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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"

I have seen the term 2nd party thrown around here for years and doing a quick search online shows that it is a term used for games that are developed by 3rd party devs but funded by the publisher. Since when has this changed?. I mean isn’t it sort of in the name, 1st party implies owned ip/studio…
aRnnaez.gif
 

bitbydeath

Member
I have seen the term 2nd party thrown around here for years and doing a quick search online shows that it is a term used for games that are developed by 3rd party devs but funded by the publisher. Since when has this changed?. I mean isn’t it sort of in the name, 1st party implies owned ip/studio…
All you need to know is that second party games are made in conjunction with XDev, which is a Sony first party developer.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Many want a Demon's Souls 2 is the point to it.
Sony doesn't own the rights to the widely popular Dark Souls series but they do own Demon's Souls so money is to be made.

Demon's Souls has a feel of its own.
I’m pretty sure EVEN if FROM makes Demons Souls 2 it just going feel like Dark Souls 4.

Like I said it’s pointless. Not every game needs direct sequels.
 
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Not as many games seem to be announced when their release dates are in limbo and years away. Some still are but it feels like a lot less than what we used to see. I think that's better for everyone but the forum poster in need of perpetual hype.

Anyways, as someone with an insurmountable backlog I'm fine with the pace that games are released nowadays.
 
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.

Because for all the gameplay functionality, you need art, sound, and edge cases to test. This is why we see so much copy/paste content in open worlds. I do agree that it's not worthwhile. So many people want detailed animation, facial expressions, and fully voiced casts, where text bubbles used to suffice.

Thankfully for me I’m getting quality Asian games back to back, at this point I honestly don't care what Sony does…..I lost all interest in their first party games.

Yup, it seems like Japan still gets it. Their studios seem to make good value decisions to sacrifice superficial aspects of games in favor of engaging gameplay and content.

It gets silly when the dev cycles are longer than console generations though.

Yup. The ROI of making a good engine and iterating has also diminished. Lots of overhead and waste, and you only get one or two good chances per generation to leave an impression.

It's amazing that FF Rebirth was shipped in 3 years.

Literally the biggest game I've ever played with the most unique content and 98% of it is good to amazing.

Their employee retention and resources were unparalleled. Sony could learn from them. There is a clear distinction between cutscenes and the typical gameplay you see. Sony does not tend to do that with their interactive movies, everything need special animations and needs to be a seamless transition between gameplay and cutscenes. I don't think it provides much value, and prefer Square's approach by far.

I think things would improve if these developers stopped with their 100+ hour, huge open world, $500 million dollar, Hollywood style games with obligatory perfect voice acting, writing, storylines, etc. We need more games in between. Smaller games with a reasonable budget and more linear games. These indie, AA developers can make money off of Unreal 5 games that still look good and most AAA games seemingly have to sell millions just to break even.

That’s a colossal problem that generally contributes to the long development time. Yeah, I know modern gamers want huge epic adventures that have hundreds of hours of content, but are these games worth it when it’s typically to the detriment to the game and the game companies when they have to literally destroy themselves to create these games?

It's not worth it, and gamers have come to expect the impossible when it comes to visual and audio quality. There has always been an unhealthy obsession with this. I love a great looking game too, but it's driving a huge problem in terms of tradeoffs with interaction and gameplay. That feeling when you enter an animation and control is ripped away from you, it's jarring. That is the result of this misplaced focus that Sony has made the focal point of almost all of their games. I would like to see a greater focus on games like Returnal where the core gameplay is unhindered by this. It's not like you can't have excellent visuals and an engrossing story with arcadey gameplay.
 

Puscifer

Member
Cue to the meltdown.
Anticipation Popcorn GIF



We have to accept that games will take long these gens. Bye bye the 3 years development cycle.
Bye bye any real semblance of a dev cycle. Finding out it's taking as long to remake Silent 2 as it took to make 2, 3 AND 4 is fucking ridiculous.
 
Also it's not like Sony studios are revolutionizing gameplay either. GOW Ragnarok, Spiderman 2, Ratchet, Forbidden West, etc were all the very definition of more of the same.
Never said they did. My point is, FROM, who is arguably the best at this, still isn't perfect. Their new IP is basically just DS4 as I mentioned. The person I responded to was mentioning that devs/Sony shouldn't make 200+ hours games with similar gameplay, which I just found ironic as that describes ER to previous FROM titles to a tee.

Btw, I don't mean that in a bad way. I feel like people over exaggerate "new gameplay". It's been a longggg time since I've played something that felt truly unique in the AAA space. I just feel like Sony always gets shit for this when people can essentially name one Dev who is able to release games in a timely manner in FROM (I would personally include insomniac as well, which is funny as it's a Sony first party studio).

Where is the outage for MS/Activision, Ubisoft, EA, Nintendo, etc? I mean ffs ToTK used the same map from BoTW and took over 7 years to make. It's just the shitty part of the entire industry at the moment unfortunately.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Bullshit
Just Capcom since 2019

Devil May Cry 5 (2019)
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Monster Hunter Rise (2021)
Resident Evil VII (2021)
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Street Fighter 6 (2023)
Dragons Dogma II (2024)

And that's just their big releases.
Who really has been the saving grace for us regardless of if they are remakes or of the same series, they are producing QUALITY games and in timely manner
Multiple studios are the same, with the exception of Insomniac Games & PD & I'll give Guerrilla Games a pass too each of Sony's studios should have had a reveal by now or due for release.
Year 2 should have had multiple studios reveal their first PS5 projects and the year after the rest.
Not 4 going into 5 years of nothing but PC ports
Games haven't magically become 2x longer to make without the evidence of why.
Stop making excuses for them.
And if that's really the case then they better stop hiring actor's to play their characters because they ain't gonna look the same by time they finish.
 

nial

Member
I have seen the term 2nd party thrown around here for years and doing a quick search online shows that it is a term used for games that are developed by 3rd party devs but funded by the publisher. Since when has this changed?. I mean isn’t it sort of in the name, 1st party implies owned ip/studio…
People on the internet love to say it, that doesn't make it a formal term used in the industry.
 

Pidull

Member
All these 40 hour AAA bloated games are out of control.

Half-Life 2 and its episodes was the right way to handle it. Iterative with shorter turnarounds.

If your first party studio can't put out a trilogy in the span of a generation, your games are too bloated and trying to reinvent too much. One big innovation per generation is enough.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Bullshit
Just Capcom since 2019

Devil May Cry 5 (2019)
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Monster Hunter Rise (2021)
Resident Evil VII (2021)
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Street Fighter 6 (2023)
Dragons Dogma II (2024)

And that's just their big releases.
Who really has been the saving grace for us regardless of if they are remakes or of the same series, they are producing QUALITY games and in timely manner
Multiple studios are the same, with the exception of Insomniac Games & PD & I'll give Guerrilla Games a pass too each of Sony's studios should have had a reveal by now or due for release.
Year 2 should have had multiple studios reveal their first PS5 projects and the year after the rest.
Not 4 going into 5 years of nothing but PC ports
Games haven't magically become 2x longer to make without the evidence of why.
Stop making excuses for them.
And if that's really the case then they better stop hiring actor's to play their characters because they ain't gonna look the same by time they finish.

I don't think this shows what you think it does;

Obvious example being that this is bookended by titles directed by Itsuno. A 5 year gap.

There's also the notable absence of anything listed for 2022. Which is way more significant for a publisher versus the pub-dev arm of a platform holder who's efforts are less a commercial necessity than something that needs to coincide with the financial and marketing imperatives of the entire business.

There's no requirement for Sony to have self-developed tentpole releases every quarter, all they need is sufficient content to drive platform sales because they are floating their business model on revenue from all sales, not just the titles created directly under their watch.
 
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DAHGAMING

Member
Im ok with it aslong as when they do show us whats coming we got some shooters back on the menu, Killzone, Resistance, Socom reboots, remake, sequals, somthing please, somthing new in that genre, just tired of these estrogen fueled games there busting out, give us somthing different.
 

feynoob

Banned
Bullshit
Just Capcom since 2019

Devil May Cry 5 (2019)
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Monster Hunter Rise (2021)
Resident Evil VII (2021)
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Street Fighter 6 (2023)
Dragons Dogma II (2024)

And that's just their big releases.
Who really has been the saving grace for us regardless of if they are remakes or of the same series, they are producing QUALITY games and in timely manner
Multiple studios are the same, with the exception of Insomniac Games & PD & I'll give Guerrilla Games a pass too each of Sony's studios should have had a reveal by now or due for release.
Year 2 should have had multiple studios reveal their first PS5 projects and the year after the rest.
Not 4 going into 5 years of nothing but PC ports
Games haven't magically become 2x longer to make without the evidence of why.
Stop making excuses for them.
And if that's really the case then they better stop hiring actor's to play their characters because they ain't gonna look the same by time they finish.
Resident evil is just remakes, aside of the main one.

The rest are from other devs who took too long to make those games.
 

Red5

Member
Well that's what you get when every game has to be bloated with an open world and designed with MTX and GAAS in mind. Games like Thief, Deus Ex, Doom or Halo are infinitely better than the bloat we get these days.
 

SantaC

Member
Yearly basis? It's not the 90's/2000's anymore, all From Software makes these days are BIG games every 3-4 years (no mention of their quality, Armored Core 6 was 2023 GOTY).
No amored core 6 wasnt goty. It was BG3.
 

Astray

Member
I think Sony's big problem is not really a slow pipeline as much as it's messaging, they need to start being more like Nintendo and do a steady stream of smaller directs instead of staying quiet for ages and ages, this is where the value of a smaller game shows as well, Nintendo is not just about the Zeldas and Marios, they also release "smaller" games like Metroid Dread or remakes of classic games to cover lean times or to capitalize on big moments like movie releases.

Not to mention that Directs would help a lot with discoverability of indies on there too, which is far weaker than Switch or PC. Having more indie highlight events like Steam does would also work great.
 

SantaC

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.
Talent is just worse today. Studios has to hire for woke diversity instead.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I don't think this shows what you think it does;

Obvious example being that this is bookended by titles directed by Itsuno. A 5 year gap.

There's also the notable absence of anything listed for 2022. Which is way more significant for a publisher versus the pub-dev arm of a platform holder who's efforts are less a commercial necessity than something that needs to coincide with the financial and marketing imperatives of the entire business.

There's no requirement for Sony to have self-developed tentpole releases every quarter, all they need is sufficient content to drive platform sales because they are floating their business model on revenue from all sales, not just the titles created directly under their watch.
It's just an example.
You can do this with a majority of publishers
Shit Ubi maybe doing a copy and paste with their shit but their games are massive in comparison and should take been more time and yet..
My point is Developers are still outputting in timely manner.
And do you know who the biggest games studio is?
Resident evil is just remakes, aside of the main one.

The rest are from other devs who took too long to make those games.
Should we remove the Remakes & ports from Sony's releases and see what we get?
At least those are built from the ground up as new games but with an existing foundation instead of literally porting a game to a new engine or...just porting the game.
 

squidilix

Member
1st party implies owned ip/studio…

For Helldivers and Death Stranding, this is their own IP, like Demon's Souls / Returnal is still a "1st party game" before they acquiring Blue Point / Housemarque.

(Like, Mario & Luigi is a 1st party game, even if nintendo don't own AlphaDream)

Stellar Blade or Rise of Ronin is more a 2dn party indeed (Sony helps in the production, with XDev). Somes games on PS4 have too (NiOh 1 & 2, Detroit)
I don't know if we can coun't Final Fantasy VII Rebirth / Remake and XVI on 2dn Party since they can help for some tools developpement and marketing. (Like Kena)

3rd Party is... they don't own the IP and the game is out outside PlayStation at launch. But Sony can also funded in some ways the game (Street Fighter V / Nier Automata) or the partenaship / marketing rights.
 
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Salz01

Member
I think Sony figured out they get more money from their first party studios releasing at the end of the current cycle, and then charging again on the new consoles for an upgraded version of said game. They get that sweet double dipping money.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
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.
"Nobody is asking for..."

This is incorrect. The market clearly prefers larger & longer games. Online discourse is not representative of reality.

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.
Again, wrong.

Remasters do not require nearly the same amount of development resources as new games and generally sell well. We're getting these because the market craves them to a certain extent. Also important to note, the money generated from Remasters is used to help development of new games.

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.
Too early to reach such a conclusion. Games now take 6 - 8 years to make so we won't know if Naughty Dog has been slowed until around 2006 at the earliest. The Last of Us TV show seems to be considered a success on every conceivable metric so it's not like Niel Druckman was spending a year or two smoking meth.

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.
Games are canceled all the time. We would have to know the cancellation rate of games over an extended period of time to judge Factions cancellation. The gamble certainly made sense considering how drastically the market has changed over the last 10 years regarding multiplayer.
 
Devil May Cry 5 (2019)
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Monster Hunter Rise (2021)
Resident Evil VII (2021)
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Street Fighter 6 (2023)
Dragons Dogma II (2024)

I'm sure if Sony had different studios working on the same IP they'd have more of them released too.
 

freefornow

Member
96494_9_analysis-why-playstations-profits-are-so-low.png


"Sony tells investors that it will not release any major first-party franchise titles through next fiscal year, and that first-party software profit will be slightly decreased as PS5 hardware sales "gradually decline.""

3KtwO0zM_200x200.jpg

" I personally don't think Playstation has a first party *problem*"
 
We need a MGLA movement.
Make Games Linear Again

Enough with the 200-hour open world map cleaner collectathons!

All this RPG-centric obsession from former PC/WoW gamers who migrated to consoles has ruined traditional, arcadey gaming.
 

nial

Member
Bullshit
Just Capcom since 2019

Devil May Cry 5 (2019)
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Monster Hunter Rise (2021)
Resident Evil VII (2021)
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Street Fighter 6 (2023)
Dragons Dogma II (2024)
This is what people believe modern Sony is; big AAA games only, same old IPs and remakes.
BTW, Capcom Co., Ltd. has two internal studio departments (Division 1 and Division 2) that have several development groups within them. Resident Evil, Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma are Division 1, Monster Hunter and Street Fighter are Division 2.
Saying that it's just Capcom is pretty disingenuous.
 

Cyberpunkd

Member
Oh, but we have grasped. What we didn’t grasp is WTF are 500 people doing for 5 years given that videogame writing is still shit, AI is still shit, every third person shooter still uses the mechanics from Gears of War 1, etc. So where is all the time and money being spend on, pixel masturbation?
 

feynoob

Banned
It's just an example.
You can do this with a majority of publishers
Shit Ubi maybe doing a copy and paste with their shit but their games are massive in comparison and should take been more time and yet..
My point is Developers are still outputting in timely manner.
And do you know who the biggest games studio is?

Should we remove the Remakes & ports from Sony's releases and see what we get?
At least those are built from the ground up as new games but with an existing foundation instead of literally porting a game to a new engine or...just porting the game.
Remakes don't take long to make.

The problem is making a new IP which takes too long. You can't reuse assets from other games unless you are insomniac.
 

Silver Wattle

Gold Member
The problem is they have allowed all their studios to focus on ultra high budget story driven games.

They need to have several studios working on lower budget games with a 2-3 year window as well as the ultra high budget once per generation games.

I've played vampire survivors more than any PlayStation game in the last decade, and I think that started off as a incredibly small team.

The PC indie scene is pumping out bangers, there's no reason why Sony can't have small studios releasing at least a few games per year( collectively).
 

cormack12

Gold Member
"Nobody is asking for..."

This is incorrect. The market clearly prefers larger & longer games. Online discourse is not representative of reality.


Again, wrong.

Remasters do not require nearly the same amount of development resources as new games and generally sell well. We're getting these because the market craves them to a certain extent. Also important to note, the money generated from Remasters is used to help development of new games.


Too early to reach such a conclusion. Games now take 6 - 8 years to make so we won't know if Naughty Dog has been slowed until around 2006 at the earliest. The Last of Us TV show seems to be considered a success on every conceivable metric so it's not like Niel Druckman was spending a year or two smoking meth.


Games are canceled all the time. We would have to know the cancellation rate of games over an extended period of time to judge Factions cancellation. The gamble certainly made sense considering how drastically the market has changed over the last 10 years regarding multiplayer.

If the market was asking for them, the completion rate of single player games would not be so low. The market does not have an option. If you want to play the new God of War game, then you have to suffer through the tedious parts. Do you understand that people can play games, enjoy part of them and still acknowledge they are bloated because there is no other option?

That's not the point I'm making. Remasters take time and money. That time and money could be spent on supporting development of the missing games and therefore expedite delivery. Again, wrong and not even the same point. Are you saying that if those people and resources were moved to support the development of a new ip, it would not be quicker than if they were not?

No, its not too early. If your main creative is away from the studio then it will obviously affect development, decision making etc. I don't care if the show was successful. This discussion is about if taking away the lead creative impact the ability and pace of making a game. Again, wrong and not even the same point. If the lead creative takes 12 months away from the studio, do you think the development of the game will be quicker, slower or the same?

Again, wrong. If Naughty Dog employees were being used to create Factions, and they were taken away from working on the single player ip, then the single player ip would take longer. Do you disagree with the logic?

If you're going to invent shit talking points then I'm not bothering replying to you again. You do it in most threads when you hear something you don't like. Pick out the actual points I'm making and agree or disagree with them, not make up shit and pretend that's what we're discussing.
 

FeralEcho

Member
Yearly basis? It's not the 90's/2000's anymore, all From Software makes these days are BIG games every 3-4 years (no mention of their quality, Armored Core 6 was 2023 GOTY).
Elden Ring was 2022,AC6 was 2023,Shadow of the Erdree is 2024 (an expansion that will ne longer than most full games)

So yes? Yearly!

Maybe if western studios weren't busy "pulling the lever" on lgbtq+ inclusion or other woke garbage and didn't drive their mopeds around the office or chill in their office hammocks they'd actually get some shit done compared to their japanese counterparts and not use these lame ass excuses!

Poor little western devs
Sad Season 1 Episode 1 GIF by NBC
 

nial

Member
Elden Ring was 2022,AC6 was 2023,Shadow of the Erdree is 2024 (an expansion that will ne longer than most full games)

So yes? Yearly!
SOTE is still just an expansion, and what about 2020 and 2021?
Again, I'm not speaking about their quality, but there used to be a time when From Software was publishing a bigger quantity and variety of games on a yearly basis. That is not today.
Not even bothering with the rest of the post.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Remakes don't take long to make.

The problem is making a new IP which takes too long. You can't reuse assets from other games unless you are insomniac.
What assets was reused for Resident Evil 2 Remake.
Did they import them from the original?
Yes they have a plan already rolled out for them.
But so do original games if they are already in development
BTW, Capcom Co., Ltd. has two internal studio departments (Division 1 and Division 2) that have several development groups within them. Resident Evil, Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma are Division 1, Monster Hunter and Street Fighter are Division 2.
Saying that it's just Capcom is pretty disingenuous.
And what are Playstation Studios?
They have more studios and more people.
This excuse doesn't work
 
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