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[TheGodfather07]

Now sonys silence and lack of shows makes sense. This is bad. Real bad. Sony are turning their back on what made them successfull to begin with. I always had a bad feeling about their life service push. Turns out it's worse than any of us expected. Why the fuck would you make bluepoint make a live service god of war game, you dumb motherfuckers? Way to hurt the ip and the studio! Absolute morons in charge of PlayStation right now.

 

[Felessan]

Why go GaaS and broke.

Because Sony is a mainstream and wants to continue to be so?
GaaS is already about 2/3 of gaming market and it's growing fast, especially in young segment that will dominate gaming in 10 years

Sony is not Nintendo, they rely on wide market, and as a result they should cater to wide market. And wide market include gaas. They already have half of the business rely on gaas - so they are compelled to support this part of their playerbase too.

 

[Cyborg]

What a shitshow! Who thought a GoW GAAS was a good idea?

 

[EMR]

 

[Pedro Motta]

 

[Von Hugh]

Live service GoW? Lol. Lmao, even.

 

[cormack12]

Men_in_boxes

 

[Hypereides]

From the onset, I had a really bad feeling about the Jim Ryan & Hermen Hulst duo being put in charge of PS and their studios... and here we fucking are. Bravo to both of them. Neither of these two chumps came off as actual creatives who saw things from the perspective of a gamer. All the laughing emoji naysayers look like jesters now.

This is going to sound entitled, but they are really beginning to owe their hardcore fanbase something.

Perfect time for them to restart Getaway 3 from Bend

This just makes me sad Sony London didn't get their chance to make a proper Getaway sequel. Fuck, man. It would've been pretty apt to see Sony make/release something like this now.

 

[Bernardougf]

They've only been working on it 2 years and they have multiple projects.

Na man... they spent two years helping with shitty Ragnarok (why ? SSM is fucking huge) and then two years working on this shit ... thats 4 years waisted of a good studio.. they arent big enough to work on multiple projects.. its time to stop giving sony the benefit of the doubt with vaporware... we are 5 years almost into the gen ... its time to call a spade a spade and drop the hopium.

If they start a new game it will be for ps6.. the only way they release something for ps5 now is with some easy remake they can make in maybe 2-3 years max and will be basically cross gen anyway.

Bend is gone ... they will release now only for ps6 IF they are not closed.

 

[Xtib81]

It took time but they're finally shifting back to single player games. That's a wasted generation though.

 

[TheGodfather07]

I knew not to trust hermen the moment he set up his PS5 upside down!

 

[GymWolf]

Jimbo and helmet, name a more iconic duo of turds if you can.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Singleplayer games don't sell anymore.

C'mon man, 2023's best selling game in the US was Hogwarts Legacy which is a single-player only game...

Hogwarts Legacy Beats Modern Warfare 3 as Best-Selling Game of 2023 in the U.S. - IGN

Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling video game in the U.S. in 2023, the first time a non-Call of Duty or Rockstar game was best-selling game of the year since 2008’s Rockband.

www.ign.com

 

[Xtib81]

C'mon man, 2023's best selling game in the US was Hogwarts Legacy which is a single-player only game...

Hogwarts Legacy Beats Modern Warfare 3 as Best-Selling Game of 2023 in the U.S. - IGN

Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling video game in the U.S. in 2023, the first time a non-Call of Duty or Rockstar game was best-selling game of the year since 2008’s Rockband.

www.ign.com

Wukong also sold like hot cakes. Singleplayer games can still do incredible numbers.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

It would be a way to sink less money, but the main problem would still remain - it's not easy to predict whether a certain project is going to explode in popularity or not. There's no easy formula to copy like with singleplayer games. Your game will need to have specific genre, gameplay mechanics, characters or aesthetic people will go crazy for at the moment of release and you'd have to plan that several years in advance. Like recently we've seen a wave of new hero shooters while the genre seems to be on its way out.

We can get some very cool projects with smaller teams.

Like that GOW R dlc. Or Grounded from Obsidian.

Would prefer they keep trying but keep budgets small and try new things.

 

[Roufianos]

Concord
Helldivers 2
Spiderman GaaS
Bend's Project
Gow GaaS
Horizon MMO
Factions
FairGames
Cancelled London Project
Marathon
Twisted Metal

And that's just what I can remember. How did Sony think people were gonna find the time to play all of those? Even if they thought half of them would be cancelled, it's still ridiculous.

And not one peep of what we actually want, Socom, Killzone and Resistance.

 

[zapper]

thank god, bluepoint would have basically been closed within two years

 

[cormack12]

I wonder if the GaaS was Bluepoints new IP though.

 

[Bernardougf]

Jimbo and helmet, name a more iconic duo of turds if you can.

Phil and Spencer ?

 

[winjer]

No wonder this generation has so few games. Companies, including Sony, are wasting so much money on GaaS, it leaves almost nothing for normal videogames.

 

[Bernardougf]

I wonder if the GaaS was Bluepoints new IP though.

Yes it was... its a GOW universe based IP.. is not gow .. therefore a new IP.

 

[Pedro Motta]

Jimbo and helmet, name a more iconic duo of turds if you can.

Phil Spencer and Aaron Greenberg.

 

[cormack12]

Yes it was... its a GOW universe based IP.. is not gow .. therefore a new IP.

Well, guess they will move onto the remaster of intergalactic now

 

[hyperbertha]

I think their current strategy is already going to affect console sales in the last quarter of its lifecycle, when the console should be at its lower price. By then, their catalog will already be available on PC too.

MS's issues ran since the second half of the 360 (Sony has never shown that level of incompetence). But while Sony can defiantly muster losing money like in the PS3 era, if necessary, they are clearly less willing to do so now. This is why I usually refer to Concord's failure as a $5 billion disaster, which, by orders of magnitude, could very well be compared to MS acquiring ABK.

You talked about Xbox games declining in quality. I would add losing relevance too.

But there is definitely something happening with Sony's AAA games... they feel too homogenized, too samey, too damn "focus-tested"... very Ubisoft-like, of course they still have a "Director driven feel overall" but in terms of game desing i think they getting.... boring.

Intergalactic's reception (overwhelming rejection) should also make PS very nervous. Outside of the woke controversy, it just felt flat, uninspired, devoid of... "gaming magic" and instead, Hollywood-esque in the worst way possible. (Something that Kojima is able to pull off.)

Forbidden West, Ragnarok, and Spider-Man 2, while successful, I think the "buzz" afterwards has felt tepid or less exciting

And Sony is able to endure this because of the 30% cut they get with every transaction. Going day and date will definitely negatively impact PS's virtuous cycle.

So yeah, it will be a risky move. But I mean, Sony has the data; they have a case study with Xbox. Maybe they can succeed where MS failed... supposedly, Hermen is trying to figure out a new way to run the PlayStation business... Let's see what conclusion he comes up with

Gameplay wise, after tlou horizon is their best franchise. But the story feels too corporate, designed based on some chart that says these scene MUST exist because these vibes MUST be created.

 

[hyperbertha]

Herman needs to go. If the man had any shred of self respect, he would fall on his sword and resign. But fucking corporate cucks have no shame and will stay there until given a golden parachute.

fuck these corpos. They have ruined the best fucking first party studios in the industry with their greed and mismanagement. Forcing BP, ND, GG, Bend, and insomniac to make GaaS trash when they all learned that mp was not for them ten years ago.

The sad thing is that Sony keeps promoting him like MS promoted Phil Spencer. phil literally took down xbox with him. I hope to god Sony comes to their senses before he completely ruins sony first party. Bend and Bluepoint will not release a game until 2030 now. And thats me being generous. What a fucking disaster.

Isn't herman actually cleaning up live service slop made by jim ryan? That's what it's looking like to me.

 

[Physiognomonics]

They wanted to exploit Bluepoint into doing their GAAS crap ? Shame on them.

 

[Embearded]

Singleplayer games don't sell anymore.

That's not true though.

What is true is that Sony created the expectation of high quality single player games which do not have as high profit as a live service game with battle passes, skins and shit to sell.

 

[Eimran]

God of War live service?

They are really out of touch…

That's what we get when the industry is run by people who never gamed

 

[jm89]

I'm sitting here thinking for years bluepoint was working on a original single player game, but it was a god of war gaas?

Get hulst and that bean counting cunt totoki out, and everyone else who thought this was a good idea.

 

[Klosshufvud]

I'm sit here thinking for years bluepoint was working on a original single player game, but it was a god of war gaas?

Get hulst and that bean counting cunt totoki out, and everyone else who thought this was a good idea.

Yeah all those times where they were making those sly hints on twitter, what the fuck was all that about? They should've come clean about this shit years ago instead of keeping fans in the dark and speculating. Four years working on a game and with fuck all to show for. And apparently applies to a dozen Sony studios. If heads don't roll for this, then the capitalist system has been a true rotten failure.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

Still waiting for the MAN to enter this thread...

 

[Luipadre]

Fucking pathetic. I was so looking forward to bluepoints game. So they both wasted 5 fucking years and instead of days gone 2 and a new neat game from bluepoint we get fucking nothing. Fuck you Jim and the rest of you clowns. Also live service GoW game my god how out of touch these suits are. No wonder PS 1st party output is fucking abysmal this gen and looks like it wont be any better until PS6

 

[Astray]

Considering it was Bluepoint I wouldn't be surprised if it was a revamped for current gen GoW Ascension



It's not that hard to imagine.

Yeah that's gonna be doubt from me that it comes out good.. GAAS games that get turned into singleplayer experiences never do well.

See: Gotham Knights, Redfall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard..etc

 

[yogaflame]

I think there is still time for Bend and Bluepoint to create a very good single player game in this ps5 era especially with ps5 pro pssr continues to learn and grow. We still have four years in ps5 life cycle before ps6. I just hope Sony will go back to making there games truly exclusive and not port it to other platforms like Pc or steam whatever the sales result because that is what makes PS console attractive to buy. Just emulate what Nintendo so, that as much as possible they dont allow there first and second party gamea to be ported to other platforms.

 

[Three]

Yeah that's gonna be doubt from me that it comes out good.. GAAS games that get turned into singleplayer experiences never do well.

See: Gotham Knights, Redfall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard..etc

I'm confused. GaaS games that get turned into singleplayer games? Were Gotham and Dragon Age GaaS games initially?


I'm not sure if it would have done well or not but after a recent review they clearly thought it wouldn't and cancelled the projects. I was just pointing out how they had turned GoW into a multiplayer game before already and so it wouldn't be difficult to imagine a game like that since it kind of already released.

 

[Astray]

I'm confused. GaaS games that get turned into singleplayer games? Were Gotham and Dragon Age GaaS games initially?

Yes they were.

You can see it especially in Gotham Knights, but Dragon Age had a period in dev where they were planning to take it into the GAAS direction.

 

[Elios83]

I'm sit here thinking for years bluepoint was working on a original single player game, but it was a god of war gaas?

Get hulst and that bean counting cunt totoki out, and everyone else who thought this was a good idea.

Bluepoint situation is not particularly bad, they released a game in 2020, they worked successfully on God of War Ragnarok until the end of 2022.
This gaas bullshit wasted just two years of what was probably just early prototyping/pre production work, so the course correction happened at the right time for them.

It's Bend that is in a really bad and tough spot.
Days Gone didn't have the expected success so a sequel was not approved, then they tried to turn them into the Uncharted team, then they went on with this gaas title that was cancelled.
It's a string a bad decisions that basically will make them skip a whole generation.
And it's unlikely they'll work on something original with further risks, it will be a safe project on a well known and proved IP.
If they greenlighted Days Gone 2 in 2019 it would have been a better. They have been mismanaged.

But now the damage is done, they can only move on and take better decisions for these studios.

 

[GymWolf]

Phil Spencer and Aaron Greenberg.

Tushy.

But i think that sabotaging something good is worse than sabotaging something mediocre.

 

[Three]

Yes they were.

You can see it especially in Gotham Knights, but Dragon Age had a period in dev where they were planning to take it into the GAAS direction.

I didn’t know this, but DA was always a single player RPG franchise before so it's more like a single player game that had second thoughts of going GaaS? I'm struggling to see the connection though. Did Bluepoint and Bend try to go GaaS on their/known IP then pitch it going singleplayer again or something like that?

 

[TheAmazingSpiderMan]

Wonder how Herman will come out and spin this when he’s inevitably interviewed by a gaming journalist at some point, and hopefully the journalist grills him.

 

[Three]

Wonder how Herman will come out and spin this when he’s inevitably interviewed by a gaming journalist at some point, and hopefully the journalist grills him.

Hermen will clearly say that he looked at a project started under Jim and cancelled it based on internal review. What are they going to grill him on? Why he isn't making these GaaS games?

 

[Astray]

Wonder how Herman will come out and spin this when he’s inevitably interviewed by a gaming journalist at some point, and hopefully the journalist grills him.

Gaming journalists grilling anyone in charge is a pipe dream. They are remarkably useless.

 

[Bloody Crow of Cainhurst]

Ngl, bros, this is looking to be my last Playstation. These clowns have used up every last shred of goodwill I had towards them since the PS2 era.

 

[Felessan]

What a shitshow! Who thought a GoW GAAS was a good idea?

GaaS Final Fantasy are the best FF

Wukong also sold like hot cakes. Singleplayer games can still do incredible numbers.

So are GaaS. Actually compared to GaaS numbers (revenue) SP hardly can be called incredible

 

[mrMUR_96]

Hulst is a literal cancer

How did he ever think putting a remake studio on a GOW live service was a good idea?

Bring back the days Sony first party made passion projects

This was probably put in production way before Hulst. All this gaas crap would have come from Jim Ryan, looks like Hulst is at least trying to cancel some of these crappy projects.

 

[Xtib81]

GaaS Final Fantasy are the best FF


So are GaaS. Actually compared to GaaS numbers (revenue) SP hardly can be called incredible

I'd argue that the GAAS world is merciless. It it takes 10 tries to have one success, I'd say stick to single player games or at least don't ask all your top tier studios to make GAAS.

 

[SpokkX]

You can compain about Xbox (their hardware is all but dead) but Playstation has fallen almost worse when it comes to their games output
Especially if you look at it in relative terms. Playstation has gone from strength to strength to... just total misses like Concord and cancellations

Looks like PS6 will be out be the time they recover

What a total shitshow. They are lucky their brand recognition is so high that PS5 continutes to sell

 

[mrMUR_96]

Lmao, so Jim Ryan essentially called for the live service push, and then bounced. Just made the company fail and waste money. Oof.

Also a GoW GaaS? Wtf is wrong with them? No one asked for that, no one wants that, lmao.

Seems more likely he was offered retirement instead of being fired, most of his greenlit stuff is being cancelled.

 

[NuclearDiarrhea]

Wonder how Herman will come out and spin this when he’s inevitably interviewed by a gaming journalist at some point, and hopefully the journalist grills him.

Journalist: "So Hermen, explain these huge fuckups"

Hermen: "Look over here, we have a new Horizon spin-off"

Journalist: "Hermen, please answer us"

Hermen: "Look here at this new Horizon merch, and this new Horizon TV show and this new Horizon Theme Park and this new Horizon..."

Journalist: "Hermen, we need some accountability here"

Hermen: "In Horizon 4, Alloy is going to trans and black"

Journalist: "Omg, this is amazing. Can't wait. Have a nice day!"

 

[Bloody Crow of Cainhurst]

You can compain about Xbox (their hardware is all but dead) but Playstation has fallen almost worse when it comes to their games output
Especially if you look at it in relative terms. Playstation has gone from strength to strength to... just total misses like Concord and cancellations

Looks like PS6 will be out be the time they recover

What a total shitshow. They are lucky their brand recognition is so high that PS5 continutes to sell

SIE and Ubisoft might be tied for equally washed publishers at this point