Will Sony Copy Microsoft and Make Playstation a 3rd Party Publisher?

[BraLoD]

Cerebralbore101 said:

BraLoD said:

I think you are missing and mixing some stuff there.

Sony cancelled a lot of games because those were live service games that after the Concord fiasco were found to be likely to fail as well, so stopping them right there was more cost efficient that wasting more money to complete and release them and fail regardless. Some of these studios had to start new game projects and that takes years, that's why they had no games launched. That has nothing to do with Sony not wanting to make games themselves anymore, actually there is not even a single hint about it anywhere, even this whole thing is because Sony is pursuing to develop more games for and beyond Playstation. They stupiditly put far too many of their studios efforts on chasing live services games so they could have their Fortnite, Call of Duty, Overwatch, etc, and failed miserably on it, that is it.

Just look at the last state of plays, Sony is, as it has always been doing, developing high quality games and using them as big showings for the brand. Nothing has changed there. At least up until now, and I see no indicator it is changing as well. Almost every year or two Sony has some of the most acclaimed games being released out there, look at the goty awards, and that is even considering so many cancelled games and lost dev time.

I think it's a case of Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, Insomniac, Santa Monica, and Sucker Punch being vestigial to Sony at this point. If they make high-selling games, then Sony is happy with that. If they don't, then Sony gives them the axe without any attempt to fix the studio and moves on. Similar to what is happening to Bend Studio or what MS did to the Forza Motorsport team. Hopefully, these teams will remain stable for another decade, but if they enter troubled waters, Sony won't be as likely to come to their rescue as they would have in the past. Geurilla started as a mediocre studio and was slowly built up into a fantastic studio over 12 years. I don't think Sony has that kind of commitment to quality games anymore. Basically, 2025 Sony has the same blasé approach to making good games as MS. They just happen to have better homegrown studios than MS. Those studios are left over from the PS1-PS4 days when they actually cared. 

I disagree, strongly, specially on even trying to compare it to MS.

Bend's last game was in 2019, Sony was not happy with the game critic reception but it made them good money, and Sony was ok with a Days Gone sequel, Bend itself did not want to do it. Bend was also pretty much just a support studio before that and was still live. They also had their live service game cancelled and are still there.

Here comes a big thing about Sony, they give their studios a really huge trust vote and let them do mostly what them want, they will intervene when it starts going wrong, and that was exactly what killed Japan Studios foe example, so many years and different projects and no direction or organization.

They should not have closed it, but it took many years to do so. You had Ueda sitting on The Last Guardian for years with Team Ico and even after leaving the company Sony still wanted that game released, never cancelled it.

Team Asobi was the team saved from Japan Studios and would you look at that, they got a platformer to win the overall GOTY, even on TGA, something Mario couldn't, Astro is one of their newest IP and it was it's first "proper game". Did you listen to how passionate that team speech was when winning the GOTY?

Polyphony Digital will spend years developing and supporting their next Gran Turismo and there is no axe coming for them. The end result is superb as well.

You have Media Molecule, their last game was in 2020 and a failure, yet the studio is still there, doing who knows what, but still there.

Even Santa Monica, after 2013 with God of War Ascension being the franchise's lowest point, and their next Sci-Fi IP being cancelled before even being formally announced, Sony still invested as much on them to go back to God of War and reinvent it.

Sony cares a lot for their studios, layoffs are happening and this is really sad as this time the reason was a company wide focus on their massive greedy ambition of having forever games, yes, and the brand is suffering from it, sadly the good people working there too, but even with all that, you have Intergalactic, Wolverine, Saros, Yotei coming, just had Death Stranding 2, and all games keep coming with a lot of support from them, they get dedicated shows, controllers, console faceplates, etc, and keep being high quality and selling great.

It feels disingenuous to even compare it to how MS is doing things for a long time now.

Even with all their problems, result from their bad choices, the games are great, sell great, and keep being some of the most relevant out there, we just got less of them for a few years. I see no push in the contrary direction whatsoever.