Sony Computer Entertainment has been known to publish quite a few games that haven’t exactly been financial breakthroughs, yet they don’t seem to be about to give up on that kind of experience, as explained by Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida during his panel at Gamelab in Barcelona a few days ago.
"When you look at what we do, managing studios and managing funds, that’s essentially what we do: to look for talent and support talent, because at the end of the day it’s the people that create amazing things, and it’s the creative team that makes breakthroughs.
It’s a hit-driven business. We look at our financial results of the titles, and probably three or four out of ten make money, and maybe one or two make all the money to cover the cost of the others titles. So we have to be able to maintain that hit ratio at a certain level to be able to continue in the business, so we always try to find out and support and help grow the talent. That’s the most important work that I believe myself and some of my management team at worldwide studios are doing.
There are lots of opportunities. There are so many projects that we want to do, and especially there are so many different techs, platforms and or devices that we can release games, but we have finite resources and budget, we have to make selection choices.
One of the things we always come back to when we’re looking at five potential projects is that we choose the team we believe in when we start working with a new team. That’s really really important."
Personally, I’m quite happy to see that Sony is willing keep supporting talented developers whether their games are financial hits or not, especially considering that titles that may not seem like enormous moneymakers at first sight can actually turn out to be runaway hits.
If I was a shareholder, maybe I’d have a different opinion on this. Thank Goodness I’m not.
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