I can't say I agree agree, because the agument being presented always seems to comes across as somewhat disingenious. Games get cancelled all the time. Shu Yoshida has said this is true of Sony as well. Saying that these studios wasted time on a live service that never releases is no different than saying they wasted time on a SP game that never released. The conversation always appears to be how they've wasted time and resources on a cancelled live service, but we barely hear the same rhetoric on a SP game. Studios like Insomniac and FireSprite, who have multiple teams, will always be prototyping stuff to have a path for their next title before their existing one ends. In this case, it involved to 2 live service titles they decided not to pursue. This is not time lost. It is important they are doing this sort of stuff so that the team can transition to the next title as effortlessly as possible. Otherwise they end up in the situation that Bend forund themselves: having finished Days Gone, then working on a pitch for DG 2 only to have it rejected and then having nothing else. The team was lucky at the time they could be used to work on Naughty Dog projects, but there's clearly not enough additional work after the cancellation of their live service title. |
I think the Spider Man topic is making unnecessary noise in this conversation lol so ok I take it from the list, it was just a pitch that didn't have any bigger consequences.
About Firesprite I'm not going to change my position because at least from the sources that I trust it was established the project started with Lucid Games, it didn't work, Sony assigned the project to Firesprite and then it was cancelled after one wave of cancellations/lay offs. So at least in my book that project was more than a conversation in a room, people actually worked on it and it wasn't their decision to cancel it.
Now, I think there a 2 reasons why you feel the argument of wasted time is disingenious:
1.- You are comparing the current situation with other times and/or companies but the current PS situation is different.
2.- You are thinking about games that were cancelled thanks to developer decision but there is only evidence that Naughty Dog cancelled their own game. Sony cancelled the rest.
Tbh I haven't read everything Yoshida has said in interviews but I know he talked about a cancelled Freedom Wars sequel. For today's standards FW is a cheap game that takes little time and money to make and a middle size studio can make multiple of them at the same time so sure if a big company has to cancel a FW it won't have a big impact but we are talking about big games that take a lot of money and years to make. You talked a little about this with Bend but out of 18 PS Studios 11 are working in just one big game (hopefully they are working in side small projects, also I didn't count nixxes nor valkyrie). That's why the current PS situation is different, their studios with multiple teams have a chance even if one of their games is cancelled but if one of the other 11 gets their game cancelled is basically over, we won't know about them for the next 3, 4 or 5 years. As of today 3 studios are already out of the generation and Sony doesn't have multiple small projects to make up the number of their output like they did in the past or like other companies have.
Obviously I don't think everything you said is wrong actually you have an excellent point, Naughty Dog having the vision to realize their service wasn't worth it and cancel it was a fantastic decision, one that maybe saved the whole studio but for a Bend developer that had to make a service instead of DG2, to then watch their project being cancelled by their bosses and also had to watch 1/3 of their friends go. Don't you think they see this whole situation as a huge waste of time? Even if said cancellation allows them to do something new and cool. Sony basically wasted their time for nothing because the service push was a mistake, they didn't get the chance to make the game they actually wanted to make and now they need years to release something.
