Shawn Layden, Head Of PlayStation’s Game Studios, Departs

[DonFerrari]

haxxiy said:

thismeintiel said:

 Mass Effect Andromeda hired much of its staff based on diversity instead of skill/experience, and the game performed poorly both gameplay-wise, with many glitches and wonky animations, and sales-wise.

This is false. The issues of ME:A are significantly more complex than a single problem that coincidentally seems to fit a certain narrative. The game had an incredibly turbulent, backbreaking development cycle with multiple reboots etc. and we usually know the fate of such games, such as Duke Nukem Forever (which, according to your perspective, should have been an incredibly successful product), Final Fantasy XV etc.

https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428

OT - this has long term effects on Sony's mid and long term market strategies, from what I've seen. Jim Ryan is far more focused on the concept of closed platform and streaming being the future... in fact somewhat aligning himself with what Epic, Microsoft, Google, Disney etc. are doing nowadays.

A team composed on people that doesn't have qualifications will certainly increase issues on development and could even lead to the turbulent, backbreaking development cycle.

And Final Fantasy XV is a perfectly fine game.

SpokenTruth said:

thismeintiel said:

Mass Effect Andromeda hired much of its staff based on diversity instead of skill/experience, and the game performed poorly both gameplay-wise, with many glitches and wonky animations, and sales-wise. 

I challenge you to back that up with facts.

1. That BioWare hired their staff on diversity rather than skill/experience.

2. That it directly led to the problems of gameplay, performance and sales.

Sure you can ask for sources on the first. But the second one is quite obvious, if a big chunky of your team is made of unqualified people that were hired based on things other than skill/experience (1st point) then it is expected that the result will be worse than having a qualified team.

EricHiggin said:

thismeintiel said:

More like shikamaru317 has it backwards.  If there was a power struggle, the guy who gets ousted doesn't have his policies all of a sudden put in place.

DonFerrari said:

Wouldn't make much sense =] for me it seems more like Shawn was hoarding power and putting his policies in place, to the point Japan got pissed and tossed him out, now we are seeing changes, perhaps b PS5 censoring will be gone as well.

Yes seems like he got it backward.

It could have gone down that way possibly.

I was basing it off of what was said about Shawn fighting for cross play. If there was a power struggle in general, and cross play wasn't going to happen if he couldn't get his way, if he is the type of person who has to have full control or nothing, or is contemplating retiring or moving on anyway, maybe both, he could have made a deal to have cross play become the norm across the platform, in exchange for his leaving and getting out of the way peacefully. Assuming cross play wouldn't be seen as a major loss to the business, and only a minor one, if at all of course. It could always be revoked when PS5 launches, and only remains on PS4 if the new leadership doesn't really want it, however they try to spin how and why they couldn't or wouldn't do it for next gen.

This would allow him to go out on a high note on his part, even though it's not something PS would really want to explain to the public. It's the kind of thing we would find out in an interview 10 years down the road, like how they opened up about PS3 and it's troubles after all these years. It would partially explain these news events coming out so close together, and the lack of explanation as to Shawn's departure.

Who knows?

Sorry but doesn't make much sense. He is a very high level corporate, so his contract and business ethics would already prevent him from bad mouthing Sony on the terms of his resignation. Don't see why they would have a truce proposition of "if you do what I'm asking for I'll leave the company".