Does the aquisition of PC porting and contract coding studios indicate a bigger issue in the industry that it’s hard to get the time booked in for these quality studios. Sony, MS and every other developer would be trying to get their games worked on by the high quality contractors. I guess this way Sony gets first dibs with these studios now.
Sony’s acquisitions (mostly) don’t represent new PlayStation content pipelines, but rather a securing of existing ones. However, they are still expanding their content production - largely through brand new partnerships with companies which they may eventually acquire in the future.
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I would also think Sony is going to push the timed exclusives hard now. To get a timed exclusive you have to compensate the dev for how much they will miss out from not being able to sell on the other console. As there are more PS4s than Xbox Ones, MS world have to pay alot more than Sony would to have the same game exclusive to the Xbox than the PS4. I think Sony see that the sales between the XSXS is going to be alot closer this gen and MD is going to have more first party content so they will push the third party exclusive line hard.
Well, they already did push hard. They must have been pushing hard in ~2018-2019 to get to where we are today. There have been a ton of 1+ year Playstation exclusive games even from companies who normally didn’t do things like that (i.e. Bethesda). Presumably this was a direct response to both the upcoming new generation and to the way in which Microsoft was investing into gaming.
I have no idea if that’s going to continue. They might wind down a little bit now that they’ve already captured the initiative this generation with a decent lead - general momentum should remain high for them and both companies are limited by hardware production not by a lack of content. Sony’s early lead in securing higher production volume than Microsoft paid off.
Sony’s lead is the direct consequence of PS4 name, moneyhats only purpose was to cover-up their 1st party line-up holes and at the same time damaging Xbox image. Most people don’t even buy the games targeted by the moneyhats.
Well in the first year Sony announced
- Ghostwire Tokyo
- Deathloop
- Forespoken
- Final Fantasy XVI
- godfall
And this year they announced
- just Kotor remastered
So its definitely winding down, they can’t compete with gamepass money.
Indeed, the fact they are mainly buying support studios shows they are investing in trying to keep their 5 year projects from turning into 7 year projects, because their first party is miniscule.
Microsofts definitely ok with having 7 year projects, they will just buy other publishers and studios to fill the gaps
This is not a big name, not by any stretch of imagination (nor the studio making it, nor the publisher, nor the IP, nor the game in general). Anyway, yeah, they will try to snatch big names, even moreso if Xbox doesn’t fight back.
Let me tell you a terrible secret. You may not believe it. But, support studios are being bought in order to keep more qualified personnel. Now they are sorely lacking. This is why Microsoft has hired crystal dynamics for the Initiative.
Christopher Dring and Jason Schreier talked about this.
There is a shortage of qualified personnel throughout the industry. A lot of studios are buying up all possible support studios.
Oh, I recall Herman Hulst claim Sony had been “quietly growing their first party” all last generation (despite many closures) so are you calling him a liar?
I think they will wind it up big time. They cannot match MSs first party output from now on. It’s really expensive to buy out studios and the wait is long before you realise the benefit. MS has bought all those studios and to date they have had Grounded, Bleeding Edge as exclusives and neither would have sold one xbox, and they have released three games on PS including one timed exclusive. So they are going to need to rely on third party exclusives to match the future gap. I expect to see From Software doing more exclusive Sony games. Same goes for Square, and other Japanese devs they have the relationships with. I also expect that something has been done with Konami and their IPs going to PS as exclusives. Time will tell if I’m wrong or right on that, but they have to do something. Sony’s elite studios consists of SMS, Poly, GG, Insomniac, Bluepoint, ND, SP, Bend and Housemarque. Say they release a AAA game every 4 years that’s two AAA games a year. That’s nowhere near what MS will be doing.
Sony sooner or later is going to have to invest in MORE diverse studios and not keep doing the same one trick pony strategy. Because in the long run thanks to gamepass, Xbox studios are extremely diverse. Xbox almost has every genre covered/cornered. Just too much firepower. If Sony is really trying to make a gamepass rival then they need to expand more from just these third person cinematic narrative games.
They been signing a lot of those publishing deals with the start up studios from industry vets. I am sure they will acquire them if things go well.
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