This is an exceprt from an interview of Jim Ryan, courtesy of GameSinners:
This was revealed by Sony’s Jim Ryan in an interview with Glixel, with the article mentioning that the game’s “new, more narrative-focused, open-world approach with a grizzled, bearded Kratos coming as a direct result of Sony’s new global thinking.” Ryan adds that “It’s a franchise that has historically acutely under-performed in Europe. Hack and slash games tend to not do so well in Europe, so the narrative this time around will make a big difference. European gamers love narrative games.”
http://gamesinners.com/news/2017/06/05/god-war-ps4-will-open-world-narrative-focused/
Firstly, I thought the gameplay looked great, and the atmosphere was spot on. Also God of War has always been narrative focussed, just a very differnt kind of narrative from your typical Naughty Dog game. But still I disagree with his statement for a variety of reasons.
This is wrong fro a variety of reasons. First, its wrong to homogenise all of Sony's franchises into The Last of Us like games, because even with that game's success I'm sure gamers do want varierty of games and if trhey want The Last of Us they have The Last of Us Part II to look forward to.
With this line of thought its also clear that targetting just that segment of the market wouldn't actually benefit any of these games because that segment already has another game to look forward to.
We saw what happens when you have a homogenous set of games, when the market shifts to different kind of products all of your franchises lose appeal at once and you have no backup left to serve the new tastes of the market. I think to a degree that is what happened with Microsoft games outside of Forza this generation, Halo and Gears of War appeal toa fairly similar market and both heavyweight franchises lost their weight at once this generation, while Forza has continued to thrive and Forza Horizon has expanded its audience this generation.
Second, it limits developer's creativity. The reason The Last of Us succeeded in both reviews and sales was that Naughty Dog were allowed to do what the wanted to, given creative freedom, and so they had a passion to make the best kind of product in its niche with The Last of Us. Its success came as a result of that. This is something Sony were good with last generation, that is why we had a diverse lineup of games like Infamous, Uncharted, God of War, Gran Turismo, Resistance, LittleBigPlanet and The Lat of Us. Sony is going to lose the one thing that makes their games stand out from both other first party games and third party games, something that is a reason millions of people play on PlayStation.
Also eventually third parties will see the niche as being successful, make games in the niche and take over Sony's first party games in the niche with their bigger budget due to being able to serve a larger audience. Its an unsustainable business practice and should be left in the dust. Jim Ryan's comment on PS2 backwards compatibility also irked me, he has no right to talk about what gamers want, he didn't even take a sample of gamers to decide what they want, but just that he didn't like PS2 games. So what? I like some PS2 games. Many people do. I can even play them on my PC, so why not on its own family? It makes no sense Sony. If gamers ask for it, give it to them.
