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[Mibu no ookami]

Wow, you replied to me twice and neither time made any sense.

Maybe you need more time outside or something.

The original fact still stands that LinkedIn isn't a good measure of company size, and even if it was, it doesn't mean anything to the average user.

This is like A Beautiful Mind sad, but eating glue edition.

Jesus you said:


So you think you're a manager running Sony's 3rd parties???

This is mental illness.

I was laughing at first, but now this is just really really sad.

You're not a journalist, this isn't investigative anything.

There's a news drought and you're REALLY TRYING HARD to dig up a "w" for your brand for no reason.

There's no value in the numbers you've found as they're not an indicator of the whole, merely those that have chosen to use LinkedIn, you'd need to do ACTUAL investigative work and find out the percentage of workers in Sony game studios that use LinkedIn. There's just too much missing here for this to have any value at all.

You don't understand statistics, and it's obvious.

You're the one displaying mental illness, where is the "W" here? Maybe you're too obsessed with console warring. This is just an informational discussion at a given point in time.

You don't need to do investigative work to find out the percentage of a companies workers that use linkedin, you must not be familiar with statistical deviation, again I'm assuming you flip burgers for a living. There is no reason to think that Sony's western studios use linkedin at widlly different percentages than the rest of the industry or each other. The only exception being for Japanese studios.

You're probably someone who doesn't understand how polls are used to predict outcomes in elections and how/why polls can be wrong or what makes up a good poll vs a bad poll.

The reality is this is far more accurate than polling, this is self-reporting data that the vast majority of the industry is going to be using. And you can verify how accurate it is by comparing the numbers to publicly released numbers.

 

[jaysius]

You're probably someone who doesn't understand how polls are used to predict outcomes in elections and how/why polls can be wrong or what makes up a good poll vs a bad poll.

ROFL! You're the one that doesn't understand statistic keeping on with this inaccurate source.

That's enough, you've found a stupid metric with faulty data, this is a huge waste of time for everyone.

 

[Azelover]

So Bungie is almost twice as large as Naughty Dog.. Now there is something I couldnt have guessed.

 

[Iced Arcade]

So Bungie is almost twice as large as Naughty Dog.. Now there is something I couldnt have guessed.

think about it. naughty dog makes (for the most part) SP 1 and done games where Bungie has a service game that is constantly updated, servers, continuous multiplayer service etc.


*Don't take that as a dig at ND though. ND is one of my favorite studios and have little to no interest in Bungie/Destiny

 

[Mibu no ookami]

So Bungie is almost twice as large as Naughty Dog.. Now there is something I couldnt have guessed.

Naughty Dog despite their fame and stature in the industry has not historically been a large company.

Bungie was selling big numbers as far back as 2001 when Naughty Dog was only doing good numbers.

Jak and Daxter came out in 2001 and sold 4.2 million copies (subsequent games sold less).

Halo sold 5 million copies and Halo 2 sold nearly 9 million copies.

The trajectory of the two companies have been wildly different.

Halo 3 sold 12.3 million copies and came out in 2007. Last of Us sold 7 million copies on PS3 and Uncharted 3 topped out for the franchise on SP3 with 6.6 million copies.

Destiny had somewhat like 25 million players in 2015.

 

[Azelover]

think about it. naughty dog makes (for the most part) SP 1 and done games where Bungie has a service game that is constantly updated, servers, continuous multiplayer service etc.


*Don't take that as a dig at ND though. ND is one of my favorite studios and have little to no interest in Bungie/Destiny

You're completely right. It is all a matter of proposition and focus. But we dont stop to think about it. They are both excellent studios. I enjoy Naughty Dog's approach a little more, but I can see the importance of Bungie too.

 

[Azelover]

Naughty Dog despite their fame and stature in the industry has not historically been a large company.

Bungie was selling big numbers as far back as 2001 when Naughty Dog was only doing good numbers.

Jak and Daxter came out in 2001 and sold 4.2 million copies (subsequent games sold less).

Halo sold 5 million copies and Halo 2 sold nearly 9 million copies.

The trajectory of the two companies have been wildly different.

Halo 3 sold 12.3 million copies and came out in 2007. Last of Us sold 7 million copies on PS3 and Uncharted 3 topped out for the franchise on SP3 with 6.6 million copies.

Destiny had somewhat like 25 million players in 2015.

Yes. It is interesting because I remember that one of Bungie's talking points when they released Halo 2, was that their team wasnt huge. So they obviously grew a lot. I'm pulling from memory, so I have no proof of what Im saying.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

You're completely right. It is all a matter of proposition and focus. But we dont stop to think about it. They are both excellent studios. I enjoy Naughty Dog's approach a little more, but I can see the importance of Bungie too.

Naughty Dog's approach is going to change and there is risk involved with that. Risk of losing what we like about them and risk of them failing.

This multiplayer last of us game... I never played factions, but I wonder how much actual interest there is in this even if it is F2P.

I think they just need to focus on making bigger deeper worlds. So many people want them to do a sci fi game and that is something they've never done before, but I think they should flex what they're good at to do something they haven't done before and naturally evolve.

Jak was a 3rd platformer and evolution from Crash. Jak turned into an action platformer... which evolved into a cinematic action platformer in Uncharted, which evolved into TLOU which was a cinematic action game. I think they can take that model and expand it. Their gameplay is so much better than what we see in most 3rd person games like GTA, Red Dead, or Mass Effect.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Yes. It is interesting because I remember that one of Bungie's talking points when they released Halo 2, was that their team wasnt huge. So they obviously grew a lot. I'm pulling from memory, so I have no proof of what Im saying.

When Microsoft bought bungie they were at 50 employees.

It's hard to know how many they had when Halo 2 released, it would be nice if a topic existed that could be referred back to... js

 

[PSYGN]

1500 at bungie… wow

what are they even doing

 

[Mibu no ookami]

what are they even doing

At least working on a new IP and Destiny 3.

A Chinese company had invested 100 million into Bungie to make a non-Destiny game or games.

So for them to create multiple large GaaS games they need the size to create and maintain two or more. I know it isn't in their DNA anymore, but I'd love for them to make a game with a single player campaign...

 

[PSYGN]

Naughty Dog's approach is going to change and there is risk involved with that. Risk of losing what we like about them and risk of them failing.

This multiplayer last of us game... I never played factions, but I wonder how much actual interest there is in this even if it is F2P.

I think they just need to focus on making bigger deeper worlds. So many people want them to do a sci fi game and that is something they've never done before, but I think they should flex what they're good at to do something they haven't done before and naturally evolve.

Jak was a 3rd platformer and evolution from Crash. Jak turned into an action platformer... which evolved into a cinematic action platformer in Uncharted, which evolved into TLOU which was a cinematic action game. I think they can take that model and expand it. Their gameplay is so much better than what we see in most 3rd person games like GTA, Red Dead, or Mass Effect.

If it's anything like UC4's multiplayer then it should do moderately well. UC4's multiplayer was pretty solid actually. Naughty Dog are realizing they need a multiplayer game to help finance their true passion in single player games.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

If it's anything like UC4's multiplayer then it should do moderately well. UC4's multiplayer was pretty solid actually. Naughty Dog are realizing they need a multiplayer game to help finance their true passion in single player games.

I guess, it's all lost on me.

 

[Negotiator101]

Part of the reason Sony bought them is due to their backend knowledge and technology.

Most of Destiny 2 certainly came out of their backend that's for sure.

 

[Calverz]

You forgot Japan studio:0

 

[FalsettoVibe]

what are they even doing

Destiny 2 expansions (Lightfall)
Matter
Marathon (Rumored)
New IP? (Rumored)

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Man insomniac surely was the deal of century! They don't get the same limelight or critical acclaim as Sonys other studios but they are surely the most profitable at least since spiderman 2018.

There the studio that seems to crunch the least as well..... maybe there's a lesson to be learned there!

Another thing to note is that if another company were to have bought Insomniac, they wouldn't have gotten Ratchet and Clank or Resistance.

Ironically, had Microsoft bought them, they may have been able to give them Spyro back.

 

[TLZ]

Pixelopus - 1

 

[NahaNago]

They were 1.5 teams but they've filled out enough to be two teams. The way we categorize them as teams is probably misleading though. It all comes down to project work. They probably have enough staff now to work on 2.5 major projects at once and I surmise that they are realizing that they don't have the staff to support Uncharted, Last of Us, Last of Us MP, and an original IP. This is why we've seen them focus on small cash lucrative projects. TLOU2 definitely sold less than expectations, which is a big burden for a large studio. You need your hits to hit. Rather than have layoffs, you see these projects like Uncharted PS5/PC bundle, LOU2 e.t.c.

You carefully grow based on project demands. You never really hire just to hire. Let's say you have a team of 10 artists, but they're stretched thin and maybe missing deadlines. Maybe you hire 4 more artists. I think traditionally a lot of these companies would just contract those jobs out temporarily, but that's not the smartest thing to do long term. Same with every other department, writers, programmers, designers, e.t.c. You can build a bigger game and faster with more people. You look at Rockstar and they employ 2000 people and they only output a couple of games a generation and pivot around them (650+ people work at DMA Design/Rockstar North), but then you have GTA V sell 150 million copies ( don't ask me how) and red dead sold very well as well.

Sony needs to start fleshing its games out a bit more and giving its AAA studios time to build in-depth worlds.

That's what separates studios like Insomniac and Naughty Dog from being studios like Rockstar and CD Projekt Red. In 2016 CDPR had 240 employees... they now have over 1000 and can build truly massive games. Obviously, they grew maybe faster than they should have, but that is besides the point.

Speculation, but if Naughty Dog can give up TLOU and Uncharted, it'll be the best thing for their studio and the best thing for Sony.

I agree on it being smarter to hire for the long term rather than all of these temporary contract jobs but I guess they are trying to save as much money as possible but at the same time if you know you are going to need a bunch of temporary workers on your next project and you work on multiple projects just hire more folks and shuffle them around where needed.

Also agree that Sony needs to start fleshing out their games a bit more. The ones that I have played have been beautiful but shallow worlds. I really want them to have the depth/detail/content of like you said Rockstar, CD Projekt, and the open world Bethesda games. Microsoft will pretty much crush Sony now in this department. You can make a beautiful, detailed, yet shallow world with 250 regular employees but to create the next rockstar game or skyrim with all of the branching stories, conversation paths, quests, and massive detailed world you need 1,000 for that one game especially if you want it to come out in around 5 years.

I don't know if it would be the best thing for Naughty Dog if they give up those games. The games sell really well. I'd honestly just have Naughtydog expand to create a branching studio to works on those games. I do think that Naughty Dog needs to start making some new games outside of those two Ip.

 

[The artful mincer]

All we know is how much Sony bought them for, we don't know if they picked up the tab on significant debt in the process.

Insomniac had a lot of misses until Spider-Man, and even though Spider-Man sold well, it has a lot of mouths to feed with Sony, Marvel, and Insomniac. Original IP always have a much higher profit margin and Insomniac really doesn't have any majorly profitable original IP.

Right now, Marvel could decide, hey we don't want you take make spider-man games unless they are on all systems or hey we don't want you to make spider-man games at all. They're entirely at the whim of another company, which isn't a great situation to be in.

What Spider-Man and potentially Wolverine allow Insomniac to do is drastically increase the size of their studio on the back of profitable games and help push PlayStation hardware, but at some point they'll need to pivot away from these games.

Interesting stuff was it ever revealed what marvel get out of this deal?

E.g. Do they get a percentage out of each sale?

 

[vivftp]

Interesting stuff was it ever revealed what marvel get out of this deal?

E.g. Do they get a percentage out of each sale?

We don't know the terms and conditions of their deal. At the very least though, what Marvel gets out of it is high profile games for their IP, further increasing the scope and popularity of the properties they own. No doubt Marvel gets a cut since they're the IP owners, but we have no way of knowing what that is.

Marvel hadn't exactly had huge success with their games prior to Spider-Man and they wanted something better to compete with Batmans Arkham games. That's why they pulled the IP from Activision early. They went to Sony to negotiate an exclusive game, Sony looped in Insomniac and Insomniac chose Spider-Man as the IP they wanted to work on.

 

[Black_Stride]

”work” not ”worked”

Are more than 150 people supporting Destiny 2 with content ”currently”? The engine is done, systems in place, ai done (new enemies are usually reskins) etc

You are assuming patching the game and developing the expansions is CRTL+C and CTRL+V?

 

[The artful mincer]

We don't know the terms and conditions of their deal. At the very least though, what Marvel gets out of it is high profile games for their IP, further increasing the scope and popularity of the properties they own. No doubt Marvel gets a cut since they're the IP owners, but we have no way of knowing what that is.

Marvel hadn't exactly had huge success with their games prior to Spider-Man and they wanted something better to compete with Batmans Arkham games. That's why they pulled the IP from Activision early. They went to Sony to negotiate an exclusive game, Sony looped in Insomniac and Insomniac chose Spider-Man as the IP they wanted to work on.

Yeah activisions mis-management of spiderman demonstrated how shite they were.

I know they were always profitable but it always seemed to be by out squeezing more and out of less and less IPS. It didn't seem sustainable long term.

Ironically they probably could have asked insomniac at the time to make spider-man

 

[vivftp]

Yeah activisions mis-management of spiderman demonstrated how shite they were.

I know they were always profitable but it always seemed to be by out squeezing more and out of less and less IPS. It didn't seem sustainable long term.

Ironically they probably could have asked insomniac at the time to make spider-man

Well, hindsight is always 20/20. There were probably a dozen studios at the time that could have made a Spider-Man game and Activision probably had no reason to think they should farm it out and make less money than just doing it in-house.

With the success of the Spider-Man games on PlayStation that no doubt contributed to them greenlighting Wolverine when that was pitched. It'll be interesting to see how Sony's relationship with Marvel evolves in the future for possibly more games. Or even how it might evolve with Disney, since they got the KOTOR remake which is a Disney property.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Interesting stuff was it ever revealed what marvel get out of this deal?

E.g. Do they get a percentage out of each sale?

No, that's not something we're ever likely to know unless it comes out in legal disclosure some time. A lesser property and I think it would have been a flat license fee, but Spider-Man and Marvel? Probably a percentage.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Yeah activisions mis-management of spiderman demonstrated how shite they were.

I know they were always profitable but it always seemed to be by out squeezing more and out of less and less IPS. It didn't seem sustainable long term.

Ironically they probably could have asked insomniac at the time to make spider-man

Well, hindsight is always 20/20. There were probably a dozen studios at the time that could have made a Spider-Man game and Activision probably had no reason to think they should farm it out and make less money than just doing it in-house.

With the success of the Spider-Man games on PlayStation that no doubt contributed to them greenlighting Wolverine when that was pitched. It'll be interesting to see how Sony's relationship with Marvel evolves in the future for possibly more games. Or even how it might evolve with Disney, since they got the KOTOR remake which is a Disney property.

Going to opine a little here.

I wouldn't necessarily say Activision mismanaged Spider-Man. The reality is that they didn't really have the right studio to produce the games. I'd argue that Marvel mismanaged Spider-Man more by agreeing to license it to Activision. Treyarch isn't exactly a top tier studio. Spider-Man, especially in the growing open world was never really within their wheelhouse. I don't think they would have randomly gotten Insomniac to build them a Spider-Man game. When a company like Activision gets a license like this, you don't generally immediately farm it out. The timing needed to be perfect too. When would you have reached out to Insomniac? Studios are almost always working on something. You'd have to get them slotted for their next game, meanwhile, you're sitting on the license.

Spider-Man was actually a huge risk for Sony and Insomniac. Reputational damage if they were to fail, high cost involved in the development and if the game didn't sell well, with margins going towards Marvel one way or another, easily could have sealed the deal for Insomniac. It was easily the largest game Insomniac had made to date.

Their relationship is definitely growing. They've done 3 games with Marvel so far, two of them were very well received, and the 3rd is about to get a second lease on life on Oculus and potentially PSVR2 (we'll see).

I don't know if the Kotor remake is even going to happen at this point. Unlike the other deals, Sony isn't directly involved in the development as it'll be developed by Aspyr. It looks as though Aspyr has a close relationship with Disney and historically with LucasArts. If it were up to Sony, they'd be publishing this and Bluepoint would be developing it.

If Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine are huge successes and that will likely be determined well before their release, I can imagine Disney looking to work with Sony more. Just have to remember these games can take 4,5,6 years to develop now, so think about when Disney/Sony would sit down and say, we're really happy with what we're seeing, let's do more, then add 4+ years to see the end result. Maybe after Miles Morales? Maybe after Marvel's Avengers didn't do well or Guardians?

If Wolverine took 5 years and if it comes out in 2024, that means it's development started in 2019, right after Spider-Man finished. So you can kind of envision, they started up Spider-Man 2 after the first game, maybe deviated some resources to get Miles Morales out for next-gen launch, and the relationship was blossoming and they said, let's do another marvel game. These things lead to more games. Look at Square Enix and Disney with Kingdom Hearts and look at the history of Capcom working with Marvel.

Honestly, I can totally see a Disney-Sony merger happening at some point in the future. The only question would be whether it would be allowed to go through after Disney bought Fox.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I agree on it being smarter to hire for the long term rather than all of these temporary contract jobs but I guess they are trying to save as much money as possible but at the same time if you know you are going to need a bunch of temporary workers on your next project and you work on multiple projects just hire more folks and shuffle them around where needed.

Also agree that Sony needs to start fleshing out their games a bit more. The ones that I have played have been beautiful but shallow worlds. I really want them to have the depth/detail/content of like you said Rockstar, CD Projekt, and the open world Bethesda games. Microsoft will pretty much crush Sony now in this department. You can make a beautiful, detailed, yet shallow world with 250 regular employees but to create the next rockstar game or skyrim with all of the branching stories, conversation paths, quests, and massive detailed world you need 1,000 for that one game especially if you want it to come out in around 5 years.

I don't know if it would be the best thing for Naughty Dog if they give up those games. The games sell really well. I'd honestly just have Naughtydog expand to create a branching studio to works on those games. I do think that Naughty Dog needs to start making some new games outside of those two Ip.

Hiring contractors doesn't really save you money in the long run. Having skilled employees who you don't have to re-vet and re-train for each and every project is the way to go. It might make sense for some departments like artists and writing, but not for developers and designers. I think Sony is starting to understand that to a degree, which is why they purchased Valkyrie and have stood up some support studios. The downtime internal studios face between projects also doesn't make a ton of sense. It's crunch crunch crunch... wait wait wait. If Sony better utilized all of its studios to work on games in between projects, the overall stress on employees would probably be lower, that being said different studios use different tools.

Naughty Dog can't maintain new IP and old IP at the same time. They don't have the capacity for it and it's a bit clear that they've hit their ceiling with Uncharted and TLOU.

 

[The artful mincer]

Hiring contractors doesn't really save you money in the long run. Having skilled employees who you don't have to re-vet and re-train for each and every project is the way to go.

I've read that this is a big reason why it's really counter productive long term to be in constant crunch .

It might work for a single project but afterwards a good chunk of your staff leave especially once the games shipped. Then afterwards you waste a bunch of time rehireing and retraining new staff which could of been spent just developing the next game.

That and how productivity gets worse and worse the longer you work and can even lead to negative productivity.

It does seem to be getting better Guerrilla apparently delayed Forbidden west to avoid Crunch and there was apparently very little crunch when Naughty Dog shipped last of us remake.

Hopefully this keeps up

 

[vivftp]

Going to opine a little here.

I wouldn't necessarily say Activision mismanaged Spider-Man. The reality is that they didn't really have the right studio to produce the games. I'd argue that Marvel mismanaged Spider-Man more by agreeing to license it to Activision. Treyarch isn't exactly a top tier studio. Spider-Man, especially in the growing open world was never really within their wheelhouse. I don't think they would have randomly gotten Insomniac to build them a Spider-Man game. When a company like Activision gets a license like this, you don't generally immediately farm it out. The timing needed to be perfect too. When would you have reached out to Insomniac? Studios are almost always working on something. You'd have to get them slotted for their next game, meanwhile, you're sitting on the license.

Spider-Man was actually a huge risk for Sony and Insomniac. Reputational damage if they were to fail, high cost involved in the development and if the game didn't sell well, with margins going towards Marvel one way or another, easily could have sealed the deal for Insomniac. It was easily the largest game Insomniac had made to date.

Their relationship is definitely growing. They've done 3 games with Marvel so far, two of them were very well received, and the 3rd is about to get a second lease on life on Oculus and potentially PSVR2 (we'll see).

I don't know if the Kotor remake is even going to happen at this point. Unlike the other deals, Sony isn't directly involved in the development as it'll be developed by Aspyr. It looks as though Aspyr has a close relationship with Disney and historically with LucasArts. If it were up to Sony, they'd be publishing this and Bluepoint would be developing it.

If Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine are huge successes and that will likely be determined well before their release, I can imagine Disney looking to work with Sony more. Just have to remember these games can take 4,5,6 years to develop now, so think about when Disney/Sony would sit down and say, we're really happy with what we're seeing, let's do more, then add 4+ years to see the end result. Maybe after Miles Morales? Maybe after Marvel's Avengers didn't do well or Guardians?

If Wolverine took 5 years and if it comes out in 2024, that means it's development started in 2019, right after Spider-Man finished. So you can kind of envision, they started up Spider-Man 2 after the first game, maybe deviated some resources to get Miles Morales out for next-gen launch, and the relationship was blossoming and they said, let's do another marvel game. These things lead to more games. Look at Square Enix and Disney with Kingdom Hearts and look at the history of Capcom working with Marvel.

Honestly, I can totally see a Disney-Sony merger happening at some point in the future. The only question would be whether it would be allowed to go through after Disney bought Fox.

Sorry, I don't see Sony as a whole merging with anyone, or even getting bought out by anyone. They're far too diversified for it to make sense and they are one of the few protected companies in Japan that the government won't let others fuck around with. That'll only get more complicated in ~3 years once the Sony/Honda EV's start hitting the market. That should serve to elevate the profile of both companies even further

Now mergers with divisions of Sony, sure why not. We just recently saw Sony Pictures Network India and Zee Entertainment merge in India to produce a 10 billion dollar media giant in the region. It's within the realm of possibility we could see similar things occur with other divisions of Sony.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Sorry, I don't see Sony as a whole merging with anyone, or even getting bought out by anyone. They're far too diversified for it to make sense and they are one of the few protected companies in Japan that the government won't let others fuck around with. That'll only get more complicated in ~3 years once the Sony/Honda EV's start hitting the market. That should serve to elevate the profile of both companies even further

Now mergers with divisions of Sony, sure why not. We just recently saw Sony Pictures Network India and Zee Entertainment merge in India to produce a 10 billion dollar media giant in the region. It's within the realm of possibility we could see similar things occur with other divisions of Sony.

The Sony EVs aren't going to be anything special. The market is already terribly crowded. Surprised that Honda is even working with Sony on this to be frank.

Sony is still a little fish compared to many of their competitors. It makes a lot of sense for them to merge with Disney. Disney+Sony Pictures, Disney+PlayStation, Disney+Sony Music, Disney+Crunchyroll, Disney/Marvel/Star Wars+PlayStation. They compliment each other well. Not to mention what it means for Spider-Man, one of the biggest IP in the world.

Disney isn't going to merge with smaller divisions of Sony Group.

 

[vivftp]

The Sony EVs aren't going to be anything special. The market is already terribly crowded. Surprised that Honda is even working with Sony on this to be frank.

Sony is still a little fish compared to many of their competitors. It makes a lot of sense for them to merge with Disney. Disney+Sony Pictures, Disney+PlayStation, Disney+Sony Music, Disney+Crunchyroll, Disney/Marvel/Star Wars+PlayStation. They compliment each other well. Not to mention what it means for Spider-Man, one of the biggest IP in the world.

Disney isn't going to merge with smaller divisions of Sony Group.

Disney's not gonna merge with Sony in any way, shape or form at all as far as I'm concerned. It's not a realistic expectation.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I've read that this is a big reason why it's really counter productive long term to be in constant crunch .

It might work for a single project but afterwards a good chunk of your staff leave especially once the games shipped. Then afterwards you waste a bunch of time rehireing and retraining new staff which could of been spent just developing the next game.

That and how productivity gets worse and worse the longer you work and can even lead to negative productivity.

It does seem to be getting better Guerrilla apparently delayed Forbidden west to avoid Crunch and there was apparently very little crunch when Naughty Dog shipped last of us remake.

Hopefully this keeps up

Sony needs to leverage its large number of studios into general marketing release windows and if a game slips 3-6 months, it won't be a big deal.

They should always have games on deck and get away from the idea of having to ship a game immediately after it is finished.

 

[SpokkX]

You are assuming patching the game and developing the expansions is CRTL+C and CTRL+V?

Yeah - I have played Destiny 2 after all

 

[NahaNago]

Hiring contractors doesn't really save you money in the long run. Having skilled employees who you don't have to re-vet and re-train for each and every project is the way to go. It might make sense for some departments like artists and writing, but not for developers and designers. I think Sony is starting to understand that to a degree, which is why they purchased Valkyrie and have stood up some support studios. The downtime internal studios face between projects also doesn't make a ton of sense. It's crunch crunch crunch... wait wait wait. If Sony better utilized all of its studios to work on games in between projects, the overall stress on employees would probably be lower, that being said different studios use different tools.

Naughty Dog can't maintain new IP and old IP at the same time. They don't have the capacity for it and it's a bit clear that they've hit their ceiling with Uncharted and TLOU.

Considering that they are now moving to pc with their games they can increase the budget to hire more developers so like you said they don't have to crunch.

With the different studios using different tools it comes back again to that they need to hire more developers and create a studio whose main goal is to understand and assist the Sony studios in whatever manner they need to develop games. They probably do already have this and I'm just not aware.

In all fairness to Naughty Dog, each ps4 game was like 1.5 the time length to beat the ps3 games and also a lot more complex. I think it is like 39 hours to beat uncharted 4 and tlou2 and like 42 hours to beat uncharted 1-3 and tlou. Like I've been saying (I think) they need to create another team inside of Naughty Dog in order to be able to work onold and new IP or just straight move on from Uncharted and TLOU like you wanted I believe.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Considering that they are now moving to pc with their games they can increase the budget to hire more developers so like you said they don't have to crunch.

With the different studios using different tools it comes back again to that they need to hire more developers and create a studio whose main goal is to understand and assist the Sony studios in whatever manner they need to develop games.


In all fairness to Naughty Dog, each ps4 game was like 1.5 the time length to beat the ps3 games and also a lot more complex. I think it is like 39 hours to beat uncharted 4 and tlou2 and like 42 hours to beat uncharted 1-3 and tlou. Like I've been saying (I think) they need to create another team inside of Naughty Dog in order to be able to work onold and new IP or just straight move on from Uncharted and TLOU like you wanted I believe.

I don't think the added length helped either Uncharted 4 or TLOU2, if anything they significantly hurt the pacing... I have similar concerns over God of War Ragnarok.

The biggest difference for Naughty Dog in supporting PC is building the game with PC in mind from the get go, so you don't need a major project afterward to port the game, and efforts to generate a PC port fall more to optimizing and enhancing rather than standing the game back up. If PlayStation Studios teams do this, that means that the PC porting teams can work on more games at once and ultimately they can pump out more games.

As much talk as there has been about the XSS being a bottleneck, I think PC will represent the same bottleneck for the PS5, which is a little disappointing.

 

[NahaNago]

I don't think the added length helped either Uncharted 4 or TLOU2, if anything they significantly hurt the pacing... I have similar concerns over God of War Ragnarok.

The biggest difference for Naughty Dog in supporting PC is building the game with PC in mind from the get go, so you don't need a major project afterward to port the game, and efforts to generate a PC port fall more to optimizing and enhancing rather than standing the game back up. If PlayStation Studios teams do this, that means that the PC porting teams can work on more games at once and ultimately they can pump out more games.

As much talk as there has been about the XSS being a bottleneck, I think PC will represent the same bottleneck for the PS5, which is a little disappointing.

I can't speak to whether the length of the game hurt the pacing since I honestly haven't played those games. I played the ports of uncharted 1-3 to ps4 and burnt myself out on the series. For tlou I just never finished the port on the ps4. I like the stunning graphics of Naughty Dogs games but I was never a fan of the move to the more slightly realistic gritty games.

But like you said if they put the pc build in mind while developing the game they will bottleneck the development of the ps5 games. It's an issue but at the same time this is something the AAA third party developers have already figured out but then again they usually have much bigger teams to work on their games.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Sucker punch making GoT with under 200 people is impressive

Sony uses multiple studios as support studios depending on where major games are in development.

 

[bitbydeath]

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Wanted to add the following even though they aren't (yet) Sony Studios:

Firewalk - 119
Deviation Games - 130

 

[Ronin_7]

Holy shit, Bungie is ridiculously bloated

1500 Devs, 0 games released apart from Destiny 2.

You've a point

 

[Kiya's Guard]

 

[midnightAI]

1500 Devs, 0 games released apart from Destiny 2.

You've a point

Isnt that the same as saying Elon Musk has no money... except those billions he has in the bank

Aaaanyway, they also released Destiny (1).... and these are GaaS games, they require a lot of staff. Did you know miHoYo, the creators of Genshin Impact, have over 5000 employees? (over 1000 of which was added due to the success of Genshin Impact)

 

[Mibu no ookami]

One year later

Bungie - 1,676 up from 1,428 (+248)
Naughty Dog - 894 up from 725 (+169)
Insomniac - 525 up from 499 (+26)
Guerrilla - 419 up from 407 (+12)
Santa Monica Studio - 402 up from 362 (+40)
Firesprite - 230 down from 262 (-32)
Sucker Punch Productions - 214 up from 183 (+31)
Haven Studios - 158 up from 112 (+46)
Bend Studio - 132 up from 108 (+24)
Media Molecule - 102 (NC)
Housemarque - 115 up from 97 (+18)
PlayStation London Studio - 114 up from 92 (+22)
Polyphony Digital* - 81 up from 74 (+7)
Bluepoint Games - 83 up from 71 (+12)
Nixxes Software - 82 up from 63 (+19)
Valkyrie Entertainment - 43 down from 46 (-3)
Savage Game Studios - 30 up from 21 (+9)
Team Asobi* - 13 up from 8 (+5)
San Diego Studio - ??
Pixelopus - 0 down from 1 (-1)

PlayStation Studios Malaysia - 86
Firewalk - 146 up from 119 (+27)
Audeze - 31

Obviously Media Molecule will dip in time once the RIF is reflected in the linkedin numbers.

 

[Yoboman]

Interesting they are all growing despite the over reported assumptions when a couple people leave or are laid off

 

[Frwrd]

Polyphony Digital… holy shit, that can’t be right.

If true, then am super impressed.

 

[skit_data]

Polyphony Digital… holy shit, that can’t be right.

If true, then am super impressed.

My thought exactly, they must be more than 81 people? If they indeed are I take back everything I've said about them being on the slower side of game development

 

[Kaiserstark]

One year later

Bungie - 1,676 up from 1,428 (+248)
Naughty Dog - 894 up from 725 (+169)
Insomniac - 525 up from 499 (+26)
Guerrilla - 419 up from 407 (+12)
Santa Monica Studio - 402 up from 362 (+40)
Firesprite - 230 down from 262 (-32)
Sucker Punch Productions - 214 up from 183 (+31)
Haven Studios - 158 up from 112 (+46)
Bend Studio - 132 up from 108 (+24)
Media Molecule - 102 (NC)
Housemarque - 115 up from 97 (+18)
PlayStation London Studio - 114 up from 92 (+22)
Polyphony Digital* - 81 up from 74 (+7)
Bluepoint Games - 83 up from 71 (+12)
Nixxes Software - 82 up from 63 (+19)
Valkyrie Entertainment - 43 down from 46 (-3)
Savage Game Studios - 30 up from 21 (+9)
Team Asobi* - 13 up from 8 (+5)
San Diego Studio - ??
Pixelopus - 0 down from 1 (-1)

PlayStation Studios Malaysia - 86
Firewalk - 146 up from 119 (+27)
Audeze - 31

Obviously Media Molecule will dip in time once the RIF is reflected in the linkedin numbers.

Where did you get these numbers because for Team Asobi, they are totally wrong.

Last year in August, Team Asobi had more than 60 employees and they want to have more than 100 peoples at the studio.

Team Asobi: “We want our games to feel like they’re made in Japan”

Team Asobi interview

www.gamesindustry.biz

Media Molecule have 135 employees and they went to lay off something like 20 peoples.

https://videogames.si.com/news/media-molecule-layoffs

Kazunori Yamauchi said in 2022, there was around 300 peoples working at Polyphony.

 

[midnightAI]

Polyphony Digital… holy shit, that can’t be right.

If true, then am super impressed.

These numbers arent right, probably from LinkedIn? If so I've argued about getting numbers from linkedin before, they are just wrong most of the time. As far as I'm aware Polyphony has over 300 employees and as mentioned Asobi had over 60, probably much more than that now.

The Naughty Dog numbers are massively inflated also, Evan Wells himself said in July 'over 400' which to me says the actual figure is between 400 and 500.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Those numbers must include contractors. Naughty doesn’t have 700 internal staff

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Polyphony Digital… holy shit, that can’t be right.

If true, then am super impressed.

You've got to read my friend. Polyphony Digital is a Japanese company and linkedin is not as primarily used in Japan as it is in the West. As a result you're going to get undersampling.

My thought exactly, they must be more than 81 people? If they indeed are I take back everything I've said about them being on the slower side of game development

See above.

Where did you get these numbers because for Team Asobi, they are totally wrong.

Last year in August, Team Asobi had more than 60 employees and they want to have more than 100 peoples at the studio.

Team Asobi: “We want our games to feel like they’re made in Japan”

Team Asobi interview

www.gamesindustry.biz

Media Molecule have 135 employees and they went to lay off something like 20 peoples.

https://videogames.si.com/news/media-molecule-layoffs

Kazunori Yamauchi said in 2022, there was around 300 peoples working at Polyphony.

See above. As for Media Molecule, these are only estimates. Not everyone creates a linkedin account to reflect their work, though the vast majority of people do. There are also people who leave, but don't update their linkedin, maybe because they haven't found a new job, or they've retired

These numbers arent right, probably from LinkedIn? If so I've argued about getting numbers from linkedin before, they are just wrong most of the time. As far as I'm aware Polyphony has over 300 employees and as mentioned Asobi had over 60, probably much more than that now.

The Naughty Dog numbers are massively inflated also, Evan Wells himself said in July 'over 400' which to me says the actual figure is between 400 and 500.

Those numbers must include contractors. Naughty doesn’t have 700 internal staff

Naughty Dog is very well known for utilizing contractors, which is why their turnover rate is so high. The same will be true of Bungie.