Saber
Newd Member
And who is the one who greenlight all those projects?
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Sony shuts down Bluepoint Studios
- Thread starter Hero_Select
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And who is the one who greenlight all those projects?
Bernardougf
Gold Member
ok ... but that was not my point thoughMarathon looks great and it's actually a new game, not a remake
I stand with Bungie.
Topher
Identifies as young
Bernardougf
Gold Member
Ok so you have zero evidence of the shift and just hopes, dreams and what ifs. . Got it
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bender
What time is it?
But if the best baseball player only gets on base 38% of the time...
0neAnd0nly
Member
I'm not sure what you're asking, I am obviously not defending Hulst.
I am simply stating that the current rot, IMO, began during SL run, and has just come to bloom under the others (which they have also contributed to).
There is no real argument from me to be had.
Topher
Identifies as young
Not enough for live service to get on base. They gotta hit a homerun. High risk/reward
Topher
Identifies as young
I can see that about SL, but at the same time he said he left SIE because he didn't agree with their live service change of direction. I definitely feel there was a massive void left behind in leadership when House and Tretton quit Sony.
Saber
Newd Member
I didn't imply that you defended Hurst.
But he is clearly the one who greenlit all those projects. He is the one to take a blame, regardless of in what timeframe some individual started doing bad decisions for the company. Hurst had every momment to reverse the situation.
It's like stating that Don Matrick was the root of Xbox demise. The guy is gone by ages and his damage was done, someone would need to reverse this. But said person didn't.
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
Good stuff. Let's hope for the best/worst.
bender
What time is it?
The best basketball player shoots 90% from thee free throw line.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I seem to recall a couple of Xbox brass celebrating Jimmies hire saying he would run Ps into the ground and he sure tried. Let's not talk about the irony though of Xbox brass themselves running Xbox aground while celebrating Jimmies hire
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Shit I'd play a BluePoint Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess in a fucking instant
Superposition
Member
LMAO
No, it doesn't. They bought the studio AFTER Demon's Souls, so this means they were pretty happy with the result.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
And none of us saw this closure coming,
We all expected an acquisition due to how close they were to PlayStation.
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Hero_Select
Member
0neAnd0nly
Member
Not exactly.
SL made moves on the backend that led us to here. It isn't just branching blame. You can ask dang near anybody in the industry during the time, but much of Playstation's current issues stem from internal changes made during his reigh.
Again, it's IMO, and that's all. I feel like you will find the same answer from many others from the time period though.
Dude spearheaded a change in direction for PS games.
It's key the remember, the video game industry in current iteration is to be judged in decades, not months or even years. It's a long haul kind of process. Changes both good and bad won't take fruition for 7-10 years.
But yes, again, Hulst isn't free from blame here. GG (or what's left of its past iteration) is but a shell (not that they matter here, but I feel it's just worth noting) and Hulst seems like an entirely different person than at his beginning. I don't know him personally, just a take from observation and what I do know of GGs past, which I had some really cool experiences with.
And again, just my. 02 from being in and around the industry during that time.
Seems like somewhat of a pointless argument honestly, was just throwing around my feelings on it. Just sucks to witness. Playstation has been my main for a long time, but I have really lost a lot of the love I had for it in the past.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Yes. A typo. Fixed. I remember the series at about 2M. So your 1.8M is about the same number.
CJ_75
Member
You don't seem to care about any evidence.
Eight live service games have been cancelled, one at Naughty Dog and one at Insomniac and both studios now only have singleplayer projects in development. Bluepoint, Firewalk, Firesprite, London Studio all closed, were working on GaaS projects.
You are right, zero evidence, no shifts at all.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Unknown what they were making, but Sony also bought and shut down that mobile focused Neon Koi studio.This is from Gemini. Is it accurate?
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Same guy who years back tweeted he was at Firewalk studios and what he saw in development was looking good.
Fast forward to 2024 and it turns out it was Concord. lol
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Look at MLB The Show.
They used to pride themselves on updating the graphics pipeline every generation. They have not done so last gen or this, and it's still stuck on the late-PS3 to early-PS4 pipeline, character models, animation/skeletal branches, etc..
Sad man. Just milking the Diamond Dynasty addicts.
yurinka
Member
No, there aren't eight live service games cancelled at all.
The cancelled ones were TLOU Online, Bend, London Studio, Deviation.
"Many of these 'cancelled games' are just pitches that weren't greenlighted, so these projects never started production. So there wasn't any production/game to cancel. Pretty likely were just a powerpoint and maybe a prototype or a target video made by a very small team, there wasn't any game/production to cancel."
With the already released ones and the announced or known ones they'll have released 14 instead of 12. But very likely in around a year and a half or two more than originally planned.
They didn't close Firesprite. Firesprite never had any GaaS under production (other than the support job they did for Star Citizen before being acquired), they only had a Twisted Metal pitch in super early stages that never got greenlited, so never was under production, so never was any production/game to cancel.
Since 2021 they have been working in a dark horror narrative adventure, developed at the same time they developed Horizon CoM.
When games are 3 years ahead of release look very different than when released. Many things can be great and other not implemented ones may sound good on paper but until not putthing everything together with a proper optimiztion and bugfixing can't be doublechecked that they don't work. Concord tanked and some things were atrocious, but other ones were great.
But well, in case of Concord these character designs should have been rejected when proposed, maybe even as early as in preproduction.
And well, being a boss/leader he has to cheer about their teams.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
That right there was enough to tell me he has the "Keighley optics."
Tells me everything I need to know about his judge of what's a banger or not.
Topher
Identifies as young
Damn.....that sounds a lot like Phil Spencer
Killer8
Member
Seems like the "Bluepoint were never good" gaslighting has begun. The fanboys are now spinning the leaked 2024 sales figures as a negative to use as some freak justification for killing the company.
Remember that Sony acquired Bluepoint 1 year after Demon's Souls Remake had released and already sold the bulk of its copies. Now why would Sony look at Bluepoint's financial performance and choose to acquire a studio who apparently were never actually any good and made games which sold poorly? Are large conglomerates frequently in the business of acquiring losers? The answer is no, of course not, and that Sony must've been happy with the sales of their games at the time of purchase.
So the shitting on the sales figures is really just a deranged, post hoc justification being deployed by the fanboys to excuse yet another terrible outcome resulting from Sony's mismanagement. And it is mismanagement, because what idiot in the Sony top brass would say to themselves "let's acquire this developer specifically known for great remakes, and then not have them continue to work on great remakes"?
The spin at this point then places the blame on Bluepoint for apparently not wanting to work on remakes any more and instead wanting to work on their own (live service) game. Even if that were true, competent management should've be able to identify a mismatch in skillset and say "no". If Bungie turned round and said they were really big baseball fans, should Sony indulge a request to let them work on MLB?
If Sony didn't think they actually needed a remake factory, perhaps they shouldn't have fucking bought them to begin with. Maybe then Bluepoint may still be alive today.
Remember that Sony acquired Bluepoint 1 year after Demon's Souls Remake had released and already sold the bulk of its copies. Now why would Sony look at Bluepoint's financial performance and choose to acquire a studio who apparently were never actually any good and made games which sold poorly? Are large conglomerates frequently in the business of acquiring losers? The answer is no, of course not, and that Sony must've been happy with the sales of their games at the time of purchase.
So the shitting on the sales figures is really just a deranged, post hoc justification being deployed by the fanboys to excuse yet another terrible outcome resulting from Sony's mismanagement. And it is mismanagement, because what idiot in the Sony top brass would say to themselves "let's acquire this developer specifically known for great remakes, and then not have them continue to work on great remakes"?
The spin at this point then places the blame on Bluepoint for apparently not wanting to work on remakes any more and instead wanting to work on their own (live service) game. Even if that were true, competent management should've be able to identify a mismatch in skillset and say "no". If Bungie turned round and said they were really big baseball fans, should Sony indulge a request to let them work on MLB?
If Sony didn't think they actually needed a remake factory, perhaps they shouldn't have fucking bought them to begin with. Maybe then Bluepoint may still be alive today.
Hero_Select
Member
Yeah the justification some people are now coming to is ridiculous.
You knew Bluepoint's portfolio when you bought them. You knew their specialty was in Remakes and Remasters, and you were happy to have that under your belt and yet you chose not to have them work on ANY of the dozens of IPs that you have dormant.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Angelcurio
Member
And yet we got another Horizon game coming. Even a PC port of Demon Souls would have been easy and fast money.
I have seen people be fired for way less than that, and yet Hulst keeps wasting money, resources, making stupid decisions, and still has a job.
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yurinka
Member
According to Sony the Demon's Souls remake sold 1.4M in the first around 10 months.
Which isn't stellar, and same applies to previous remakes/remasters. Their remakes and remasters had great reviews and quality but not great sales.
And Bluepoint, and not Sony, was the want who didn't want to continue making remakes and remasters, and instead evolve to work in new games as support team. Sony agreed, pretty likely saw potential there and they worked in GoWR.
They must have worked supporting other stuff since 2022 because didn't have the staff with the roles needed to lead a AAA project and Sony called them support studio.
Bluepoint didn't want to make ports, remasters or remakes. The Demon's Souls remake as far as we know it sold around 1.8M copies, maybe ended selling around 2.5M.
Horizon sold 10 times that. The sequel was launch aligned doing the same numbers until they did put it in PS+. Horizon is Sony's best selling game ever.
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Hero_Select
Member
Demons Souls Remake released before Sony bought Bluepoint so the fact that it sold or didn't sell well enough is a moot point really. They knew how much the game sold before they bought them and I assume they were happy enough with how it did
Fake
Member
Aressa
You can't die before your death
This. They proved themselves with drake collection then gravity rush then SotC then again with demon souls. They even supported ragnarok.
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
Days Gone sold 8 million and Sony refused to greenlight DG2. Instead they made them work on a GAAS game that was cancelled. Now it seems they have them on another GAAS project.
8 million copies sold!
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Topher
Identifies as young
Yeah.....I was just reading some folks mentioning that. So after supporting SMS in getting GoW:R out the door, Hulst gave Bluepoint ~3 years to create a live service game, having never released a game from scratch. That's what we are supposed to believe based on "trust me bro" posts.
Topher
Identifies as young
"we"?
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I can see why Sony dumped them. If they got nothing really going on since their GOW GAAS game was cancelled, it was a cost cutting measure.
However, as people have brought up they are a studio specializing in remasters and collection packs. So it's odd why a GAAS would be planted on them. Although if it was BP's idea to try that out, it can be then faulted on them too. Who knows what the internal decision was, but I got a hard time thinking GOW GAAS was BP's idea.
For me, it doent even matter if Sony makes tons of money and profit to cover them. If any product line or group of employees arent worth carrying, they could be dumped. But that assumes their expectations didnt match the output and they just F'ed up.
But if BP F'ed up on their own. That's just trying to be efficient letting them go. No different than IT dept wasting out time sending memos to everyone saying only print in B&W unless colour is absolutely needed. If people cut down on colour, they'd save like $1000 worth of toner cartridges. Who cares. Our region alone makes shit loads of money. Who cares about $1000.
But in this case, I dont see why BP cant be shifted to a support studio if all else failed. Their expertise tidying up games into remasters seems to go hand in hand with doing a great job supporting a bigger project. Or shift them to a remaster pack. Knowing Sony, they got still to have some remasters and remakes in the cards. But if there are, I guess Sony thinks the original studio making it can handle it themselves.
It'll be interesting what Sony does going forward. If they buy up more studios or create their own first party studios to do other games, it shows they arent purely in cost cutting mode with BP nothing left to do. But if that happens it'd show there's something else they dont like about BP.
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yurinka
Member
I work as gamedev since over two decades ago. Among many other things worked on pitches to publishers, investors, or the HQ inside a AAA publisher. Even teached and mentored about making them in an university and an incubator about this specific topic (and obviously many other ones).
And well, I brainfarted when I was writing that. I meant:
"Many of these 'cancelled games' are just pitches that weren't greenlighted, so these projects never started production. So there wasn't any production/game to cancel. Pretty likely were just a powerpoint and maybe a prototype or a target video made by a very small team, there wasn't any game/production to cancel."
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Topher
Identifies as young
How does being a game developer give you access to all the proposed projects and their statuses across multiple studios at SIE?
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Msamy
Member
Fuck this cunt who destroyed sony
Killer8
Member
This changes nothing. Sony still chose to pursue the acquisition with full knowledge of these sales figures. Clearly it was viewed as enough of a success. Otherwise they wouldn't continue with the acquisition.
Sony also made the decision to add the game as a mainstay to the PS+ Extra service only 6 months after the acquisition, which no doubt kneecapped longer-term sales potential.
Again, Sony had access to all of the historical sales data and knew exactly what they were buying (the source of the sales leak was even Insomniac).
It's also convenient that this is the new talking point when nobody was concerned about Bluepoint's supposedly lacking sales performance in the 2021 acquisition thread.
Hmm:
Dear Santa Jimbo, now we got Bluepoint please give us ARC System Works, Capcom and Kojipro for Christmas
Maybe you should've spent more time mailing the sales data to Jim Ryan, Hulst and all the other ghouls at Sony HQ to block the acquisition of a dud company...
This has already been addressed by me - Sony should not have agreed to let them do what they want. It's that simple. Management isn't just about telling people what to do, it's also having the sense to tell people what not to do. If Sony wanted to do the game development equivalent of hands-off parenting, then the outcome is entirely on them.
Sony have dozens of beloved IP deeper in the closet than a homo at a CPAC conference. It's idiotic to not utilize the opportunity to revive some of them when they were sitting on all that remake expertise.
Timberwolf25
Member
He's Hurst Secretary....erm I mean Administrative Assistant?
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
0neAnd0nly
Member
This is a great representation of what I am referring too, for sure.
Sony, for both good or bad, use to try to push the industry. Killzone 2, MAG, Warhawk, LBP, Knack - they were always working on something different and at times it cost them (high price of PS3 / cell, knack being critically bashed, etc), and at times it worked (KZ2 e3 event, mic drop no DRM, etc).
Now it feels like they are just wadding in the waters with the rest. Nothing feels particularly fresh, innovative. It's the same thing is has been since the back half of SL's leadership, which Hulst benefited greatly under in hype and career movement.
Sucks. The whole industry feels so incredibly stale now. Xbox might be on life support, but it feels like the Microsoft ideals won, in the end.
Which leads us to the awkward situations we have here; a studio that Sony worked with a ton, bought way too late, and then subsequently closed. So odd.
yurinka
Member
I never claimed that. But I recognized the format of the Spider-Man MP one and saw that this project wasn't included in any of the several Insomniac roadmaps leaked around that time and later and none of them included any MP/GaaS game (there was a pitch considering post launch MP modes for a couple games, I think were Wolverine and Spider-Man 2). Plus later saw Sony in their fiscal report presentation specifying certain studios like Insomniac are SP only.
Regarding Twisted Metal at Firesprite, the only source we have mentioning it and its cancellation (Jason Shredder) mentions it was in super early stages and wasn't even greenlighted.
Regarding Bluepoint from my working experience I find totally impossible that a top publisher would greenlight to lead a AAA MP GaaS to a support team specialized on remasters and remakes with no experience or staff related to leading AAA games, no experience or staff related to MP and no experience or related staff to GaaS. And even more with maybe the most popular and iconic IP of the company. It's like giving the budget to build a cathedral to a kid who makes sand castles in the beach.
The logical thing is that if they were a support team that helped in new games leaded by other people, they were doing that. Independently if the game was GaaS or not, because to make art and animations assets and generic suppport game code is the same for both.
And I'm forgetting the other 4th project but was also super clear to me that it was also a game that wasn't under production and instead was a project that wasn't greenlighted.
Billbofet
Member
You are so right on this.
Last Summer, my son and I were on a bike ride, and we stopped at a rummage sale. He picked up MLB: The Show '17 for a dollar and felt like he was getting the deal of a lifetime.
He played the shit out of it on the PS5, so when this year's version came out, I happily bought it for him.
Aside from updated rosters, the game, for the most part, looks like '17. He goes back to '17 and plays it more than the new one since there is no point in creating a new character if it's just the same game.
vpance
Member
Days Gone was way too conservative-ish and white so I can see why would never want to touch it again, regardless of profits.
Sure Demons Souls didn't do bonkers sales but it's the sort of project the core Sony fans appreciate. The Bloodborne remake anticipation was real, it could have easily sold 4+ mil
yurinka
Member
Yes, obviously Sony bought them knowing their work quality and their sales. They perfectly knew that were the GOAT of remasters and remakes and that sales weren't stellar. And like any of us they thought they'd be a great acquisition and that there was potential on them.
We still didn't have the Insomniac leaks. Seeing them, seeing Hermen's words and comparing to the other teams who survived and seeing how the industry is going with budgets, RAM, layoffs and other shit we see that 1+1=2
They had to chop to compensate the other things and chopped the weakest link, which happened to be them. Which as Hermen said, doesn't mean they did a bad job. One thing are the financials, and other the quality of the games.
Seeing Jimbo and Hermen broke most records they could break in their related metrics isn't needed. But I -and I'm pretty sure Hermen- would go there and would go back buy Bluepoint again.
Regarding the others I mentioned there, very likely they already tried and didn't want to sell.
It depends. In AAA companies most people at a certain level are super capable, productive, smart people that knows how to do their shit. Yes, sometimes they have to say no or goodbye, as Hermen did with Firewalk or Bluepoint.
And before saying goodbye, something very difficult to say when it's to a prestige team (case of Bluepoint) or individual, many other things we don't know must have happened before: many noes and warnings.
I know what how annoying is to make many ports, and I understand they wanted to move away from remasters and remakes. I agreed and understood they wanted to evolve (but with bigger budget which maybe wasn't available due to their sales and salaries I'd have kept a remasters/remakes team) to make support in new games.
And pretty likely over time after supporting different new games would have been time to hire the people needed to lead games and they let them lead some sequel. But not now, they didn't have creative director, game director, people from narrative, only had under half a dozen designers etc.
I think Sony did the proper steps, and very likely Bluepoint too. But finantials are finantials and business are business. Sometimes you do a great job with top quality, and nobody did anything wrong and you have enough money to continue forward but some time later you have to cut costs and fire people, so the weakest link gets kicked out.
And in most cases, that weakest link got different warnings before getting the kick. Sometimes don't.
Yes, they have many great dormant IPs. Many of them will continue there in the closet because back then only 4 people bought them and even if we loved it, nowadays even less people would care about them. So maybe woulnd't make sense financial sense to bring them back.
But there are a few that I think they'll bring back. Not with Bluepoint, because they didn't want to make more remasters or remakes.
But well, Nixxes also makes remasters, or the original teams can also help to remake them like I think is the case of the GoW Trilogy, and Sony has many internal and external teams that can help (as happened in the Demon's Souls remake, like in any AAA most of the staff who worked on it wasn't from Bluepoint).
Same goes with sequels, I think Sony must release Uncharted 5 and Bloodborne II. But sometimes like these cases the devs are busy with other projects they have to release before. Or in case like Uncharted 5 seems they won't because ND hates white heterosexual men. So may have to wait until they stop being that successful in sales to put there somebody with common sense who wants to bring Nate back.
Or simply, their roadmap (which in case of a first party lke Sony includes both 1st and the top seller 3rd party games) is too busy and need to they keep them for later, where they have a better spot, maybe to avoid releasing too close to certain other similar game, or to release it closer to a movie adaptation to be released in 7 years or something like that.
I mean, let's say Guerilla is ok with remaking the Killzone trilogy and to release a new sequel since let's say soon after they released Horizon 1 back in 2017. And well, to support them, a movie adaptation.
It became a huge success, so they grew the team started to work just after it on a direct sequel and in Hunters Gathering, plus mostly outsourced to Firesprite the VR game. They grew a lot, so very likely wouldn't be able to grow a lot until many years later.
The sequel released being as successful as the first one, so obviously greenlighted the third, which may release by let's say 2028. Hunters Gathering is supposed to be released this year, and unless it's an ultra hyper mega flop (I think it won't) won't get Concorded and will get minimum, minimum one or two years of support.
Meaning, they wouldn't have free the SP or the MP team to start working on it until lets say 2028. Regarding the remakes/remasters teams: Nixxes being free of old ports, would be focused with some other support teams making remakes but before Killzone would do better selling games (GoW Trilogy and Nathan Drake Collection after it). Add there some SP PC ports and helping in some other GaaS and maybe the teams for the remake can't be ready to start working until let's say 2028 too, or maybe 2029.
Then the movie/tv show/anime adaptation. Sony already has like 10 adaptations announced in the works. So very likely their related teams are busy too, and can't start until let's say 2030.
Then the sequel, the remakes and the movie would need some years to be made. So let's say the sequel takes 6 years and releases in 2034, the remakes take being very generous thanks to AI a couple years and get released in 2031. And a movie let's say is ready for 2033.
These made up numbers got pretty well alligned by coincidence releasing them somewhat close, but the point is that something they wanted to do in 2017 couldn't be fully realized until 2031-2034. That's considering they still se market for it at that point. Maybe by then aliens invaded us and Skynet already is killing people.
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