TBH at this point they should (they won't I know) just cancel Fairgames, the exit of the funder doesn't mean that much but if the reception to the gameplay from internal tests wasn't good then nothing about the game will generate interest. "Another Sony first person shooter service from a team of ex-Ubisoft developers" talk about killing any interest in a game lol and sucks to say it but making the first trailer around a squad of women when its obvious the game is based in avatars just marked the game the same way Concord was marked, the people who usually buys and plays online competitive shooters won't give that a chance.

What actually bothers me is the fact that Fairgames was intended to close 2025, I mean the sooner it's out the sooner they stop wasting money on it but it's weird  they thought closing the year with a service was a good idea.

The Bungie situation is crazy. I'll never wish for studios to be shut down and devs to lose their jobs but it really sounds like Bungie has no salvation. Fighting against a terrible administration with a CEO that is still there is one thing but when you can't even trust in your teammates because there's a change they stole their part of the work, that's what really kills a team. Who knows if ending Bungie would actually be merciful to the good devs trapped in that nightmare, no wonder one of the most prolific Destiny 2 designers decided to leave to join Guerrilla.

Sony is lucky to some extend. Destiny 2 will make a lot of money this year, DS2 looks like it's going to do better than the first one, Yotei is going to be up there too, next year GTA will be out (maybe lol) their economy won't suffer but the whole service movement really was a shit show from beginning to end and it's sad that every failure affects the next game like a snow ball even when it's not their fault. Gummy Bears could be revealed in a couple weeks and they will have to bear with the consequences of decisions made years ago.

The one good thing Sony is doing is funding games like Stellar Blade and the upcoming Lost Soul Aside. Finding these Korean/Chinese games we are getting some gems this generation.  Korea and China are really coming into their own last few years. If Sony can realize that and stop focusing on this gas failure.

That's the thing, not everything they do is wrong actually they are doing a lot of things right.

-Commitment to smaller games. We had 3 last year, I didn't like Ryan but this happened under his time so he deserves some flowers.

-Recognize Astro success. The comments early this year from Sony CEO about making more games like Astro.

-Realistic expectations. Returnal sold less than one million and it made money, Saros is going to happen thanks to it. Helldivers 2 had also expectations around the million.

-Publishing the games they are paying for on pc.

-Pushing their chinese business.

-Constantly funding games with new partners. The PCF game is a highlight because is a Sony IP, that's already an advantage over random PCF game that isn't Bulletstorm.

-Two new studios that weren't bought, they were funded.

The problem is that for everything good there's something bad and the last 2 years has been related with services. Spider-Man 2 becomes the fastest selling game in PS history -> Sony cancels an unknown number of services that were in development. Helldivers 2 is a success -> Concord flops hard. Astro is the GOTY -> Bend and BP were making services and they are cancelled. DS2 is getting a way better reception than the first one -> Marathon needs a miracle.

This cycle is starting to be tragic lol, the good news? They are going to survive 100%. The bad news? We don't know if they are actually learning something from this and we won't know anytime soon because their two new studios are making services. 

Gummy Bears is going to be the cheapest PS project in who knows how long so Sony giving them the chance to finish it makes sense but Sony isn't making it easy, for these games to have a fair chance.

Sony can, and are, clearly doing both.

Stopping focus on live services doesn't mean they magically put more interest into the stuff you want.

The Live Service stuff is weird. A lot of people are very vocal about not liking live service games, but that doesn't change the fact that live service is a success. If it wasn't, Sony wouldn't be doing it - though of course Sony's push has been a tremendous failure. 

I don't care about Live Service either. But it doesn't change the fact that Fortnite, CoD, GTA Online, FF XIV, etc are monster money makers that are much bigger than most things that Sony puts out. 

I think I've written a post in here about Sony's push in particular. It's been a bunch of dumb decisions. 

Why would you pull back so much from the single player crowd that you put together in the previous gen? Why would you put studios like Bluepoint on live service? 

It feels like a lot of Sony's decisions are very data driven, without actually understanding the data. 

I worry that we are going to see that with Astro Bot too. They talked about it being a success and were planning to make more family friendly games. And I don't really think that should be the lesson there. 

I'm not saying family friendly games are bad. But the lesson really should be about variety being important. You should keep trying to make certain kinds of games, even if they don't really seem like they're selling well. 

- variety in itself is important. Plenty of people want different kinds of games. I really like Souls likes, I would buy more games if Sony put out competent Souls likes. 

- building up a fan base. In an extreme example, you can't make Elden Ring without first making Demons Souls and Dark Souls. 

No but they would lose a lot less money chasing trends and instead trying to create something rather than factory stamp bullshit chasing a trend. Sony is trying the throw every gaas game we have at the wall and see what sticks. They had to cancel nearly a dozen and now closed studios chasing this and lost countless hundreds of millions. Meanwhile, some of their lower-budget games have done better. Stellar Blade broke a million for a new IP. Astro won GOTY, and Sony almost tried to make people forget it existed before launch. Not much interest in the game myself, but the fact that they put all their focus on Concord last year and shoved Astro into a corner really shows how out of touch Sony execs is with its fanbase.

Just finished Mission 7 on DMC5 SE - 10 hours into the game.

First double character mission which was nice.

I'm loving the gameplay mechanics and system even with V.

This is 100% shaping up to be my favorite in the series in terms of gameplay - just need to see more of the story and how it fleshes out to determine if I'll like it more than DMC3's story (which is my favorite in the series).

Watching old Giant Bomb quick looks. One of them was The Order 1886. Made me realize, Evil West premise is similar. Alternate 1800s. Steampunk. An organization that hunts monsters. 1886 is Werewolves. Evil West mainly Vampires but also werewolves. Evil West is if you took the premise of The Order 1886 but made an actual fun video game.

I actually have this game on Steam, got it from a bundle - I'll check it out.

Saw the Drunkman (Druckmann) interview, he confirmed to be the producer of Naughty Dog's second team game and how he likes that role because he can mentor other devs at Naughty Dog. The report was pretty safe, we know ND has 2 teams but now it's official.

I'm still betting it's an Uncharted remake but would be cool if it's something new.