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Jason Schreier: heads rolling at Sony for the cancellation of The Last of Us Online after 4 years in development
nial
Member
It's not copium, heck, just so you know how differently we see these things, I can even say that the first half of PS3 gen (2006-mid 2010) was way better than the boring second one (mid 2010-2013).
Bernardougf
Member
Yeah ... maybe ... at least we have 3 seasons of concord to hold us all together in this difficult times... god bless sony gaas initiative
nial
Member
Why settle for Concord when Sony has already released far better games this year, and especially with Astro Bot coming two weeks after it?
PeteBull
Member
he was sarcastic, bro, we all know concord is and will be dumpster fire;P
Strategize
Member
Wasting time with this and not doing TLOU3 straight away was idiotic. Not only did Naughty Dog suffer, but the HBO show will also suffer by either ending after 3 seasons, or pulling a Game of Thrones where they have to end the story before the source material is even made yet.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
IIRC, didn't the recent expansion underperform in sales? I'm sure Destiny has been very profitable for Bungie in past seasons, but expansion content in those seasons also sold very well.
If the recent one didn't do so well, combined with "sunk costs" in the acquisition of the studio that SIE have been amortizing, then it's very possible for SIE, Destiny hasn't been profitable.
Again, I'm no expert in the GAAS space whatsoever, but the only extraction shooter I've heard of regularly named is Tarkov. The other game you mentioned? Never heard of its name until now. So is the extraction shooter genre massive, or is it just Tarkov that's really popular? There is a difference IMO.
As for Marathon being an extraction shooter vs. PvE...well honestly IMO if they want to continue with PvE, why not just stick to Destiny and shelve Marathon? In fact maybe it'd be best to siphon Marathon's extraction shooter mechanics as innovations for Destiny 3 instead. Out of the two, Destiny clearly has the brand name and cache; Marathon is nice as an old-school romp and reminder of Bungie's roots, but it's not culturally relevant today.
I'm surprised we haven't heard anything like that in terms of SIE's plans with Bungie going forward. Why let Bungie "test their chance" on Marathon if you might be thinking it'll underperform and you just sweep in to reign full control over the studio anyway? It could feel like a stop-gap that's just stalling for time and wasting money (unless everything can be written away as a tax write-off), when that time and money could've gone towards Destiny 3 and maybe taking cool ideas from Marathon and merging them into Destiny 3.
"Online discourse" depends on where online you're looking. I'm sure he's considering places besides NeoGAF and ResetERA; Twitter for example, or Reddit, or Youtube or Facebook's gaming groups even.
Now on this one he is probably going with pretty limited and slanted observations on his part, because he could be comparing discussion for Marathon to games that have shown and revealed a lot more about themselves, or are already out and have established fanbases. In which case, well no shit "hype" for Marathon would be less. SIE and Bungie still haven't shown more than a concept teaser trailer.
So on this one I might agree with you that Jason is making a bad read not stooped in reality.
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nial
Member
The thing with sarcasm is that it doesn't have to make you look dumb.
Bernardougf
Member
Thats two wonderful top shelf choices for the second half of the 4th year of this console ... we are truly blessed
ComputerBlue
Member
Delusion.
Kamina
Golden Boy
the head hunter
seriously though , why would anyone mess with him
Perrott
Member
Plus Until Dawn and LEGO Horizon Adventures also coming this fall, as well as the unannounced Gravity Rush 2 remaster and Horizon: Zero Dawn remake. Six games total for the second half.
And that's on top of an already packed first half of 2024 with The Last Of Us Part II Remastered, Helldivers 2, MLB The Show 24, Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade and Destiny 2: The Final Shape.
Not to mention timed exclusive releases from third-party, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill: The Short Message or Zenless Zone Zero.
Indeed, we are blessed.
nial
Member
Considering Astro Bot will be their absolute best first-party game in 6 years (pretty much since the last major Astro game), I fucking agree.
Prove me wrong.
Bernardougf
Member
I put Demons Souls and GT7 far ahead... but aside those two I agree with you ... and thats is just sad and a clear picture of Sony current first party dogshit output.
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Bernardougf
Member
So remakes, remasters, second and third party games and first party gaas. Welp... dogshit first party output still prevails. Thanks for helping my point.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
The expansion that didn't meat forecasts was Lightfall. The game averaged 130k CCU the month it released which was Destiny 2s highest CCU average since launch month.
Destiny 2s highest CCU month was Lightfall at 135k.
Desinty 2s second highest CCU month was The Final Shape at 123k.
Destiny 2s third highest CCU month was Beyond Light at 99k.
Destiny 2s fourth highest CCU month was Forsaken at 89k.
So their last two expansions were their best CCU months in Steam history. People are saying The Final Shape didn't do well, but the Steam numbers suggest otherwise.
I think it's a reasonable hypothesis to say the genre, which is new, hasn't had a truly high effort entry release in it ever. Escape from Tarkov was a runaway success by a small team that obviously grew as a result. Hunt Showdown is is a mid level success from Crytek...who has struggled with everything since the peak of the Crytek franchise, and Dark and Darker is another indie game that seems to be doing well for its studio. All the other Extraction Shooters are either half baked (The Division) or from indie studios with limitations. On paper, the genre seems poised to break out IMO.
It's not worth the struggle to balance PvP and PvE in the same game. You can't serve both masters. The clean break allows Bungie to develop two entirely separate audiences, which makes sense from a pure numbers standpoint. The multiplayer audience doesn't seem to care about IP recognition. The vast majority of breakout multiplayer hits from the last 20 years are from unknown IP.
I doubt PlayStation thinks Marathon will underperform. It has to be a big reason why they spent so much on Bungie.
fart town usa
Member
Neil should get axed and he can go direct for Netflix. Fire Hulst too, please.
Get the hell out of California too. The stench of woke BS is all over modern Sony. Insomniac has fallen. Concord is landing. It's so laughably bad at Sony. Astrobot will end up being GOTG for PS5.
Get the hell out of California too. The stench of woke BS is all over modern Sony. Insomniac has fallen. Concord is landing. It's so laughably bad at Sony. Astrobot will end up being GOTG for PS5.
ComputerBlue
Member
No.
nial
Member
This isn't something particularly relevant as people like to believe (SIE has NEVER had an American CEO), and it comes down to their individual studios. Not much they can do there except for huge reorganizing efforts and well, they kinda did that this February.
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Loxus
Member
I keep hearing this woke stuff with Neil Druckmann. I can't remember seeing anything woke in The Last of Us 2 or Uncharted 4.
Maybe I'm out of touch with this woke stuff cause I'm from the Caribbean.
Woopah
Member
Second party is just a type of first party. Stellar Blade and Helldivers 2 both got pretty good reviews this year (Rose of the Ronin less so).
PaulBizkit
Member
jeez, man... how many competitive shooters do they think we need?
Hypereides
Member
EDIT: nevermind.
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Bernardougf
Member
Yes I agree with you .. but its not the main reason I buy playstations, its a secondary reason, as they always were, filling the gaps , but not a two year gap, the main reason is for Sony big budget produced games that like nintendo has a quality of production and style of their own, or better had a quality, because the three big sequels launched were subpar to previous games, right now gaas aside, what we have are imho, failed sequels, unnecessary remasters/remakes from perfectly fine games from lastgen, zero inovation in first party, zero real effort in their single player first party output, the shift to gaas, the shift to a more "modern/wokeish" appeal, everything is stacking up and we have this horrible gen as far as first party is concerned and people are coping really hard, xbox style. And driving the hopium wave that everything is fine because the vaporwares are all in the oven.
Wastelander92
Member
The heads rolling should be the execs/board members who pushed for gass.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
I think Jason would be called out by those in the know if his reporting was bullshit?
He's in such a high profile position, if he was bullshitting he would be called out.
He's in such a high profile position, if he was bullshitting he would be called out.
Perrott
Member
Stop moving goalposts and fuck off.
fart town usa
Member
Sony in general, my post wasn't necessarily singling out Neil for being overly woke.
Loxus
Member
Like I said, I'm from the Caribbean and this is what I thought woke meant.
What's so bad about that?
Topher
Identifies as young
No, it isn't you. There was some stuff in TLOU 2 but was not heavy handed at all. Completely overblown.
hemo memo
You can't die before your death
How? If you called any company in the world with any massive scale project that ever existed, you’ll not find a complete agreement. Jason just opens the door for corporate employees to shit on their employers by providing anonymity.
Jason is basically a gaming disgruntled employee's hotline.
fart town usa
Member
You posted propaganda. Sorry but I'm not going to venture into poli-gaf and try to explain the last 15 years of far-Left Western politics.Like I said, I'm from the Caribbean and this is what I thought woke meant.
What's so bad about that?
Loxus
Member
Another way I thought woke meant was waking up in the Matrix and learning the truth about the Matrix world or knowing about aliens in Men and Black.
So what does woke mean to you?
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HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I hate the term woke as its getting way overused
For me woke does not mean hey we included certain groups so everyone feels included
To me woke is when its an obvious narrative thats crammed down our throats and then people get pissed when said product doesn't sell because the non included group that its marketed towards doesn't buy it
Loxus
Member
So GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony is what would be considered woke?
I never liked that gay stuff.
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
I'm convinced that bigot sandwhich touched everyone's mother
proandrad
Member
It’s confusing because words get co-opted in the USA for politics. When used in the context of gaming some people are against woke because they define it as fake virtue signaling from companies that only really care about making money. Of course some people just hate minorities and mix in their 2 cents in the conversation. Others just have a hard time explaining why they hate something and just throw the word woke out there. But for the most part people hate woke when it comes as a command from higher up to change something that was already established, people hate when woke becomes game design, and people really hate woke when it leads to unfair hiring decisions.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Absolutely true, and there will be shit to navigate. But, saying heads rolled at a business and it not being true would be called out.
We have seen Jim leave, and other employees. A few weeks after Jim resigns Sony officially says their margins are a mess and theres issues they need to resolve. There's clearly some major shit going down at Sony behind the scenes.
Bernardougf
Member
I usually agree with you but ...but imho TLOU2 is pretty woke.. from the lesbian relationships to bigot sandwiches lines, to she-male hulk protagonist, pregnant woman power, trans person problems, straight white male protagonist pissed on with 5 min of game ... I guess it all depends how everyone interpret the intentions of every story ... so for me is really really woke.. for some including you.. wont be ... its a pretty subjective word (woke) really.
Edit: Plus knowing the cuck writer and his friends... welp.
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Topher
Identifies as young
Yeah man....this is one of those rare times where we part ways on a subject. But you are right. It is a perspective thing and we just don't see that game the same way. All good brother.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Good. They should be. Shouldn’t have gone past brainstorming.
They should have focused on Part III or the next Uncharted.
They should have focused on Part III or the next Uncharted.
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FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Makes sense why my mom said my dad was a drunkman. Maybe my ears weren’t ready to hear Druckmann.
Or maybe Duck Man?
Toons
Member
Its not you whos out of touch. West is in a culture war death spiral right now. Just ignore it, with luck it'll be over sooner rather than later
yurinka
Member
Sony completed the Bungie acquisition in July 2022.
Bungie releases the Lightfall expansion in February 2023 and underperforms.
Bungie releases the Final Shape expansion in June 2024 and is a big success.
Bungie was paying the development of Destiny 2 content, Marathon, the codenamed "Gummybears" project (now moved away to become a new PS Studios team) and other projects that were in early stages/incubation stage.
Last year with the underperformance of Lightfall they had loses (mentioned by Hermen in the QA of the fiscal report in May, and by the Bungie CEO in the recent layoff message).
SIE/PS Studios is a publisher with many dev studios, so they have central teams with many people in job positions doing some work for all their games that no longer will be needed to be done at Bungie, so some of them got fired. Some people took responsability for the Lightfall underperformance so got fired too.
All that is reduced costs. In order to further reduce costs at Bungie, the incubated project was moved to PS Studios and also some people (like part of the redundant people mentioned above, or people in charge of GaaS specific areas) was moved to other SIE teams.
These are more reduced costs that will help with their profitability going forward, specially when combined with The Final Shape success. Even after the cuts, Bungie now will have more people than they had when acquired by Sony. They will focus on Destiny and Marathon. Regarding Destiny 2, after TFS they'll continue with a different, cheaper approach: instead of huge yearly expansions they'll make more frequent and smaller episodes.
I don't have numbers but apparently Tarkov is very popular.
Another popular example of extraction shooter you may know is the Dark Zone mode of The Division: high risk, high reward PvP in a special area where players fight and collect top tier loot, that you only keep if you're able to extract. Some player can team up with you but later betray and kill you to steal your loot.
Back then, The Division was the best selling new IP of Ubisoft ever and the fastest selling new IP (for any company) ever in Europe.
There are also several successful extraction shooters in PC, but are kind of a niche not exploited by the shooter titans. Helldivers 2 is a somewhat similar concept, but it's TPS instead of FPS and PvE instead of PvP, plus you get the rewards even if not extracting and some of them not even needing to complete the mission.
It would be stupid to shelve Marathon when they spend hundreds of millions on it and it's almost ready, plus its announcement trailer was super successful.
Their idea is to have at the same time two different games, Destiny and Marathon. Because you know, they make more money with two games than with only one.
On top of this, Destiny 2 is reaching its sunseting stage (after several years players get tired of GaaS games and leave them, even the most successful ones so their userbase keep getting smaller) and seems Destiny 3 isn't close, so the idea should be to use Marathon as bridge and main revenue source as bridge between Destiny 2 and the next Destiny game because Destiny 2 may die soonish.
In order to have both games, they also need to differentiate them enough to avoid overshadowing as much as possible, plus trying to get a different submarket for each one. Same goes when differentiating it from other games like Helldivers 2. With the new game they try to find a blue ocean instead of a red ocean.
We heard them multiple times: they are a fully owned subsidiary under Hermen, which will continue releasing their games day one in all platforms using their own publishing label that will continue focusing on Destiny and Marathon.
They were incubating multiple projects (some of them Destiny projects, some of them new IPs) including a new IP whose team has been moved and will be under PS Studios.
You are the one who thinks it will underperform, not them. The announcement trailer was super successful, and if Bungie and SIE didn't cancel it is because they think it's good enough and has potential enough to continue forward.
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deathsaber
Member
Personally, I think Sony should be taking Naughty Dog to task right now. Almost four years of a generation gone by, and not even a game announcement.
I know they are working on something, and obviously Sony KNOWS they are working on something, and knows exactly what that is, but there should be something to show at this point and there probably would be if they didn't really put THAT many resources into turning what should have been Last of Us 2's online into some kind of full price GaaS and expected THAT to be their output for the PS5 generation.
It really IS just the latest case of GaaS-derangement syndrome still passing through the games industry that has taken told and continues to bring an ever-growing list of legendary devs low.
Bungie was an A+ dev everyone was interested until they became a Destiny factory, and who other than a small core of oddballs who probably only play Destiny even care about that anymore. Their massive recent layoffs prove how "successful" they have been.
Anthem basically put Bioware on the shelf for a decade with nothing to show for that time, and now they gotta pray that Dragon Age Veilguard gives them a hit title (which they haven't had since Dragon Age Inquistiion on PS3/PS4. Suicide Squad did the same for Rocksteady, stole a decade of their time, and their continued existence is questionable. Avengers took Crystal Dynamics to the brink and god only knows IF they go anywhere else from here, being a part of the dead-end Embracer family.
To Naughty Dog's credit- they saw the sinking ship and axed it, but its a crime that four years were wasted on this project, and we aren't awaiting the imminent release of their next big thing. (A single player, cinematic action-adventure game which is their wheelhouse)
I know they are working on something, and obviously Sony KNOWS they are working on something, and knows exactly what that is, but there should be something to show at this point and there probably would be if they didn't really put THAT many resources into turning what should have been Last of Us 2's online into some kind of full price GaaS and expected THAT to be their output for the PS5 generation.
It really IS just the latest case of GaaS-derangement syndrome still passing through the games industry that has taken told and continues to bring an ever-growing list of legendary devs low.
Bungie was an A+ dev everyone was interested until they became a Destiny factory, and who other than a small core of oddballs who probably only play Destiny even care about that anymore. Their massive recent layoffs prove how "successful" they have been.
Anthem basically put Bioware on the shelf for a decade with nothing to show for that time, and now they gotta pray that Dragon Age Veilguard gives them a hit title (which they haven't had since Dragon Age Inquistiion on PS3/PS4. Suicide Squad did the same for Rocksteady, stole a decade of their time, and their continued existence is questionable. Avengers took Crystal Dynamics to the brink and god only knows IF they go anywhere else from here, being a part of the dead-end Embracer family.
To Naughty Dog's credit- they saw the sinking ship and axed it, but its a crime that four years were wasted on this project, and we aren't awaiting the imminent release of their next big thing. (A single player, cinematic action-adventure game which is their wheelhouse)
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Bernardougf
Member
Ok little snowflake.. time to leave you with your bottle of copium. Be happy
OuterLimits
Member
Microsoft being a raging dumpster fire this gen has helped overshadow what has been a rather poor/disorganized situation occurring within Sony 1st Party studios in recent years.
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NickFire
Member
I think Sony needs to get its ship back on the right course personally. Has felt to me like they're coasting off of prior success / competitors stubbing their toe the past couple years while chasing trends. But taking a shot at LOU Online isn't something I hold against them. I think the market is there for an online game within that world. I just don't understand how they spent so long working on it and couldn't get something worth shipping despite all their resources.
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