A spreadsheet decision.

Looking at what studio is not in the mid of a game development. Bluepoint wasn't because their game got cancelled.

Studio's that are about to launch a game should be worried, if they can get a chance to make another one.

I would advise any Sony studio to pitch an Horizon game. Hulst will always approve those...

Its not just the difficulty for me, its the whole feel of the game. If you expect certain things out of an action game and it defies most of those expectations without much pay off to you (as a player), you would probably feel the same. Demon souls is intentionally slow in movement in a way some may find sluggish, very paired back from a story telling perspective, has super clunky rag doll physics, very sunken in tone and on the surface level looks kind of unremarkable  next to the likes of DMC/GOW/Bayonetta etc. I legit think a solid amount of the PS userbase would walk away from that game experience calling it bad too if there wasn't hype and reviewers to tell them it was good and that they're the problem lol

They could have remade Ape Escape and Omega Boost. I wonder how many of them end up working at Retro.

It really feels like in the AAA space nowadays either you make 20+ million selling megahits, or you get closed down.

Cost-cutting is the order of the day and any studio that isn't currently bringing in the big bucks goes on the chopping block, regardless of how useful or talented they are.

Don't worry. AI boss of Xbox will not be firing anyone in 10 years. Everyone will be replace with AI. No more studios to close! Sony will do the same

It's a bit hard to parse information from so many years ago. I think I did say that the original article made a reference, but I realise now that isn't the case. Jason never gives any detail about this, and only merely states it was rejected. But as I did mention, the specific answer came from the Days Gone devs themselves:

https://www.eurogamer.net/days-gone-director-pitched-open-world-resistance

https://icon-era.com/threads/days-gone-2-not-being-made-was-a-bend-studio-decision.13966/

The actual video with David Jaffe is where the information is from. I believe there is speculation on his end that Sony would've rejected it anyways, but that's just speculation.

Anyways, to your other point: no one is saying in confidence that BP chose a live service title; just that without actual information on how these decisions were made you can't confidently say that Sony forced it on them either. Perhaps Sony was making live service development more lucrative with higher budget ceilings for them, and so certain teams like London Studios jump at that chance. But we're all just speculating at who made these decisions and why. We only need to go back to the Days Gone 2 example to see how everyone is quick to say one thing, when the truth is far different.

All we know for sure is that BP released their last game in 2020 (the same year as Tsushima). Then seemingly became a support studio for 2-3 years without working on another game. Then they went into live service for 2-3 years. Then worked on nothing for another year. At some point Sony should've stepped in (which is maybe what they did getting BP supporting SMS), but maybe BP wanted to move on from remakes. We saw this happen with the TLoU1 remake which was originally a Sony Visual Arts project - someone pitched the idea that this support studio would be able to move into self-developed titles beginning with a remake, and that didn't work out at all resulting in ND having to take over the project.