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[CamHostage]

I feel like using a "B" in one and "Ms" in the other is overstating the difference. $150mil versus $250mil doesn't really indicate that the lower one is a "bargain basement price". (That said, I'd personally take the $150 if it meant $100m left over to make a totally different game too.)

But whatever. GaaS or no GaaS, I just want Sony Bend to recoup and keep going with games I enjoy, I've most-always liked them (even though they have had some clumsy moments along the way... also, I didn't like when they made Bubsy 3D, but that's water under the bridge.)

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

No pressure guys. I'm sure if they fuck this up for some reason, they'll be handed another quarter billion to make a single player game.

 

[CamHostage]

I'd love them to try a new Syphon Filter since Ubi has given up on Sam Fisher.

Stealth genre is severely underserved in modern gaming.

Yeah... but was Syphon Filter ever great as a stealth game? My memory of the PSP games isn't as good as I wish, but the PS1 game stealth sections were often annoying puzzlers with not a lot of mechanics to actually pull off stealth. It was stealthy because you had either silenced weapons or the OP taser, but if you got seen, the stage often reset. (PS1 also did have lights you could shoot out, which I miss in games, but did that affect stealth rating?) PSP added wall-clinging and pools of light and shadow to work around with nightvision goggles, I remember that, so it was better, but I feel it was still more of a tactical shooter than a sneak-em-up. Maybe I should give it more credit than I am, I just don't think the stealth ever got beyond stop-and-pop.

 

[Fahdis]

RIP Sony Bend.

 

[Fess]

Every one of your complaints, can and will be corrected via game design in the future.

I like your optimism but online gaming has been around for a long time and I just doubt it’ll ever be what I want it to be. I haven’t played Helldivers 2 though. I’ll give it a try if it’s free. Every other online game have the same problems with immersion breaking behaviour and douchebags camping for insta spawn kills or people with thousand hours of experience having fun killing noobs. Still waiting for a strictly offline adventure mode with AI crew and a proper long campaign before I try my first second of Sea of Thieves.

 

[CamHostage]

Days Gone was buggy as hell at launch and it took 6+ years for Bend to release it. It rated a 72 on metacritic, and yes, many players came around to playing it, but at deep discounts. Bend studio was poorly managed compared to Sony's other AAA studios, which is why DG2 was never greenlit

I feel like Sony Bend was managed perfectly well for 3 1/2 PSP games (depending on how you count SF: Combat Ops) and a Vita game, but yeah, they worked best as a little fish in a big pond, and they struggled both when when they moved from portable games back to consoles, similar to the trouble they had in the jump from PS1 (where they "accidentally" birthed a blockbuster with Syphon Filter) to PS2. Days Gone turned out a lot better than Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain, but both were trying times for the team.

I am still clinging to the hope that Sony is trusting Bend to get something special out of UE5. They won't be Sony's version of Xbox's The Coalition, being kind of the vanguard leading the way for others to follow and learn from example, (also Firesprite and Firewalk are both using UE, although I don't know if any of them are sharing resources much the way Coalition is involved so deeply in UE that it was assigned to test the engine and provide feedback for improving Xbox Series integration,) but I would like some PlayStation team charged with getting the most out of that kit. Bend did very nice technical work with Days Gone, and for as much as I don't personally care for them to continue in that direction (it just never got out of Last of Us's shadow IMO,) they have a chance to impress again in the next game on more recent Unreal tech.

 

[TransTrender]

Even if we don’t like GAAS games?

Literally a Snake Oil Salesman.

 

[PeteBull]

My pov on this shit is- good, the more it costs the more they will need to not be a bomb, aka its 99% sure already it will bomb hard and sony will change its strategy, nothing speaks more to those corporations than 250m bucks down the drain xD

 

[Shakka43]

If they are indeed working on a gaas title I see the Death knocking meme arriving to their door in the near future.

 

[CamHostage]

Nah, there's ways to sand off the survival genres rough edges. Rust, DayZ, Ark, Valheim, Lego Fortnite are all pretty accessable today. I could see them polishing up the genre further as there's so much to explore there.

Grounded, Palworld, First Dwarf, Under a Rock, Planet Crafter.... there's a bazillion ways to do survival. Steam is having a whole fest event dedicated to the subgenre.

Open World Survival Craft

Steam Open World Survival Crafting Fest 2024

store.steampowered.com

(Not sure how Days Gone got in there...)

Accessible as in clear cut quest markers and objectives. And very beginner friendly.

I cannot imagine them making any of those games.

Eh, I could. It's a massively popular genre, it's flexible in concept, it's addictive, it could accommodate structured events while allowing freedom to build your base and explore. I'm not sure I feel this is the right genre for Bend, but I'm not sure they'd be bad at it either.

BTW, Sony did Tomorrow Children with Q-Games. They've done all kinds of not-linear/questgoal-narrative games in the past, but they have kind of gotten themselves defined as making a certain type of cinematic experience. I get what you're saying that it's been so much of a while since a Sony game didn't fit into one of a few familiar buckets (and their commitment to adding GaaS to their portfolio has left all those projects sticking out of the pack,) but I could see it fitting in just fine in between the movie-quality games and the competitive games.

 

[FUBARx89]

He needs to let it go. The constant whining is annoying.

Plus, Days Gone was meh at best anyway. Don't @ me lying to yourself saying it was really good. Cause we fucked up with Halo Infinite. Time to admit the truth about Days Gone too.

 

[realcool]

These GaaS prices are getting out of hand!

 

[Radical_3d]

They are, and here's an excerpt from one of their job listings from February:
In that slide that you posted, Bend is listed in the "Evolving" category because they're pivoting from singleplayer, narrative focused games to multiplayer, live-service titles, and not quite there yet, unlike Bungie or Haven/Firewalk, both of which were set up from the start to be live-service powerhouses.

 

[The artful mincer]

on a new IP single player game, which have been consistently crushed in the market.

What?!

Citation needed on that.

 

[IDKFA]

Looooool I'm calling BS on that. Pure BS. As if Bend would be allowed to spend that much.

 

[Badlucktroll]

i hope all this gaas shit doesnt crash playstation

 

[Elios83]

Lol this guy is certainly the kind of person that can move on in his life without being salty about the past
He doesn't know anything also Bend is not making a GaaS game, it's open world with multiplayer elements.

 

[Luipadre]

Jeff Ross is still mad they didn’t let him make Days Gone 2. Rightfully so, I might add. The first game did amazingly well.

Just keep that context in mind when you read these wild numbers from him.

Im mad too

 

[Tsaki]

"$250m"
Lmao this dude still hasn't moved on and now he even has to make up numbers to cope with it.
You'd think publishers would be willing to gobble up individuals at high ranking positions, but nope; quite telling

 

[Bernardougf]

Vomit inducing the thread

 

[Calverz]

But is that enough to make a decent syphon filter game?

 

[CGNoire]

Just bring back The Getaway Goddammit.

 

[Laptop1991]

Well if it doesn't end up a success and get and keep a sizeable fan base to keep paying, that's a hell of a lot of money to waste.

 

[diffusionx]

This is how much a “AAA” game costs. People still seem to be anchored to this idea that you can make a high end game for $75 million or something which hasn’t been true for almost a decade at this point. That’s how much a PS3/360 game cost to make late in the generation.

Concord probably cost $200 million.

 

[Moriarty1889]

Jeff Ross is still mad they didn’t let him make Days Gone 2. Rightfully so, I might add. The first game did amazingly well.

Just keep that context in mind when you read these wild numbers from him.

Sony doesn’t want a sequel because they don’t like the main character most likely. He was labeled as ANOTHER GRUFF WHITE DUDE by several media outlets who criticized the game. That in and of itself is most likely the reason why. Games now have to virtue signal more than ever and feature strong female leads and POC above all else. Days Gone goes against that but if the main character were say a black biker or lesbian it would have most likely gotten a sequel. I know it sounds crazy but is more than likely true. Just look at other games being put out as of late and the main characters in them. Calling this out for what it is and possibly why it never got the sequel. Lets see what rubbish live service game they are making and what the main character or characters look like that Bend was most likely FORCED to make.

 

[mdkirby]

He doesn't know anything.

He will likely know what their yearly burn rate was during his tenure, and what the staff size was that resulted in those costs (and the budget for days gone). He still knows many at the studio, and from that likely knows how big the team is on the new game, and roughly how long it’s been in development. It wouldn’t be rocket science to extrapolate a reasonable estimate for how much it has cost …with some margin of error.

 

[mdkirby]

Sony doesn’t want a sequel because they don’t like the main character most likely. He was labeled as ANOTHER GRUFF WHITE DUDE by several media outlets who criticized the game. That in and of itself is most likely the reason why. Games now have to virtue signal more than ever and feature strong female leads and POC above all else. Days Gone goes against that but if the main character were say a black biker or lesbian it would have most likely gotten a sequel. I know it sounds crazy but is more than likely true. Just look at other games being put out as of late and the main characters in them. Calling this out for what it is and possibly why it never got the sequel. Lets see what rubbish live service game they are making and what the main character or characters look like that Bend was most likely FORCED to make.

It’s strange how pervasive this has been in AAA gaming, along with the almost seeming revulsion and rejection of “hot women”. It’s nowhere near as deeply rooted in any other media. Films have some diversity sure, but nowhere near the level of big budget games, and primarily only cast extremely attractive people, for either gender, who are then also generally sexualised and featured prominently in any marketing.

It’s kinda strange how much DEI has taken on a more extremist and all encompassing aura within just the games industry. I wonder how it happened.

 

[Kabelly]

I love the gunplay in Days Gone and especially the sound design. I'll keep an open mind because I don't care if a game is online focused if the game is good. The problem is half the time these devs that go for GAAS think about how to squeeze every dollar out of the consumer first before the actual game design.

 

[Heaven Angel]

Fucking more GaaS shitty games. And they wonder why there's less to no growth in sales. When they realize that these gaas games they're so invested on isn't gonna work, it'll be too late.
That's a huge sum to place bet on gaas which is way more riskier than a proper narrative Single Player experience which majority of people wants.

If they don't get returns they might kill the studio for something something, long-term commitment.

 

[Perrott]

This was also recent, notice Bend are not under the live service section.

They are not in the live-service section because they're in the "Evolving" one, aka shifting from a singleplayer, narrative-based developer to a live-service operation, instead of already being an established live-service studio like Bungie or one specifically set up for that purpose (Firewalk/Haven).

 

[DenchDeckard]

A day's gone sequel would be 150 mill? Wow.

 

[bitbydeath]

They are not in the live-service section because they're in the "Evolving" one, aka shifting from a singleplayer, narrative-based developer to a live-service operation, instead of already being an established live-service studio like Bungie or one specifically set up for that purpose (Firewalk/Haven).

That’s not what that means.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Let's do some rough numbers

Bend Studio, 150 employees

Days Gone released in 2019, so they've had 5 years of dev time. Some of that dev time was used to support other games, but let's ignore that

150 x 5 years x $150,000 total cost per employee (overhead, benefits, etc) = $112M to keep the studio on.

Where he pulls $250M out of his ass is beyond me.

 

[Jaybe]

Dude is like some stalking, jilted ex-lover

 

[Kiya's Guard]

No syphon filter, no days gone, but a live service game? God

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

OP is trash tier. Title should have read "...cost OVER a quarter of a billion dollars ALREADY."

 

[jonnyp]

Bye Bend.

You had a good run. Loved DG, would've loved a sequel.

 

[jonnyp]

A day's gone sequel would be 150 mill? Wow.

Callisto Protocol cost 160 mill. A DG2 at 150 mill would be cheap comparably but development costs are out of control.

 

[phant0m]

Yeah... but was Syphon Filter ever great as a stealth game? My memory of the PSP games isn't as good as I wish, but the PS1 game stealth sections were often annoying puzzlers with not a lot of mechanics to actually pull off stealth. It was stealthy because you had either silenced weapons or the OP taser, but if you got seen, the stage often reset. (PS1 also did have lights you could shoot out, which I miss in games, but did that affect stealth rating?) PSP added wall-clinging and pools of light and shadow to work around with nightvision goggles, I remember that, so it was better, but I feel it was still more of a tactical shooter than a sneak-em-up. Maybe I should give it more credit than I am, I just don't think the stealth ever got beyond stop-and-pop.

Your criticisms are mostly accurate, but you also need to remember it was severely limited by control standards at the time. The original games were playable on OG PS1 controller. No analog -- and the PSP only had a single stick. While MGS ended up being a much better stealth game mechanically during the same era, the games we got from the Splinter Cell franchise were very much enabled by the industry moving to dual analog controls.

 

[th4tguy]

Ugh, I hope this doesn’t result in the studio shutting down

 

[Fafalada]

Let's do some rough numbers

Bend Studio, 150 employees

Days Gone released in 2019, so they've had 5 years of dev time. Some of that dev time was used to support other games, but let's ignore that

150 x 5 years x $150,000 total cost per employee (overhead, benefits, etc) = $112M to keep the studio on.

Where he pulls $250M out of his ass is beyond me.

That's assuming dev is only funded through permanent employees of the studio, which is almost never the case. Content is all but guaranteed to add additional costs outside of FTEs, the only question is how much, and then there's hiring an operations and platform teams, potentially building the tech (I have no clue if Sony studios have any sort of common online platform to operate online games on (no, PSN isn't it) - but I'd be more surprised if they do than if they don't) - all costs that are entirely new to a GaaS they'd not have for their prior titles, marketing spend etc.
Anyway, admittedly 250+ is still a tall order, but your number is probably lowballing it on the flipside.

I also do wonder about that 'employee cost' math nowadays - I guess Bend isn't in an expensive part of US - but if this was California, even salary alone with no overhead at 150k/year would look like lowballing it.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

Ugh, I hope this doesn’t result in the studio shutting down

As long as the game isn't a flop... it'd be OK.

That's why they are doing GAAS and not F2P. It looks like Helldivers 2 isn't going to have much staying power, but even then they got $400M+ just in game sales from it.

 

[Hugare]

He talks about it once every few months. We talk about the same **** every day / week. Jeff Ross knows his ****.

No, he doesnt

He hasnt been part of Bend for years now. For starters.

We all know that Bend is making a GAAS game. Him saying so isnt revolutionary.

And he has no access to financial information from Bend. I can garantee you that. He isnjust guessing.

Believing that Sony would waste 250M on a GAAS game made by the only studio that made a new IP that they were disappointed at, lol ... sure, buddy

They wouldnt even greenlight DG 2, but here, take 250M for a GAAS game.

 

[lh032]

Seems like these GaaS dev cost are imploding as well.

I wonder how these GaaS games are going to sustain in the near future, are they going to be very aggresive on Mtx / subscription fees?

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

That’s a lot of money for a service game. Maybe it’s incredibly bloated like Days Gone.

 

[kaizenkko]

They are not in the live-service section because they're in the "Evolving" one, aka shifting from a singleplayer, narrative-based developer to a live-service operation, instead of already being an established live-service studio like Bungie or one specifically set up for that purpose (Firewalk/Haven).

So let me see: Guerrilla will not make Horizon 3, Gran Turismo 8 will not have single player elements and all those studios will became GAAS studios? lol

That's just a dumb way to read.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

No, he doesnt

He hasnt been part of Bend for years now. For starters.

We all know that Bend is making a GAAS game. Him saying so isnt revolutionary.

And he has no access to financial information from Bend. I can garantee you that. He isnjust guessing.

Believing that Sony would waste 250M on a GAAS game made by the only studio that made a new IP that they were disappointed at, lol ... sure, buddy

They wouldnt even greenlight DG 2, but here, take 250M for a GAAS game.

Jeff Ross has a deep understanding of Sony Bend and the gaming industry because he worked in it, and continues to work in it, for 25 years. I'm sure he still has contacts at Bend who are talking about the new game with him. He seems much more trustworthy and knowledgable than an anti GAAS gamer such as yourself.

Unless...did you work at Sony Bend?

 

[Fabieter]

I expect ghost of recon breakpoint Sony edition after seeing concord.

 

[dDoc]

Enough GaaS already wtf!

And even if they don't, they're not getting a cent out of me for this genre. Hope there's a lot of players out there who adopt this mentality and we will see the end of GaaS.

Sorry OP.

 

[Hugare]

Jeff Ross has a deep understanding of Sony Bend and the gaming industry because he worked in it, and continues to work in it, for 25 years. I'm sure he still has contacts at Bend who are talking about the new game with him. He seems much more trustworthy and knowledgable than an anti GAAS gamer such as yourself.

Unless...did you work at Sony Bend?

Sure, just like David Jaffe has of insight about Sony, right?

Again, he may know about what Bend's game is about from his ex-colleagues, but I doubt that he has any insight about how much it costs.

I have never worked at Bend, but I'm not an idiot. If you really think Sony would trust Bend with $250M to make a GAAS game ... I dont know what to say to you.

"Development reportedly included a crunch schedule of 12-hour workdays and cost around US$220 million, making it one of the most expensive video games to develop."

The Last of Us Part II - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

So Sony gave Bend more money than the budget for TLOU Part II? lol

Sure