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Shinobi602 on the "lack" of First Party reveals by PlayStation: "I think some still haven't really grasped just how long big games take to make now"



He commented on the subject in the PlayStation thread on the Woke Retarded Purple Forum, as people are worried about the lack of first party announcements from Sony, even more so after rumors that Sony will not have a big event with giant reveals in the middle of the year.

The full text:

Wolverine was announced years ago and I don't know the details of why they decided to do that so early. Could have been a Disney thing. Could have just been Insomniac wanting to hype up their fans, or for recruiting talent, or any number of reasons. Physint could just be Kojima being Kojima. He's on his own planet lol.

I don't mean there's like a mandate from up top at Sony or something, but based on convos I've had, it sounds like some teams like to have windows nailed down more concretely before announcing things. There's one that a while ago I definitely expected would show up in this upcoming event because it's been a good minute, but won't, and that's just how they prefer do things and that's fine I guess.

But I think some people in here really just want to be in perpetual hype mode lol. A bunch of their teams released big games not that long ago. Just in the last couple years, Guerrilla launched HFW which is a massive game, helped with Horizon: Call of the Mountain, HFW's PC port, are helping with something else that we'll see soon and are working on multiple big projects. Santa Monica launched GOWR like a year and a half ago. Polyphony launched GT7 two years ago. Returnal came out 3 years ago and Housemarque's game is a new IP which almost always takes longer to get up to speed. TLOU2 was four years ago and TLOU Online would have been the next big thing but we know how that went, and not because it was a bad game. Naughty Dog needs a little more time.

I think some still haven't really grasped just how long big games take to make now. I've been on a couple projects for years whose release dates I was expecting to be announced at this point or that point and they took longer because game dev is just hard. Every company has some blockbuster dry spells here and there. Nintendo's not releasing a new Zelda or Mario or Metroid every few years. They supplement with spin offs and stuff and they're good with that, but I don't think they have huge blockbusters every year. We can clearly see Xbox is definitely not averse to it either. Sometimes the way things line up - you have peaks and valleys in releases.

I personally don't think Playstation has a first party *problem*. Sure it could be better, and I understand people want to specifically know "ok, where's Sucker Punch, where's Bend, where's Santa Monica, where's Naughty Dog" - the "big" ones. A lot of 2023 was dry, but just in the last 6-7 months, they've put out Spider-Man 2, Helldivers 2, Rise of the Ronin, and Stellar Blade, all big first party games. And outside of that FF7 Rebirth just for an extra cherry on top. They're feeding you. And there's still more this year. Sony's likely pretty okay with how things are going. I'm sure they'd love to have 'big franchise games' this year, but PS5 is still doing great and I think outside of this forum, the mainstream buyer is pretty chill right now.

Like I said, there's a few big ones planned for next year on top of Death Stranding 2. Totoki confirmed that too. I don't know when they'll announce them at the moment, but I suspect there could be another event later in the year, we'll see. I'll probably hear more later.

Canadian Agree GIF by CBC
 
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KungFucius

King Snowflake
Not every game needs a movie budget.
The pace they release games is disappointing and unacceptable.
Agreed. And when we do get games, they are bloated with too much content and overstay their welcome. Ghosts of Tsushima would have been better if it had half the side content and could have had a shorter story. If you want to reuse assets release a follow up a few years later with the other half of the content.
 

Audiophile

Member
Then they've gotta invest in more studios to maintain a better schedule, evaluate the scope of a proportion of their titles and find ways to make their existing studios more efficient.

We're paying customers and excuses don't really cut it.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Helldivers, ronin and stellar blade are considered 1st party?.

First party published.

The question is what their first party developers are doing. ND just canceled Factions, so their next game is probably a couple of years away at least. Insomniac's venom is next year. Sucker Punch are developing Ghost 2 but that is probably not a 2024 game either.
 

Loomy

Banned
Not every game needs a movie budget.
The pace they release games is disappointing and unacceptable.
The pace is fine. Games take as long as they take, and sometimes things go left and you have to reevaluate and that adds time to the development.

The problem that Sony is facing right now is cadence. They can't keep being in situations where every studio releases something over a 2 year period, and then spend 3 years in a trickle. They know that. They're addressing it.

It's not like we have a shortage of games to play.

Ghosts of Tsushima would have been better if it had half the side content and could have had a shorter story.
The story is only about 20 hours long and the side content in every game is entirely optional.

If you want to reuse assets release a follow up a few years later with the other half of the content.
People trashed Spiderman 2 because they assumed(incorrectly) that it was a lot of reused assets. There's no winning

Meanwhile From Software putting out absolute classics on a yearly basis. Maybe don't make 200 hour open world games that all look and play the same?
Both Elden Ring and Sekiro took about 5 years to make. I'm pretty sure AC6 took longer.

Helldivers, ronin and stellar blade are considered 1st party?.
All published by SIE. Sony owns the Helldivers IP, Xdev helped with the development of Ronin, and Stellar Blade was once multiplat, but Sony decided to fund and publish it. I'm guessing they want a stronger foothold in Korea and the development community there.

ND just canceled Factions, so their next game is probably a couple of years away at least
"Two team studio", so those games were being worked on concurrently.
 

hinch7

Member
Not my problem. Work smarter, not harder (or longer in this case). Just don't go crazy with budgets, and reign in on directors hyper fixating on ultra realism and cinematics when your customers just want games to play.
 
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IDappa

Member
First party published.

The question is what their first party developers are doing. ND just canceled Factions, so their next game is probably a couple of years away at least. Insomniac's venom is next year. Sucker Punch are developing Ghost 2 but that is probably not a 2024 game either.
Wouldn’t that be 2nd party then?. Idk can’t keep up sometimes. Definitely need to see what’s happening with their studios (where the fuck is ghosts 2)
 
First party published.

The question is what their first party developers are doing. ND just canceled Factions, so their next game is probably a couple of years away at least. Insomniac's venom is next year. Sucker Punch are developing Ghost 2 but that is probably not a 2024 game either.

Astrobot and Concord is what's this year

And most importantly Lego Horizon
 

cormack12

Gold Member
I think everyone is aware games are more complex to make and will take longer. This guy is also one of those rules for thee and not for me when it comes to Sony. The logic should apply to all first parties (e.g. Nintendo and Microsoft). What pisses people off is:

Games are big/HFW is massive
Literally no one is asking for games to be bigger or more massive. Either this is something the publisher is saying, or the pitch is centred round securing jobs for 5+ years.

The amount of remasters
Again, nobody is asking for this, and whichever way you spin it it costs money and time. Both of which could accelerate the sequels or new ips we want to see.

The main creative from your tier 1 studio making TV shows
Of colours it's going to impact availability and oversight of the new project.

Poor decisions like Factions
Even this decision polarised the fanbase. Why take your distinguished studio - the industry leader of single player narrative games and make them focus on a large scale multiplayer gaas, when they've only had cult success with their current online entries.

Content in games
What is being delivered already has contentious elements that don't actually contribute to the game itself but again, takes time and effort.


People aren't stupid generally. Sony is still top dog, but they are being carried at the moment. When ND bring their next game, I'm sure it will be melt eyeballs and be another pinnacle to beat but we don't need to pretend their first parties are in trouble, but we equally don't have to be making excuses. They should be doing better. They aren't, but it's not like there isn't anything to play either.

I guarantee a lot of this is strategy as well. Sony will already be looking at ND next title to come in the final third of this cycle. Then they will upsell a next gen patch ersion of it, then we'll get a remaster on the new hardware. Same as Rockstar will do.
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
Not every game needs a movie budget.
Did you read the full post? He makes a point of referencing Mario and Zelda and the infrequency of those releases; despite having the technological basis of PS3 games, I'll add.

I'd also say: Yeah, right. People want the biggest of big cheese here man. Otherwise they'd be happy with what we've got.

The pace they release games is disappointing and unacceptable.
I agree with this, but probably in a different way.

I'm fine with games taking 4-5 years, even 6 if it has to be so; but I don't think that these studios, Playstation or otherwise, are as productive as they could be. The problem isn't the scale of the games, it's the pipelines themselves. There's too much employee bloat and bureaucracy.

Even indie studios are running into this problem, as per Jasin Schreier and plain observation.
 
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Nydius

Gold Member
It always boggled my mind that there were people who had legitimately convinced themselves that Wolverine would be out this year despite knowing the ludicrous time AAA budget games take and that Insomniac was still in the process of supporting the recently released Spider-Man 2.
 
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Markio128

Gold Member
I’m just as happy with games like Stellar Blade and FF7R, as I am with first party games. In that respect, I agree with the sentiments. That’s not to say that I’m not excited to see what ND and others are up to though. But, if they are not ready to show, then what’s the point?
 

Xtib81

Member
Not sure what's taking longer compared to games 10 years ago. We're just playing more beautiful games but there's no difference in terms of what we're doing in those worlds nor how we're doing it. If anything, you'd expect them to develop tools to make games faster.
 
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Games ok I can wait. But I would personally love Sony to invest or buy more studios I don't care if its from embracer or Microsoft themselves. Despite Microsoft buying zenimax and Activision which isn't doing to well at the moment. If Microsoft managed the studios properly they could of been pumping out more first party games then sony. So to me games can wait more investment in buying studios
 

simpatico

Member
I don’t buy this anymore outside of just a few outliers. Developers during every gen have had the challenge of working with brand new software environments new technology. This is actually the first gen that uses the exact same foundation as the previous. They take twice as long to make and are on average worse than what we were getting before.
 
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