Support NeoGAF

[nial]

Stellar Blade was all Shuhei, it's well reported how he pushed to get them a publishing deal

Stellar Blade was all Kazuma Kizuka, Edward Saito and JunHo Lee if we're being more serious (producers deserve way more respect than what they usually get). Now, when Sony started to work with Shift Up, Shu was NOT in a position to get a PS Studios production deal, and the most he could do was recommending the studio to the likes of Hermen Hulst and Arnaud Saint-Martin (XDEV Japan head).

 

[yogaflame]

Nightmare is over, I hope it is.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Nightmare is over, I hope it is.

just pray that all these losses are not used to justify going day and date on PC.

 

[Buggy Loop]

just pray that all these losses are not used to justify going day and date on PC.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Looks like the GAAS gambit is dead. They had way too many planned for too short a time interval; was bound to happen.

I'm a bit worried for Bend Studio tho TBH; weren't their prospects riding on this GAAS they were working on? Now that it's cancelled, do they get to pivot back to a traditional AA/AAA game or are they in jeopardy of getting shut down?

just pray that all these losses are not used to justify going day and date on PC.

That is something I'm worried about; that with these GAAS titles cancelled, it'll make SIE expediate a push for Day 1 PC (Steam) for all of their games.

If that happens, I still fully believe it will have some negative impact to console prospects. The markets are just too similar these days; bleed is inevitable. Just go ask Xbox; not a coincidence their console collapse came about at a growing pace in the same gen they stipulated Day 1 Steam support for all of their games. Well, MS had other issues too (declining quality with several IP, namely) which also contributed to that, and the money spent on Zenimax & especially ABK can arguably be pointed at as accelerating their shift from Xbox consoles to multiplatform publisher status.

Xbox's floor is very low since the brand's normalized peak was softened due to weak XBO performance vs. 360. PlayStation's floor is much higher than Xbox's, but I don't want SIE to put themselves in a position where they have to start looking towards that floor.

 

[mitch1971]

God of war Gaas. Fucking hell. And I thought Concord was bad.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Forget Sony. Western AAA gaming as a whole is cooked.

Remember how good EA used to be? They had real variety at one point. Shooters, RPGs, sports games, extreme sports games, racing games…. All kinds of shit. Fight Night, SSX, Mirrors Edge, Syndicate, etc. Now? Fifa every year and once in a while they trot out the corpse of DICE (FPS are now GaaS too) and Bioware.

Ubisoft also used to be great, and now they are about to completely collapse under the weight of all the woke slop that the market repeatedly rejects.

Rockstar makes 1 game a decade.

Warner Bros was trying to sell all its gaming studios before unexpectedly striking gold with Hogwarts. Then they immediately followed this up with historic flops. Suicide Squad flopped. Arkham Knights flopped. MK1 underperformed.

Bethesda is barely treading water but I’m sure Doom will be great. I liked Starfield but most people hated it. ES6 is still years out.

Xbox has 400 studios that do everything except make videogames. What the fuck is The Initiative doing? They’ve been working on PD since 2018 and all weve seen is a 1 minute trailer.

All the big publishers seemingly agreed at the same time to make the traditional games industry more like the mobile game industry but way more woke for some reason.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Also Men_in_Boxes you keep losing buddy. Badly.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

With these cancelations, Concord enters the annals of history as one of the most important games of all time.

For all the wrong reasons. There will be a business course on this game, for sure.

 

[sncvsrtoip]

You never know. Maybe DG2 will now get green lit.

Yeah with 2030 premiere date

 

[yogaflame]

Sony hopefully will be back in focusing on SP exclusives and for me, no matter what the sales number, don't make there exclusives multiplatform because that is the selling point of the PS console and that what makes Sony PS attractive. It's exclusives SP games. Looks at Nintendo's success, there exclusives no matter what happens will stay exclusive.

 

[Generic]

Forget Sony. Western AAA gaming as a whole is cooked.

Remember how good EA used to be? They had real variety at one point. Shooters, RPGs, sports games, extreme sports games, racing games…. All kinds of shit. Fight Night, SSX, Mirrors Edge, Syndicate, etc. Now? Fifa every year and once in a while they trot out the corpse of DICE (FPS are now GaaS too) and Bioware.

Ubisoft also used to be great, and now they are about to completely collapse under the weight of all the woke slop that the market repeatedly rejects.

Rockstar makes 1 game a decade.

Warner Bros was trying to sell all its gaming studios before unexpectedly striking gold with Hogwarts. Then they immediately followed this up with historic flops. Suicide Squad flopped. Arkham Knights flopped. MK1 underperformed.

Bethesda is barely treading water but I’m sure Doom will be great. I liked Starfield but most people hated it. ES6 is still years out.

Xbox has 400 studios that do everything except make videogames. What the fuck is The Initiative doing? They’ve been working on PD since 2018 and all weve seen is a 1 minute trailer.

All the big publishers seemingly agreed at the same time to make the traditional games industry more like the mobile game industry but way more woke for some reason.

Singleplayer games don't sell anymore.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

Great! Now greenlight days gone 2.

 

[Yoboman]

Stellar Blade was all Kazuma Kizuka, Edward Saito and JunHo Lee if we're being more serious (producers deserve way more respect than what they usually get). Now, when Sony started to work with Shift Up, Shu was NOT in a position to get a PS Studios production deal, and the most he could do was recommending the studio to the likes of Hermen Hulst and Arnaud Saint-Martin (XDEV Japan head).

Take it up with the director

Stellar Blade Was a Small Indie Game Until Chance Deal with Playstation｜Game8

2024.03.13 Stellar Blade was a small game before Shuhei Yoshida helped SHIFT UP get a contract with Sony says creators. Read on to learn more about this and more Stellar Blade gameplay info.

game8.co

 

[Jesb]

With all the money they burned they could’ve paid off everyone’s dept in North America.

 

[kevboard]

this is the worst Playstation generation i've seen, even PS3 recovered from its launch, i cant see PS5 doing the same. its past time for Hermen to step down

the issue with the PS3's launch wasn't even the exclusive games tbh. it was the price, awful online/social festures, the 1 year late launch compared to the 360, and really bad third party ports.

there was never a shortage of interesting titles.
Resistance, Virtua Fighter 5 and Ridge Racer 7 being 3 great exclusive launch window titles.

Folklore released within the first year, as did Uncharted.

it really is this push for AAA, 500 Million dollar budget, 6 year development cycle games that kinda made this gen pretty eventless. nothing noteworthy releases for years, and AA and smaller titles that could release more frequently are mostly being abandoned.

 

[yogaflame]

Singleplayer games don't sell anymore.

Ehem Nintendo.

 

[Elginer]

this is the worst Playstation generation i've seen, even PS3 recovered from its launch, i cant see PS5 doing the same. its past time for Hermen to step down

Agreed. If anyone is expecting it to get better you’re gonna have to let it go. We have concord which launch and failed, Naughty Dog which spent 4 years on factions that was canceled due to Bungie saying it wouldn’t make enough cash. Now we have the news that the last 4 years of work from these two studios is also being flushed down the shitter. I’m sure Sony will still launch their hotly anticipated Horizon multiplayer game and their Watchdogs reject looking Fairgames.

Oh how I miss the ps4 team that was in charge.

 

[AmuroChan]

Sony is very fortunate that because Microsoft had their own issues, they didn't lose any market share this gen. Hopefully Concord was rock bottom and now they can slowly get back to making games that their audience wants.

 

[BoxFresh123]

They put Bluepoint on a GOW live service game........

 

[Buggy Loop]

Singleplayer games don't sell anymore.

 

[Astray]

Also Men_in_Boxes you keep losing buddy. Badly.

He's one of the weirdest posters i have ever encountered on any enthusiast gaming forum.

It's like he's allergic to fun games and only exists to be nickel and dimed by shitty F2P fare. I expect to see that type on GAAS game subreddits, but never on places like here.

 

[Schmendrick]

Projects like those from teams like these..... Fucking hell, did all of Sony Gamings executive level get high and afterwards just decided to go with it? How on earth do you have so little insight into your target demographics at a level where you can decide on such scale.

 

[iorek21]

Wait, they wasted precious 4-5 years of a Bloodborne Remake/ Days Gone 2 for THIS?

 

[tTHANOSs]

Y'all blaming Hulst but Ryan also deserves the blame. At least they are taking action now. Should we should thank Herman? ... okay maybe not.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Looks like the last life cycle of ps5, possibly 4 years from now, will be impressive possibly seeing those OG PS franchise be revive with there shift away from GAAS. It also means it will be an impressive line up for Ps6 era if all those OG PS franchise especially from Ps1 and ps2 era will be revive.

All I'll say is, the talk SIE have had towards doing more AA games like Astro Bot, and bringing back some legacy IP, better not just be hot air. Frankly, they need those games now more than ever.

And hopefully the older rumor of them working with 3P like SEGA and Bandai-Namco to bring back games like Wipeout turn out to be true, too.

...also drop SBI from consultancy work on any of your Western games, and stop opening so many studios in California.

 

[Lokaum D+]

They put Bluepoint on a GOW live service game........

maybe they were trying to make Ascention MP a thing ? ( not gonna lie, Gow MP was fun enough for me to lost 10+ hours in it )

Just imagine the share amount of cosmetics they would put on the store, it would for sure make some money, but not enough to recoup the cost or even maintain servers.

 

[Arsic]

Blue point was not working on bloodborne. i’m glad they failed.

Poor bluepoint. lol bend..

 

[Humdinger]

To be fair that project started development before he got into WWS, so even the previous leadership (Layden/Yoshida) saw potential on an online Horizon co-op title.

I do, too. I'm not an online gamer in any sense, but cooperatively fighting machines in Horizon sounds like it could be fun.

 

[hyperbertha]

GOW world live service like Destiny could work. You don’t have to be god damn Kratos all the time. That could have been interesting. Far better sounding than Horizon IMO.

You're part of the problem. No cure for bad taste

 

[Hero_Select]

I know it's been said already but.. God of War as a live service game? Thank fucking god that's cancelled.

 

[Carmen Winstead]

Also Men_in_Boxes you keep losing buddy. Badly.

He's one of the weirdest posters i have ever encountered on any enthusiast gaming forum.

It's like he's allergic to fun games and only exists to be nickel and dimed by shitty F2P fare. I expect to see that type on GAAS game subreddits, but never on places like here.

Just you wait, in a couple of years the perfect Extraction shooter, ideally made by Bungie, will be released and it will crush every live service game in the market.

 

[ComputerBlue]

First off, fucking great. Second off, fucking Sony, wasted a whole generation on chasing something that isn’t their strong suit, think of the games we probably missed out on because of this.

GoW gaas? What the fuck…

 

[Bernardougf]

 

[HYDE]

Didn’t they learn anything from Ascension?
Stupidity central

 

[hyperbertha]

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.

Did anyone ask for Concord? This company is no longer in the business of giving consumers what they want, but making sure consumers have no choice but to put down money over the long term in liver service titles.

 

[Ebrietas]

This was so unnecessary. Maybe Sony will remember the purpose of a first party is to support and supplement third parties, not actively compete with them. They already have a stranglehold over the major GaaS properties like Fortnite, Genshin, etc (and now own one with the Bungie purchase). That's billions of dollars of free revenue they get by virtue of having the dominant console platform. Their focus should be on maintaining and extending that dominance. You do that by creating unique, high quality, 100% exclusive games. Not that complicated of a formula. They used to know this in the PS3 and PS4 generations. Let's see if they figure it out again.

 

[Kerotan]

A live service GOW game. Talk about reaching for the stars at anything that can be pegged GAAS. LOLOL

Yeah Sony should focus their efforts on single player games. GT7/Helldivers/Destiny 2 being the exception.

 

[Guardian Monkey]

You're part of the problem. No cure for bad taste

People can’t like different things, eh? Ok.

 

[Lokaum D+]

Didn’t they learn anything from Ascension?
Stupidity central

Ascension MP was fun for its time, just a small arena battle with some fun customization and simple gameplay.

 

[hyperbertha]

Anyways, as for what's next for Bluepoint?

How about a sequel to the fucking' Order 1886? But do it justice like it deserved.

So much potential in that IP

Studio is dead. Besides kinda weak game. Unlikely it gets better

 

[BlownUpRich]

Sony these days is absolutely comical, this is sad.

 

[HYDE]

Ascension MP was fun for its time, just a small arena battle with some fun customization and simple gameplay.

But it made them cheap out on building a bigger and better game in the end that hurt it

 

[ProtoByte]

They've utterly DESTROYED their first party pipeline. Bend and Bluepoint are beyond due. Holy fucking shit.

Hulst and Totoki and any other of the yahoos that bet the house on live service slop need to be fired yesterday.

 

[viveks86]

I think people are missing the silver lining. GoW wasn’t the only blue point project. They still have something else up their sleeve. It has been rumored for a while that they have more than one game in the works. The other is likely a single player game. The image is proof that it’s not GoW related.

Same with Bend. I don’t think the GaaS game was their only project (just a gut feeling).

I’m seeing this as good news for gamers, even though I’m sorry for the affected devs. This means focus is being redirected to what playstation studios are actually good at

 

[MiguelItUp]

Did anyone ask for Concord? This company is no longer in the business of giving consumers what they want, but making sure consumers have no choice but to put down money over the long term in liver service titles.

Nope, but the damage Jim Ryan had done was already done. He wanted a live service push, and he got it. It's just hysterical how bad of a move that all was. Really sucks.

 

[hyperbertha]

Singleplayer games don't sell anymore.

True. If not for Concord with its record breaking sales sony woulda been cooked

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

just like with Concord... right?

No, Christopher Dring never said Concord was testing well internally.

 

[Insanemaelstrom]

Personally never believed him ryan was as bad as people claimed but this? Even as someone who considers god of war 2018 to be the best game ever made, god of war gaas doesn't make sense. Also why would you position 2 really good single player studios to make gaas. When was the last time bend or bluepoint made a mp game? Hopefully all this failures will be a lesson to them and they start focusing more on single player.

Also, considering the cancellations, studio closures and failures like Concord( even if offset by successes like Helldivers 2), heads are surely rolling in Sony. We now that multiple people were fired over factions cancellation, this two might be the tipping point.

Unfortunately this will have little impact on their financial reports so we won't get more info until some executive resigns or someone leaks some info

 

[mrqs]

The question is,

I think people are missing the silver lining. GoW wasn’t the only blue point project. They still have something else up their sleeve. It has been rumored for a while that they have more than one game in the works. The other is likely a single player game. The image is proof that it’s not GoW related.

Same with Bend. I don’t think the GaaS game was their only project (just a gut feeling).

I’m seeing this as good news for gamers, even though I’m sorry for the affected devs. This means focus is being redirected to what playstation studios are actually good at

What I take from the image is that they worked on Shadow, Demon's and GoW: Ragnarok (specifically because of Kratos' axe). The other box was their next project, and that was GoW GaaS. We really shouldn't get our hopes up.

Schreier posted implying this was >the< thing they were working on.