I’ve heard from people working at Sony that their movie divisions’ profits are more unpredictable than their other divisions. Sometimes hard to predict whether your big budget movies in a give year will actually be blockbusters or not. I guess not too surprising, but it’s also easy to see why Sony banks on safer bets with games as their budgets continue to grow. And probably part of why MS is moving to Gamepass and its more steady stream of income.
Reminds me of Microsoft before Phil got the greenlight. With Mattrick it was outright cash cows or bust. So they had no new IP to create the next wave of cash cows. In the early Phil years the budget was so tight they were either underfunding good ideas(Recore) or skipping on sequels to stuff they obviously should have been making sequels for (Sunset Overdrive).
Its worse.
At least Mattrick had the forethought to form 343 Industries and Black Tusk Studios in his tenure. Sony just shut down Sony Japan and their new san diego studio.
I got my PS5 in early March and thus far, I’ve only played Miles Morales and a little bit of Astro’s Playroom. PlayStation will almost certainly remain my exclusives-only machine.
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Sony is basically pulling a Microsoft of late 2000’s where it’s Forza, Halo, Gears except now its The Last of Us, God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, GoT.
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I had my ps5 at launch and basically did the same thing. I played miles morales, I played astro’s playroom, and then I turned it off until just a couple of weeks ago when I wanted to redeem my avengers upgrade to the ps5 version and then had to jump through several hoops to make that work, and then once it was upgraded I just turned it off again and will probably stay off until Final Fantasy 7 Intergrade.
It seems like Sony is dying by death by a thousand cuts. It’s not any one thing that is going to cause their downfall. But it’s just going to be a bunch of little things piled up.
When I say downfall I don’t mean they are going to be bankrupt or out of business. Just they won’t be the market leader anymore.
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Remember when the Bethesda buyout was going on and people on ResetERA said “Why doesn’t Xbox grow a studio organically instead of buying one” (Which is an idiotic statement that has no basis in reality)? Lo and behold, a studio within Sony WAS trying to grow “Organically” and they seemed to put a stop to that shit real quick.
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I could just copy and paste what I said in the thread about Japan Studio.
If you create a situation where fans, the media and your marketing department concentrate all their effort in AAA movie like experiences and convincing everyone these are the only games worth caring about or giving GOTY nominations to, this is the inevitable result.
The discussions are so awful to me as well. It’s all sales focused, there’s no value in anything that didn’t sell 10m copies. It’s a horrible, reductive way of viewing gaming and I really hate it. Nothing Sony does can be seen as problematic because the PS5 is still selling out.
I always say this but you should build from a position of strength where possible, not weakness.
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Holy shit, Shawn Layden liked Jez’s tweets about comparing the current PlayStation leadership to the Don Mattrick era.
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I’m pretty ignorant of how this industry works and business in general, but this doesn’t really paint a pretty picture. Even putting aside what customers want, it reads like some of their employees are dissatisfied with management’s decisions and leaving. It’s much much too early to treat this one article like it’s Sony’s official mandate, but it’s definitely cause for discomfort. Stacked together with all the recent not-great Sony news, I can see how some people are frustrated.
I’m confused as to why their marketing and PR departments aren’t working on changing the conversation, I feel like it wouldn’t take too much.
lol he’s on a roll
if you look at the “tweets liked by” tab he’s doing a victory lap
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This is why it was good that MS let Grounded and Bleeding Edge happen.
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At first glance Nibel’s tweet how Sony is prioritizing big games honestly isn’t so bad. We can’t deny that the God of Wars, Uncharteds, TLOUs, GoT were not very big hits and successful. It’s something I absolutely am dying to see from Xbox too with games that are not the usual Gears, Halo, Forza. Games that have high production values and just take the hardware to the max.
And I definitely think we’re going to see that. But then I read the other things from Jason’s piece and yeah, that’s not so good at all. When we then look at Xbox, they will be offering smaller, medium and big games. Well known franchises like Perfect Dark and Fable, but also Avowed, something new for Obsidian. For a while now I had the feeling that Jim Ryan isn’t all that and I’m clearly not the only one.
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I detest Jim Ryan and this article reinforces some of my fears about Sony’s direction in the gaming space.
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I think what people have come to expect from Jason are reports of toxic workplaces, wrongs done to employees. I’m happy that this doesn’t sound to be the case here.
Yes, it’s indicative of a management that may have lost touch with their workforce, not providing opportunities for growth, not giving teams a chance… but it seems like it’s a defensive play from Sony’s part more than anything else. I’d still agree management could be making better choices, but at least this doesn’t seem like bullying, harassment, etc. So maybe that’s why this seems a bit tamer than other articles. Honestly, investing in some small titles seems a lot safer to me, since having a large game fail is a lot more of a risk. But I also get the feeling that Sony doesn’t have a ton of free capital at the moment with how things have been going for the non gaming business the last while, and are probably trying to play it very safe.
How can you detest Jim Ryan? He’s a golden god. A 5 star man.
He is untethered and his rage knows no bounds.
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I didn’t read the full piece just yet, i do intend to do that soon. But I assume you mean their future will be mostly a big focus on the big games like a new Uncharted, less new IP, continuation of money hatting third party games and content, way less titles like Dreams, Detroit etc?
Still, they launched with Astrobot and Sackboy Adventure, two rather fun and in several ways creative titles. I’m guessing these got greenlit by Shawn Layden?
It’s the freedom and experimentation too. Microsoft isn’t looking at Ninja Theory and saying, “Bleeding Edge wasn’t a hit so now you’re off of your own projects and you’re going to be a support studio for The Coalition.”
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Creative freedom basically died after Shawn left it sounds like, damn. I’m gonna check the article soon.
I wonder, if one or their biggest studios wanted to make a sci-fi game, say Naughty Dog. Can they? I mean we now know we haven’t seen the last of Uncharted, honestly no big surprise there. But I always thought that was going to be like the expansion while most of ND working on new IP.