Honestly I find this review to be fairly credible, and I am perhaps the only person in this thread who is going to offer up a unbiased point of view. Some of you believe it, or at least the gist of what is being said, because it conforms to your own beliefs. Some of you discount it as pure bullshit, because the reviewer is saying something you don't want to hear. Both sides are assuredly wrong in their approach. When trying to judge whether something is genuine. You first need to determine if it is in fact plausible.
When we look at this review from a position of what this person should be privy to. What they shouldn't be privy to, and what their sphere of responsibilities ought to be. There is nothing to indicate falsehood, and a great deal that points to it being authentic. The reviewer claims to have been in management at Foster City studios. They are a co development studio. That means they work with second and third party studios. Their primary focus should be on relationships with outside entities.
The gist of the review is based on the perspective of a salesman. This is obviously someone who has to sell third parties on developing for Sony's platforms. This person is in a position of first hand experience. Every grievance that was listed is what someone in such a position might say. Especially considering the fact that reality is in fact bearing out what they have said. When we look at Sony's co development projects over the past few years one thing becomes apparent.
Sony has lost the loyalty of high caliber studios, and has started to use studios of a substantially lower caliber. This isn't even a matter for debate. Sony has lost the brand loyalty of Insomniac. A developer with a relationship that spanned fifteen years, and a number of important franchises. A number of smaller studios who were once loyal have also moved on to developing titles for multiple platforms, or other platforms entirely.
Losing Insomniacs loyalty is pretty bad, and losing smaller loyal developers is bad. Allowing a sub standard studio like Nihilistic to work on two system selling franchises is just fucking awful, and the hallmark of incompetent upper management. They weren't even a unknown commodity. They had a track record that showed that they released very low quality games. It of coarse begs the question. Were they the best that Sony could get, or was someone unwilling to put the needed resources into ensuring these titles were of the quality that they needed to be.
Either way it goes it bares out the reviewers statements. If the upper management isn't allocating the necessary resources to fund earnest high quality development of such franchises. It points to poor resource management, or poorly focused efforts. If Sony on the other hand has severely damaged its relationship with developers. Then that would explain why nobody with a better pedigree was even willing to fight for the rights to develop these flagship titles. The reviewer has said incompetent management, and a bad relationships are the problem, and you know what I think that is exactly what is happening.
The rest of the commentary reads like a regurgitation of what outside developers have probably told them. Look we know what the industries stand is on these devices. They don't like them, they don't want to develop for them, and they don't want to place the majority of their focus on casual products. It isn't that there isn't a market, but it is small, and relatively unprofitable. Sony's partners are obviously bailing, because the brand is becoming a toxic environment, and this review reads like it is coming out of someone that was forced to stand at ground zero.
Look what I am saying is that it is probably genuine. Not only is it logical for a person in this position to know these things, or to present these specific viewpoints. Internet hoaxers typically don't bury their work. That would defeat the purpose. If someone wanted to plant such a story they would have gone to a loud mouthed blogger, or thrown it to a site desperate enough for hits that they would move heaven and earth to sell people on the story. No it was found on a small job search site. It was so out of the way that it took five weeks to get noticed, and the number of hoaxers in the world that are patient enough to wait five weeks to point out their handiwork has to be very small indeed, and they most certainly wouldn't unwrap it during a major holiday period. Why produce a spectacle when the greatest majority of people won't be online to see your work.
