PlayStation buys Firewalk Studios

James Sawyer Ford said:
They locked up Final Fantasy and Forespoken. Obviously the latter flopped, but the former is a massive title.

So it's not like they really needed anything else when you have two gigantic games like FF16 and SM2 releasing. Third party has also been exceptionally strong in their favor.

If we are going to credit Microsoft for Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, and Starfield - games that would otherwise be on Playstation had MS not bought them out - then we need to include the Square titles as well. It's the same thing.
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I'm not getting into a list war here. Why are we getting distracted here? This is about Sonys gaas focus. Who cares about trash like forspoken? We like Sony first party because if their quality and production values. Securing trash like godfall, ghostwire tokyo, and forspoken is jimbo simply trying to make up for the lack of first party sp output because of his idiotic gaas focus.
 
Thirty7ven said:
I don't believe PlayStation studios will put out 4 GAAS games per year for the next three years so…

We know what's coming this year and we don't know when Wolverine, DS2 and TLoU Online are coming out. The rest we don't even know what they are.
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Sony told their investors that 12 gaas games are releasing by 2025. Unless they are lying to investors, they are coming.
 
SlimySnake said:
I'm not getting into a list war here. Why are we getting distracted here? This is about Sonys gaas focus. Who cares about trash like forspoken? We like Sony first party because if their quality and production values. Securing trash like godfall, ghostwire tokyo, and forspoken is jimbo simply trying to make up for the lack of first party sp output because of his idiotic gaas focus.
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Forspoken is still a SP initiative....sometimes they don't work out. But it was a hugely hyped and marketed title. They wanted it to be better. It wasn't KNOWN to be trash when it was revealed, and it got a pretty massive budget (much more than Ghostwire or Godfall).

We can say the GaaS is idiotic, but if they get 2 massive hits out of 10 flops then that could still be judged as a success.
 
SlimySnake said:
Sony told their investors that 12 gaas games are releasing by 2025. Unless they are lying to investors, they are coming.
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Lying? It's game development, shit gets delayed all the time.

And you don't know if these gaas games have sp or not. It's too easy to get carried away.

It would be cool if we had that PlayStation event so we had a better idea, but right now it's just fear mongering.
 
DeepEnigma said:
The GaaS games are in addition to their other studios who produce their pedigree. I don't see what the issue is?
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Herman said PlayStation have 25 games in development, 12 of them live service.

https://www.ign.com/articles/hermen...more-live-service-more-pc-more-new-franchises

Whether people like it or not, Sony needs to find success in that area, specially when a company like MS has no qualms about going around buying the biggest third party live service games.

Ideally we want Sony to bring their games as art entertainment philosophy into these multiplayer games as well.

Personally what I don't want is lame trash that is just a bunch of senseless time wasters like most of these multiplayer games are. Everybody I know who spends most of their gaming time on stuff like Call of Duty and whatever are quite honestly, simple folk.
 
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aries_71 said:
Never understood why EA sent Titanfall to its death and then buried it under several tons of concrete. Any insider rumor on what happened?
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I don't think there is any juicy rumor or story behind that. I think EA got overly ambitious and wanted to bury CoD with Titanfall and Battlefield and it backfired. CoD and BF are long established franchises with considerable fanbases. Titanfall was a once-console exclusive franchise just then finding its way to a larger console base. It was too much of a wild card to stand a chance during that season.

After that, Respawn focused its efforts on Apex and Star Wars Jedi. Apex exploded and Jedi did very well. I think that just confirmed to them that Titanfall was something to maybe revisit in the future, possibly with a larger headcount, but for now it's in their best interest to focus on the IPs that are bringing them success. Now they are heavily invested in Star Wars as they have a Jedi sequel on the way, which the director envisions as a trilogy, so likely one more after this. They also have a Star Wars FPS and a Star Wars strategy game on the way. Apex had a studio opened dedicated to working on it for the next decade or two.

There is just no bandwidth for them right now to attempt another Titanfall and hope it works out this time.
 
welcome-to-the-party.gif
 
SlimySnake said:
Not only that. He counted call of duty as a Sony game because Sony published it in Japan lmao. Some people have no shame.

The fact of the matter is that Sony first party had two games in 2021, four in 2022, and just one in 2023. That's if it doesn't get delayed.
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Oh so "let's erase MLB, Horizon VR2, Horizon DLC and assume Spider-Man 2 is delayed to next year so that my narrative works" plus you're assuming nothing new for this year will be announced.

My post was a copy from Wikipedia clearly.

Also 4 AAA games in a single year like last year is good for a publisher. Let's not pretend it's not.
 
I am a bit confused about acquiring a lot of studios that haven't output anything yet. Equally, I guess this is Sony coming to terms with having to make their own shooter.
 
According to armchair accountants who did MS/Activision ROI, Sony buying Firewalk and Jade Raymond's studios who have costs and $0 sales for years until they releases games, the net profit is -100% loss and ROI. The numbers of years to breakeven is infinite.
 
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hemo memo said:
Remember the last time Sony thought throwing money at something would work?

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That game was fucking amazing. Truly a blast. The story, the multiplayer, everything about it. They should bring it over to console, or make it a mobile game. (If they ever make a mobile game..)
 
James Sawyer Ford said:
Forspoken is still a SP initiative....sometimes they don't work out. But it was a hugely hyped and marketed title. They wanted it to be better. It wasn't KNOWN to be trash when it was revealed, and it got a pretty massive budget (much more than Ghostwire or Godfall).

We can say the GaaS is idiotic, but if they get 2 massive hits out of 10 flops then that could still be judged as a success.
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I wanted forespoken to be good so badly. As soon as I heard the.. let's say.. "chatty"… characters, I knew it was over. Also, so weird how a parkour game could feel SO SLOW. I swear she felt so heavy and moving seemed like such a task. (Was the frame pacing off)
I love the Lum engine and really wish they could have struck something gold or at least silver with it. I think the engine does scale REALLY well. But they need to have less shit on screen maybe.
I don't know, but I think of FFXV cities and how they felt so.. sized correctly. Loved it.
 
Fahdis said:
Buy back the Devs at Evolution Studios you cunts!
I deserve DriveClub 2!
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Not likely. Those guys joined as their own team under Codemasters and failed hard. A lot of them, including the director of Driveclub, were fired. Again. The ones left were relegated to a support role.
 
ByWatterson said:
I feel very confident predicting Sony will eventually acquire Square Enix.
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I'm confident you're wrong. Japanese publishers aren't on the market like the western ones. People keep calling for SquareEnix, Capcom, Sega or Konami (lol) being purchased.

And why would they? Sony is already getting those games, often as exclusives.
 
SlimySnake said:
I don't think that's true. Nd is making factions, gg is making Horizon mp, bends next game is GaaS, Insomniac was hiring mp devs so they also have something in the works. That leaves SSM, bluepoint and housemarque.

12 GaaS games when they have maybe 16 studios means 75% of the studios are working on gaas with some of them simultaneously working on single player games like Spider-Man 2, tlou3, Wolverine and whatever ssm is working on.
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Factions was going to be in TLOU2 anyway. If that's gaas then so was the original multiplayer.
 
mckmas8808 said:
What's their current size?
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150 and expanding fast apparently.

Haven, Deviation & Firewalk are apparently ~150 each but Haven plans to grow much more me thinks.

Jade talked in 2021 about having tools that can expand to a Team of 1000 developers in the Cloud ☁️.
 
Captain Toad said:
I'm confident you're wrong. Japanese publishers aren't on the market like the western ones. People keep calling for SquareEnix, Capcom, Sega or Konami (lol) being purchased.

And why would they? Sony is already getting those games, often as exclusives.
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Imagine spending billions on Konami, jeez.
 
Captain Toad said:
I'm confident you're wrong. Japanese publishers aren't on the market like the western ones. People keep calling for SquareEnix, Capcom, Sega or Konami (lol) being purchased.

And why would they? Sony is already getting those games, often as exclusives.
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They're on the market, just not as much for foreign companies.

Most of the major Japanese studios have already gone through major mergers.

Square Enix (Taito)
Sega Sammy (Atlus)
Namco Bandai
Koei Tecmo

Konami and Capcom are really the only ones who haven't gone through major m&a.

But they're due for further consolidation as they're all significantly smaller than their Western counterparts.

Bandai Namco is the largest, but they do so much more than just video games and they're still less than half the size of EA.

I think we'll see Sony acquire FromSoftware and/or Kadokawa and potentially Square Enix, though they should aim for Sega or Capcom instead.

I think we'll see the big Japanese companies merge into 2-3 major firms as AAA gaming alone is too much to handle for smaller companies.

I could see Nintendo buy Sega, and Sony buy Square Enix. Capcom merge with Namco Bandai and Koei Tecmo merge with Konami.
 
Captain Toad said:
I'm confident you're wrong. Japanese publishers aren't on the market like the western ones. People keep calling for SquareEnix, Capcom, Sega or Konami (lol) being purchased.

And why would they? Sony is already getting those games, often as exclusives.
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Why would Sony buy Square Enix when it gets its games often as exclusives?

They aren't getting these exclusives for free, by buying them they can further promote their games, and help ramp up the quality as well by reducing the need to produce as many titles. There are many reasons why a purchase would make sense here. Sony currently doesn't generate any revenue from Square Enix games that aren't on Sony platforms. That would change by owning them outright. It would also help Sony expand into PC and Mobile.

The only thing slowing down investment in Japanese companies is foreign investment restrictions. Now that Sony is in the acquisition game to a larger degree than they have historically, it makes a lot more sense as they can't be blocked as easily as foreign investors. That Sony is also okay with multiplatform more than they were in the past also makes it make more sense.
 
Mibu no ookami said:
They're on the market, just not as much for foreign companies.

Most of the major Japanese studios have already gone through major mergers.

Square Enix (Taito)
Sega Sammy (Atlus)
Namco Bandai
Koei Tecmo

Konami and Capcom are really the only ones who haven't gone through major m&a.

But they're due for further consolidation as they're all significantly smaller than their Western counterparts.

Bandai Namco is the largest, but they do so much more than just video games and they're still less than half the size of EA.

I think we'll see Sony acquire FromSoftware and/or Kadokawa and potentially Square Enix, though they should aim for Sega or Capcom instead.

I think we'll see the big Japanese companies merge into 2-3 major firms as AAA gaming alone is too much to handle for smaller companies.

I could see Nintendo buy Sega, and Sony buy Square Enix. Capcom merge with Namco Bandai and Koei Tecmo merge with Konami.
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All of these comments make so much sense. Nintendo and Sega merging would be perfect for both companies. I've seen Xbox fans claiming Sega would be perfect for Xbox. But honestly if Microsoft were to make Sega exclusive like Bethesda and eventually Activision... Sega would not workout. Sega's Japan sales would drop drastically. Lay offs at Sega would follow. It just wouldn't make sense.

But back on topic. Imo I don't think most people realize how important Firewalks FPS for PS5 really is. Considering how Cod is a 10yr deal. PlayStation need Concord to be a hit
 
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