Eh, I'd place more of the blame at Jim Ryan, it takes time to see changes in a company at such a scale. We'll have a clearer picture if 1st party are still in this state as we go into the next generation. I've pretty much written this generation off from sony 1st party, never thought I'd be saying that.
Herman was head of first party though. Im sure Jimbo gave him a GaaS mandate but Herman went about it the wrong way. You can make GaaS without sacrificing your main studios. He had Bluepoint and Bend working on GaaS games. He didnt give Sucker Punch a bigger team or a bigger budget after they shipped a 10 million seller. He let Neil go out palling around with hollywood for five fucking years. He was in charge of GG when they decided to make Horizon 2 cross gen. He personally signed Deviation Games, the Concord Studio and Jade Raymond's new studio. And personally greenlit FOUR Horizon spinoffs.
hell, he's besties with Kojima and he never said to him that hey man, maybe upgrade your graphics a bit? Your game looks like dogshit by next gen standards. At least upgrade the rocks.
Besides, a good exec wouldve been able to convince Jimbo to let the big studios do their own thing and focus on pushing the hardware by releasing next gen only exclusives. I find it very odd that developers just blame everything on the publisher. Like come on, you dont have any say in the matter? I highly doubt the guy currently in charge of the art style in this garbage looking Horizon game had no power. He was told go make this a fortnite clone and he was like, as you say master. No, these people have more power than they think. Sony has always been extremely developer friendly, just speak up man. Say no, i am not making a God of War GaaS game. or something that looks like AI slop. You are not Nintendo, you cant get away with making kiddie looking games. Just say no. Worst case scenario, you get demoted. Take the hit.
Remember GG tech director said that they chose to be last gen because the PS4 allowed them to achieve their vision for the game. Basically admitting that they had envisioned a last gen game. Around the same time Avatar and AC Shadows were starting development and they chose next gen because their vision was much more ambitious. Santa Monica said that they wanted Ragnorak to look the same as GOW 2018 which is why they didnt bother upgrading the graphics. Kojima's tech director said there is not a big enough power gap between the PS4 and PS5 so we didnt even try. And Sucker Punch recently said they are literally risk averse.
This is on devs and herman not pushing any of these devs as the head of first party used to do. Jaffe said Sony studios were literally terrified whenever Shu came to visit those studios because he was so harsh on the games not matching the sony seal of quality. Cory said he once stormed out after playing a build of GOW 2018 he didnt like. herman just let these lazy bastards coast.
