Jason Schreier: Sony's Obsession with Blockbusters is Stirring Unrest Within PS Empire

[DonFerrari]

shikamaru317 said:

DonFerrari said:

Did you read OP? He is comparing to the PS3 years where Sony said from every 10 games they made 6 lost money, 2 broke even and only 2 had profit. And he really dislike Sony on PS4 that have been able to constantly sell over 10M on several IPs.

Sony as any company will focus on what bring most money, but we have to turn blind eye to it to make this type of critic.

Sony don`t reveal the number of the least successful titles. But Knack 2 likely didn`t turn a profit as well, and most of the exclusives that weren`t AAA also didn`t made money. Gravity Rush from what I remember was said to lose money. On Days Gone I sincerely don`t want a sequel even though I really liked it, for me that was a game that 1 entry really told the story (same for TLOU imho).

Oh, you were referring to the OP, I thought you were talking about the article, since you mentioned Jason needing to be willing to fund smaller projects with his own money. I'm not really sure about the PS3 era, but I wouldn't have thought that they would have lost that much money on games. They had quite a few that were selling like 3m+ that gen, so unless the budgets were truly outrages you would think they would have been making money. 

Forgot about Knack 2 honestly, but yeah, that probably lost money, only reason the first sold well enough to get a sequel greenlit was because it got boosted by the launch title effect.

The 60% of the games losing money, 20% not making or losing and only 20% bringing money to sustain the business was direct from Yoshida Shuhei if I`m not wrong. So basically Sony on PS4 saw what worked on their PS3 efforts and focused on that (from business perspective that is totally right) and that is how those studios gone from 3M to 15M seller in a gen, some with sequels and others with new IPs.

And on Jason himself you can be sure if he was the boss at any company he wouldn`t be pouring money on losing project, and at any company even if CEO would want that (very hard) shareholders wouldn`t allow. Sony isn`t a small company that can be done by the whim of the CEO. So the clickbaity headlines about developers being pissed and all that is just him doing poor journalism.

LudicrousSpeed said:

Astral said:

We already have / know of a few "AA" or small new ips on PS5 from Sony like: Astro's Playroom (a full game is hinted), Destruction AllStars, Returnal, Sackboy: A Big Adventure. That tells me a diffrent story. I guess we will see.

Do we have numbers to compare?

Sony during PS3 era:
139 games
59 first party
63 new IP's

Sony during PS4 era:
63 games
34 first party
30 new IP's

I might have missed some smaller network titles or extremely niche stuff Sony published, but it's a very large difference. And many of the things they green lit on PS3 are what set it apart from the 360, especially towards the end of the gen when MS was focusing on Kinect and Halo/Gears/Forza with some small XBLA stuff thrown in, are the types of games Sony apparently doesn't believe in any more.

I buy what Schreier is saying because we already saw Sony pull away from variety and risk during the PS4 era, as the numbers above prove. They focused more on big titles, with much fewer exceptions than the PS3 era. And they relied much more on third party deals than PS3 era with PS4, and by all accounts will rely on them even more during PS5's life time. Bear in mind those new IP numbers don't really put any context, but I'd argue the PS3 number is not only much higher (over double) but they were much larger new IP's. Stuff like Last of Us, Uncharted, Demon's Souls, Motorstorm, Resistance, Infamous, etc etc, hold more weight than a few new PSVR IP's and Horizon imho.

The proportion seem very close, almost half of the titles were new IP both in PS3 and PS4, the total quantity reduced but that is easily explained by development time taking longer each gen.