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[Clear]

Seriously guys, its not just 1 person who does a development review, its a panel. I doubt Hulst even looks himself and just makes a decision based on the recommendation given to him.

The way people try to make corporate decision-making "personal" so they have an individual to blame is frankly, pathetically clueless.

And once again, games getting cancelled after years worth of effort have been put in, is the way the business has been for the past 25 years. Its standard practice to regularly review progress and decide whether its worth persevering.

 

[Radical_3d]

Hulst, I guess…

 

[nial]

Over a year ago Hermen was promoted to CEO of SIE Studio Business Group due to his huge success managing SIE's first party games.

So he is a CEO of SIE? I was correcting your mistake of 'Not CEO'.

yikeroo

 

[yurinka]

We're saying the same thing. When I say "show" I don't mean to us. I mean to other Sony studios.

So using your example, you show your MVP to a group of people from other studios after 1 year's worth of work. Depending on the feedback, the project moves on, is reworked, or is cancelled. The farther along you go, the cancel and rework options become less viable, but at least at that point you know your base/core is solid.

"Fail fast" generally means get your idea out in front of as many users as quick as possible to see if it catches on. If it doesn't, scuttle it and move on. It's the "minimum viable product" idea. Google has embraced this over the years.

'Fail fast' refers that for a company is better to detect as fast as early in the project as possible that the project or a specific area of it won't work and have to cancel it (or make huge changes).

Because if the company has to throw to the garbage bin something, it's better to detect and do it when they spent under a $1M on it with just a powerpoint, some concept art and one or two prototypes than when they already spent $200M on it.

So in business like gamedev, where frequently they cancel games, or during development they frequently drop features or content, or constantly iterate stuff, they try to detect that these things are needed to be do as soon as possible.

They try to detect this by doing many internal and external reviews and tests of many kinds. In different parts of the development.

Obviously they failed hard at this in Concord: somebody ignored the feedback saying that their totally unappealing woke character design and story did suck hard. And since hero shooters depend on their heroes being very appealing, so the game tanked super hard. This is something they should have detected and fixed in the preproduction, with the early character design, not when revealing the game or after releasing it.

Meanwhile another game with pretty much the same game design and concept (Marvel Rivals) and another one with the same paid $40 GaaS business model were super successful.

 

[yurinka]

As for Layden. I know he's said he pushed for PC releases, I'm not sure if he was the final decision maker when SIE decided to invest this heavily in live service games.

In the same way Shawn and Shuhei Yoshida pushed and greenlighted PC ports of SP AAA games before Hermen got in charge of the first party games, Shawn also pushed and greenlighted GaaS like Destruction AllStars, Condord, Gran Turismo 7, Helldivers 2, Horizon Online, pretty likely London Studion's new IP, pretty likely TLOU Online (they splited from TLOU2 somewhere in 2019) and pretty likely Firewall Ultra, and the mobile games that Japan Studio was making before Hermen got in charge of the first party studios in November 2019.

The first 3 released games that we know were greenlighted with Hermen Hulst as head of PS Studios are Astro Bot, Stellar Blade and Death Stranding 2 (other than the MLB The Show games released since 2021). Helldivers 2 was supposed to be released in 2019 but released 5 years later thanks to Hermen's patience.

So he is a CEO of SIE? I was correcting your mistake of 'Not CEO'.

yikeroo

SIE is split into two parts:

• SIE Studio Business Group (first party games including their off-gaming adaptations)
• SIE Platform Business Group (management of their relations with 3rd party publishers/devs, PSN, PS Store, PS+, hardware, accesories, marketing of the platform)

Hermen is CEO of the Studio Business Group. In this position he continues in charge of PS Studios, but when got promoted to this CEO position he also got in charge of Bungie and PlayStation Productions (the movie & tv show adaptations they license and overview).

Nishino is CEO of both the Platform Business Group and SIE as a whole. Before being promoted to CEO of Platform Business Group he already was in charge of PSN, PS Store, PS+, hardware, accesories.

 

[Radical_3d]

In the same way Shawn and Shuhei Yoshida pushed and greenlighted PC ports of SP AAA games before Hermen got in charge of the first party games, Shawn also pushed and greenlighted GaaS like Destruction AllStars, Condord, Gran Turismo 7, Helldivers 2, Horizon Online, pretty likely London Studion's new IP, pretty likely TLOU Online (they splited from TLOU2 somewhere in 2019) and pretty likely Firewall Ultra, and the mobile games that Japan Studio was making before Hermen got in charge of the first party studios in November 2019.

The first 3 released games that we know were greenlighted with Hermen Hulst as head of PS Studios are Astro Bot, Stellar Blade and Death Stranding 2 (other than the MLB The Show games released since 2021). Helldivers 2 was supposed to be released in 2019 but released 5 years later thanks to Hermen's patience.

Hulst was VP of SWWS since 2011, tho. He had something to say.

 

[nial]

SIE is split into two parts:

• SIE Studio Business Group (first party games including their off-gaming adaptations)
• SIE Platform Business Group (management of their relations with 3rd party publishers/devs, PSN, PS+, hardware, accesories, marketing)

Hermen is CEO of the Studio Business Group. In this position he continues in charge of PS Studios, but now also he's in charge of Bungie and PlayStation Productions (the movie & tv show adaptations they license and overview).

Nishino is CEO of both the Platform Business Group and SIE as a whole.

And there it is.

 

[nial]

Hulst was VP of SWWS since 2011, tho. He had something to say.

2011? Lol what.
That's probably due to his role as studio head of Guerrilla, though. I think everyone else at the rest of the studios had that same position.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Helldivers 2 was their lighting in a bottle, they'll never be able to replicate again, but they keep wasting precious time and money in this failed strategy, bunch of idiots

As long as there's Fortnite's CODs and fifas out there making bank, companies will always try to latch onto the party.

Even Sony who has been focused on SP since they bailed from GAAS and shooters since KZ Shadowfall.

And since they had one smash hit with H2, it just encourages them to make more.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

its a panel

I can bet what kind of people make up this panel.... ain't pretty,

 

[yurinka]

Hulst was VP of SWWS since 2011, tho. He had something to say.

Both Shuhei Yoshida and Shawn Layden said that they were the ones and not Hermen who did stuff like to start the PC push and greenlight games like Concord.

As another example, according to Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst first found out when got in charge of PS Studios that the San Diego team of Visual Arts (internal PS Studios support team since forever) was making the TLOU1 remake, with them being in charge of the project (with ND overviewing and supporting) and having spent a too high budget on it. He didn't like the project, asked Visual Arts to go back to their support team role and tasked ND to lead the completion of the project with a small ND team plus Visual Arts as support team.

 

[bighugeguns]

I've heard that the only real way to deliver value is by solving a problem.

Solving problems you yourself collectively create seems like you're cannibalising your own company from within just to create the illusion of solving problems.

Where's the value?

 

[Jesb]

Must be nice to suck at your job with zero repercussions.

 

[Dafegamer]

Seriously Fire this Guy already, or let him just Lead Guerilla Games, it's obvious that he's not fit to Lead the entire Company

 

[Dafegamer]

Sony's Don Mattrick.

Incredibly Accurate

 

[Fake]

Of course he say that, because is not his money wasted.

And he is still the ceo. The guy is a clown just like Neil Cuckmen.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Seriously guys, its not just 1 person who does a development review, its a panel. I doubt Hulst even looks himself and just makes a decision based on the recommendation given to him.

The way people try to make corporate decision-making "personal" so they have an individual to blame is frankly, pathetically clueless.

And once again, games getting cancelled after years worth of effort have been put in, is the way the business has been for the past 25 years. Its standard practice to regularly review progress and decide whether its worth persevering.

Thats the thing about gaming, nobody really know unless it's public info. And it goes for any CEO or VPs.

How proactive are they in product development, testing, previews etc.... Some are, some arent.

I dont a get a sense Bobby Kotick sits around playing Diablo or Candy Crush or endless COD matches testing the game himself. But maybe he's a gamer and does. Is Jim Ryan a game tester? Who knows. But I get a sense he definitely isnt a gamer. But googling it, it says Jim is a gamer. Who knows.

At every company I've worked at, the execs definitely arent big into testing. Maybe they get shown a prototype passed around a table like everyone sees, but you can tell they arent active into knowing about each one because even in meetings when someone presents and talks about some products even some execs dont even know about every single product released. VP of Marketing will be closest. VP of Sales probably second closest. There is no way in the world the VP of Finance, VP Supply Chain, or VP Operations knows shit all about products. To them, they arent close to it as they consider products as just another SAP code in the database half the time. And the CEO is definitely not fully aware.

Even for the biggest product lines, all execs (except maybe the Marketing guy) knows the product details and features to their fullest.

 

[kevboard]

 

[Kerotan]

They saw that Fortnight and GTA money and said "I want a piece of that" then threw money at it without understanding it.

The thing is though Sony get a piece of it. 30% to be exact. They should be happy with that and look to fill the gap in the AAA single player market.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Shuhei definitely go the ball rolling, but I think he was more concerned about creating teams that would make these type of live service games. He only mentions that he believed that the Firewalk team was small, but experienced and a good choice for an online game.

He doesn't say that he saw the concept art or anything like that. He might have, but the game would have been in pretty early stages back then especially with a small team. I guess we'll never know why he was demoted and what really went on around 2018/2019.

Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst took over in 2019 and they oversaw majority of the development of Concord and other live service games that are cancelled now.

"We've assembled an amazing team at Firewalk Studios, built specifically to bring memorable multiplayer experiences to players around the world," said Tony Hsu, Studio Head of Firewalk Studios. "SIE has supported our team's vision from the beginning and with the incredible creative power of the PlayStation Studio ecosystem. This exciting next step will help us transform that vision into a reality."

Sony Interactive Entertainment to Acquire Firewalk Studios from ProbablyMonsters Inc

SAN MATEO, Calif., April 20, 2023 – Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (“SIE”) announced today it has entered into an agreement with ProbablyMonsters Inc. to acquire Firewalk Studios™, a studio of industry-leading creatives developing an original AAA multiplayer game for PlayStation®5 (PS5™) and...

sonyinteractive.com

Firewalk was founded in 2018, but the Concord-project started around 2016, so Sony had known about Concord from the start and Yoshida most definitely must have seen concept-art.

But yeah, ultimately the Firewalk acquisition and release happened under Hulst.
I just think it's short-sighted to ignore Yoshida's role as Hulst only took over from him in that regard.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The thing is though Sony get a piece of it. 30% to be exact. They should be happy with that and look to fill the gap in the AAA single player market.

Sounds reasonable. Know your lane and sit back and collect the money.

Problem is they got money to spend and got greedy hoping to cash in and topple the kingpins.

It'd be like a grocery chain spending half their operating budget trying to topple Coke and Pepsi in pop and water brands. Instead knowing what you do best and going modest with some store brand products in the beverage aisle, they go ape shit spending billions buying up bottlers with no track record, and one well known drink company worth $3.6B. Add it up and look out Coke and Pepsi!

Turns out out of all of that new stuff, they got one new hit product, the rest are cancelled, bottler shut down, and the $3.6B one has tanked from day one including one of their new brands getting caught infringing on another company's trademark.

And the whole time the execs try to play it off as it's not going too badly. LOL! It's going fine since our store brands for cereal and boxes of salt are doing fine.

What Sony did was pure emotional stock picking. Instead of sitting back and doing pretty good already with some good sector picks he follows for decades and sitting back raking in dividends, one morning the guy goes mental. After seeing all the volatile tech stocks shoot up, suddenly the guy has a magic idea to take all his new money and funnel it to noname penny stocks with zero products and high priced tech picks hoping to hit the lottery. Not surprisingly, one pick was great (Helldivers 2) and the rest tanked. He isnt happy with making 15% every year in stock appreciation and divvy yields. He now wants +100% hoping they are all Nvidia.

Total beginner investing strategies. That's the kind of shit new investors did 25 years ago during the dotcom phase with high flyers and online trading was a new thing.

 

[realcool]

"Why was this such a catastrophic failure?"

(A bland $40 hero shooter with hideous character designs and pronouns.)

"I don't know, actually."

~PlayStation, evaluating the results of one of their GaaS tests.

 

[yurinka]

I've heard that the only real way to deliver value is by solving a problem.

Solving problems you yourself collectively create seems like you're cannibalising your own company from within just to create the illusion of solving problems.

Where's the value?

Before him Sony's first party games had two big issues:

• AAA games basically double their budget every generation, but their revenue doesn't, to the point this PS5 generation non-GaaS first party AAA games have to sell around 8M copies to become profitable, something only top selling IPs achieve. So PS6 gen would be even worse
• Even in PS, the big majority of game revenue and playtime is spent in AAA or subs, and that percentage kept highly growing during this and the previous generation. So next gen will be worse for non-GaaS AAA
• GaaS were a big part of the present and most of the future in gaming and PS in particular, but Sony was stuck mostly non-GaaS AAA games
• AAA games take longer to be made every generation, taking now on average 5-9 years and many of their AAA studios had only a single AAA game

During the 5 years and a half he has been PS Studios boss:

• Aprox. doubled the first party revenue mostly thanks to:
  • Successful first party games expansion to other platforms, mostly PC
  • Successful first party expansion to GaaS, which last quarter generated around 40% of their first party revenue
  • Successful expansion in the off-gaming adaptations
  • Several non-GaaS titles breaking sales records and winning a ton of awards
• Aprox. doubled the manpower of their first party teams plus expanded 2nd party deals to get games from them more frequently
  • Previously existing studios now have more people
  • Previously existing studios like ND, SSM, Guerrilla now work in 3 or more games at the same time, like Insomniac
  • Japan Studio no longer develops mobile games and no longer is a money pit: they made their most successful ever internally developed game (greenlighted by him) and regarding externally developed games they grew and now are also publishing games made in the rest of Asia, not only Japan
  • Acquired lead teams like Housemarque, Bungie, (ex-Liverpool Studio+Evolution+Supermassive), Firesprite, (ex-Bungie) Firewalk (shut it down and moved the worth people to other teams, I assume mostly Bungie)
  • Acquired support teams like Bluepoint, Nixxes, Valkyrie
  • Opened Team LFG (incubated at Bungie) and Dark Outlaw (ex CoD Zombies/Deviation)
  • Shut down Pixel Opus (were a dozen people, hadn't their own office) and London Studio plus the mobile gaming studio Neon Koi they bought
  • Signed record investment in a generation for 2nd party games, both with existing and partners, including games like Death Stranding 2, Physint, Marvel Tokon plus pretty likely FromSoft since signed a strategical deal with them, bought a portion of them and signed another strategical deal with their mother company, who now has Sony as largest stockholder
• Has been very successul expanding their first party IPs outside gaming with movies or tv adaptations of Uncharted, TLOU, Gran Turismo or Twisted Metal. Plus is working in many adaptations more

And he isn't cannibalizing anything, their console's active userbase during this period has been growing thanks to a big influx of new to PS players and is bigger than the console active base any console brand ever had, not just PS. He added a shit ton of value instead.

 

[DannyDanger]

The sooner these companies realize nobody likes all these colorful, purpley, metro-sexually, non-manly games, the sooner we can get back to shit like SOCOM

 

[Doggyred]

Sony really needs to cut out these gaijin from their company. They are a cancer

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

Clown

 

[yogaflame]

I hope Hulst be fired and Totoki be replace. They practically killed PS brand and console. Turning off many fans ,making it no point of getting a ps5 and ps6 because of there stupid decisions especially with porting exclusives to other platforms, and woke and dei infested gaas crap obsession.

 

[reezoo]

sounds more like 'xbox are not selling so... this is an xbox, that thing is also an xbox... that thing over there is also an xbox..."

 

[reezoo]

Before him Sony's first party games had two big issues:

• AAA games basically double their budget every generation, but their revenue doesn't, to the point this PS5 generation non-GaaS first party AAA games have to sell around 8M copies to become profitable, something only top selling IPs achieve. So PS6 gen would be even worse
• Even in PS, the big majority of game revenue and playtime is spent in AAA or subs, and that percentage kept highly growing during this and the previous generation. So next gen will be worse for non-GaaS AAA
• GaaS were a big part of the present and most of the future in gaming and PS in particular, but Sony was stuck mostly non-GaaS AAA games
• AAA games take longer to be made every generation, taking now on average 5-9 years and many of their AAA studios had only a single AAA game

During the 5 years and a half he has been PS Studios boss:

• Aprox. doubled the first party revenue mostly thanks to:
  • Successful first party games expansion to other platforms, mostly PC
  • Successful first party expansion to GaaS, which last quarter generated around 40% of their first party revenue
  • Successful expansion in the off-gaming adaptations
  • Several non-GaaS titles breaking sales records and winning a ton of awards
• Aprox. doubled the manpower of their first party teams plus expanded 2nd party deals to get games from them more frequently
  • Previously existing studios now have more people
  • Previously existing studios like ND, SSM, Guerrilla now work in 3 or more games at the same time, like Insomniac
  • Japan Studio no longer develops mobile games and no longer is a money pit: they made their most successful ever internally developed game (greenlighted by him) and regarding externally developed games they grew and now are also publishing games made in the rest of Asia, not only Japan
  • Acquired lead teams like Housemarque, Bungie, (ex-Liverpool Studio+Evolution+Supermassive), Firesprite, (ex-Bungie) Firewalk (shut it down and moved the worth people to other teams, I assume mostly Bungie)
  • Acquired support teams like Bluepoint, Nixxes, Valkyrie
  • Opened Team LFG (incubated at Bungie) and Dark Outlaw (ex CoD Zombies/Deviation)
  • Shut down Pixel Opus (were a dozen people, hadn't their own office) and London Studio plus the mobile gaming studio Neon Koi they bought
  • Signed record investment in a generation for 2nd party games, both with existing and partners, including games like Death Stranding 2, Physint, Marvel Tokon plus pretty likely FromSoft since signed a strategical deal with them, bought a portion of them and signed another strategical deal with their mother company, who now has Sony as largest stockholder
• Has been very successul expanding their first party IPs outside gaming with movies or tv adaptations of Uncharted, TLOU, Gran Turismo or Twisted Metal. Plus is working in many adaptations more

And he isn't cannibalizing anything, their console's active userbase during this period has been growing thanks to a big influx of new to PS players and is bigger than the console active base any console brand ever had, not just PS. He added a shit ton of value instead.

All corporate slide shit... PS5 doesn't have a good PS5 exclusive for god knows how long.

 

[PlayStaytion]

The fact it got to this point to begin with is an enormous failure in management. Are they really saying they didn't implement adequate testing already? No, the problem is Sony's management has poor taste. Nintendo would have spotted this a mile away.

With Mario, the unshave-able baby face? It's not that hard for Nintendo and everyone else to do what Nintendo's doing. I'm pretty sure these people understand art more than Nintendo.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

With Mario, the unshave-able baby face? It's not that hard for Nintendo and everyone else to do what Nintendo's doing. I'm pretty sure these people understand art more than Nintendo.

 

[Felessan]

Concord was marked for death before anyone actually played it this would not have been the case if it was released to a market that actually want GaaS & that market would have let them know the changes that they wanted & over time it could have built a market for it's self then came to PlayStation.

You are repeating same stuff and implied that Playstation is not "a market that actually want GaaS". That is simply wrong as Playstation is the biggest market revenue-wise for many live service games. And over the half of PS players are live service games players.
Marvel Rivals didn't skip PS5 on launch, so is ZZZ. And if you look at recent/upcoming ones, those who are on a bigger side - go straight to Playstation. Because even though PS doesn't have the most players, it has the most of paying players.

The problem with Concord was that it was not playertested enough/feedback not taken seriously. Has nothing to do with platforms.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

You are repeating same stuff and implied that Playstation is not "a market that actually want GaaS". That is simply wrong as Playstation is the biggest market revenue-wise for many live service games. And over the half of PS players are live service games players.
Marvel Rivals didn't skip PS5 on launch, so is ZZZ. And if you look at recent/upcoming ones, those who are on a bigger side - go straight to Playstation. Because even though PS doesn't have the most players, it has the most of paying players.

The problem with Concord was that it was not playertested enough/feedback not taken seriously. Has nothing to do with platforms.

Exactly.

Aside from Nintendo whose library of top selling games are skewed heavy to first party, XBox, PS and PC top played games can be similar (aside from platform specific games).

But each of these 3 playforms will have the usual games... Fortnite COD, FIFA, GTA, Apex, Minecraft, Roblox etc.... Ya, there might some titles that skew more or less, but holistically pretty similar as long as its a big third party crossplat GAAS game.

And PS is no different. All the usual big GAAS titles are the top selling and played games.

Problem is Sony is lousy at making GAAS games, especially shooters with lasting appeal. So bad they gave up during PS4 after KZ Shadowfall bombed early. They've got one major new shooter hit in H2 and that's it. Every other big gaming corporation has had success with shooter IPs over the decades, but some reason Sony can never catch on and ride it out for any length of time. Even when they buy up Bungie to take over Destiny 2, the game and company immediately tank where users are trending down, financials trending down and layoffs. So they cant even succeed latching onto a successful IP.

Their best bet is to stick to SP and continue on with more Helldivers 2 DLC and then H3 at some point. They got a smash hit. Nurture that one like other companies who do the same when they find a gem. Skip out trying to make 7 different shooter games. Focus on one at a time Sony.

 

[The Wheel of Fortune]

It's good for me because I have the time to catch up on gaming after a couple of very busy years and major publishers get to realize that most of us don't want more of these kind of games from them (and I say this as someone who plays Genshin Impact at least a couple of minutes everyday). If now Sony goes back to creating great single-player experiences, I'm happy and they're forgiven.

 

[Robb]

Good luck with that.

 

[onQ123]

You are repeating same stuff and implied that Playstation is not "a market that actually want GaaS". That is simply wrong as Playstation is the biggest market revenue-wise for many live service games. And over the half of PS players are live service games players.
Marvel Rivals didn't skip PS5 on launch, so is ZZZ. And if you look at recent/upcoming ones, those who are on a bigger side - go straight to Playstation. Because even though PS doesn't have the most players, it has the most of paying players.

The problem with Concord was that it was not playertested enough/feedback not taken seriously. Has nothing to do with platforms.

That's not what I'm saying, I'm saying it shouldn't live or die by the hardcore PS5 console fan-base even a PS4 release would have giving it a better chance .

Kinda crazy to go after Fortnite fan-base without releasing on the platforms that made Fortnite popular. Why would these people stop playing Fortnite to play something that they can't play with the friends they're playing Fortnite with?

 

[Danjin44]

The issue they going after Fortnite players and most of them play new for few weeks then go right back playing Fortnite.

 

[Felessan]

That's not what I'm saying, I'm saying it shouldn't live or die by the hardcore PS5 console fan-base even a PS4 release would have giving it a better chance .

Kinda crazy to go after Fortnite fan-base without releasing on the platforms that made Fortnite popular. Why would these people stop playing Fortnite to play something that they can't play with the friends they're playing Fortnite with?

Your assumptions/logic is wrong.
Concord didn't go after Fortnite crowd. Fortnite is BR, Concord is Hero Shooter. And OW2/Apex are the same platforms - PC/PS
Marvel Rivals did just fine several months later what Concord couldn't, with exactly the same platform choice (sans xbox, but who care about it). Same genre, same target playerbase, same platforms - one is highly successful, other is not.

Laymans who think they "know" GaaS space and think that there are no other games but Fortnite there are hilarious. There tens (hundreds if we include AA) games there and there different genres with different playerbases. You can't just bump them together and label "this is all Fortnite".
DoTA/LoL players will think you are an idiot if you batch them with Fortnite players. Same with Genshin, Tarkov or MMO. All of them are GaaS though.

 

[PlayStaytion]

 

[Kerotan]

Sounds reasonable. Know your lane and sit back and collect the money.

Problem is they got money to spend and got greedy hoping to cash in and topple the kingpins.

It'd be like a grocery chain spending half their operating budget trying to topple Coke and Pepsi in pop and water brands. Instead knowing what you do best and going modest with some store brand products in the beverage aisle, they go ape shit spending billions buying up bottlers with no track record, and one well known drink company worth $3.6B. Add it up and look out Coke and Pepsi!

Turns out out of all of that new stuff, they got one new hit product, the rest are cancelled, bottler shut down, and the $3.6B one has tanked from day one including one of their new brands getting caught infringing on another company's trademark.

And the whole time the execs try to play it off as it's not going too badly. LOL! It's going fine since our store brands for cereal and boxes of salt are doing fine.

What Sony did was pure emotional stock picking. Instead of sitting back and doing pretty good already with some good sector picks he follows for decades and sitting back raking in dividends, one morning the guy goes mental. After seeing all the volatile tech stocks shoot up, suddenly the guy has a magic idea to take all his new money and funnel it to noname penny stocks with zero products and high priced tech picks hoping to hit the lottery. Not surprisingly, one pick was great (Helldivers 2) and the rest tanked. He isnt happy with making 15% every year in stock appreciation and divvy yields. He now wants +100% hoping they are all Nvidia.

Total beginner investing strategies. That's the kind of shit new investors did 25 years ago during the dotcom phase with high flyers and online trading was a new thing.

I'm glad it failed because I'll play the single player offerings but not the GAAS even if they're good. Helldivers was a smash hit but I even skipped that.

 

[yurinka]

All corporate slide shit... PS5 doesn't have a good PS5 exclusive for god knows how long.

Seems that factual data butthurted gaming flatearthers again.

I hope Hulst be fired and Totoki be replace. They practically killed PS brand and console.

Looking at the objective KPIs they made the PS brand and console more successful than ever before posting record revenue, profits, active userbase and so on. Maybe this is the reason of why they got promoted instead of fired.

The issue they going after Fortnite players and most of them play new for few weeks then go right back playing Fortnite.

No, the big majority of the gaming revenue and playtime (or PS in particular too) is spent in GaaS games. Fortnite is just one to the many very successful ones. Other very successful ones are MLB, Gran Turismo 7, Destiny 2 or Helldivers 2 to name a few.

Regarding the user retention, which is the amount of days a player keeps playing a game since starts to play it, in non-GaaS players play only a few days and move to something else. In GaaS on average they spend longer times due to being engaged with the multiplayer, unlocks and post launch features and content releases. Like in the non-GaaS titles, many quit after the first day. But the amount of players get engaged during months or even years is proportionally way bigger in GaaS.

To the point that they are having issues now with players spending most of their money and playtime in -mostly GaaS- games released in previous years, keeping a too small portion to the new stuff, and particularly the non-GaaS stuff.

Problem is Sony is lousy at making GAAS games, especially shooters with lasting appeal. So bad they gave up during PS4 after KZ Shadowfall bombed early. They've got one major new shooter hit in H2 and that's it.

Sony bought Destiny, which is a bigger hit. And Bungie, so they also got Marathon and all the future stuff they'll do.

 

[th4tguy]

Not CEO.

People already did that, so... which I think it's fair. It's only eyes-rolling when it's accompanied by some hilarious worshiping of the previous people of that role, who were behind the exact same initiatives as well (like Shuhei Yoshida). @Angry_Megalodon.

I was simply pulling from the article:

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Herman Hulst spoke to the Financial Times (in a paywalled article that has been recapped by Genki on Twitter) about Concord's failure and Sony's continued push to live service despite it. Hulst says the fiasco has led Sony to "put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing." He adds, "The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary" oversight is.

 

[Neff]

"We grotesquely misread the market to the tune of hundreds of millions in losses which are ongoing, that's a good thing and here's why"

 

[StereoVsn]

I am just getting my popcorn and waiting for Fairgames and Marathon to get canned. I am thinking Fairgames will never release, and Marathon will get released and die in a year or year and a half.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

"We grotesquely misread the market to the tune of hundreds of millions in losses which are ongoing, that's a good thing and here's why"

He's literally saying the opposite of this.

 

[undeadhero]

They shouldn't have ever shifted to live-service games. Stick to single player, or don't bother.