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PlayStation India Hero Project incubator program announced by Sony Interactive Entertainment
nush
Member
India,China? Cynic in me says that phase one of outsourcing game development.
killatopak
Gold Member
I now expect ludicrous amounts of dancing regardless of genre in their games.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
The price of ballooning costs and inflation.
Luigi Mario
Member
Hopefully, we will get more classics like this:
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yurinka
Member
Dhalsim approves this news
I'd say that what they are doing is trying to nurture talent and get extra attention in the contries with the biggest population of the world to grow their market there.
It would be cool to see an Uncharted game with the crazy action setpieces from certain Indian movies.
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nush
Member
The end of $70 games is on the horizon then.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
True, $80 on the way!
Puscifer
Member
Never watched Mad Men but I looked him up on and on a scale of 1 - Damn Daddy, he's pretty up there.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Imagine the roadkill, powerlines, and train gore mechanics.
Jimmyisback
Banned
Who's this?
skit_data
Member
I literally just watched a clip where a guy gets the bright idea to reach out while hanging from the side of a train going full speed, he hits some bar and flies off
Edit: and yes, it was in India
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ChorizoPicozo
Member
i feel i could complete the next sentence.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
CamHostage
Member
Huh, cool. I was actually thinking about how there should be something like this for South Asia and specifically India when China Hero Project started gathering steam. There are a lot of development studios in India and a ton of schools and training centers... mostly these are to foster the cheap-labor support needs of mainstream developers elsewhere in the world, but where there is training and facilities/equipment, there is the potential for unique talents to emerge. Unfortunately there's not really even many seedlings of great games by Indian developers to point to of what might be worth fostering in this development community (and there's not nearly as much easy, but then, that's what a program like this is for.
China Hero Project IMO has turned out better than expected (some pretty nice games have come out of it, like FIST and Anno Mutationem and Hardcore Mecha and the upcoming Boundary, so we'll see how this turns out.
Well, yeah, there is that, and that was the first thing that came to mind.
Ra*One wasn't good (going by reviews; nobody I know has played either version,) but It's interesting thought that Sony has been in this country so long ago looking for game developers and franchises for the India market and that region. Would have been cool if that could have continued and gotten better over time, and like there was like a lost Bahubali game only in India to discover...
(SCE Europe also produced a PSP/PS2 game by Gameshastra called Desi Adda, who also did some PSP Minis I think. Can't think of other works by Sony using developers from that area; they marketed The Last Guy with a bizarre cast of South Asian "developers" in promotional clips, but AFAIK, the game was made entirely by Japan Studio.)
China Hero Project IMO has turned out better than expected (some pretty nice games have come out of it, like FIST and Anno Mutationem and Hardcore Mecha and the upcoming Boundary, so we'll see how this turns out.
Hopefully, we will get more classics like this:
Well, yeah, there is that, and that was the first thing that came to mind.
Ra*One wasn't good (going by reviews; nobody I know has played either version,) but It's interesting thought that Sony has been in this country so long ago looking for game developers and franchises for the India market and that region. Would have been cool if that could have continued and gotten better over time, and like there was like a lost Bahubali game only in India to discover...
(SCE Europe also produced a PSP/PS2 game by Gameshastra called Desi Adda, who also did some PSP Minis I think. Can't think of other works by Sony using developers from that area; they marketed The Last Guy with a bizarre cast of South Asian "developers" in promotional clips, but AFAIK, the game was made entirely by Japan Studio.)
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Day one!Life of Black Tiger 2 looking fire.
sainraja
Member
LordOfChaos
Member
That's neat. I'd be interested in seeing more cultures included in the stories told through gaming, and India has a motherload of lore to go off.
Raji: An Ancient Epic was decent and made in Pune.
Raji: An Ancient Epic was decent and made in Pune.
Yoboman
Member
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Baki
Member
These are markets with a large growing middle-class and growth vectors for PS. For example, install-base for PS5 in China is expected to reach 7M this gen. That would make China the PS5 #3 market. For reference, PS4 sold 9.5M in Japan and that was the #2 market for PS4.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
How many units did the UK sell for PS4?
CamHostage
Member
Right, it's kind of phase two of expanding (or exploiting, depending on the viewpoint) that market's workforce. Phase one was, let's get these people to work making our games, and game publishers have been doing that in India for at least two decades. Phase two would be, let's give some of these people a little backing to make their own games and see what they come up with.
China Hero Project was as successful as it has been so far because there's a bubbling game development community there of talents who have worked for years (or come out of colleges/training programs started for their predecessors) and some of them now have the yearning and skills to make their own products. Chinese game developers even have had a foot in the door of indie and other offbrand development cycles for a while before this CHP program started, and probably a lot of us have played (or been impressed by) a cool game made by a small Chinese studio over the years.
India unfortunately doesn't have that same track record or underground clout, so we'll see how this goes, but undoubtedly there must be good game designers there waiting for their chance, and we'll see if Sony can find them and back them enough to work out.
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CamHostage
Member
Unfortunately, yes, this will take time, as it's just the start of the program. China Hero Project started in 2016, and there are still games like Lost: Soul Aside and Boundary from the first phase which still aren't done. CHP did get some of the small-scale stuff out in 2018/2019 (maybe that stuff was already well underway before Sony backed them?), but it's a long-term program and even if they get cool stuff with a promising demo signed up early, actually getting to play that cool stuff may be a long wait...
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Yoboman
Member
Yeah that's why some of the games out of China like Stellar Blade or Black Myth Wukong look good out of the gate. Cause those teams or individuals have a lot of experience already making games as outsourced talent
Shits_McGiggles
Member
I'm getting instant flashbacks to the Prince of Persia Sands of Time remake catastrophe from those Ubisoft studios in India.
diffusionx
Gold Member
Me in the bottom center
CamHostage
Member
Because that's your context for game development in India; lots of people when they think of games from China have the context of microtransactions and Tencent clone work. There's not a game history from these places that we are aware of, and the little we do know about probably isn't great.
A program like this is designed to hopefully find the talent who will help to change that.
It might not work out. Ubisoft did try it's own internal version of talent elevating when they gave Ubisoft Prune/Mumbai the PoP Remake project, and it didn't work out. However, that's only one studio rather than a bunch of applicants, and that's a very difficult assignment of remaking a classic, plus we don't know the budget or other circumstances of the PoP project. It's a different set of circumstances with India Hero Project.
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nial
Gold Member
Stellar Blade is South Korean.
Yep. This was my first thought as well. "Let's train Indian and Chinese developers so that we can make games for less, increasing our profit margin."
CamHostage
Member
Sony does not publish most of the games made within China Hero Project. (Also, some of these games end up releasing on non -Playstation platforms like Switch and Xbox.)
So no, it's not a program built to increase the profit margin. Profit will come by other ways.
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nial
Gold Member
Your thoughts are wrong, though.
It's far too early to know that. If a company were to do this, they would, you know, actually cultivate the talent better depending on them.
If Sony can cultivate talented developers in India and China, then replace Japanese/American developers with far cheaper talent, why wouldn't they?
They're a company; they aren't in this for the sake of altruism. There's always a bottom line. Their customer service certainly shows this.
CamHostage
Member
Sony Interactive Entertainment China Hero Project has existed since 2016, and has seen 7 games shipped by independent developers (some also independently published.)
India Hero Project follows that same model.
The Hero Project program is not a training center or outsourcing recruiter. It is an incubation program for funding talent already trained who have formed a studio and are looking to make original products.
(Both training centers and outsourcing recruiting already exist in India, btw. Sony has in the past used such services in its games. )
The international Hero Project programs will connect to Sony's bottom line in a different way.
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nial
Gold Member
Has any of this happened before in the gaming industry? Yeah, I don't see that being the case. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by trying to deploy Chinese/Indian talent into American/Japanese offices and replacing already established teams with such different development cultures as a whole. That would be a disaster waiting to happen.
I don't think they ment that, more along the lines of closing the american office and doing the work in india kinda like what happened with call centres. Not agreeing with the idea or anything just saying how I comprehended that sentence.
64bitmodels
Reverse groomer.
And the optimist in me says that it's a great way to get more cultures in the gaming space after literally only the west and Japan making stuff for over 50 years
Silent Viper
Banned
It Should happen. Americans demand lot of money to work. Getting cheap quality talent will reduce development cost.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
India is an emerging talented market, and Sony would be wise to tap into it. This is a win-win for everyone.
New employed developers, new studios, more games, cheaper cost of production for Sony, more exclusives for Sony, a different flavor of games, and more diversified cultural representation.
New employed developers, new studios, more games, cheaper cost of production for Sony, more exclusives for Sony, a different flavor of games, and more diversified cultural representation.
mansoor1980
Member
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
As competition for content gets more and more expensive and difficult to recruit, having built out resources across the world is going to pay dividends.
They kind of missed the boat in South Korea, so they're investing there and in Malaysia, China, and now India.
Difference between Microsoft and Sony.
xcalibersa
Member
Hopefully the devs are better than that Ubi indian team that built that utter shit looking prince of persia