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

[DonFerrari]

IcaroRibeiro said:

Fei-Hung said:

I think the title is mad about sinus obsession with blockbusters. It's consumers obsession with blockbusters. Why do people talk about specs of their consoles, TFs, RAM, processor speeds etc. Midtier games are great. I play them all the time. Right now is a great example for me where I finished Rage 2 and then Darksiders Genesis and then I'll be playing Returnal.

There is no consumers obsession with big blockbusters. There is a big market for them, but companies are pushing it way more than what consumers are demanding. Best selling game on PS4 is a port of a PS3 game. The best selling game of all time is Minecraft. This gen the only games that sold more than 30 million copies in a single console are Mario Kart 8 and Animal Crossing New Horizons 

I'm not denying escapism is what make people get into games, but the assertion of high realism being more competent producing it makes no sense

Most people dont talk about specs and whatnot, indeed most of them dont even understand hardware specs unless they are PC gamers.

I'm not saying companies need to start halving their budgets and released smaller games, indeed I think there is quite important for some companies keep pushing boundaries as far as technology is concerned 

But I'm really not buying your argument they are spending more and more because it's what consumers likes the most. So far seems like multiplayer and accessibility are the main selling points of any game  that's why a game like The Last of Us 2 will hardly sell as much as Overwatch even if TLOU 2 has a much bigger budget 

So, if hemorrhaging money isn't making those games to sell anything more than smaller budget games, why some companies keep doing whatever they can to release much more risky games that maybe will not break even? 

It's just for reflection 

I would just say companies aren't dumb, and they go where the money is. So if they are focusing on AAA and putting every more money on those it is because that is where the money to be made is. Sure some smaller titles do big numbers but that is more of an exception than anything, most of the top sellers are big blockbusters (that is even per definition).

Doctor_MG said:

DonFerrari said:

I sure would be happy if Sony could release 4 great quality Uncharted per gen for me to play, but I understand it wouldn`t work out, so I`m totally fine with 1 entry and perhaps one big expansion that was cheap to produce per gen, and they making new IPs as most as possible. For me the number of titles for PS4 was enough even if less than PS3. On PS4 I would say I have liked a lot almost all their games while on PS3 some of the games weren`t to my liking.

"but I understand it wouldn't work out"

It did work out last generation though. 

"they making new IPs as most as possible"

They are making the same amount of new IP's as last gen, with less total games overall.

The rest of your reasoning is just subjective. I can't argue with it, but I think you can understand where I'm getting from. 

Nope not really. The gen Sony made more titles and sequels (PS3) the overall sales of SW was smaller than on PS4 when they made less sequels and total titles. It was already summarized here.

If they release half the number of total titles but about the same number of new IPs or at least same proportion it means they really are pushing for it as most as they can, as sure some titles will be sequels and some others are just series that doesn't make sense to finish to start another (like Gran Turismo and MLB).