Mibu no ookami
Banned
Part of me thinks they see those legacy ips as to masculine. It sounds dumb but internally I think some people don't see them (SOCOM, Killzone, Warhawk) as fitting the culture of the place.
All of their efforts have this 'modern' bend to it. Hoping to bring in a new audience.
I think enough loss and pressure might change things.
Sony Japan needs to go scorched earth.
I mean maybe they're right at the end of the day.
Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft.... none of that shit is for me, but it's massively popular.
I just think it would make more sense to try and fail with the legacy IP than to try and fail with stuff you've literally pulled out of a bubblegum wrapper they pulled out of a gas station trash can.
The one legacy IP that they try to make into a live service game was God of War... pushing multiplayer is one of the big reasons why God of War: Ascension didn't work out. A rare L for Santa Monica, only to be repeated by Bluepoint who could have in that time brought back Legend of Dragoon or any number of legacy IP, or hell even put Demon's Souls on PC...
I think they learned the wrong lessons from MP games that didn't succeed on PS3. It was more of a PS3 problem than an IP problem.
If they did a reboot of the Killzone trilogy and remade the first three games. I'd buy them. I still wouldn't play them online, but some people probably would. The same is true of many other games that they have and I think working from there has a greater chance of finding success than randomly stumbling onto the next big thing and getting absolutely no traction.
Even sticking with Guerrilla, it should have been EASY for them to make a Monster Hunter clone set in the world of Horizon. The gameplay is all there.
Concord, Fairgames, and Marathon all share a really similar thread of not knowing what audience they're looking for or what their hook is.