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Schreier: "PlayStation’s Astro Bot Is a Model for the Video-Game Industry"

Killer8

Gold Member
Schreier is a retard but he's unequivocally correct here.

Sony need to bring back their lower budget middle market. Smaller teams making smaller games that they can release at greater frequency. Herman Hulst recently gave an interview congratulating Team Asobi on their launch and even the Sony-employed interviewer was pressing him about Sony committing more money to 'family games' like Astro Bot. I take that to mean that after their live service failings there is even internal pressure within Sony to get back to what put them on the map in the first place.

Concord would've been a disaster regardless, because it was shit and we knew that even before it released, but it needn't have sucked up all of the oxygen as Sony's big summer flop if it was surrounded by a cavalcade of other great titles like Astro Bot. Microsoft experienced the same problem last year when Redfall bombed and Forza Motorsport disappointed. Pinning your hopes and dreams on one game per quarter isn't going to cut it - If only a couple of those fail then the entire release calendar is sunk.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Schreiers primary objective is to get clicks (from you guys).

The whole industry was already set up with 50 - 100 person teams making short single player games back in the 00s.

It failed for a reason. Schreier knows this.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Let the shilling continue I guess.
Feelings Feels GIF by WE tv
 

Shake Your Rump

Gold Member
A game fails: "Sony needs to take a long hard look at itself"
A game succeeds a mere week later: "Sony knows how to make videogames. Incredible achievement"


People get money to write this.
Both of these statements can be true.

Concord was an independent game, acquired mid-way through development. Sony's relationship was decided by the marketing department. Bad decision. Take a long hard look at marketing deals and acquisitions.

Astro Bot was developed in-house by a team that formed from part of a group that had been with Sony for 30 years. They know how to make video games.
 
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Sooner

Member
Both of these statements can be true.

Concord was an independent game, acquired mid-way through development. Sony's relationship was decided by the marketing department. Bad decision. Take a long hard look at marketing deals and acquisitions.

Astro Bot was developed in-house by a team that formed from part of a group that had been with Sony for 30 years. They know how to make video games.
Single player games and online GAAS games are completely different.

Sony went into their GAAS initiative knowing more would crash and fail than would succeed. If you make 5 GAAS games and 4 fail, but one hits hard, it's a success.

Expensive single-player games need to hit much more consistently. That's why there has been less risk taking in this area.
 

Rudius

Member
This doesn't make much sense. Telling someone who already has many unplayed games that a solution is to buy another game?

Every console has suspend and resume. I just played through the entirety of Pokémon Let's Go over the span of weeks without ever closing the game.

It took me 140+ hours to complete Persona 5 over the span of months, despite it being the only game I played at the time. You can play any game, regardless of how little time you have, if you are actually interested in playing the game, as opposed to just checking it off a list.


A game is either worth your time playing, or it isn't. How long it takes to "complete" is irrelevant if your goal is to play the game.

Does any other hobby obsess with how many items they complete? Are there quilters out there cranking out a "backlog" of quilts, just to say they made X number of quilts? People knitting drink coasters because a hat... "f that". Do woodworkers lament how long it takes to make a bookcase versus a napkin holder?
If a 100 hour games had 10 times the real content of a 10 hour game, alright, but we know it's not the case.

Recently playing Wukong I could see that God of War Ragnarok wastes my time: both are similar games, both are good, but in Wukong you move fast, kill fast, die fast, there are no walking sections, cut scenes don't drag on, you don't have to slowly climb or squeeze trough passages etc. Both are long games, but modern God of War is longer than wukong without having more game in it, it's just stretched and slowed down. And God Of War Ragnarok is far from the worst offender in that regard.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
"Rather than chasing endless gameplay, Astro Bot is delightfully compact and can be completed in around a dozen hours — a godsend for busy parents or people with massive gaming backlogs."
See this is what I want but I recently picked up Hogwarts Legacy and did a search for how long the main game is and not only did I find out it is 40+ hours but also a bunch of people complaining that it is too short.
I feel like there is a big schism between people who have a ton of time to commit to games and people like me who want ~15 hours max which will take a month or so to complete, because any longer and it's highly unlikely I will finish the game.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I feel like there is a big schism between people who have a ton of time to commit to games and people like me who want ~15 hours max which will take a month or so to complete, because any longer and it's highly unlikely I will finish the game.
I think this speaks to how shallow most games actually are. Most of them are built to be interesting for 5 to 10 hours and then the planned obsolescence kicks in.

Short games end before the planned obsolescence period drags on too long.
Long games just keep going.

We should be wanting better gameplay design, more depth, more variety. Instead we talk about when a game should end because we see another interesting 5 - 10 hours game coming next month.
 

Klosshufvud

Member
I have for certain put more hours on the supposed 8-10h games over the 100h ones. DMC3 and GoW1? Finished a dozen times. Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk? Couldn't even finish the tutorial areas before boredom hit. When a game is designed specifically to stretch those hours, it impacts the pacing and also my tolerance to keep playing.
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Id rather have a ton of threads on a potential GOTY than Concord, more positivity and less hate is nice
Concord only saw that amount of traction because of this. There's a sense of "sticking it" to people with a game like that. Remember, a lot of folks are still sore about Starfield failing to move the needle, Xbox games coming to PlayStation, and the Xbox Series devices becoming more and more irrelevant. When you've protected a brand for so long, and then that brand begins to destroy itself, the remaining warriors must shoot at whatever they can (this includes its "journalist" fangirls and not just users around GAF, who are nowhere close by comparison). Otherwise, if this were 1999/2000, it would have come and gone and no one would care, particularly anyone who wasn't similar to a current day zealot. PlayStation fans rightfully mocked it and have largely moved on.

Like I predicted though, Astro Bot (especially) and The Pro are about to make it a blip on an otherwise decent year for PS5.
 

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Does anyone have any stats for this game's development?
Yup
How many people were involved?
60 developers.
How long did it take?
3 years of dev time.
How much did it cost?
The average salary for a senior game developer in Tokyo where Team Asobi is located is in the 12M - 15M Yen range, so if we take the higher value of that salary range, the development budget would be approximately 2.7B Yen, which translates to about 19M USD.

Now, if we also factor in the cost for game asset creation from external support studios, I’d estimate the final production budget to be around 25M–30M USD.
 
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Lunarorbit

Gold Member
I really used to like schreier. Bought both his books and even gave money to his podcast. When he joined Forbes something changed. I know people on here always thought he was a bitch but I liked his investigative journalism.

Now he just seems like a washed out photocopy of what he was
 

Buggy Loop

Member
The Daily Show Wow GIF by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah


No fucking shit?

Did peoples forget what made PSX and PS2 popular to begin with? Their first party lineup was fire. GAMES, not Hollywood wannabes or chasing ephemeral trends like gaas.

Team Ico died for nothing you fucking dumbass. Now you support Astrobot like no tomorrow because you actually forgot what good games are after nearly 3 gens of wanking to graphics with inch deep gameplay.
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
-dumb gif

No fucking shit?

Did peoples forget what made PSX and PS2 popular to begin with? Their first party lineup was fire. GAMES, not Hollywood wannabes or chasing ephemeral trends like gaas.

Team Ico died for nothing you fucking dumbass. Now you support Astrobot like no tomorrow because you actually forgot what good games are after nearly 3 gens of wanking to graphics with inch deep gameplay.
A lot of pointless, silly aggression here. Games come in flavors, lots of them, and it doesn't matter if we like them all or not. I prefer an industry that welcomes AstroBot, The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto, and Sonic The Hedgehog rather than one that only goes after "a type". Yes, there are phases when trends are chased, because the point is to make money, after all. But, by and large, the industry is full of diverse, unique experiences and a recent gem like AtsroBot doesn't invalidate the many, great, games that are either cinematic or otherwise.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
A lot of pointless, silly aggression here. Good games come in all flavors, doesn't matter if we like them all or not. I prefer an industry that welcomes AstroBot, The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto, and Sonic The Hedgehog rather than one that only goes after "a type".

As a massive fan of PSX and PS2 Sony lineup, I disagree with their switch and focus on the likes of the Last of Us, Uncharted, Horizon, Daddy of war, Days gone etc. Again, studios have died to chase this cinematic experience, I’m not saying that there’s no places for them, but the 180 degrees Sony made to chase this was too much. Astrobot is exactly showcasing this. It’s like a dandelion growing through the pavement of a parking lot. Now Sony says they have family in mind, pulease, what BS is that. For 3 gens it was thrown under the bus with nowhere near the diversity of PSX/PS2 era.
 
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akira__

Banned
Just last week the industry was dying and concord was the beginning of the end of playstation. And playstation losg their way. And then now with Astrobot, a playstation mario came we get these extreme takes. Relax it's just a game.
The console industry not dying, and Astrobot is not saving it.
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
As a massive fan of PSX and PS2 Sony lineup, I disagree with their switch and focus on the likes of the Last of Us, Uncharted, Horizon, Daddy of war, Days gone etc. Again, studios have died to chase this cinematic experience, I’m not saying that there’s no places for them, but the 180 degrees Sony made to chase this was too much. Astrobot is exactly showcasing this. It’s like a dandelion growing through the pavement of a parking lot. Now Sony says they have family in mind, pulease, what BS is that. 3 gens of nowhere near the diversity of PSX/PS2 era.
Eh, AstroBot proves there's a place for all of it. Studios died trying many different things and that's where the pivots started (Microsoft and Nintendo are in the same boat). That's business.

akira__ akira__

Spot on. People are super reactive to things these days, when in reality, two different pitches were just thrown and one lead to a homerun. Again, that's business.
 
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clarky

Gold Member
Problem is Schreier is a massive cunt, doesn't matter if he's right or wrong, twat is on the purple hair side. Avoid.
 

MarkMe2525

Gold Member
At first glance, I thought the article was going to focus around the simplified mechanics and exploiting nostalgia as the base of his premise, which I would have disagreed with. After skimming through it, I agree that many games would benefit from lessened scope and more sustainable development practices. Every large AAA doesn't have to be an open world jack of all trades.
 
Um, that point really makes no sense, mate.

The solution to your massive backlog isn’t to buy new, shorter games. It’s to play the games that you bought and never even booted up. The former is part of the reason you have a backlog to begin with.
thank you. 'godsend'? talk about a drama queen...
 

NickFire

Member
Schreiers primary objective is to get clicks (from you guys).

The whole industry was already set up with 50 - 100 person teams making short single player games back in the 00s.

It failed for a reason. Schreier knows this.
I cringe at some of his stuff but I agree with his opinion on this. There’s room for lots of type of games and not everything needs to be a forever game. Shout out to Robocop. Back on topic I still think there’s plenty of room for big games. But the logic behind keeping a studio compact and giving everyone a voice is sound. I think people can be more honest about their thought process in smaller groups too because less corporate formalities and you probably get to know your colleagues in different departments better too.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
All want from Sony is make more quirky Japanese games like this like they used to.

I’m not even saying they should stop making western games but back in PS1, PS2 and PS3 they had good balance both Japanese and western games.

Also the don’t need those unique Japanese games be super high budget AAAA or whatever…..AA with unique aesthetics is more than enough for me.

I just hate that this gen Sony is mostly focus on western games.
 
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