release performs well or not.

As an example, Hermen said that Helldivers 2 is generating more money from addons than from game sales.
 
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mckmas8808 said:
Why do yall act as if California doesn't have some of the best programmers and tech people in America?
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I pretty sure they do.. but the mentality and specially the priorities overthere are all fucked up .. taking the same talented devs and studios to another environment might be sufficient for a real change in culture and production.
 
yurinka said:
For them there's another key difference between GaaS and non-GaaS: when very successful, the amount of money that a GaaS is way higher and continues making moeny over years, being less focused on launch. Which gives them extra stability and rely less on if specific game release performs well or not.
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There is no reason for Sony to increase GaaS production because they are already making 30% of ALL micro transactions of every possible title. They are already benefiting from all the successful GaaS out there without needing to risk failure of any kind. The risks they took and the money they lost so far was not necessary at all.

Helldiver 2 worked out, but overall the GaaS initiative was pointless. They got money on PC that they otherwise wouldn't get, but that doesn't balance out the failures. As a platform holder they shouldn't have done that and they finally learned the hard way.
 
Sebastian1295 said:
I wish xbox never would've went third party. The biggest mistake they made was doubling down on gamepass when the results weren't adding up because now it's left them in a terrible situation. They should've realized that it wasn't working and cut the cord which would've pissed off fans in short term, and in the long term they could've went all in on making content exclusive and being cut throat. I just fail to understand why they're so hell bent on gamepass when the growth has stagnated and it's completely sunk the brand reputation in the process.
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Msft as your best customer within your ecosystem is never a good thing. Gamepass dominates Xbox and with pc gamers being price sensitive it makes sense to have one ecosystem then feed off the pc base. Thus gamepass grows and 80 usd makes me think nextgen is near.
 
With recent news of cuts in these dev teams, and what we already know about what they're working on, there isn't much new here to unpack. We continue to wait for 4 or 5 new releases (Intergalactic, Saros, Corey Barlog's new project, and Ghost of Yotei) and will see what some of the new additions bring to the table in a few years. That's not a huge amount of output, even if all of the releases are excellent. I expect to see more third party partnerships in the next few years to pad out the Playstation lineup.
 
DenchDeckard said:
Ghost of tsushima?
Horizon?

Oh and days gone.
Sonys biggest games in recent years
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… and Demon's Souls Remake, Returnal, AstroBot, Death Stranding 1&2, GT7, HellDivers 2, etc…

With some of the PC users and ex-Xbox players buying PS5 it is more than fair to count TLoU Part 1 (and Part 2) as well as games that thanks to Sony helped come out sooner rather than later or at all (e.g.: Silent Hill 2 Remake).
 
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Panajev2001a said:
… and Demon's Souls Remake, Returnal, AstroBot, Death Stranding 1&2, GT7, HellDivers 2, etc…

With some of the PC users and ex-Xbox players buying PS5 it is more than fair to count TLoU Part 1 (and Part 2) as well as games that thanks to Sony helped come out sooner rather than later or at all (e.g.: Silent Hill 2 Remake).
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Dude, you just named a from soft remake, a game that wasn't a Sony owned studio until after its release 1 Sony platformer another two second party releases.

The main Sony owned studios in recent years are insomniac, guerilla ssm, naughty dog, Bend.

Anyway let's just agree to disagree, I feel their main AAA Games are rhe open world rinse repeat formula from spiderman to horizon to days gone and beyond.
 
mckmas8808 said:
Why do yall act as if California doesn't have some of the best programmers and tech people in America?
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It's a creativity problem. That applies to cinema too. So many great specialists won't get you anything if the thinking heads are running out of ideas and the few ones they come up with are fucking terrible. In this era, California is the worst place to settle, because the brain rot is contagious, these people hang out with one another and get infected.

Having the gaming and cinema divisions so much intertwined is also a mistake. A big one. It limits the creative potential of making genuine videogames without a cinematic tie-in.
 
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DeltaPolarBear said:
There is no reason for Sony to increase GaaS production because they are already making 30% of ALL micro transactions of every possible title. They are already benefiting from all the successful GaaS out there without needing to risk failure of any kind. The risks they took and the money they lost so far was not necessary at all.

Helldiver 2 worked out, but overall the GaaS initiative was pointless. They got money on PC that they otherwise wouldn't get, but that doesn't balance out the failures. As a platform holder they shouldn't have done that and they finally learned the hard way.
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Wrong, there's very important reasons for them to invest in GaaS:

Most of the PS playtime is spent in GaaS, and year after year the percentage kept increasing in the last couple generations. Playtime spent in new games, particularly non-GaaS kept decreasing year after year.

The majority of the game revenue in PS, but also in PC and specially mobile comes from GaaS. And the percentage keeps increasing over time in the last couple generations.

Meaning, the market for non-GaaS AAA and particularly new ones keeps getting smaller. So to be limited to very expensive non-GaaS AAA whose budget get increased more and more every generation would be a suicide. Even more if limited to their own console.

So they have to continue expanding in GaaS and PC areas, and later to mobile.

And well, the GaaS MLB, Gran Turismo and Destiny also worked out and aren't pointless. They and Helldivers 2 combined pretty likely already generated more revenue than the one they'll invest to release the dozen IPs with GaaS including cancelled, failed and non-greenlighted games.

And thanks to GaaS and PC Sony pretty likely basically doubled their first party revenue in around half a decade or so even if first party game units sold decreased in console.

The alternative to their current strategy of incresing investement in non-GaaS, GaaS and PC (plus mobile in the near future) would be to be limited to non-GaaS titles for their console, which considering current gen AAA budgets of >$200-$300M means they'd have to sell minimum 8-10M copies to be profitable (and more millions in the next generation, since every generation the AAA budgets increase). Meaning less investment in new IP and way less (or directly to stop making) sequels of non-top selling IPs. And to focus less in top tier visuals and big sized AAA games and swifting to a more AA-ish approach.

DenchDeckard said:
The main Sony owned studios in recent years are insomniac, guerilla ssm, naughty dog, Bend.
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And the two biggest internal development studio money makers: Bungie and Polyphony.

Panajev2001a said:
Jokes aside. What is wrong with the trailer? Why will it not be an actual game from what you have seen of it?
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All ND game announcement trailers hyped me 100% since Uncharted 1 and this is the first one that killed any hype I had for their next game because it only featured two ugly, androginous lesbians, making me think it will be again an anti male / white / heterosexual woke propaganda fest.

In Uncharted 4 was almost non-existant, and in both in Lost Legacy and specially TLOU2 caught people by surprise and most people got it once they already bought the game due to the inertia of the love they had for previous entries of these IPs. Something that in this game -like in Concord- won't happen.

Many people like me started to get pissed off with this shit (female beauty and white male heterosexual protagonists getting censored, white male heterosexual characters kept only for bad / traitor / dumb guys, and in the lore for abusive or violent fathers, secondary filler tokenism NPC characters forced to be there to fill DEI checklists, but add nothing decent to the story so negatively affecting the narrative and pacing of the game, etc) and want them to stop this stuff and go back to focus on game quality instead by appealing to trying to appeal the type of player who always bought this type of games instead of the social engineering agendas of Blackrock, Vanguard, Rothschilds, Soros and the rest of western globalist economical elite.
 
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DeltaPolarBear said:
There is no reason for Sony to increase GaaS production because they are already making 30% of ALL micro transactions of every possible title. They are already benefiting from all the successful GaaS out there without needing to risk failure of any kind. The risks they took and the money they lost so far was not necessary at all.
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By the same logic there is no reason to make their own SP games. Sony got 30% of all SP games sold on its platform, why bother? But we know that it doesn't work this way, platform should have their own identity with its own staple titles to be successful.

DeltaPolarBear said:
Helldiver 2 worked out, but overall the GaaS initiative was pointless. They got money on PC that they otherwise wouldn't get, but that doesn't balance out the failures. As a platform holder they shouldn't have done that and they finally learned the hard way.
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They learned what exactly? Initiative is up and continue running - no change from before. Management rhetoric stays the same. Yes, some games failed and many were cancelled - but this was expected by Sony at the point of inception of initiative. It's how seeding projects in unfamiliar environment works.

And about shouldn't have done. Business is about future. Think about what will happens in 10 years, when current 30-60 playerbase of SP games will shrink by ~30% due to natural reasons and current 10-25 playerbase (that like 90% into gaas) will become 20-35 playerbase (most massive and most paying strata). To be ready for this Sony should start building knowledge base, expertise and quality teams now, because it all take significant time.
 
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kruis said:
I wonder if that slide is up to date. Blue Point Games and Bend WERE working on canceled GAAS games. Does the fact they're still listed in the "evolving/multi genre" category mean they're still in GAAS development hell?
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I thought their placement in the chart was interesting as well. I think it's a good sign that they're not in the multiplayer or live-service category. I'd love to see them focusing on single player but I do think that evolving/multi-genre COULD include single player games. We will see….
 
Hopefully Firesprite doesn't share the same timeline/fate as Ready at Dawn:

1) Make some interesting spin-off games/DLC of popular properties
2) Is finally given a budget for their first ambitious AAA title
3) AAA title underperforms based on sales
4) Studio is either sold off to someone else or closed entirely.

At least Bluepoint is smart enough to know their strengths and just stick with just that, which are remakes.
 
ProtoByte said:
After wasting 5 years and breaking the momentum of their most valuable studios. Like, Ubisoft and EA have "found reason" so called and it was still never the same.


Based on the leaks, unless Insomniac went back to the drawing board, Wolverine was not going to live up to potential.

Intergalactic seems like a trolling initiative more than an actual game at this point.
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what was wrong with it in the leaks?
 
Gamer_By_Proxy said:
WTF is Dark Outlaw? Sonys dark passenger?
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That is that one ex-Cod developer 'Deviation Games' who promised AAA FPS and output nothing under Sony third party publishing.
Supposed toxic management led to Sony hiring the talent from that studio and create their own first party.

The cycle continues, lets see what happens in another 2 years of dev time. If they are pulling a Jade Raymond.

Lethal01 said:
what was wrong with it in the leaks?
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People saw the leaks and summarized it was woke and unimaginative gameplay.
 
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