Not going to lie but Factions being cancelled and Naughty Dog doing two single player games instead of 1 and 1 is a win for me because I never gave a shit about Factions because im not an online multi-player gamer so for me personally, this is excellent news. I hope all of their main studios do the same.
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The problem for Sony is that pivot from SP to GAAS and then back to SP is going to cost them 3-4 years of wasted dev time and if multiple of their first parties go through that then they are screwed. Lucky for Sony their fanbase buys anything they put out but Sony has some serious droughts coming up.
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I prefer their SP games (I own most of them on PC), but there was a reason for the shift to MP/Gaas. Sony finances are on the verge with razor sharp profits despite a big operation volume.
Jim Ryan shifted to Gaas because they had to, with increasing costs, they needed the money avalanche of free games (what a funny perspective, free games yield to oceans of money) to sustain their SP games.
but you do not shift SP studios to Gaas studios and their size and skills are not at all adapted to Gaas games. It is like saying, all what Rare did is Sea of Thieves all these years; it is a big task.
They bought Bungie for learning, but this is not enough (and Destiny fate was a bit oversold). MS understood that if you need a big Gaas, you need a big studio (Activision is multiple thousands just for COD), at the same time, Sony has funded 12 startup companies with no money and people. Even if they succeed launching a game Day 1, they will need manpower to survive (343 learnt it the hard way with Halo).
All what MS was criticized for, all was what Sony did the opposite. And now, boss has been fired (just talk about the Gaas boss, let Jim retired in happyness) and see how wrong Sony was.
2024 could be the crossing year for politics and strategy, even if I do not believe it will change that much the casual emprise the ps5 has on the market.
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True but not every major studios was dong a live service game. Sucker Punch, Guerrilla, Santa Monica and Bend werenât doing any live service games. The Horizon live service game is from NC Soft so no worries there. At most, Sucker Punch will have Legends 2 for Tsushima 2 which is a small co-op mode so thatâs fine. But as long as theyâre not making a full game, I will be happy. Only Insomniac is working on an MP game in the Marvel universe but they have three studios if I remember so that doesnât change much for them.
I do agree that Naughty Dog wasted a few years but theyâre not the first developer to go through this and they sure as hell wonât be the last.
Sony has a major first party drought for 2024 as itâs mostly minor releases like Helldivers 2, Ronin and Stellar Blade. But they do have third party exclusives like FFVII Rebirth that will carry them.
For me personally, I have Granblue Fantasy Relink (CyGames), FFVIIR (Square Enix) and possibly Ronin (Sony) if itâs not a souls game for the first quarter of 2024. Granted, two thirds are third party publishers but theyâre exclusive to PlayStation console wise and im not waiting years to see if/when the game gets ported to Xbox.
But major first party games, im not expecting anything from Sony until 2025. Microsoftâs 2022 appears to be Sonyâs 2024. But it is what it is. I personally have a shit ton to play already for 2024 on both platforms and the year hasnât even started yet.
I have never seen layoffs and game cancelations as being good news. I find it very strange that GaaS is the punching bags for âgamersâ, while those games are some of the most popular the last 5 years. The gaming media and a certain section of âgamersâ (that is very toxic) seem to create this narrative that the only valid type of games are single player third person narrative games. I find this very narrow minded and very gate keeper.
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Let them fight over an empire of shit. Local hardware consoles sales and serious dependence on that is a narrow and losing situation long term. Sony has fumbled at their first major attempt to get out of that and has pretty much cratered the first party output for their studios for the next couple of years.
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Precisely; I called out Xbox for their layoffs last year, and Sony should get the same treatment. I know all the capitalist reasons why these things occur but it doesnât make it any more acceptable; this obsession with growth being the only metric companies care about isnât sustainable or just.
Furthermore, even though I expected this result for Factions, I never want any developer to have their work thrown in the bin and I certainly donât want to celebrate that when they spent five+ years on the project. As Iâve always said, my goal with calling out the media has always been for a hope for them to be better - being less negatively hyperbolic about everything Xbox and holding Sony to account more often⌠you know objectivity. Perhaps if the same âinvestigative journalistsâ had spent more time actually trying to see what was going on, rather than fawning at every time Druckmann farts in the wind, this could have been corrected or cancelled well before it got to this point. Accountability matters and at the end of the day, this is on Sony and ND leadership (never the devs).
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To me it goes beyond console war. For example, Rocksteadyâs new game about the Suicide Squad has been kicked around by the media like an unwanted dog because it seems to have elements of GaaS. The media coverage itâs gotten seems very passive aggressive because of those GaaS elements. I look at the game and see a very crafted and polish game. I may not play it, but I can see many people will like it, but the gaming elitist seem to already determine to crap on the game.
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I never played Factions personally (Iâm more of a Xbox + Nintendo guy), but my one friend that I still play MP games with loved Factions. So, I am disappointed that I wonât be able to experience the greatness of TLOU Factions with him. I also have a couple family members that are PS/Switch only that I was looking forward to possibly playing Factions with.
Personally, Iâm still waiting for a couple reasons to get a PS5 and Factions was going to be one of them. Right now, the only reason I would get a PS5 is for Astro Playroom. The only other new PS game I care about is GoWR which I can just play on my ps4 when I have the time.
Like Rand and practically everyone saying, no one ask a live service of the game, but just a multiplayer add-on.
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Itâs strange to think of gamers as a monolithic block who all like the same things. Thereâs clearly an audience for GaaS like Fortnight or Call of Duty, which are huge successes, but a large part of the Playstation audience is very attached to the consoleâs single-player heritage and reviles anything multiplayer. In my opinion, thereâs probably a generational gap here, with younger players more open to GaaS than a lot of old-timers like us. 
Due to a lack of knowledge, many people also have a very caricatured and negative view of GaaS, whereas many games apply the formula in a moderate and very relevant way (particularly at Xbox).
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Some GaaS do have very predatory business models but then how is that more predatory then sony and nintendo re-releasing the same single player game as a remaster every few years for full price?
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The issue for me is gaming journalists donât want gaming to change and most have no clue as to the economics of the situation. The perfect example is Alan wake 2, an excellent game that is garnering publications GOTY awards and high review scores but hasnât sold well. Yes it released in a crowded period which was in a crowded year of great games but if it hadnât been funded by epic I could have seen some problems at Remedy.
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It is more a large part of the vocal forum crowd, which is usually also more old (so the generational gap you cite), but I think most of the playstationn crowd buy the box because it is a playqtation and not because of a given game or a given type of game.
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If you listen to forum crowd, those games do not exist
Roblox, minecraft, COD, Fifa, SOT, any racing game, any RTS, any F2P, any mutliplayer game, any simulation game, any competitive game, and of course any mobile game, etc
Which in fact are the majority of the money gained in this industry and player by a majority of gamers that do not bother to go to forums because they are too busy playing games.
So the forum crowd awake surprised when the Sony boss told that Gaas has to be made and single player games are great but âŚ
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Is PlayStation ok? 
That really depends on the perspective. In terms of console solds, they are killing it. In terms of profit, they are underperforming, they may be very soon very bad. In terms of growth and investment they are flat.
There was a discussion on ERA about the investments of Sony in its diverse branchs. Some said it was ok because gaming was getting as much as the other branchs in terms of M&A prospects. That is quite narrow considering the gaming division represents Half of Sony profits.
Also in terms of profits, Sony is lower than the competition. you could also wonder why the gaming part of the market leader of console videogames market was not worth more than Activision, a single publisher of videogames. the main reason is that the market see Sony as going nowhere and not worth investing (remind that Sony share was labeled as Trash by stock exchanges agencies for the largest part of the ps3 generation until the ps4).
1 Like
I agree that there is a distorsion between the general hype around this game and its real market performance. Still, I think it was a mistake to let Remedy go. MS could afford to have a badly performing studio but with high visibility. With COD money, they can afford that even more.
Quantum Break is still one of the best X1 game.
I donât think people should be getting too alarmed just yet despite the many not so great things that have happened the last year or so but it definitely not all sunshine and rainbows over there
People see all these Playstation sales and thatâs their barometer for success when quite frankly it means less than ever, you only have to look at Japan where they are selling plenty of consoles but software sales are terrible
They just arenât particularly well set up for the future right now imo
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Sadly the Media in gaming have found it profitable to push console wars and they figured out bashing Xbox makes Sony fans and Xbox fans click on the articles. Iâm pretty sick of it and just want to play games and have some light discussion with other gamers without console wars.
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