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HappySqurriel on 14 September 2012
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Kresnik said:
HappySqurriel said:

But that only works if Sony has the cash-flow to support external development ...

If Sony is closing studios because they can't afford to keep them open and operating, I'm doubtful they can afford to fund similar development at an external studio. Likely the IPs won't die off, but rather than getting 6 or 8 games a year (in total) from the studios that closed we will likely see 1 or 2 games released involving these IPs each year.

If these were the only closures that are going to happen it might not be that bad, but if you add to it another series of closures of similar studios it will start to put a big hole in Sony's PS4 line-up compared to their PS3 line-up.


I think you're missing something here though, which Jay has mentioned in a couple of his posts.  There's a difference between closing a studio because you're in financial trouble, and closing a studio because they're just not productive enough or not profitable.  In the case of the 3 studios that Sony have shut, I'd say it was a mix of both.  They need to cut back wherever possible, so why not shut down:

a) A studio which has never had a game sell more than a million copies (Psygnosis)

b) A studio very much on the decline throughout the current generation (Zipper)

c) A studio without much of a purpose to be honest, and no big IP (BigBig)

They were very much the weak links in Sony's lineup.  And if they had the same output for any other publisher (EA/Acti, even Microsoft), they'd have been shut down ages ago.  I mean, don't get me wrong - I loved Studio Liverpool and WipEout is one of my favourite series ever, but from a business standpoint it has never - and will never - be big enough.

And this brings me to my point.  It's one thing to shut down an unproductive studio or three, because financial difficulties or not it just makes a lot of business sense.  And it's a completely different issue to invest in the external development of an IP that has traditionally sold very well.  Sony are in financial trouble - not denying that for a second, but they're not just going to stop making games.  As I'm sure someone once said, "You have to spend money to make money!", and in the case of an exterally developed game that's got a good chance of selling well enough to make a decent profit, then obviously Sony are going to invest. 

I don't necessarily disagree, but I also think that people are not fully considering the poor financial shape of Sony ... Sony as a company is in very rough financial shape which is putting a lot of pressure on their Gaming division, and their gaming division has had a very rough several years and has many significant challenges ahead.

With that said, the core question was whether the PS4's games were going to be more influential than the PS3's games were and its difficult to see how a company that is reducing the number of developers and is (probably) looking to have existing developers reduce costs as best as they can will produce more games that have a bigger impact on hardware sales with increasing development costs and longer development timelines. From a purely number's perspective I would expect fewer games that were shorter, had less features, and were (generally) less impressive in relative terms.