"Sony's first party wasn't good until second half of PS3" Myth or Fact?

[TheMisterManGuy]

curl-6 said:

TheMisterManGuy said:

They may not have needed it per-sae, but that doesn't mean they didn't have. At the time of the PS2, Sony had more than a dozen internal studios for games.

Japan Studio (Which at the time was just 4 product development departments within Sony Computer Entertainment Japan)

Polyphony Digital 

Foster City Studio

  - Naughty Dog 

  - SCEA Bend

Santa Monica Studio 

  - Incog Entertainment 

San Diego Studio 

  - 989 Sports

London Studio 

  - Team Soho

Cambridge Studio 

Studio Liverpool 

  - XDev

A pretty large development operation for a console that didn't particularly need first party development.

Never said they didn't have any, just that they weren't as developed as they would later become, nor as necessary.

Naughty Dog also didn't become a Sony studio til partway through the PS2 gen. Their PS1 output was all as a third party.

Naughty Dog was acquired very early on in the PS2 era in January 2001. 

And obviously Sony's first party wasn't quite as powerful it would later become. But it still helped play an important role in the PS2's success. 

I think the thing with the PS2 is that it's library was so massive and seemingly endless that people remember it for different reasons. If you were primarily or exclusively a PlayStation gamer, then you'll probably remember the first party stuff just as fondly as the third party games. But if you were primarily an Xbox or Nintendo gamer at the time, then you may associate the PS2 more with the third party stuff that wasn't on either of the other two systems more than the first party games.