It was Shuhei that signed the contract with Probably Monsters (who owned Firewalk studios), but it was something he called a "prototype contract". The game wasn't anywhere close to being done at that time and probably looked very different than what we saw last year. I'm sure Shuhei would have pulled the plug on it before it even saw the light of day if he was still in charge, but I think he got demoted in 2019 and didn't have much say in what happened with those contracts later on.
Architect of Sony's disastrous 'live-service push' says failures are good actually, because now there's "more rigorous and more frequent testing"
Loomy
Thinks Microaggressions are Real
An example of Apple having no interest in understanding the market they were entering.
Sony clearly has that figured out for the traditional games, but I'm not sure why they never hired someone to set that up on the live service side of things.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
There's many different ways to "fail fast". One way is to fail in front of as few people as possible (but still enough so you get dependable feedback). It's why titles like Fairgames have been getting tested so much.
*Actually, I spoke with someone who played Fairgames almost 2 years ago and they said it wasn't very good at the time.
I assume internal testing started happening much more frequently after Concords release.
OK, we do agree here.
Punished Miku
Gaslighter Pro: 16.7 Fireflops
I still think Hulst is honestly the best they've got. Sometimes you can keep on someone who knows what a real mistake looks like, and its more valuable than someone who has never made one. Shit happens. They're still in the shadow of Jim Ryan. Concord wasn't really all that flawed either. Just bland and unremarkable.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Felessan
Member
We are not in 00'-10' for it to work. Typical live service targeting mass market (not some niche low budget stuff like A/indie in SP) costs over 100m now. You have to have some reasonable success from the get go for these costs to be justified.
And no, without Playstation in picture Concord would fail just as much, not so loudly celebrated on forums but still a failure. Including Playstation actually make it easier for live service games as it's a platform where most money are, so it's easier to get success.
They killed quite a few under stricter review process post Concord. So they did streamlined process somewhat.
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Topher
Identifies as young
In the past year? Such as?
Killjoy-NL
Member
But the contract was for funding of Concord and I'm sure Yoshida had seen concept-art and whatnot.
Felessan
Member
Both Bluepoint and Bend live service games were cancelled in Jan 25
Physiognomonics
Member
That's some elaborate BS to save their job. Let's hear them after the release of Fairgames and Concord. I can't wait to read some even more elaborate BS.
It's really sad for the majority of developers fired (or are going to be fired) victims to a few execs at Playstation. They also have destroyed Playstation legacy. Right now they'd make more profits by becoming fully 3rd party (like Steam).
Many of us have been telling (half a decade ago) this would happen exactly like this!
It's really sad for the majority of developers fired (or are going to be fired) victims to a few execs at Playstation. They also have destroyed Playstation legacy. Right now they'd make more profits by becoming fully 3rd party (like Steam).
Many of us have been telling (half a decade ago) this would happen exactly like this!
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semiconscious
Member
so embarrassingly, incredibly damning. so, if your gonna invest huge amounts of time & money in a project, it'd probably be a good idea not to fall asleep at the wheel? that these guys can just blurt this shit out thinking it actually sounds good? fucking amazing...
Durin
Member
I always feel these statements are to safe face for investors, because they're distorted reality for consumers.
Live-service is just chased because a handful make oodles of money, and they wanna have one of their own...but largely haven't been successful at it. They thought their studios good at making particular games could just transition, and they were wrong.
Whoever though Concord would succeed, and to keep pumping money into its 8 year dev cycle should just be fired.
Live-service is just chased because a handful make oodles of money, and they wanna have one of their own...but largely haven't been successful at it. They thought their studios good at making particular games could just transition, and they were wrong.
Whoever though Concord would succeed, and to keep pumping money into its 8 year dev cycle should just be fired.
StreetsofBeige
Member
They knew what they were doing. And that master plan was simply shotgun buying up studios or making in-house as many GAAS dude bro shooters they can. Spend a ton of cash acquiring studios and throw darts hoping as many as possible stick to the walls succeeding. So far, only H2 has. And try to cover as many themes as possible. Concord = hero, H2 = sci-fi coop, Fairgames = more modern setting heist coop, Marathon = sci fi extraction. Who knows what Jason Blundell's Deviation Studios was making before it shut down but likely some kind of COD-ish game. And Factions 2 would be the gritty soldier bandit kind of game.
No other gaming company has ever gone on a GAAS shooter studio binge like Sony. And this is actually the second time doing this. During PS3, they had these IPs all overlapping each other: Resistance, KZ, MAG, Haze, Socom, Warhawk/Starhawk, a couple big battle PC MMO ports. While MS, Activision, EA all focused on supporting 1-2 key shooter IPs each. Sony had as many as these 3 did combined. Crazy.
And to gun for more GAAS, they even bought up some mobile studio called Neon Koi thinking they could do smartphone games too. Shut down.
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YukiOnna
Member
They were the ones who pulled the plug on their already successful direction of continuing to provide quality packaged titles since the late PS3 era. They completely killed off their output and went in one direction which leaves absolutely nothing to play among other factors so I don't think this means much. I don't think anyone would have had a problem if they had chased their Fortnite or Genshin clone step by step and behind the scenes, but they got obsessed with the idea of a forever game or multimedia franchise and alienated their userbase.
LavitzSlambert
Member
Let's not be melodramatic, this does not destroy the historical image of Playstation. If the failures of the PS3 and Vita didn't tank them, I don't think this will either. There is still Intergalactic and Saros coming in the near future, and other teams are working on more. Even if their big budget narrative games go multiplatform, Sony is still one of the only studios making them. It would take a gigantic change in customer preference, continued Sony missteps, and significant competition in the same space (probably by Microsoft and Valve) in order to topple them for real. I won't say it can't happen, but it will be much easier to course correct, even if that takes a long time to do due to Jimbo.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
GAAS revenue on console went from almost 0% in 2010 to around 50% by 2020.
A lot of people still don't get how absurd that is.
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.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Isn't Hideaki Nishino the CEO of SIE? Hulst was head of WWS.
I know Hulst was made co-CEO for a while, but that was changed making Nishino the sole CEO of the company.
I know Hulst was made co-CEO for a while, but that was changed making Nishino the sole CEO of the company.
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.
willothedog
Member
Fbh
Member
What they hopefully learned is that Hermen and the majority of playstation leadership have no fucking idea about what they are doing with GAAS. So hopefully the added "testing" involves bringing in new people to green light projects and putting a memo on their desk that says "If Hermen think it looks amazing, shut it down".
Yup, the original approach made sense. That's why I think people using that interview to try and put the blame for the Concord disaster on Yoshida to be incredibly silly.
Hiring an external team of seemingly experienced developers to make a prototype for a PVP shooter for Sony, that makes sense. In fact I'd argue that's the ideal approach, minimizing investment and not forcing your established single player studios to work on GAAS.
The screw up came later, once Sony leadership was presented with the prototype they should have realized the project had flop/bomb written all over it and either tried to salvage it by requesting extensive changes, or simply cancelled the project.
Instead, they were apparently so blown away by it that they decided to straight up buy the studio and treat it as a big release.
Shuhei went to a bakery to order a cake.
Firesprite came back with a rainbow colored, piss flavored cake.
Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst were like:
Yup, the original approach made sense. That's why I think people using that interview to try and put the blame for the Concord disaster on Yoshida to be incredibly silly.
Hiring an external team of seemingly experienced developers to make a prototype for a PVP shooter for Sony, that makes sense. In fact I'd argue that's the ideal approach, minimizing investment and not forcing your established single player studios to work on GAAS.
The screw up came later, once Sony leadership was presented with the prototype they should have realized the project had flop/bomb written all over it and either tried to salvage it by requesting extensive changes, or simply cancelled the project.
Instead, they were apparently so blown away by it that they decided to straight up buy the studio and treat it as a big release.
Shuhei went to a bakery to order a cake.
Firesprite came back with a rainbow colored, piss flavored cake.
Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst were like:
ShadyAcshuns
Member
How retarded. I could have saved Soyny about a billion dollars if they'd just ask me. I'd tell them to ix-nay the aaS-gay and there you have it.
Buggy Loop
Gold Member
Ouf, that doesn't read like a lesson learned
nial
Gold Member
That's literally his same role as always + Bungie and PlayStation Productions. From your same link:
Memati187
Member
Fuck nooo, cuckstation incoming.
i wish Hermen was fired, the only issue is that it will be replaced by Druckman
Pharaoh 117
Member
"Sure, we could have had 3 or 4 successful GAAS generating millions upon millions every week but what we would have learned?". Makes sense.
yurinka
Member
The one talking is Hermen Hulst, not Shawn Layden, who started the GaaS+PC pushes.
And their live-service push is being successful, in this around half a decade they doubled their first party revenue and around 40% of their current first party revenue comes from GaaS. And this is having released so far only 6 out of 12. In the next year or so they'll have released 10 or more.
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.
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or maybe they're too late to the party, especially with Concord, a hero shooter had failure written all over it in this day an age where no one gives a crap about that anymore unless it has a big name IP attached to it, , the fact that the artstyle was horrendous only made it fail faster, but it was a matter of time no matter what, even if everything about it was top tier
Marathon is a trainwreck in the making, that shit "genre" is as niche as it get, "extraction shooter" is a mode easily replicated inside an actual game, something The Division did years ago, it has a limited reach, no one cares about that and not amount of fancy graphics and style will change that
Failgames, that shit should have been canceled long ago
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
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willothedog
Member
So he is a CEO of SIE? I was correcting your mistake of 'Not CEO'.That's literally his same role as always + Bungie and PlayStation Productions. From your same link:
Loomy
Thinks Microaggressions are Real
I know. It's pointed out in the first post. The thread name is the article/interview title. Wanted to add his name in parentheses but reached character limit.
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.
ZehDon
Member
I mean, it's no big deal really. Sure, they screwed the pooch, damn-near ruined an entire generation.
And sure, the second half of the PS5 is going to be Sony's worst run ever.
And sure, they've damaged their brand name, built on quality single player games.
And sure, every single multiplayer game they've shown looks like it's going to bomb worse than Concord.
And sure, it'll take nearly an entire decade for them to recover.
But, at the end of the day, they can just re-release TLOU again, jack up the price of the console again, and wait for the money to roll in.
Can't wait to see how bad it gets with the PS6.
And sure, the second half of the PS5 is going to be Sony's worst run ever.
And sure, they've damaged their brand name, built on quality single player games.
And sure, every single multiplayer game they've shown looks like it's going to bomb worse than Concord.
And sure, it'll take nearly an entire decade for them to recover.
But, at the end of the day, they can just re-release TLOU again, jack up the price of the console again, and wait for the money to roll in.
Can't wait to see how bad it gets with the PS6.
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YukiOnna
Member
I never denied that, but it's disingenuous to suddenly imply that it's one or the other when packaged title sales are consistently high. Especially when they should not have transitioned the entire company's direction and alienate their core audience. They also completely miss the point of why these are successful, but that's a different conversation. Unfortunately, as long as they continue to make a profit from all those buying the currency and microtransactions on PS Store, they will likely keep trying a while longer. Hopefully, Nishino realizes that's enough and pulls the plug.