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[Mibu no ookami]

It isn't taking 5 years to develop for their critical studios at this point, and almost every last one has wasted time and resource on bunk. 5 years or 7, Sony is not working at efficiency right now.

This is all projection, assumption, and speculation. You have no idea, you're not behind the scenes.

 

[Clear]

You do know MS didn't develop or publish the game right? I truly don't understand this entitlement.

Yeah, they treated it like regular GamePass filler "content".

Which is a problem.

It just goes to my point that the portfolio management is important; Just throwing stuff out as soon as its ready is not smart.

I'm not sure to whom your addressing the charge of "entitlement" at. I'm not the one complaining that Sony aren't releasing tentpole releases every quarter!

No one should give a shit about GOTY. We still have so many other games coming out this year to play, including 2 Ninja Gaiden games, a Shinobi, 2 big Sony games, 2 big Nintendo games, another Obsidian WRPG and tons more.

Quality should matter. And it should be spot-lighted, because not every game is going to be great.

More to the point, given how long games take to make, opportunities should not be squandered because they don't come along that often. Also, its not a zero-sum business. A rising tide lifts all boats in terms of platform publishing. So a third-party success story if associated with a platform or service while not as immediately profitable as a first party release, still contributes broadly to overall sales/retention.

Playstation having 2-3 tentpoles in a year is not a problem.

 

[Three]

Sony has the big under the box TV space all to themselves this gen and there will probably not be another traditional walled garden console from Xbox. Nobody is trying to paint Sony as an evil villain and how you got that from my post is beyond me. Sony and Nintendo weren't direct competitors when it was Switch and PS4 but they are now. Switch 2 is gonna get 3rd party support like a regular console now.

Your previous post about Sony having no competition and how they're going to have evil plans to get rid of physical because MS isn't there to stop them (lol as if MS is a good physical advocate) is literally from a couple of weeks ago. Nobody is talking about PS4 times.

 

[Gitaroo]

If you look at Ratchet Rift Apart on PC, you realize it probably could have run on PS4 as well.

When you look at Hogwarts Legacy they made it work even on Switch (yes with caveats). If Hogwarts Legacy can run on Switch, you don't think Astro Bot could run on PS4?

Sony builds games not just for them to sell but to push the ps5 forward, which unfortunately sometimes limits their sales potential individually.

Helldivers 2 would easily work on XBS and you'd probably gain an extra couple million players, but that's not worth it for Sony in the grand scheme of things.

They could easily port Spider-Man Remastered to Switch 2 and XBS and really cut into that licensing cost associated with Marvel IP, but they want the brand pushing PS5s.

This is the order of sony and what they're willing to support

PC - They don't see it as a major detriment, but their first party single player games still come to PS5 first
PS4 - They don't want to give reasons for people to keep their ps4 over PS5
Switch - They'll put games like Horizon Lego Adventures or MLB as mandated
XBS - MLB as mandated

I see this as also from a preservation perspective, eventually PS3 HW will all die, even the server blades they built for PSN streaming. PC, PS4 and PS5 combined are just mass users base for financial, I don't see PS4 versions slowing PS5 HW adoption, especially if the games are cross platform and cross buy even. I will be honest, a Ratchet PS3 collection won't be a system seller on any system, but being on more system just give existing owners more options where they can buy and play. PC version is the forever system that can scale beyond existing HW liek 8K unlocked frame rate etc being the final form of those games..

 

[Punished Miku]

Also, its not a zero-sum business. A rising tide lifts all boats in terms of platform publishing.

This is literally what the publisher of Clair Obscur said when directly asked about Oblivion. They're not mad at all. No one is but you.

 

[near]

Sony PS3 era is dead. Sony PS4 era is dead. Sony PS5 era is dead.

I conclude that Sony is dead.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Your previous post about Sony having no competition and how they're going to have evil plans to get rid of physical because MS isn't there to stop them (lol as if MS is a good physical advocate) is literally from a couple of weeks ago. Nobody is talking about PS4 times.

It's not that MS was any better or that "MS isn't there to stop them", its that them being a major player allowed for another option for customers. Basically being on parity with Sony when it comes to 3rd party releases. Both systems ultimately served the same purpose, only thing that really distinguished the 2 from each other in the grand scheme of things was the first party exclusives.

With MS now being a 3rd party publisher and many of their releases going to PS, Sony can coast with little effort. MS recently announced all the price increases and now for people that haven't even got into current gen yet have a clear choice.

I agree with the idea that at this point, Sony doesn't even really need to produce their own first party games anymore. They are basically the Steam of the console space at this point. And personally, I think that fucking sucks.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I see this as also from a preservation perspective, eventually PS3 HW will all die, even the server blades they built for PSN streaming. PC, PS4 and PS5 combined are just mass users base for financial, I don't see PS4 versions slowing PS5 HW adoption, especially if the games are cross platform and cross buy even. I will be honest, a Ratchet PS3 collection won't be a system seller on any system, but being on more system just give existing owners more options where they can buy and play. PC version is the forever system that can scale beyond existing HW liek 8K unlocked frame rate etc being the final form of those games..

I'm hoping Bluepoint gets back to what it does well and having worked through most PS4 big time sellers is either moving on to Bloodborne or some of the PS3 games.

But so many of those games need remakes rather than remasters. Modern quality of life stuff at least.

 

[Durin]

Single player games are high risk low reward and most people (not gamers) understand that you have to create a diverse risk pool. The more single player games you make the more those games are compared to each other and the more that they're going to compete with each other and there is generally a ceiling on these games and how much they sell. Even their most successful games sell to a fraction of the overall playerbase.

It made sense to invest in live service as the industry i.e. consumers are moving towards that model. The only thing that to me, didn't make sense was their execution on it. Sony just doesn't have the DNA for live service games and they've forgotten their multiplayer legacy because it smells like PS3 and anything that smells like PS3 is bad to sony.

I'd argue they aren't creating a diverse risk pool, they're going all risk for the reward of the top-few live-service games print money (but only them). Live-service games are a much larger risk because you are not just competing with other newer live-service games, but also the older live-service games regularly churning out new content with players you want to sell to actively still playing them.

Single-player games massively benefit with being a one and done for most people, so they can finish the experience, and then support another in the market. Live-service games cannibalize more of the audience because they depend on retaining them, which is why you see so many fail out of the gate, and others fail over time.

Literally the market can only support so many live-services at once, but it can support many more finish-able experiences (including multiplayer games with planned finite content)...not to mention entire genres/sub-genres don't even play well with the monetization methods of live-service.

 

[Gojiira]

Unfortunately Sony doesn't own the Death Stranding IP anymore. Koji Pro was able to wrest full rights to it away from Sony and the first game is coming to Xbox.

The 2nd one is just a timed exclusive as well at this point and can no longer be called a 1st or even 2nd party game.

Sony never owned it to begin with, they only had 50%. But DS does use not only a Sony made game engine, but was also funded and published by them. Kojima buying them out isnt him wresting control back, Sony werent holding the franchise hostage.
DS2 is once again fully funded and published by Sony. Last time it stayed that way for 5 years so for all intents and purposes its exclusive. And yes its Second Party, fully funded/published makes it second party…Really not hard to grasp.

 

[Clear]

This is literally what the publisher of Clair Obscur said when directly asked about Oblivion. They're not mad at all. No one is but you.

I'm not mad. I'm just stating my opinion that MS could do better, and that 6 year dev-cycles are too long to be sustainable.

Its really pretty bizarre how upset these mild as milk observations are making some of you.

Care to explain to me why suggesting that an industry-wide realignment of practice towards the sorts of time-scales that were standard until the 8th gen would be such a terrible thing? When that way would allow for more releases per calendar year, less cross-gen projects, more experimentation and creativity because it would take lower volume sales to reach profitability, etc.

 

[ProtoByte]

This is all projection, assumption, and speculation. You have no idea, you're not behind the scenes.

Don't surrender your common sense. You think Naughty Dog taking 7 years between TLOU2 and Intergalactic is reasonable?

 

[Deerock71]

Nintendo Switch 2 is going to be direct competition.

You'll get ridiculed for saying this...until the flagging PS5 sales start rolling in.

 

[Jinxed]

Death Stranding 2 is coming out in june and ghost of yotei in october. Not as if they just didnt win GOTY 2024 with an exclusive either. Some people here are really desperate

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

They need another exclusive, we know they have Spider-Man, GT8 and god of war outside of that there aren't many games, Sony late ps3, ps4 was automatic with exclusives and was on fire.

We love this fanfic. PS4 from its release until bloodborne was...nothing. Early PS5 had a lot more PS studio games...they just weren't exclusives. Even last year was pretty good from their studios. This year they got like 3 or 4 releases as well.

I only wish i had your lives cause my backlog keeps increasing year after year. If there were no game releases for 2 years i'd be set...

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I'd argue they aren't creating a diverse risk pool, they're going all risk for the reward of the top-few live-service games print money (but only them). Live-service games are a much larger risk because you are not just competing with other newer live-service games, but also the older live-service games regularly churning out new content with players you want to sell to actively still playing them.

Single-player games massively benefit with being a one and done for most people, so they can finish the experience, and then support another in the market. Live-service games cannibalize more of the audience because they depend on retaining them, which is why you see so many fail out of the gate, and others fail over time.

Literally the market can only support so many live-services at once, but it can support many more finish-able experiences (including multiplayer games with planned finite content)...not to mention entire genres/sub-genres don't even play well with the monetization methods of live-service.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a diverse risk pool is.

New single player games are also competing with old single player games. Red Dead, GTA5, Hogwarts Legacy, Elden Ring all continue to sell well and it's why they're the base line barometer often on sales charts.

The best Sony can hope for on a single player game is like 20 million units and that's jackpot level success, what's more likely is a ceiling is 10 million, but that game can just as easily sell 3-5 million.

You're simply ignoring how many single player games fail and misunderstanding the risk-reward element of live service.

 

[bitbydeath]

Death Stranding 2 is coming out in june and ghost of yotei in october. Not as if they just didnt win GOTY 2024 with an exclusive either. Some people here are really desperate

They could still pickup the slack from everyone else too.

 

[bitbydeath]

Their next showcase will be on sometime in the next few weeks.

Will be interesting to see what they bring.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Don't surrender your common sense. You think Naughty Dog taking 7 years between TLOU2 and Intergalactic is reasonable?

Notice how you've changed your argument. What is reasonable is subjective. The reality is you have no idea what is or isn't efficient. You've just predetermined in your mind that 7 years is unreasonable, you've also come up with 7 assuming that the game comes out in 2027 rather than in 2026, because 7 sounds more unreasonable to you than 6.

It's so easy to read someone like you.

You make these large scale broad assumptions based on literally nothing.

What's the difference between 5 years and 7 years?

If studio a develops a game every 5 years and studio b develops a game every 7 years, after 35 years, studio a has developed 7 games and studio b has developed 5 games.

Would you prefer 7 games that are all in the 80s or 5 games that are all in the 90s?

I'll take the 5 games personally. 2 fewer games over a 35 year period? Yeah, that's not the end of the world to me.

 

[nick776]

Anyone that defends Sonys output this generation should lose their account immediately. Even the biggest Sony fanboy can't be happy with their output this generation

I agree. Sony is pathetic. No idea why so many seemingly condemn the OP. Sony needs to up their game.

 

[Punished Miku]

I'm not mad. I'm just stating my opinion that MS could do better, and that 6 year dev-cycles are too long to be sustainable.

Its really pretty bizarre how upset these mild as milk observations are making some of you.

Care to explain to me why suggesting that an industry-wide realignment of practice towards the sorts of time-scales that were standard until the 8th gen would be such a terrible thing? When that way would allow for more releases per calendar year, less cross-gen projects, more experimentation and creativity because it would take lower volume sales to reach profitability, etc.

I never commented on games taking 6 years or not. I commented on you seemingly having an issue with MS for daring to release a game in the same week as another game they aren't developing or publishing. Its just genuinely odd. I pointed out that they literally probably covered all the cost of development, wide exposure with GP, and prominent marketing. So I'm sure the publisher is grateful since MS did all this and aren't even the actual publisher. But on top of that, they actually think Oblivion might have helped and said it publicly. Theres literally nothing to be upset about. I pointed this all out pretty clearly with plain English and a link to the publishers comments. Nothing here is vague or can be misunderstood. There's nothing to be mad at.

Your first post on it makes no sense. If its wrong to release a game in the same week as another game you aren't developing or publishing because you might steal attention, then they literally could never release a game. Games come out every single week. They would be doing this no matter what to multiple other games every single time. Its totally nonsensical. Did Clair Obscur steal attention unfairly from other indie games without a prominent GP deal? Its just odd, and weirdly entitled and irrational.

 

[PixelatedBeast]

Someone said Nintendo makes AAA games....

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Sony doesn't have to try anymore because they have no legitimate competition and that's why they are not as aggressive with their exclusives and making questionable decisions. This is why I said the inevitable Sony monopoly is a terrible thing for the industry and things will only get worst next generation. IMO, the lack of genuine exclusives is severely hurting this generation competition-wise.

 

[DonF]

Peak Sony was PS2 era. Now they take no risks, only go for safe bets, and are looking for the next big thing, desperately. PS3 era Sony was also great. The HD jump is no longer an excuse for this very long dev cycles.

 

[Perrott]

They need another exclusive, we know they have Spider-Man, GT8 and god of war outside of that there aren't many games, Sony late ps3, ps4 was automatic with exclusives and was on fire.

You want big tentpole games? For the remaining three and a half years of the generation they'll have:

2025:

• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Horizon: Hunters Gathering
• Marathon
• Until Dawn 2

2026:

• Fairgames
• Marvel's Wolverine
• Naughty Dog's Shaun Escayg project (either an Uncharted remake or The Last Of Us spin-off)
• Santa Monica Studio's Cory Barlog new IP
• Saros

2027:

• FromSoftware's new IP
• Gran Turismo 8
• Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Venom
• teamLFG's new IP (Gummy Bears)

2028:

• Astro Bot 2
• Dark Outlaw Games' new IP
• God of War VI
• Horizon III
• Marvel's Spider-Man 3

Those are 5 big games a year, not counting:

• Whatever Media Molecule and People Can Fly might come up with.
• Smaller releases such as Lost Soul Aside or the upcoming God of War spin-off in Greek mythology.
• Any re-releases that Bluepoint and/or Nixxes might come up with.
• Collaborations with external studios that we might not even be aware of.
• Destiny 2 expansions -- or paid expansions that might be planned for any of the various aforementioned titles.
• MLB The Show yearly releases.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Are you a shareholder? Getting some money with every console sold?

No. Is it a problem if I just point out a simple fact?

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Man, do you think sales = best? By that logic PS3 gen was trash even though the amount of amazing exclusive games was off the charts and made PS4 such surefire hit

From Sony's perspective, PS3 probably was a trash gen.

For me personally each gen is all the same. As long as I have games to play, I'm not complaining.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

You want big tentpole games? For the remaining three and a half years of the generation they'll have:

2025:

• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Horizon: Hunters Gathering
• Marathon
• Until Dawn 2

2026:

• Fairgames
• Marvel's Wolverine
• Naughty Dog's Shaun Escayg project (either an Uncharted remake or The Last Of Us spin-off)
• Santa Monica Studio's Cory Barlog new IP
• Saros

2027:

• FromSoftware's new IP
• Gran Turismo 8
• Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Venom
• teamLFG's new IP (Gummy Bears)

2028:

• Astro Bot 2
• Dark Outlaw Games' new IP
• God of War VI
• Horizon III
• Marvel's Spider-Man 3

Those are 5 big games a year, not counting:

• Whatever Media Molecule and People Can Fly might come up with.
• Smaller releases such as Lost Soul Aside or the upcoming God of War spin-off in Greek mythology.
• Any re-releases that Bluepoint and/or Nixxes might come up with.
• Collaborations with external studios that we might not even be aware of.
• Destiny 2 expansions -- or paid expansions that might be planned for any of the various aforementioned titles.
• MLB The Show yearly releases.

The tent pole games are all sequels, many of those franchises have been laughed at as DEI or annoying (GOW kid), and the rest of the games are small, unknown, or already laughed at like Intergalactic and Marathon and Fairgames.

I think Sony fans who criticize their output want more super solid big budget SP IPs or come out faster. Some of their big IPs are now only once per generation.

Even with their big push into GAAS, which all their new games except H2 have failed, gamers wonder where are KZ or Socom etc... Instead its Concord, Marathon, and weird stuff like a cancelled GOW GAAS game.

 

[CoreyFlawless]

Yes, just go pc now. The few rare ps exclusive that come out now. They be on pc year or so later. PS3 amazing, ps4 was good. The ps5 just really blows.

 

[existensmaximum]

They seem to be doing great. Selling lots of consoles and making a profit so good for them I guess. Bad for me, I've never been this disappointed with Playstation as I am today and the PS5 generation started extremely promising and went to shit, really.

So yeah, I'm not in their target audience anymore but I realize I'm in a minority, so what are you gonna do.

 

[ProtoByte]

Notice how you've changed your argument. What is reasonable is subjective.

No I haven't, and no it isn't.
The entire point of Naughty Dog's "reorganization" according to Druckmann himself was to increase the efficiency of the studio.

I feel truly honored to have such a passionate, thoughtful, and talented team at Naughty Dog, and this growth reflects the ability to recognize the meaningful contributions from all departments, while setting up our studio to be more accessible, agile, and scalable.

Co-President Neil Druckmann Shares an Update on Naughty Dog's New Studio Leadership Team || Naughty Dog

www.naughtydog.com

That means more output per man hour worked. Last gen, they put out Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy, and TLOU2. They will barely have Intergalactic out by the end of this gen. 1 new game.

They have utterly failed in studio reform.

The reality is you have no idea what is or isn't efficient. You've just predetermined in your mind that 7 years is unreasonable, you've also come up with 7 assuming that the game comes out in 2027 rather than in 2026, because 7 sounds more unreasonable to you than 6.

No, I'm coming at 2027 because Jason Schreier has already confirmed that Intergalactic is not coming out next year. 2027 is now the best case scenario for that shit.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Won't Launch Before 2027, Says Schreier

According to Schreier, fans will have to wait until at least 2027 not only for The Witcher 4 but for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, too.

wccftech.com

It's so easy to read someone like you.

Oh, I feel so seen...

You make these large scale broad assumptions based on literally nothing.

Well, that's not true as demonstrated above.

What's the difference between 5 years and 7 years?

If studio a develops a game every 5 years and studio b develops a game every 7 years, after 35 years, studio a has developed 7 games and studio b has developed 5 games.

Would you prefer 7 games that are all in the 80s or 5 games that are all in the 90s?

I'll take the 5 games personally. 2 fewer games over a 35 year period? Yeah, that's not the end of the world to me.

I would never project what's going to happen in this industry over 35 years, it's barely been that long since the NES. What I will say is that right now, I am not seeing the dividends of this absolute and comparative bump in game development time. Spider-Man 2 took around about the same amount of time as Spider-Man 1 despite the former being full of asset and design re-use and the latter being a new IP as far as insomniac was concerned. SM2 might have a higher meta score, but that is inflationary, and most people agree that SM2 is not as good as 1. I do not have faith that Intergalactic is going to hit the Naughty Dog standard. It's already fallen short just from the visual designs. All that to say that the choice you're putting forward is extremely optimistic.

It is simply not reasonable for mainline studios to put out a maximum of two games in a generation that will last 8 or 9 years while it's basically guaranteed that one of them will be cross gen. This snails pace of significant releases and then underwhelming quality when they finally do come out is what sent the Xbox brand into a death spiral. Better to make harsh and broad (and correct) statements than coddle each other on the internet about how the corporation is doing just fine when they're clearly not.

Buying Firewalk to put out and then cancel Concord was rank inefficiency and incompetence. Spending money on Bungie was rank inefficiency and incompetence. Hiring Jade fucking Raymond was rank inefficiency and incompetence. Putting 5 of your 7 marquee SP studios on live service projects that get cancelled one by one is rank inefficiency and incompetence.

Hermen Hulst must be fired at the earliest convenience. The man has ruined PS for a decade, and it will now be extremely difficult to get back on course.

 

[coffinbirth]

I haven't turned on my PS5 in FIVE months. Only a few PSVR2 things and Saros to look forward to, personally.
Probably won't buy a PS6...maybe the handheld.

PC and Switch 2 for the foreseeable future.

And I've been there since Jumping Flash!

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Hermen Hulst must be fired at the earliest convenience. The man has ruined PS for a decade, and it will now be extremely difficult to get back on course.

Just an FYI, but Concord was on Shuhei Yoshida.

Carry on.

 

[RoadHazard]

I can see helldiver 2 being a technician limitations plus it's a GAAS with on going support. If they made something like says Ratchet PS3 collection it would not requires on going support nor run into any technical horse power problem. I am not a dev but isn't developing on PS4 are PS5 very similar in terms of SDK. If they are stuck on 1 platform I can see them being reluctant on doing it since things are so expensive to make these days but we are talking PS4+PS5 alone which has over 170millions user base plus PC on top. I would still love to see sunset overdrive on ps5 with 4K 60f+fps HDR support and dual sense haptic.

PS4 + PS5 is not 170 million potential users, there's obviously a large overlap there. And Sony has metrics on how many PS4s are still in use, might just not be enough to still make games for it.

 

[hemo memo]

The impact of their GaaS projects cancellations means Sony is likely still in the process of resource reallocation and strategic recalibration across their development teams.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Sony is leading in console sales and their MAUs are growing.

Maybe, they worked out that investing all these hundreds of millions is a waste of resources instead of letting third parties take the risk and drive platform sales.

All of their sequels are in decline when it comes to sales but they are costing more.

Something Sony drove. The big budget first party IP.

I seriously think they aren't sustainable and Sony knows this....so they are reducing the cost by investing in gaas titles that re use assets and have very little motion capture compared to something like thw last of us 2.

I feel it's all down to last of us 2 underperforming that caused all of this. Then they saw the budgets for spiderman 2 etc.

If I was a business and my direct competition had crumbled under their own stupidity, I too would look at the ROI and pull back on first party games. Its the most simple business decision you could make.

 

[Three]

It's not that MS was any better or that "MS isn't there to stop them", its that them being a major player allowed for another option for customers. Basically being on parity with Sony when it comes to 3rd party releases. Both systems ultimately served the same purpose, only thing that really distinguished the 2 from each other in the grand scheme of things was the first party exclusives.

With MS now being a 3rd party publisher and many of their releases going to PS, Sony can coast with little effort. MS recently announced all the price increases and now for people that haven't even got into current gen yet have a clear choice.

I agree with the idea that at this point, Sony doesn't even really need to produce their own first party games anymore. They are basically the Steam of the console space at this point. And personally, I think that fucking sucks.

He was asked by someone here if he thinks Nintendo and Sony make the same type of games. The answer is no but he wanted to frame Nintendo as "direct competition" in this case. Nintendo, Valve, and I'd even say MS have not put out a worthy exclusive for a while. But the point was how can they coast if Bennyblanco thinks Nintendo is their "direct competitor" and an alternative? While also claiming they have no viable competition just a couple of weeks ago. What he was saying before about the sky falling down because they're going to set their evil plans in motion due to "no viable competitor now" didn't make sense either. MS wasn't and isn't advocates of physical, most of their sales were from a console that doesn't allow physical in any form.

 

[Bungie]

Sure Jan

IR Information : Sales Data - Top Selling Title Sales Units

www.nintendo.co.jp

Do you think Sony could make the best selling console ever entirely off the strength of their first party?

They'd lose all the casuals instantly, Cod & GTA are the backbone of Playstation.

Edit: Fortnite too!

 

[samoilaaa]

i really dont like this console war bullshit and talking bad about one side or the other but for me personally in terms of 1st party games i didnt like anything that came in the last few years from sony and microsoft

I really like those action packed games with great stories , god of war 3 , gears of war 1-3 , uncharted , infamous ( not a great story but awsome combat ) , these type of games i like

 

[Clear]

I never commented on games taking 6 years or not. I commented on you seemingly having an issue with MS for daring to release a game in the same week as another game they aren't developing or publishing. Its just genuinely odd. I pointed out that they literally probably covered all the cost of development, wide exposure with GP, and prominent marketing. So I'm sure the publisher is grateful since MS did all this and aren't even the actual publisher. But on top of that, they actually think Oblivion might have helped and said it publicly. Theres literally nothing to be upset about. I pointed this all out pretty clearly with plain English and a link to the publishers comments. Nothing here is vague or can be misunderstood. There's nothing to be mad at.

Yes I have an issue when 6 years of dev time are being potentially sabotaged by amateurish publishing. Particularly when its arguably the biggest publisher in the industry incompetently allowing sales to be cannibalized.

Sure, they might have got away with it this time. But will it work every time? History and experience tells me NO it won't.

And given that games are still taking many years to make... can't you see how this might be a problem worth highlighting?

Your first post on it makes no sense. If its wrong to release a game in the same week as another game you aren't developing or publishing because you might steal attention, then they literally could never release a game. Games come out every single week. They would be doing this no matter what to multiple other games every single time. Its totally nonsensical. Did Clair Obscur steal attention unfairly from other indie games without a prominent GP deal? Its just odd, and weirdly entitled and irrational.

Its called portfolio management; as a publisher your job is to get the most sales and attention from every title you put to market.

Releasing 2 titles that address largely the same audience at the same time is not going to achieve that because splitting attention diminishes the launch impact for both. Spacing them out, so satisfaction for one feeds interest for the other is generally considered to be the best approach.

Cannibalization is a real thing. Programming should be complementary and therefore additive to the overall value of the platform/service.

Doubling up on appealing to the same demographic just shows a striking lack of confidence in either product as a sales/attention driver.

The situation with E33 and Oblivion is particularly egregious due to 2 factors: Firstly it sets up a competition between a new IP and an established franchise. Secondly its being fed into a service so the actual "return" in terms of subs/retention has the same monetary value regardless if one or both are driving interest.

In context of this, Sony's 2-3 tentpole-a-year launch cadence is a model of intelligent portfolio management, creative and fiscal responsibility, and most importantly given the cost and duration of dev cycles of output sustainability.

 

[Hudo]

You all could've prevented this by just buying a Dreamcast.

 

[Gitaroo]

PS4 + PS5 is not 170 million potential users, there's obviously a large overlap there. And Sony has metrics on how many PS4s are still in use, might just not be enough to still make games for it.

Either way, more than enough to justify and especially including PC.

 

[mdkirby]

They're releasing 2nd party games. But their 1st party is completely awol. They put nearly every studio on now cancelled Gaas games, so lo and behold their output is almost none existent, and given the time it takes to make games, won't recover for half a decade.

 

[Mattyp]

Death Stranding 2 is literally coming out next month.

This is a first party Sony title is it?

 

[Mattyp]

Notice how you've changed your argument. What is reasonable is subjective. The reality is you have no idea what is or isn't efficient. You've just predetermined in your mind that 7 years is unreasonable, you've also come up with 7 assuming that the game comes out in 2027 rather than in 2026, because 7 sounds more unreasonable to you than 6.

It's so easy to read someone like you.

You make these large scale broad assumptions based on literally nothing.

What's the difference between 5 years and 7 years?

If studio a develops a game every 5 years and studio b develops a game every 7 years, after 35 years, studio a has developed 7 games and studio b has developed 5 games.

Would you prefer 7 games that are all in the 80s or 5 games that are all in the 90s?

I'll take the 5 games personally. 2 fewer games over a 35 year period? Yeah, that's not the end of the world to me.

Your time frames are widely out, last gen Naughty Dog published 3 games over what amount of years? This gen Naughty Dog will publish a SINGLE game.

A single game in a 10 year window is beyond cooked.

So yes in a 30 year period I would rather 9x80+ games than 3x90+ games. They all take 12 hours to finish, you wait a decade for 12 hours of enjoyment.

 

[Shaki12345]

Good luck with the thread. The Sony Defense Force is very powerful and strong here. 3 or 4 first party releases (including remasters) a year are enough to keep most "fans" happy.

If Nintendo did 3 or 4 releases a year, it would be a shitstorm here. In the meantime all competitors have a much higher output on original content AND remasters. Go figure.

 

[Madserb2023]

I don't think Sony's output has been that bad. My second favorite game last year was Astro Bot. However, the majority of games I have played in the last 6 months have been Xbox games which is weird for a dying system. I don't blame Sony though, they are winning irrespective of it.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

No I haven't, and no it isn't.
The entire point of Naughty Dog's "reorganization" according to Druckmann himself was to increase the efficiency of the studio.

Co-President Neil Druckmann Shares an Update on Naughty Dog's New Studio Leadership Team || Naughty Dog

www.naughtydog.com

That means more output per man hour worked. Last gen, they put out Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy, and TLOU2. They will barely have Intergalactic out by the end of this gen. 1 new game.

They have utterly failed in studio reform.

They failed at studio reform? When did they start? Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy, and TLOU2 all share the same engine. That is where you get your efficiency from and you still had people complaining about that saying it was 2.5 games. Ignoring that two of those games were generational.

You have no idea what other games they have in development or when they'll come out.

No, I'm coming at 2027 because Jason Schreier has already confirmed that Intergalactic is not coming out next year. 2027 is now the best case scenario for that shit.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Won't Launch Before 2027, Says Schreier

According to Schreier, fans will have to wait until at least 2027 not only for The Witcher 4 but for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, too.

wccftech.com

Oh, I feel so seen...


Well, that's not true as demonstrated above.

Jason Schreier hasn't confirmed shit. Do I expect the game in 2026? No, but am I going to make an argument assuming it comes out in 2027? No.

I would never project what's going to happen in this industry over 35 years, it's barely been that long since the NES. What I will say is that right now, I am not seeing the dividends of this absolute and comparative bump in game development time. Spider-Man 2 took around about the same amount of time as Spider-Man 1 despite the former being full of asset and design re-use and the latter being a new IP as far as insomniac was concerned. SM2 might have a higher meta score, but that is inflationary, and most people agree that SM2 is not as good as 1. I do not have faith that Intergalactic is going to hit the Naughty Dog standard. It's already fallen short just from the visual designs. All that to say that the choice you're putting forward is extremely optimistic.

That wasn't a projection, that was simple math to show you that the rate of development if a game takes 5 years or 7 years barely matters in the long scheme of things and rather than hyperfocus on on quantity, we should care about quality.

Spider-Man 2 was a direct sequel to Spider-Man 1 and it used much of the same map and tons of asset re-use and was highly criticized for not feeling more next gen. You can't have it both ways.

LOL, that Intergalactic trailer was one of the best looking things we've seen in gaming. You're not serious.

It is simply not reasonable for mainline studios to put out a maximum of two games in a generation that will last 8 or 9 years while it's basically guaranteed that one of them will be cross gen. This snails pace of significant releases and then underwhelming quality when they finally do come out is what sent the Xbox brand into a death spiral. Better to make harsh and broad (and correct) statements than coddle each other on the internet about how the corporation is doing just fine when they're clearly not.

What are you basing that on? How many games did Sucker Punch put out on PS4? Santa Monica? CDPR? Rockstar?

Xbox hasn't had a hit new game in over a decade. Try more.

Buying Firewalk to put out and then cancel Concord was rank inefficiency and incompetence. Spending money on Bungie was rank inefficiency and incompetence. Hiring Jade fucking Raymond was rank inefficiency and incompetence. Putting 5 of your 7 marquee SP studios on live service projects that get cancelled one by one is rank inefficiency and incompetence.

Hermen Hulst must be fired at the earliest convenience. The man has ruined PS for a decade, and it will now be extremely difficult to get back on course.

I don't think you know what the word inefficient means.

Your time frames are widely out, last gen Naughty Dog published 3 games over what amount of years? This gen Naughty Dog will publish a SINGLE game.

A single game in a 10 year window is beyond cooked.

So yes in a 30 year period I would rather 9x80+ games than 3x90+ games. They all take 12 hours to finish, you wait a decade for 12 hours of enjoyment.

You know Naughty Dog's whole roadmap? Where did you get it from?

A single game in a 10 year window? They released TLOUP2 in 2020, is it 2030 yet?

When you have to shift to hyperbole, you should know at your core that you have no argument.

12 hours? TLOU2 is a 25-30 hour game. You didn't beat it in 12 hours, and now I think you didn't play it at all and you're just here to troll..

 

[diffusionx]

I think some people struggle with the reality that Sony only has like 10 studios making new single-player character adventure games.

With games taking at least 5 years to develop, that gives you 2 games per year on average.

If you extend that to 6 years of development time, that gives you 1.67 games per year. That's not to even account for games getting cancelled because they aren't working out or the market conditions change.

So the only realistic way for Sony to significantly expand on that is to publish 3rd party games or 2nd party games or whatever you want to call them. The problem here is that people ignore these games largely and they don't count them.

Other things you can do are release remakes and remasters or smaller-sized games, but people also don't generally want to count these.

What people here also won't mention is that Sony is better at this than any other company in the business. There might be individual studios as good as individual Sony studios, but no one is making more AAA games and better AAA games.

Well, if they didn't do things like put Bluepoint or Sony Bend on live games we would have a game from both of those studios either last year or this year.

So it's a combination of games taking longer to make and grotesque mismanagement and misallocstion of resources.

 

[Punished Miku]

Yes I have an issue when 6 years of dev time are being potentially sabotaged by amateurish publishing. Particularly when its arguably the biggest publisher in the industry incompetently allowing sales to be cannibalized.

Sure, they might have got away with it this time. But will it work every time? History and experience tells me NO it won't.

And given that games are still taking many years to make... can't you see how this might be a problem worth highlighting?



Its called portfolio management; as a publisher your job is to get the most sales and attention from every title you put to market.

Releasing 2 titles that address largely the same audience at the same time is not going to achieve that because splitting attention diminishes the launch impact for both. Spacing them out, so satisfaction for one feeds interest for the other is generally considered to be the best approach.

Cannibalization is a real thing. Programming should be complementary and therefore additive to the overall value of the platform/service.

Doubling up on appealing to the same demographic just shows a striking lack of confidence in either product as a sales/attention driver.

The situation with E33 and Oblivion is particularly egregious due to 2 factors: Firstly it sets up a competition between a new IP and an established franchise. Secondly its being fed into a service so the actual "return" in terms of subs/retention has the same monetary value regardless if one or both are driving interest.

In context of this, Sony's 2-3 tentpole-a-year launch cadence is a model of intelligent portfolio management, creative and fiscal responsibility, and most importantly given the cost and duration of dev cycles of output sustainability.

Do you still not know that MS is not the publisher of Clair Obscur? I honestly don't know how your post makes any sense unless you still don't know who published it.