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Forums - Sony - Sony: We Should Probably Develop Less Games

happydolphin on 13 February 2012
pezus said:

I see what they want to do, but I'm just not sure your idea of how they should do it is the right one.

Pezus, think about it. If they can save the dev costs (Say a 20Mil$ investment) on making a game that makes little profit (say 20Mil$ just for the sake of it, k). Take that 20Mil, and boost UC sales to GT levels (10Mil). That's 5Mil units pushed (if it's even doable, idk). 5Mil times 20$/unit, so 100Mil$ profit for 20Mil$ invested, rather than 20 Mil$ for 20Mil$ with Resistance.

It's just a matter of leverage bud. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just telling you how I see it. If I were running Sony, I would push the hell out of Uncharted. Movie adds, Maxim adds. Like they used to do back in the PS1 days. Now, they're all over the damn place!



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happydolphin on 13 February 2012
pezus said:
RolStoppable said:

I agree with this.

The easiest way to find out which games Sony should get rid of would be posting a list of all the games they released last year. No Sony fan should have a problem to pick ten games, because there really is a lot of disposable stuff.

And Nintendo should drop Zelda too because it doesn't have much "potential" anymore?

Don't give him any ideas :P



happydolphin on 13 February 2012
pezus said:
happydolphin said:
pezus said:

I see what they want to do, but I'm just not sure your idea of how they should do it is the right one. 

Pezus, think about it. If they can save the dev costs for making a games that makes little profit (say 20Mil$ just for the sake of it, k). Take that 20Mil, and boost UC sales to GT levels (10Mil). That's 5Mil units pushed (if it's even doable, idk). 5Mil times 20$/unit, so 100Mil$ profit for 20Mil$ invested, rather than 20 Mil$ for 20Mil$ with Resistance.

It's just a matter of leverage bud. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just telling you how I see it. If I were running Sony, I would push the hell out of Uncharted. Movie adds, Maxim adds. Like they used to do back in the PS1 days. Now, they're all over the damn place!

What makes you think just injecting a bit more money into Uncharted would suddenly project it into godlike status? Would 20m even be enough for that? MS spend much more than that on Halo advertising afaik.

I am not sure... I don't know how much MS spent in advertising Halo. If it's 100Mil, then it's lost per the sample calculation I offerd. idk man.



happydolphin on 13 February 2012
RolStoppable said:

It means that you don't know the entirety of Sony's games. There's a lot of fat that can be trimmed, because the output of certain studios has never been particularly good from a quality perspective and neither did these games sell (or they did at one point, but not anymore). You may not know about these games, because they usually don't show up on the list of hyped exclusives. But Sony still has to pay the people who makes these games. Getting rid of them would free up a lot of money that could be spent elsewhere.

For interest, we'd like to hear some examples.



happydolphin on 13 February 2012
RolStoppable said:
happydolphin said:

For interest, we'd like to hear some examples.

From the wikipedia list:

2011

 

2011

 

I am surprised by the length of this list though. I thought Sony published more games, maybe there's a few missing. Nevertheless, picking out ten games that aren't needed should be doable.

More or less here.



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MARCUSDJACKSON on 13 February 2012
happydolphin said:

MARCUSDJACKSON said:

 loss leading? explain plz.

unfortunately Sony doesn't have that AAA title and will likely continue to struggle to find their next big(LBP,GT5,UC) ip. 

Sony has great partners but not strong ones, so if Sony can lock in a strong indie dev. somewhere in the future, then i can see a big tripleA title coming from Sony.

junk? you must mean ip that don't sell, cause junk is far from an accurate word to use in describing the ip in question.  

loss leading, i.e. losing money for every platform sold. For playstation, it's playstation 3 and Vita sold at a loss for a prolongued period post launch. PS3? yes, Vita? not so much. the hardware it self? yes, but that should be made back by the memory cards, and because Vita games have such low dev. cost, whats left should help cover the cost of the Vita.

Yes they do have that AAA title you're looking for, it's called Uncharted, and The Last of Us, The Last Guardian, InFamous, LBP, GoW. Gran Turismo is already a mega franchise! In other words, save those 20Million per weak game, and invest in marketing and pushing those for which you can leverage each another good 3Mil!

no, i'm more so looking into the future v what we currently call established ip ei UC. some would argue InFamous(becuase it under 2m sold last i checked), The Last of us(because it is unproven and has yet to be released) and The last guardian are tripleA titles, but what i think is another story. 

i agree with the saving/marketing part, but i'm not so sure, spending extra on marketing would help Sony leading to the end of this gen., but marketing would have helped if they weren't playing catchup at the begining of this gen.

Indie dev? Are you kidding me? Fuck that. They need to strengthen ND, Media Molecule, Santa Monica and Insomniac, as well as Team Ico, and they need to push the big boys into massive success, via marketing and non-dilution of flagship software.

i was refuring to Epic, or Crytec, which i would assume you would call independant and not indie but in that assumtion my point is clear. yes Sony has a great source of first party studios, but many would argue what ever they make won't do what seems to be the current standard of games sales to our particular group here on vgc.

come on. you've been in the threads, you know what i'm talking about, and you just happen to be debating some of those same people that make and defend those comments/arguements (it seems) to the death, and that will be one thing that never changes about the gaming related conversations we have here on vgc or anywhere. we will continue to talk in circles for as long as the console wars rage on, and that's one reason i stopped with my original post on the front page, as it was reasonable so it didn't get quoted lol. 

i'm really here for the conversation and i'm bored.

Sorry if I tingle your fannybone. I called them junk because it doesn't appeal to me, and it sure as hell doesn't seem to appeal to the public either, if we go by sales. Listen, MS owns the nitty gritty genre, Sony can't compete there. It's like butting your head to make a massive selling football game when Madden has been king for years. Unless you can topple the mountain king, stop trying! They rather need to differentiate themselves more than try to fend MS on their winning turf. KZ, Socom and Resistance need to stop if Sony is to stay in the game imho.

fannybone! you know me better then that i hope? dosn't appeal to the public? you mean masses right? Sony can compete there, the problem is finding the right shooter(or whatever) that can penetrate the market to topple the king v just trying. yes, they've got UC, LBP, GT5, but what MS has is system sellers, and what Sony has doesn't truely equate to that. yes Sonys games move hardware, but they don't move systems. i hope you got what i did there.

i guess in the end it goes back to marketing.





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Jay520 on 13 February 2012

Haven't read the last 50 posts, but I was wondering what some of you guys thought about my theory that Sony's relatively low sales is an effect of lack of quality/appeal rather than lack of marketing. Here's a post from earlier in the thread that I want some opinions on (besides those from Sales2099 of course)

Advertising plays a large part in the low sales of many PS3 exclusives, but from what I've experienced through research and a lot of anecdotal evidence, the main reason behind the low sales of some PS3 games is a lack of good combination of quality and appeal. Games like Uncharted and God of War are high quality and appeal to the masses, hence, the higher sales.

But then you have a game like say Killzone which is a well-made, quality game. But it lacks appeal. It's not very accessible. You try to get some new people to play it and the aiming feels clunky and slow. It's not necessarily low quality (well it is to some people), but it's not appealing. It's too hardcore to be largely successful on the PS3. (There are other things that hinder sales also like lack of competitive splitscreen).

Or you take something like LBP, which is clever and innovating, & is certainly considered quality by a lot of people. But most PS3 fans won't even give it a chance because they think it's too kiddy. LBP problem isn't necessarily a lack of quality, it's a lack of appeal. And in some cases, it's a lack of quality due to most of the levels being mediocre and/or short.

Or you take a game like SOCOM 4 which is just low quality.

And in some cases, there are games like Infamous & Resistance which are good, but aren't considered top tier of their respective genres.

At least that's from what I experienced. Most accessible, non-niche, high-quality games do sell well. Sony can make a lot more blockbusters. They just gotta make them the right way. Uncharted & God of War are great examples of high quality AND appealing titles. You could market most of the other aforementioned games (Killzone, LBP, InFamous), but they probably wouldn't see any drastic benefit due to lack of quality/appeal. Marketing isn't the factor crippling PS3 exclusive sales in my opinion.



Jay520 on 13 February 2012
Jay520 said:
Haven't read the last 50 posts, but I was wondering what some of you guys thought about my theory that Sony's relatively low sales is an effect of lack of quality/appeal rather than lack of marketing. Here's a post from earlier in the thread that I want some opinions on (besides those from Sales2099 of course)

Advertising plays a large part in the low sales of many PS3 exclusives, but from what I've experienced through research and a lot of anecdotal evidence, the main reason behind the low sales of some PS3 games is a lack of good combination of quality and appeal. Games like Uncharted and God of War are high quality and appeal to the masses, hence, the higher sales.

But then you have a game like say Killzone which is a well-made, quality game. But it lacks appeal. It's not very accessible. You try to get some new people to play it and the aiming feels clunky and slow. It's not necessarily low quality (well it is to some people), but it's not appealing. It's too hardcore to be largely successful on the PS3. (There are other things that hinder sales also like lack of competitive splitscreen).

Or you take something like LBP, which is clever and innovating, & is certainly considered quality by a lot of people. But most PS3 fans won't even give it a chance because they think it's too kiddy. LBP problem isn't necessarily a lack of quality, it's a lack of appeal. And in some cases, it's a lack of quality due to most of the levels being mediocre and/or short.

Or you take a game like SOCOM 4 which is just low quality.

And in some cases, there are games like Infamous & Resistance which are good, but aren't considered top tier of their respective genres.

At least that's from what I experienced. Most accessible, non-niche, high-quality games do sell well. Sony can make a lot more blockbusters. They just gotta make them the right way. Uncharted & God of War are great examples of high quality AND appealing titles. You could market most of the other aforementioned games (Killzone, LBP, InFamous), but they probably wouldn't see any drastic benefit due to lack of quality/appeal. Marketing isn't the factor crippling PS3 exclusive sales in my opinion.


I want a reply before I go to bed, dammit! I will not be ignored!

HappySqurriel on 13 February 2012
Jay520 said:
Jay520 said:
Haven't read the last 50 posts, but I was wondering what some of you guys thought about my theory that Sony's relatively low sales is an effect of lack of quality/appeal rather than lack of marketing. Here's a post from earlier in the thread that I want some opinions on (besides those from Sales2099 of course)

Advertising plays a large part in the low sales of many PS3 exclusives, but from what I've experienced through research and a lot of anecdotal evidence, the main reason behind the low sales of some PS3 games is a lack of good combination of quality and appeal. Games like Uncharted and God of War are high quality and appeal to the masses, hence, the higher sales.

But then you have a game like say Killzone which is a well-made, quality game. But it lacks appeal. It's not very accessible. You try to get some new people to play it and the aiming feels clunky and slow. It's not necessarily low quality (well it is to some people), but it's not appealing. It's too hardcore to be largely successful on the PS3. (There are other things that hinder sales also like lack of competitive splitscreen).

Or you take something like LBP, which is clever and innovating, & is certainly considered quality by a lot of people. But most PS3 fans won't even give it a chance because they think it's too kiddy. LBP problem isn't necessarily a lack of quality, it's a lack of appeal. And in some cases, it's a lack of quality due to most of the levels being mediocre and/or short.

Or you take a game like SOCOM 4 which is just low quality.

And in some cases, there are games like Infamous & Resistance which are good, but aren't considered top tier of their respective genres.

At least that's from what I experienced. Most accessible, non-niche, high-quality games do sell well. Sony can make a lot more blockbusters. They just gotta make them the right way. Uncharted & God of War are great examples of high quality AND appealing titles. You could market most of the other aforementioned games (Killzone, LBP, InFamous), but they probably wouldn't see any drastic benefit due to lack of quality/appeal. Marketing isn't the factor crippling PS3 exclusive sales in my opinion.


I want a reply before I go to bed, dammit! I will not be ignored!

I don't disagree with you, but I also think that a lot of Sony's problem is that many of their games don't stand out in the market because they're so similar to so many third party games that are also available for their systems ... It is (essentially) the same problem that a lot of third party publishers have, and they chase success rather than lead.



Jay520 on 13 February 2012
HappySqurriel said:

I don't disagree with you, but I also think that a lot of Sony's problem is that many of their games don't stand out in the market because they're so similar to so many third party games that are also available for their systems ... It is (essentially) the same problem that a lot of third party publishers have, and they chase success rather than lead.



I would agree with you, but games like Uncharted & God of War aren't exactly unique and they've seen big success (relative to other Sony IPs).