Sony Strategy Thread: Third Party Sony (PS NOW)

[Zod95]

theprof00 said:

Gran Turismo 6
A lot of people ask why Sony released Gran Turismo 6 on ps3. They say it would have been perfect for ps4 at release, and it's widely felt that the decision somewhat hurt the ps4's lineup at launch. xbox1 after all, has forza, which looks amazing and is on trend to sell 1m world-wide very shortly (within 2013), and this decision could end up pushing sim racer fans to the xbox.

The strategy:
Polyphony recently released a breathtaking GT6, but does it deserve to be given a full entry title? Does it really deserve that 6 added to the name? In all honesty, not really. GT6 is simply a slightly upgraded mold of GT5 with the added inclusion of a whole lot of microtransactions. It's definitely a change of pace, including the paid-DLC and online aspects, but it's little more than a quick entry, with lots of features still incomplete. Hell, they still haven't even finished all the car models. So, what's going on here? What have they been working on all this time? GT6 really could have played a part in the ps4 launch so why in Satan's name are we seeing #driveclub instead?

#Driveclub's Evolution studios are makers of Motorstorm which is- you guessed it- another launch title for a previous gen. Evolution is a launch developer, and Motorstorm, well Motorstorm has been slowly depreciating with every title since the first. So it only makes sense that they were tasked with making a new racing IP for the launch of a new gen. It's simply what they're good at and being that they're a more flexible studio who is willing to try new things for a new generation, why not have a preliminary testing of the waters?

After all, both Evolution and Polyphony are Sony studios, it just makes sense to try looking at GT from a new perspective before releasing a new entry. PD has even gone on record as saying that they prefer releasing title's in a more robust environment with a strong userbase. Consider this, an even worse outcome of seeing diminished console sales due to the lack of a pre-eminent next-gen racer would be releasing a racer in direct competition with forza combined with the typical lackluster sales of a launch title. Such an outcome would be to the obvious detriment of the GT name, especially given the chance that Forza could actually outsell the premier racing title.

Ok, so now we know why GT6 is a ps3 title. It's a safe release that's sure to make profit reusing many of the same assets from GT5 and enjoying a nice solid userbase. Immediately, judging by GT6's sales, we can see that it just makes more sense to do it this way. Let the new franchise venture out into next-gen, and focus on the brand. Some say that #DC will cannibalize GT sales, but really it's so blatantly obvious that #driveclub's single purpose is to compliment GT. Starting at GT6 we see the clear move by PD to a more online focus. We don't even have to go that far, we can look at the ps4's own strategy toward social networking, even the competition makes it clear with Forza taking a strong 2.0 push with it's xb1 title using cloud profiles to automate your career and play against friends. Social is the next step for these racers. The historical single-player focus for GT is changing, and Sony is using #driveclub as the blueprint.

Oh, and don't be surprised if it eventually comes out that assets are being shared by the two dev firms. Maybe it will not be so direct as entire car modeling- after all PD is extremely proud of its property- but expect things like physics, lighting, technicals, and measurements to be extremely similar. It is very likely that PD will continue to work on tracks and cars, and Evo will work on network and gameplay in a kind of symbiotic relationship. I would guess that a little less than 2 years after driveclub, we will see GT6: Evo or GT7. The release date really all depends on how many consoles Sony can put into people's homes. A good number would be 20million+ until we see GT. Yep, I'm saying that this next-gen GT will be released a lot earlier than GT did for ps3, and it's because of this relationship that I make this statement.

Well, there you have it, the reasoning behind Sony's decision to release GT6 on ps3- or at least my best attempt to explain it.
Hope you enjoyed reading it, as usual feel free to leave comments at the bottom. Thanks
-Prof

Very interesting points and reasoning... although I don't see how an earlier release of Gran Turismo in a console (thus having a smaller userbase) would hurt the IP. GT3 came out only 1 year after PS2's launch and it became the most successful game in the series. As the console sells, the game sells too. Is this hard to believe? In my opinion, the reason for the GT6 to have been launched on PS3 was because that was Poliphony's plan since the beginning. Like they ended a cycle with GT4 on the PS2, they wanted to do the same on the PS3. Plus, they didn't have yet any next-gen concept to deliver so, as you said, to launch GT6 (a game that only consolidates what GT5 attempted to do) on PS4 would have been strange at least.

As for the symbiotic relationship between Evolution Studios and Poliphony Digital, I don't know how real it is. What you said makes sense, these two can benefit from each other. But I'm not sure whether the shorter production cycles of GT games have anything to do with that. GT6 took only 3 years after the 5.5 years of GT5 and, like you, I expect GT7 to come after 2 years or so. But the reason for that I think it's not about cooperation with other devs. Japanese game studios have been realizing that controlled production cycles like the Western does (for example with Call Of Duty, Assassin's Creed and Forza) are much better for profits and even for the sake of the series than launching the game only when the initial ambition is achieved, not matter how long it takes (like it happened with Gran Turismo 5, Final Fantasy XIII, Tekken 6 and The Last Guardian that didn't even came out at all). Therefore, some of them are already adopting the Western good practices, including Square Enix (which launched FF XIII-2 after 2 years and Lightning Returns again after 2 years) and Poliphony (which is starting to shorten GT's development cycle).