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twintail 5 hours ago
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Otter said:

That's not how it reads to me.

"As part of the same report, Bloomberg also says that Sony Bend pitched a sequel to Days Gone after the game's release in 2019, but was rejected. Sony then apparently moved Bend developers onto two Naughty Dog projects – a multiplayer game (presumably the standalone Last of Us multiplayer game) and a new Uncharted project (which has also been rumoured recently).

Some Bend staff reportedly left as a result of having their autonomy taken away, and leadership allegedly complained to Sony and asked to be moved off of Uncharted development. Sony Bend is now apparently working on a new original game, but it's not clear if this is Days Gone 2, a brand new game, or a return to another back-catalogue game."

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-last-of-us-remake-reportedly-in-development-and-days-gone-2-pitch-rejected

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"When you have this many teams either not working on a live-service title, or developing one alongside their core strengths, it's hard to assume that BluePoint were forced to do anything."

I don't think so at all.  The existence of single player games doesn't really contradict the point that sony clearly had a live service agenda and subsequently would require X amount of teams to work on it. We don't need to assume either way but I think its especially naive for people to say confidently that BP chose to work on GAAS as if we know it was their preference. 

Team Asobi have an established Sony IP aimed at families, live service doesn't fit into that. Suckerpuch have a 10m+ selling IP that already has an online function. Firesprite were intended as a VR studio to support PSVR2, live service doesn't really play a role. Insomniac and Santamonica are responsible for the highest selling games on the system & they demand sequels, none the less Insomniac were developing a multiplayer spiderman that was cancelled in 2024. These facts don't really negate the very obviously live service push sony initiated (12 games that they boasted about to investors initially) and the implications of that in terms projects they were greenlighting during the period.

It's a bit hard to parse information from so many years ago. I think I did say that the original article made a reference, but I realise now that isn't the case. Jason never gives any detail about this, and only merely states it was rejected. But as I did mention, the specific answer came from the Days Gone devs themselves:

https://www.eurogamer.net/days-gone-director-pitched-open-world-resistance

https://icon-era.com/threads/days-gone-2-not-being-made-was-a-bend-studio-decision.13966/

The actual video with David Jaffe is where the information is from. I believe there is speculation on his end that Sony would've rejected it anyways, but that's just speculation.

Anyways, to your other point: no one is saying in confidence that BP chose a live service title; just that without actual information on how these decisions were made you can't confidently say that Sony forced it on them either. Perhaps Sony was making live service development more lucrative with higher budget ceilings for them, and so certain teams like London Studios jump at that chance. But we're all just speculating at who made these decisions and why. We only need to go back to the Days Gone 2 example to see how everyone is quick to say one thing, when the truth is far different.

All we know for sure is that BP released their last game in 2020 (the same year as Tsushima). Then seemingly became a support studio for 2-3 years without working on another game. Then they went into live service for 2-3 years. Then worked on nothing for another year. At some point Sony should've stepped in (which is maybe what they did getting BP supporting SMS), but maybe BP wanted to move on from remakes. We saw this happen with the TLoU1 remake which was originally a Sony Visual Arts project - someone pitched the idea that this support studio would be able to move into self-developed titles beginning with a remake, and that didn't work out at all resulting in ND having to take over the project.