Kresnik said:
About 6 months ago, I'd have agreed with everything you posted here. I wanted Sony to buy more first party studios, create more great experiences, have more franchises on the go etc. etc.
I don't feel that way anymore though.
The thing Sony needs to start doing is saving money. Buying a studio and having to pay the wages for say, 100 new employees, isn't going to save them any money. They can't even afford to keep fantastic studios like Liverpool open, so I don't think they need to be buying any more.
The way they're doing things now, imo, is a much better strategy. Have their core studios (Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Media Molecule, Guerrilla) create the big IP's (Uncharted, God of War, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone). They hand off the development duties to smaller, third-party studios (Ready at Dawn for God of War, Tarsier for LittleBigPlanet).
This way, they get the best of both worlds. They get profit from the game & pay the costs, but aren't investing huge amounts of money in a studio they can't sustain. And the smaller studios get sustained work from Sony if they do a good job with their IP's (i.e. Ready at Dawn, High Impact).
I'm also enjoying how Sony take the IP's from their bigger devs and hand them to the smaller devs for the portable games too. Like Studio Cambridge did LBP PSP, Sony Bend did Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Which makes me all the more pissed off that Studio Liverpool shut. Just give them fucking Gran Turismo Vita, Motorstorm Vita, Infamous Vita. ANYTHING like that. Fools.
edit: Although, one thing I think they DEFINITELY need to do is open a new studio in Japan. Japan Studio isn't enough on it's own (Polyphony don't really count since they're just GT machines). I think opening a dedicated JRPG studio over there would be an excellent step.
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If those small developers prove to be great game makers, other Big company could buy them, and Sony would have 1 less viable developer in order to earn lots of cash.
On the other hand, If the games are a success, they will easily have enough money to pay all the people in the company they bought. They closed Zipper interactive, and Liverpool studios because their games were not a success in order to make their studios rentable. Is the sad but real truth. And that is why Sony bought Sucker Punch last year, it looks like Infamous 2 is doing a lot better than what it says here on vgchartz. Also, I can bet that if Sanzaru games studio, the ones doing the new Sly cooper, makes a great game and is a success financially, Sony will buy them.
SCE is giant searching for worthy studios to assimilate them under the Sony umbrella. If in the upcomming months RAD is not owned by Sony I would say that is because RAD wants to be independent, and not because Sony did not try do buy them.
So, even if Sony is not doing so great in the electronic devices department, they must continue to invest in their gaming services, just like they did when they bough GAIKAI. They need to have more and better assets, that can guarantee in some ways the best gaming experience possible. That is also a reason why they invested so much money in their first party studios this generation. At first people was like, "Sony is loosing their exclusives (3rd party), and releasing some new 1st party games; meh I dont give a damn", now people are like "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD! Sony exclusives are the best!" and those are now 1st party.
Sony right now has really good AAA studios working on PS3 games like Media Molecule, Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, Games Guerrilla, Sucker Punch. But in the VITA department they only have 1, Bend Studios, and Japan studios which has not doing much things lately. Most of the Big studios wont make Vita games, unless they grow a lot and get more employees. Sony needs more Vita studios, that is why I said they need to buy RAD, and High impact games. Both studios are great, so I bet they have great ideas for new Vita IPs, and also they can develop games based on IPs already established. And if Sony gets more Vita studios, Bend could finally develop another SYPHON FILTER GAME!!! Even though, they are right now the Premium studio for portables, they deserve the chance to create a game for consoles; Sony should let them trascend into a higher plain of existance lol XD. Syphon Filter for the PS3 with uncharted3 graphics would guarantee multiple nergasm :D
And yeah, Sony needs to have more japanese studios under their umbrella. Japanese gamers dont give a damn about western created IPs :( so if they want to sell games and consoles like crazy there, they need some good japanese studios too.
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