If anyone is interested, David Jaffe is doing a livestream I guess tomorrow and a game director at Bend is set to be on to discuss PlayStation and the article.
| Shaunodon said: The success of those titles is moreso linked to the success of the system. All the people that bought in to the mass hype campaign during the early years of the PS4 needed something to play eventually. It's much like how the unprecendented success of new series entries for Nintendo on the Switch are closely tied to the booming success of the system. Even Pokemon Sw/Sh which had minimal effort put in and I'm assuming a reasonably low budget to match, is still going to end up as one of the best-selling games in the series. Absurd productions costs are just a by-product of the current industry 'standards', mostly for the higher-specced systems, but hardly any of that equates to higher quality titles outside of technical aspects. Almost all the highest-selling exclusives for the current and likely next generation will be Nintendo titles and their production costs are nowhere as absurd. Sony's philosophy for console manufacturing and game distribution has helped mold the current market. If anything, they've recently been leading the charge in making the industry more forumlated to a specific standard, because that's exactly what they've done with their recent console designs and associated services. Everything about their transition from the PS4 to PS5 reeks of it. They're likely already planning out the ideal time to move on to PS6 while watching for what little things they could've done better this time, but there won't be any thoughts of great risk or innovation until they're absolutely forced to. When Gamepass becomes a serious enough threat to challenge their market share, that's when they'll consider rolling out a truly competetive service to match becaue that's how they operate. |
You'd think so, but:
For example:
Best selling Uncharted on PS3- 7.8% of PS3 owners own.
Best Selling Uncharted on PS4- 12% of PS4 owners own.
Best selling GOW on PS3- 5.5% of PS3 owners own.
Best selling GOW on PS4- 17.3% of PS4 owners own.
The reality is, outside of pure hardware growth the software is also showing massive growth. In terms of critical success, they've also now been consistently hitting GOTY contenders year after year.
GOW PS4 has sold almost half the entire series total, on just one platform.
Sony establishing themselves as a premier publisher, releasing some of the most polished and best games in the industry likely played a much bigger role than the notion of some unquantifiable hype campaign created by a software drought.
The PS5 has an unusual design, nothing like the PS4 when they went for off the shelf PC parts and played it very safe in the wake of the PS3 fiasco. It's far more customized and alien that the design of the Xbox. They invested in SSD and controller tech over raw power, and despite lower specs it seems to be punching above its weight. They take plenty of hardware, software and service risks.
If they waited until Gamepass 'challenged' their market share without adjusting their services, it would be too late.
Of course they're planning their move to the PS6, we know they begin R&D immediately after each console launches. If Sony are good at one thing, it's timing.
Dallinor said:
You'd think so, but: For example: Best selling Uncharted on PS3- 7.8% of PS3 owners own. Best Selling Uncharted on PS4- 12% of PS4 owners own. Best selling GOW on PS3- 5.5% of PS3 owners own. Best selling GOW on PS4- 17.3% of PS4 owners own. The reality is, outside of pure hardware growth the software is also showing massive growth. In terms of critical success, they've also now been consistently hitting GOTY contenders year after year. GOW PS4 has sold almost half the entire series total, on just one platform. Sony establishing themselves as a premier publisher, releasing some of the most polished and best games in the industry likely played a much bigger role than the notion of some unquantifiable hype campaign created by a software drought. The PS5 has an unusual design, nothing like the PS4 when they went for off the shelf PC parts and played it very safe in the wake of the PS3 fiasco. It's far more customized and alien that the design of the Xbox. They invested in SSD and controller tech over raw power, and despite lower specs it seems to be punching above its weight. They take plenty of hardware, software and service risks. If they waited until Gamepass 'challenged' their market share without adjusting their services, it would be too late. Of course they're planning their move to the PS6, we know they begin R&D immediately after each console launches. If Sony are good at one thing, it's timing. |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons will have outsold every other AC game within the year, yet I don't believe it's considered the clear-cut best game in the series.
That software drought, particularly of Sony published exclusives is helping contribute to those high concentration of sales in fewer games. PS3 had two original GoW games plus two remastered collections while PS4 has managed half. That plus the change of direction and gameplay for GoW on PS4 helped it appeal more to the mainstream, being more of a 'blockbuster' title.
Again though, as you've said there were less exclusives being put out compared to PS3, but with more systems being sold and more owners they would naturally be more highly concentrated; Uncharted 4 never had to compete with two other original games in the series potentially cannibalising sales. And without as much variety or choice for owners in general, they would naturally have to flock to the games that are most recommended.
But that lack of choice and variety for personal preferences is why so many people are becoming vocal about the direction of PS lately. Especially when many of their blockbuster titles feel derivative.
| Shaunodon said: Animal Crossing: New Horizons will have outsold every other AC game within the year, yet I don't believe it's considered the clear-cut best game in the series. That software drought, particularly of Sony published exclusives is helping contribute to those high concentration of sales in fewer games. PS3 had two original GoW games plus two remastered collections while PS4 has managed half. That plus the change of direction and gameplay for GoW on PS4 helped it appeal more to the mainstream, being more of a 'blockbuster' title. Again though, as you've said there were less exclusives being put out compared to PS3, but with more systems being sold and more owners they would naturally be more highly concentrated; Uncharted 4 never had to compete with two other original games in the series potentially cannibalising sales. And without as much variety or choice for owners in general, they would naturally have to flock to the games that are most recommended. But that lack of choice and variety for personal preferences is why so many people are becoming vocal about the direction of PS lately. Especially when many of their blockbuster titles feel derivative. |
Who are these vocal people, really? Some xbox fans? lol
I think SONY took a page out of Nintendo's book and realised that cheapening new IPs with so many entries per gen is a losing strategy compared to spacing them out releases and polishing each entry to perfection. That way, you keep the IP fresh and establish it as a system seller, extend the hype to next gen, and most importantly, give the developers a breather to reflect and give new IPs a chance. Is anyone complaining they got Ghost of Tsushima instead of infamous 4 & 5? Doubt it.
Last edited by LurkerJ - on 11 April 2021
| Shaunodon said: Animal Crossing: New Horizons will have outsold every other AC game within the year, yet I don't believe it's considered the clear-cut best game in the series. That software drought, particularly of Sony published exclusives is helping contribute to those high concentration of sales in fewer games. PS3 had two original GoW games plus two remastered collections while PS4 has managed half. That plus the change of direction and gameplay for GoW on PS4 helped it appeal more to the mainstream, being more of a 'blockbuster' title. Again though, as you've said there were less exclusives being put out compared to PS3, but with more systems being sold and more owners they would naturally be more highly concentrated; Uncharted 4 never had to compete with two other original games in the series potentially cannibalising sales. And without as much variety or choice for owners in general, they would naturally have to flock to the games that are most recommended. But that lack of choice and variety for personal preferences is why so many people are becoming vocal about the direction of PS lately. Especially when many of their blockbuster titles feel derivative. |
Ok.
Despite their being less games, Sony as a publisher has now sold more games than ever before. They account for a higher percentage of total software sold on their own platform, despite the system selling more in a total software to hardware ratio.
This is regardless of total hardware, total software and number of releases.
Every single metric points to one very simple undisputable thing: They are selling more games.
It cannot be any clearer.
Dallinor said:
Ok. Despite their being less games, Sony as a publisher has now sold more games than ever before. They account for a higher percentage of total software sold on their own platform, despite the system selling more in a total software to hardware ratio. This is regardless of total hardware, total software and number of releases. Every single metric points to one very simple undisputable thing: They are selling more games. It cannot be any clearer. |
I'm not denying that they're selling more games overall, but you can't just draw a direct correlation to that as meaning the titles are all somehow better (or of 'higher standard') than ever. I don't hear from many Uncharted fans that 4 is their favourite entry; Last of Us 2 is so controversial it's practically the Voldemort of gaming discussion; Horizon was a new IP and probably would've had great success on whatever system it debuted; Spider-Man was the surprisingly very fun darling of 2018, but I don't think it's considered an all-time classic; Detroit is another David Cage game; Bloodborne is another Souls game and there's so few titles overall I already can't think of another good example. God of War is maybe the one that people would argue truly broke new ground for the series, but many would also argue it's not a true God of War game either.
The more formulaic output of these games along with the higher budgets certainly contributes to that sales growth but it's only one aspect.
Their lean towards favouring these blockbuster titles, simply because for now it's helping drive their overall sales, doesn't always equate to higher quality experiences or satisfaction for the consumers. Especially when other potential projects and IPs are having to be sacrificed for it. And was the main subject of this thread not about the general fatigue people are beginning to feel over that?
Last edited by Shaunodon - on 10 April 2021
shikamaru317 said:
The thing is that the AAA budget doesn't really need to be as high as it is. These $100m+ AAA's are starting to feel more like a brand new quadruple A tier to me, with games like Sony releases and Rockstar's RDR2 far too big and high budget for their own good sometimes. In this day and age you can still make a good AAA game for less than $50m if you budget well, for instance Remedy released Control with a $41m budget and it sold 2m+ copies, made a profit, and got great reviews (85 meta on PC, was nominated for many awards). At this point I'd say that 3 or 4 of Sony's studios are more AAAA than AAA, Naughty Dog, Guerilla, and Sony Santa Monica in particular seem more AAAA than AAA, with Sucker Punch being a bit of a question mark, on the one hand they are the 2nd smallest out of Sony's big studios with only around 162 devs (only Bend is smaller), but on the other it took them 6 years to develop Ghost of Tsushima, which is definitely more of a AAAA dev cycle than AAA. I personally think that Sony should try and refocus some of those studios into multi-team AAA instead of single team AAAA, allowing for faster dev cycles, lower budgets per title, and less creative risk. |
Side note. I lowkey feel those A4 titles are made for the sake of creating an illusion of high quality status that won't allow mid-sized studios to keep releasing competitive blockbusters
If Sony plus few other studios manage to distance themselves than everything else in the industry they will create some kind of oligopoly
That's how movie blockbuster industry mostly comes down to Disney, Waner and Universal (and Fox before it was bought by Disney) with Paramount, Sony and Lionsgate being the second tier blockbuster producers
Game industry is less likely to archieve such level of dominance because theaters are limited in space and number, so a few blockbuster will always jeopardize the box office performance of smaller budget movies relegated to less screens in theaters, while in gaming you can purchase whatever you want, two games released in the same week are in a competition but barely.
Hope this plan to not work, diversity and competition always brings innovation and quality, I'm sure this will not be the case anymore if only the same studios release the large bulk of blockbusters
shikamaru317 said:
Oh, you were referring to the OP, I thought you were talking about the article, since you mentioned Jason needing to be willing to fund smaller projects with his own money. I'm not really sure about the PS3 era, but I wouldn't have thought that they would have lost that much money on games. They had quite a few that were selling like 3m+ that gen, so unless the budgets were truly outrages you would think they would have been making money. Forgot about Knack 2 honestly, but yeah, that probably lost money, only reason the first sold well enough to get a sequel greenlit was because it got boosted by the launch title effect. |
The 60% of the games losing money, 20% not making or losing and only 20% bringing money to sustain the business was direct from Yoshida Shuhei if I`m not wrong. So basically Sony on PS4 saw what worked on their PS3 efforts and focused on that (from business perspective that is totally right) and that is how those studios gone from 3M to 15M seller in a gen, some with sequels and others with new IPs.
And on Jason himself you can be sure if he was the boss at any company he wouldn`t be pouring money on losing project, and at any company even if CEO would want that (very hard) shareholders wouldn`t allow. Sony isn`t a small company that can be done by the whim of the CEO. So the clickbaity headlines about developers being pissed and all that is just him doing poor journalism.
LudicrousSpeed said:
Sony during PS3 era: I might have missed some smaller network titles or extremely niche stuff Sony published, but it's a very large difference. And many of the things they green lit on PS3 are what set it apart from the 360, especially towards the end of the gen when MS was focusing on Kinect and Halo/Gears/Forza with some small XBLA stuff thrown in, are the types of games Sony apparently doesn't believe in any more. I buy what Schreier is saying because we already saw Sony pull away from variety and risk during the PS4 era, as the numbers above prove. They focused more on big titles, with much fewer exceptions than the PS3 era. And they relied much more on third party deals than PS3 era with PS4, and by all accounts will rely on them even more during PS5's life time. Bear in mind those new IP numbers don't really put any context, but I'd argue the PS3 number is not only much higher (over double) but they were much larger new IP's. Stuff like Last of Us, Uncharted, Demon's Souls, Motorstorm, Resistance, Infamous, etc etc, hold more weight than a few new PSVR IP's and Horizon imho. |
The proportion seem very close, almost half of the titles were new IP both in PS3 and PS4, the total quantity reduced but that is easily explained by development time taking longer each gen.
duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363
Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994
Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."
I think the title is wrong about sonys obsession with blockbusters. It's consumers obsession with blockbusters. Why do people talk about specs of their consoles, TFs, RAM, processor speeds etc. Midtier games are great. I play them all the time. Right now is a great example for me where I finished Rage 2 and then Darksiders Genesis and then I'll be playing Returnal.
People want big blockbusters to validate their big shiny TVs and consoles.
More so than that, the polish and spectacle created by these huge games is the ultimate getaway from reality. It's glorious visually and through audio. It's a portal that takes us away from our 9-6 jobs, bills and responsibilities and takes us on a wild ride. I'm not saying smaller games cannot or do not do this, but not at this level, not for most.
The best example I can give if this is Bollywood. Their films are shit. Dialogue is mostly shit. Everything is a musical and it's the same heroes rescuing the same girls across a love story mixed in with action or comedy etc. I asked a relative who is rich and whos family friends own a huge distribution company for Hindi film and music. They said people want a getaway. They are poor and have miserable lives. These films provide a fantasy for them for that brief moment in time.
I think we are no different. We may not be poor but we live shit lives in the sense we will work out 9-6 until we die. Most consumers work to live with little to no savings with mad mortgages etc. This is their getaway, and these big games Sony makes is there perfect getaway for them.
The article lacks any clarity to Sony's plans, it lacks any data regarding psychology or understanding off business, it lacks any data per understanding of what's being made regardless of these changes and what's been released.
It is a hit piece with Playstation at it's centre. There is no other side or maybe it's literally assuming the worst and that everyone at Playstation is a moron.
From a game journalist who won't speak about Gamepass being in the huge billion dollar loss making business (these businesses generally loses billions for years before getting into black if ever).
Still think Japan studio should have stayed open. With all the anime streaming services they own, releasing a handheld with the anime service as part of PSNow or a version of it on there would have brought Japan back to Sony. This is assuming they have no division / team working on that .
Edit: read back and corrected the shit ton of swipe errors.
Last edited by Fei-Hung - on 12 April 2021
| LurkerJ said: Who are these vocal people, really? Some xbox fans? lol I think SONY took a page out of Nintendo's book and realised that cheapening new IPs with so many entries per gen is a losing strategy compared to spacing them out releases and polishing each entry to perfection. That way, you keep the IP fresh and establish it as a system seller, extend the hype to next gen, and most importantly, give the developers a breather to reflect and give new IPs a chance. Is anyone complaining they got Ghost of Tsushima instead of infamous 4 & 5? Doubt it. |
While I agree this is probably a better tactic overall, but the amount of IP's they've developed is practically the same while entries are cut in half. Last generation we saw entries for Uncharted (3), Infamous (2), The Last of Us (1), Resistance (3), Killzone (2), Ratchet and Clank (6), Twisted Metal (1), LittleBigPlanet (4), Socom (2), Motorstorm (3), Playstation Battle Royal (1), God of War (2), Sly Cooper (1), Hawk (2), White Knight Chronicles (2), Gran Turismo (2), Siren (1), Modnation Racers (1), Demon Souls (1)
Total games = 40
New IP's = 10
PS4 however received LittleBigPlanet (2), Uncharted (2), The Last of Us (1), Infamous (1), Ghost of Tsushima (1), Spiderman (2), Horizon Zero Dawn (2), The Order (1), Knack (2), God of War (1), Killzone (1), Driveclub (1), Gran Turismo (1), Ratchet and Clank (1), Gravity Rush (1), Last Guardian (1), Days Gone (1), Dreams (1).
Total games = 23
New IP's = 10
Anyway, though I don't need three or four entries in every franchise, bringing back older franchises for an entry or two (Resistance, Twisted Metal, Jak and Daxter, etc) would be a great way to fill out the total number of games. They are already established IP's, so less risk, and it increases the amount of output.
*List only includes owned IP's that are new entries, not remasters.
***There is a much better consolidated list of all IP's that were created and published by Sony. My list is pretty much defunct at this point and isn't substantial enough to show the difference.
Last edited by Doctor_MG - on 13 April 2021
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