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Forums - Sony Discussion - PlayStation Nation |OT| Playing Astro Bot on the Horizon Until Dawn

G2ThaUNiT 2 hours ago
epicurean said:
G2ThaUNiT said:

Yeah I would say 2 years out sounds about right. 5-6 years is pretty standard now. In Naughty Dog's case, it was a very sizeable team that was working on Factions 2 that worked on it for years, but now that it's cancelled, they're retooling the team to work on something else. Not to mention, Naughty Dog also worked on TLOU 1 and 2 for PS5, which of course took resources to make.

In Bend's case, I expect to see what they're working on next year. Timing about lines up for a AAA open world game that they're supposedly working on, seemingly with a live service aspect to it.

But these games now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make and thousands of people working on them. We are the point where a single studio could make only 1 new AAA game in a single console generation. It's mainly why Sony is so reliant on all these remasters. To fill in the gaps. That's also a big reason why implementing AI into development is something many companies are wanting to take advantage of to shorten dev times and budgets.

This was always going to be the end result in the chase of photorealism and bigger and better. That's also why I REALLY want Astro Bot to succeed. A small team overall with a modest budget and took only 3 years to make. 

So, is it mainly the graphics that caused the more than doubling it takes to put out new games? They also all seem to have larger teams, and I was under the impression Naughty Dog and other large studios were working on more than 1 game at a time (Insomniac has done Miles/Ratchet/SM2 all in the first 4 years of the PS5). I feel like something went very, very wrong. Probably the push for live service in all the studios. 

I dont think people in the PS3 era were saying "We need more complex games!" I know I wasn't. I like better graphics, sure, but I've been taken aback by the delay in Sony's first party output.

That definitely is a major contributing factor. The higher the fidelity, the more labor required. Games also have to have detailed environments, smooth animations, and unique assets for every level. All of that effort takes time.

Studios are only so large too. Naughty Dog has less than 500 employees total IIRC, so there's also a lot of outsourcing and bringing in additional studios to help development, which takes time to setup. Naughty Dog in particular has been working on more than 1 game. It was TLOU 1 and 2 remasters, PC ports, and Factions 2. Which we know the latter didn't pan out that well. The push for live service has definitely set some things back it seems for some PS studios. 

Insomniac certainly has been the exception to the rule. They were able to release 10 games during the PS3 generation alone. Maybe they're just really good at planning everything out. But Ratchet & Clank, as well as Miles Morales were much smaller games compared to Spider-Man 1 and 2. So that may have been a contributing factor. 

But it does seem to be an industry wide issue that has led Jason Schreier to make this comment back in January 2023



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the-pi-guy 2 hours ago

Firewalk is in a very precarious position. 

1.) Making a different game would be a lot of time and money for a second chance at rolling the dice. Even if they miraculously get a game out in like 4 years, that'd end up being like 1 game in a decade, (depending on how you count that timeline.) And their biggest claim to fame is making one of the biggest AAA failures. It's not like ND, where they can just throw up their logo and people are interested. 

2.) Supporting another studio doesn't feel likely. Firewalk is in one of the most expensive areas of any studio. I think only Naughty Dog is in a more expensive area. The cost per person is very high. 

3.) Shutting down the studio seems like the most likely path, and that's incredibly unfortunate.