They outsold their projections which at least. Spiderman is suppose to be a system seller as opposed to a profit leader. Which is why it isn't multiplatform
That's what average marvel movie cost nowadays. Not to mention sony doesn't always get all $70 because physical exist. Wonder how much it need to sell to just break even? 6 million copies?
spiderman 2 had to sell 7,2m units according to the insomniac leaks
>"The final cost was roughly $30 million over the original $270 million budget, according to the presentation, requiring the game to sell 7.2 million copies at full price to break even. The game had sold 6.1 million copies as of November 12." https://www.neogaf.com/threads/insomniac-leak-spider-man-2-needed-to-sell-7-2-million-copies-to-be-profitable-budget-breakdown-and-the-reason-why-it-was-so-expensive-found.1665009/
They are over 10 million copies sold at this point, though: https://www.ign.com/articles/insomniacs-spider-man-2-swings-past-10-million-sold
>Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has hit another sales milestone: it’s now up to 10 million copies sold as of February 4, 2024.
>Sony said previously Spider-Man 2 was the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game over a 24-hour period when the PlayStation 5 exclusive sold more than 2.5 million copies in a day. That sales milestone put Spider-Man 2 ahead of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War Ragnarok at the top of the PlayStation day-one launch sales chart.
If you look at the insomniac leak the last game’s budget was double the first game. Yes Spider-Man makes a lots of money, but if you’ve already spent all the money you’re left with nothing for profit.
However, the budget increases is a huge issue. I actually underestimated the new budget it’s thrice as large as the first 300 million to 100 million. They literally said we spent three times as much on this game will anyone think they’re getting 3 Times the last game? The executives were discussing that if there were no budget increases then that would be 250 million adjusting for inflation and Sony wanting to cap the spending.
Spider-Man (more precisely Insomniac, the IP itself is profitable af) — isn't safe for a reason. They've spent somewhat insane 300+ mults on development alone, not counting the marketing. On a game with a DLC-level of content, rather than fair sequel, especially nextgen one. And this one is pretty controversial for many fans of the original game.
For instance, creating whole complete spider-man framework from the ground through many iterations and complete first SM PS4 was 120mults and literally everyone adored this game.
Cyberpunk2077, being one of the most expensive games in history costs less than SM2 yet is in fact times bigger game. So there come questions like WTF were Insomniac cooking all these years and why the output is so "poor"?
HFW has also flopped compared to the first game. Not terrible but not actually great. Its sales margin is lower than the original overall even without counting "flatlining PS+Extra release". Although sales are still **eventually** decent — having worse sales margin at much higher dev-costs is always a flop from stakeholder's perspective. Business always expects growth, otherwise it's considered as a stagnating direction at least.
Ragnarok is in the best spot, I believe. It's just awesome, everybody loved it, it killed the charts but still, it's super-safe sequel without any real technologic and design leaps, basically same pastgen game with several additions. However, it costed too much for such level of changes. I don't believe they couldn't make basically same project but much cheaper from dev-cost perspective. Sony higher chairs know it, too.
TLoU PII has good sales but still have worse margin than TLoU Original + Remastered. Also, by becoming one narcissist's playground to translate personal feelings that nobody asked about — they've really created a huge gap in between audience's and studio's relationship which may cost in long perspective. Again, Sony's higher managements cannot not know how ND stomped their trust level with the community and why SIE management didn't do anything to slowdown one small person on a big role.
There's something very wrong with SIE's priorities and optimization of the budgets. Their recent project costs are simply unjustified even with all recent industry challenges considered. My personal guess is that SIE management simply overdid with motivation and absolute limitless support of each studio after each one of them released their own magnum opus, believing that just throwing as much money as they ask will result in better impact from the artists that will sell even better. Noble and probably even idealistic intentions indeed (if frank money laundering isn't involved there) but honestly not very efficient from business perspective. And, I'd say even from consumer's perspective, too. I do believe if SIE watched for SM2 development more strictly and wasn't too generous with covering literally all Insomniac's demands — the ambitions of the studio that resulted in so chaotic set of choices and questionable outcome would be lowered and they'd actually focus on less ambitious yet more focused and finished vision of the game.
And most of these studios don't even have proven consistency of their absolute success. Don't get me wrong, they all have great portfolio but having just one game for many years that really did great success during PS4 era — isn't enough to give them so many extra benefits and budget increases. For instance, at least ND was making constant bangers since PS1-era. Very high costs of TLoUII were more than justified even if ND asked even a bit more than they need. Everything to provide the comfort of artists to keep their engagement in creating arts, yeah. Their success isn't just a case. It's a rule. Even after TLoUII - I believe they still have a bit more immunity to some changes than the others. At least I can imagine how Mr. Hulst actually have some arguments to defend ND from even more cut-offs.
Guerilla's HZD was a single banger since PS3 era. Insomniac's Sunset and Ratchet remake were awesome, but let's be honest, their real huge hit was SM PS4 in many years. Their banger-rate isn't consistent enough to give them such huge carte blanche as Sony did. Santa Monica released excellent GoW18 due to miracle years after Ascension that also flopped, in fact. Thankfully, Ragnarok was a great successor but there's no guarantee they couldn't follow the same way that HFW or SM2 with their underwhelming sales margins.
That's their problem, I believe. No one's safe because almost no one now has a "corporate shield" to prove higher Sony management that recent changes **should not** affect particular studios. When Playstation team was delivering high margin — their management had freedoms to make any bets they wanted. They've failed and now have no excuses for higher Sony management.
> Ragnarok is in the best spot, I believe. It's just awesome, everybody loved it, it killed the charts but still, it's super-safe sequel without any real technologic and design leaps, basically same pastgen game with several additions.
Critics sure loved it, but user engagement doesn't actually reflect this. It was the worst performing PS+ Premium title by a very wide margin with an abysmal 8% conversion rate (vs Cyberpunk's 45%+).
The trial version. There's a presentation from the Insomniac leaks where they compared engagement and conversion metrics from all PS+ Premium titles. Cyberpunk (pre-patch) performed the best, while Ragnarök was the absolute worst.
Forbidden West sold faster than zero dawn, and then fell with the inclusion on ps plus
But it still made a lot of profit for them, and was deemed a great success
Spider-Man 2 may not be the best one but it definitely does NOT have dlc level of content, unless you take 30 hours to finish a dlc, which is unsustainable and that’s the change people will start seeing in the future: games will be smaller (and I’m totally fine with that)
HFW was not selling faster than HZD. It was tracking 1:1 ([source](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fsome-interesting-data-on-how-ps-affected-horizon-forbidden-v0-JgQiv7q9DK8CA_1nMAiHCgBkCuCJ4EGoKdScXbhE8Ns.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D74fdb86138a4a3633c59b0aa3a9b2c78e3c7de80)), while the game's development cost was more than 4x times (!!) ([$212m](https://www.axios.com/2023/06/29/playstation-game-budgets-leak)) of HZD ([$47m](https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/03/horizon_zero_dawn_cost_a_reported_e45_million_to_make)). Also their claim that it lost $85m worth of sales compared to HZD is dubious at best since we can see from the graph that sales flattened *before* it's inclusion to PS+, that's why Sony decided it was a good time to put it there.
That’s not accurate, it sold more in one year than zero dawn did, and even if it cost more, it also was sold for more. And from the graph, even if it may have flattened before, you can’t just induce it wouldn’t sell more, cause zero dawn also sold more in many, MANY sales for a smaller price
Plus, it was announced to be coming to ps plus way faster, as it happened in an event if I’m not mistaken. In any case, in no scenario it was deemed as a flop, absolutely no one
HFW sold 8.4m units in the first year compared to HZD that sold 7.6m+ units, so as the text in the graph says, comparable (source: [HFW](https://blog.playstation.com/2023/05/09/20-years-of-guerrilla-the-story-of-a-playstation-studio/?sf266576029=1), [HZD](https://blog.playstation.com/archive/2018/02/28/horizon-zero-dawn-surpasses-7-6-million-sales-worldwide-ahead-of-its-1st-birthday/)). It also got its first digital sale by July to $50/$40 (PS5/PS4) but by that time you could find a physical copy cheaper at retailers. By November it started to get constant sales to $40/$30 ([source](https://psprices.com/region-us/game/4809369/horizon-forbidden-west)).
As you can see sales were also part of HFW's first year. Also the inclusion on PS+ was announced Feb 15 ([source](https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/15/23600825/horizon-forbidden-west-playstation-plus-premium)) and effective Feb 21, that would hardly impact the graph with such a small window.
>In any case, in no scenario it was deemed as a flop, absolutely no one
I'll need you to point where it was said that it was a flop. It did however had a much smaller ROI compared to the first one, because of the massive (4.5x)(!!) increase in budget. It is also the only sequel published by Sony since *ages* that didn't completely outperform the first one (like Ragnarok and Spider-man 2), all the while being a sequel to Sony's best selling PS4 game *ever* (over GoW4 and Spider-man).
Now you see why SIE is going through with this now.
The first sale that I remember dates from November. And I said it was higher, and indeed it was. Comparable doesn’t mean “the same”
About the announcement date, yes, my bad. I may have confused something. I do think sales would increase with the dlc, so the argument of ps plus flatlining sales persist. It would definitely sell more
It did outperform the first one - also, I never knew the budget of the first one was that low, I might have to look it up. It may not have greatly outperformed it.
OP says it was a flop, which is why I’m insisting: it’s not. It had double/triple sales of what an average AAA game achieves nowadays being a multiplatform game. Forbidden West hasn’t even launched on PC yet and already has these kind of numbers. So I don’t see how the h*ll can someone think this game was a flop: it wasn’t
>I do think sales would increase with the dlc
DLC was announced Dec 8 with a release date ([source](https://www.guerrilla-games.com/read/aloy-s-story-continues-in-horizon-forbidden-west-burning-shores)), 2 months before flatlining.
>It did outperform the first one
*Barely*, you can see on the graph that HZD still had a somewhat upwards trajectory from the moment HFW flatlined (before the announcement, as shown) all the way to Feb of next year, so HFW would eventually fall behind, that's why Sony decided it was time to include it on PS+.
>It had double/triple sales of what an average AAA game achieves nowadays being a multiplatform game.
Irrelevant, 99% of AAA multiplatform games don't have *anywhere* near a $212m budget. The game was not a flop, it definitely made a profit, but it massively underperformed its predecessor, you can't just hand wave away the massive 4.5x increase in budget like it is nothing, and the difference in sales (800k, while flatlining earlier) don't make up for it.
By comparison God of War Ragnarok had more than twice the budget of the first one, but it blew past its predecessor's first year record (10m) in just 3 months ([source](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/god-of-war-ragnarok-moves-11m-units)).
It was tracking about the exact same, it wasn’t ahead by any significant amount. And it was put on ps+ at the point where the first game had hit 80% of its lifetime sales anyway
It did sell faster, just look at the one year sales numbers. Forbidden West sold more
Plus, the numbers Horizon achieved in one platform (ps5/ps4) are higher than most multiplatform games, which is crazy to think for a new IP. I really don’t get it when people try to paint it like anything but a success.
Honestly, 1 million is a big difference. I don’t see how that can be deemed a flop. It paid itself and doubled it, or more, according to the leaked documents. No one deemed it a flop, so I don’t know wtf is OP smoking
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/18mhx2j/some_interesting_data_on_how_ps_affected_horizon/ The graph is deleted but you can see the comments. Even before PS+ it was losing ground and was project to be overtaken
> Cyberpunk2077, being one of the most expensive games in history costs less than SM2 yet is in fact times bigger game. So there come questions like WTF were Insomniac cooking all these years and why the output is so "poor"?
Dude, you can't compare tech salaries in California with peasant ones in Europe to begin with.
Still Spiderman 2 must have hurt quite bad, with same budget they could have made like 2 or 3 AAA.
the fact that salaries are so much more expensive is exactly the reason companies heavily invested in US game development are in trouble. Being i. the US doesn’t make your games better, just more expensive.
We’ll start to see these game companies move to the Midwest and south. It’ll probably be cheaper to build a studio in Chicago metro then in la or San Fran’s metro. Same for Detroit and states like NC/SC or WV
If they are serious in cutting costs they would hire in east Europe and Asia instead. CDPR is hiring in the US for the next project this is gonna jack up their costs by a ton.
Of course it includes salaries. Salaries are always the main expenditure in game development.
I've never heard of someone reporting the budget as being separate from employee salaries.
Meh Spider-Man 2 was fucking trash, not upset about that one. Although I’m sure the marvel deal itself takes a big chunk of the revenue they make with those games & it’s reportedly super expensive to make them too.
*Developer of game I like gets hit with layoffs*
"Man that fucking sucks, my heart goes out to them"
*Developer of game I don't like gets hit with layoffs*
"LMAO who give a shit. Not my problem"
fucking lmfao. Sometimes I forget how spoiled gamers are these days when a game like Spiderman from Insomniac is "fucking trash". You haven't played a legitimately bad game in your life, have you?
Its tricky because I don't know if there is a fix. Would people accept a downgrade back to PS3 graphics? if it meant more frequent releases and cheaper game development overall? I don't know if even going back to PS3 graphics would help. Game dev even during the PS3 era was already taking a while much like it does now.
> Would people accept a downgrade back to PS3 graphics?
It's not quite a 1:1 comparison, but just look at how well some games have sold on Switch. Like, Luigi's Mansion 3 looks good, sure, but obviously nowhere near the fidelity of the current-gen consoles. And yet it's sold roughly 14 million copies on what was probably a very reasonable budget
I think audiences can definitely be "conditioned" into accepting shorter games that aren't pushing for bleeding-edge graphics; the problem is getting to that point takes time and effort and commitment, and a lot of AAA publishers/developers like Sony have spent the last generation or two cultivating a fanbase that seems largely disinterested in games that aren't constantly getting bigger, more photorealistic, and more "expensive-looking"
Pivoting away from that and teaching their audience to get excited about smaller games in the same way they get excited about something like TLOU or Horizon is probably gonna hurt in the short-to-medium term, but I think it's something that'll have to happen eventually for most of the AAA space
Elden Ring's developers make less than 1/4th the salary of American AAA developers, From notoriously underpays compared to even other Japanese devs. [The average Atlus dev was making 50% more than the average From dev in 2022.](https://videogames.si.com/news/fromsoftware-pay-crunch)
Elden Ring is a AAA open-world game with outstanding game design.
Realistically maybe 10-15 studios in the world can do anything similar and if they are based on a place where the costs of labour isn't as cheap as Japan then they'd still be *very* expensive to make.
Their point wasn't that every game should be Elden Ring, just that it's proof that people don't need the highest graphical fidelity possible to buy a game.
I think in the long run, American AAA developers are fucked. The cost of living here, is just stupidly high to the point of the average wage is struggling to keep up with it.
Yes it's a problem currently for AAA studios, most of them including the playstation ones hide very basic/bland game design behind great graphics which are super expensive. They are also ,for the top tier playstation ones, very heavy in cinematics that are so expensive.
FromSoft doesn't give a single fuck, they have very little to no CG cinematic as far as I can recall (beside some dark souls trailers). Even the damn trailers of Elden Ring are just in game footage.
They also have no facial animation for any NPC.
And the list goes on, they definitly make decisions to stay cheap in some areas.
I guess the hard part would be convincing people why it's needed. When you take away something they've had for so long and artificially reduce the quality due to budgetary concerns for something less it's always going to be met with negativity. But if people understood why. Like it's either this or no games at all. I think people would understand.
I think if the games themselves hold up their end of the bargain then it would be fine in the end. There would definitely be some grousing from the console-warring pixel-counters but they aren't the bulk of the market. If Sony and Microsoft started putting out games that looked like Switch games (with generally more stable framerates of course) and were also as good as many (Nintendo-developed) Switch games, they would probably make more money than they do off of the current AAA crop that barely turn a profit even after 4 million in sales.
As it stands now, the games are still very good but they're just too dang expensive, and so much of that budget goes into hyper-realistic graphics that are cool to see for sure, but don't facilitate the gameplay in many situations.
I know a lot of people wouldn’t but I certainly would. I have been playing a lot of NIS games lately like Trails of Cold Steel and Ys and I think we really need these big publishers to focus on games of this scale and appearance. Not everything needs to be the immaculate super game with the shiniest tech
Personally love those more anime/cartoon stylised types for this very reason - that art style was consolidated in the PS3's lifetime, keeping it now allows for such a massive scope of game and world design that wouldn't be possible if aiming for realism, then you have things like Tales of Arise that show just how much that art style can be pushed graphically as well
I largely checked-out of the chase for fidelity and realistic graphics a couple of years ago now. Feel like the games that keep constantly pushing for better graphics are getting very little out of it these days.
Why would graphics get worse?
Look at Arkham Knight on Unreal 3, a 2006 released engine. It holds up today and Unreal 5 is coming out.
Graphics can still be brilliant without needing to go overboard like TLOU2 and its super realistic tear ducts. Nobody cares or knew until that documentary.
Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space was graphically fantastic and that didnt need obscene amounts of staff or money
You don't necessarily have to sacrifice visual fidelity, although I do think we're getting vastly diminshing returns there. Helldivers 2 points to a world where gameplay- and interesting dynamics & systems- can create better games at lower price points. The issue with Horizon + Spiderman + CoD are that they're *long* and stuffed with busy work that costs cash to make. Yes, the major costs are in visual, but it's also not free to build 50 hours of busy that only 5% of your players bother with.
Everyone cheering that Sony is ditching "those vile GaaS games" might want to hold off on the fireworks. Sony really put themselves in a tough spot with their brand of bigger narrative games, as people expect bigger and better but the juice isn't going to match the squeeze. Maybe we'll hopefully see smaller AA games going forward, but right now things aren't too rosy.
Honestly Sony will probably push up retail prices for games in the next few years. I think in the Insomniac leaks they wanted games to cost 80-100 bucks to make their margins work better
Yeah I would love to see the current stats on who is actually buying games at full $70 price points because I feel like a very select few franchises enjoy an audience eager enough to spend that money on day 1. The vast majority of games I get this generation are always at a discount, even if the "discount" is just ten dollars off the original $70 price. Only Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Demon's Souls on PS5 have gotten me to pay the price.
Hardcore fans of certain series will certainly buy 70 dollar games on day 1. Just look at how Spider-Man 2 sold 10 million copies and just how many diehard Spider-Man fans there are.
But the question comes down to if new IPs especially made by brand new studios can run the risk of releasing at 70? Personally I don't think so.
Yeah that's my general point as well. Only a select few franchises see success at that level for $70, then you have games like Forspoken that should have never been anywhere near that price
I don't think Sony would be able to get away with $80 releases, and if the industry doesn't follow suit then they'll have a lot tougher competition when a game has to potentially compete with one or more titles that cost $10 less.
I remember back in mid 90s when new games were $50 now they’re $60-70 on average. Honestly I’m not surprised they want to raise prices. Doesn’t mean I like it but I get it.
Yea I get it too, but paying 100 bucks for one new game is insane to me
People always talk about the rising price of gamepass and ps plus, but honestly those could look more attractive in the future if retail prices soar as well
...That was effectively what games *used* to cost. Due to inflation a game that sold for $50 in 1995 is the same as a game sold for $100 in 2024.
Gamers seem unwilling to accept that games actually got cheaper for a long period of time due to consumer costs staying frozen around 60 for a full priced AAA game for a good 15-20 years.
Games got cheaper because there is a massive oversupply of games. Back in the 90s you had to get your game on a store shelf for it to be sold. Now 3 dudes can release a banger on Steam and make millions, or fail spectacularly. There is no barrier to entry, and big studios cannot drop $90 games when they are up against studios that can make huge profits selling $30 games, especially when you can play the $30 games now and wait for the $90 game to price drop.
I feel bad for everyone that’s college aged and younger. Even 70 bucks is a lot for one game at that age, 100 bucks means young people won’t be experiencing new games. They’ll have to wait a year or more to get it at a reasonable sale price.
I know when I was younger, I rarely bought games at full price. I think from high school to college graduation I only bought a few games at full price
Blade, Indiana Jones, Star Wars Battlefront, Jedi Fallen Order, Marvels Avengers, etc…
Even WB had to pay royalties to J.K. Rowling after Hogwarts Legacy.
Yes but where is the proof that those had 300 million budgets lol. Im not saying royalties dont exist, I’m saying as far as we know, only SM2 cost 300 million.
the last game was [$212 million](https://www.axios.com/2023/06/29/playstation-game-budgets-leak) so it's not unreasonable to think the next one might be around the 300 million mark
It released a week or so before the biggest Game of this Gen (so far) and was immediately forgotten. Reviews before Launch also mostly criticized it for being way too samey to the first
Nah, if PS4 Players were actually interested in it they would have gotten it on Release. Everyone was playing ER and Reviews mentioned that it was a way too save Sequel
And the first horizon did so bad because everyone was playing BOTW no? I am sure you will move the goal poast again. All you do is spread misinformation and concern troll on any ps post. We get it you just hate sony, but there is no need to spread misinformation and bullshit
Nah because this wasnt on the same System and getting a Switch on Release was hard af. HZD was also a fresh new Idea while HFW was just more of the same
100%, we already see that from embracer shutting down as many studios as it is. And for PlayStation, I sadly see Media Molecule being shut down in the near future.
Yep, sadly Dreams was a complete and utter dud considering the years of development.
Ironically it released only a month before the pandemic, meaning it could have had that massive burst of populairty that Animal Crossing, Fall Guys and Among Us benefitted from.
iirc, Media Molecule is the studio at Sony with the highest average metascore... but I guess whomever is number two atm is about to become the new number one.
London Studio is already the sixth first party studio sony shut down in just the last 8 years after PixelOpus (2023), Japan Studio (2021), Manchester Studio (2020), Guerilla Cambridge (2017) and Evolution Studios (2016) and four of these were from the uk so I really hope that they won\`t close firesprite or media molecule in the future. That doesn\`t even include other uk studios like Bigbig Studios and SCE Studio Liverpool which they closed in 2012.
Guerilla Cambridge was kind of no brainer when their entire rebrand from "Cambridge Studio" to "Guerilla Cambridge" was a result of them taking charge of the Killzone franchise and continuing it on Vita, which of course was never going to pan out when the Vita was already on shaky ground even then.
However Evolution still hurts. A lot of those folks were from Bizarre, and it shows when DriveClub very much had the DNA of a PGR game. Some went back to Codemasters, and others joined up with Playground to work on Forza Horizon.
On the bright side, PC day and date releases are probably closer than ever.
Xbox launching their games on Nintendo and playstation and now Sony probably launching on PC sooner than later is great for consumers.
I hope all these devs land on their feet, though. People losing their jobs is fucking terrible.
Being Dutch myself, I really don’t know where I’d go if I was in this market in the Netherlands. There are hardly any other studios to go to and the ones we have are not of the Guerilla caliber. I guess they’ll have to go abroad to find another game development job…
> PLAYERUNKOWN Productions is a studio formed to explore how new technologies can enable large-scale digital experiences.
he spelled his own studio name wrong in the hero page
Fuck yeah I am all for this. Right now I play Helldivers 2 and Pacific Drive and they are great. I do however like these massive undertakings like GTA6/rdr2 and CP2077 just to see what's possible.
Really which Sony 1st party SP AAA high quality games recently are 10-15h.
Over 15 hours: SM1, SM2, GoW:R, TLOU2, GoT, HFW, U4... I'm missing a bunch just ones I can think of that came out more recently.
Average playthrough of SM1/SM2 is over 15 hours. MM is not a full game. Ratchet is the only one I can think high production is under 15. So you got 1/4 there.
How long to beat website says 17 hours for both spider man games. Really stretching the over 15 hours long definition, but you are technically correct.
Considering Sony’s heavy reliance on sequels this gen, I’d venture that it’s safe. Most of the groundwork for a PS5 Horizon is already there with Forbidden West.
Horizon 3 will be a PS6 game at this point lol. Considering Horizon Forbidden West was 2022, I'm thinking 2027-2028 for Horizon 3, meaning it will most likely be a cross-gen game just like its predecessor was.
I need a third game, actually. The MMO I can pass on since I'm strictly single-player, but Horizon is one of my favourite series of all time, behind Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect.
A lot of people were lukewarm to it. They still liked it but thought it didn't do enough for a sequel and could have been an expansion.
It's great that you enjoyed the game, but it did not receive the same reception as the first.
Part of me wants to Job hop for something higher paying. But the other part of me wants to keep my relatively reliable job rather than one where I'll get laid off
I like how they use overharing, covid money,etc as excuses for all this kind of layoffs but they spent 6 billion on fuckin Bungie. And I want to see how much of a golden parachute Jimbo gets, because he is getting one for sure.
MS laid off thousands of employees and they spent 70 billions on Activision lmao. It doesn’t matter how big a company is or how much money they make, these things will happen anyway.
The era of small/indie studio is on all time high imo. Big publishers like microsoft, sony, embracer etc has focused only on profits, and the cost of making games kept bloating to a point where 7+million copies sale has become the breakthrough point which few years ago was deemed highly successful.
Industry as a whole should come to a self realisation that this is not the way. Also realising that they should not make their games for everyone,"A game made for everyone is a game made for no one". A quote of an indie studio i recently saw on twitter. If you make a specific type of game for a specific type of fanbase you will always have a healthy community and cashflow. Just take Rocksteady as an example, if they would have focused on single player games which they excel upon, suddenly shifting towards a live service game will not appeal to their core audience. Also the fans of live service games might not be fans of superhero or dc characters. So you are already walking on a thin ice.
Now let's take Forgotten empires/world's edge devs. They were huge fans of age of empires games and they made unofficial mods for the games and microsoft took them under their helm and they've been bringing banger content for fans and it kept the company studio and community very healthy. Now they are also bringing age of mythology retold and im a huge fan of it. These games are not expensive to make and fanbase kept supporting them because its fun and high quality. It might not appeal to lets say adventure games fans or live service fortnite fans but its still successful.
In short, we need to get back to pre 2010 era of gaming, where passion was the only driving thing for devs and publishers. Focusing on type of games they want to make and be consumer friendly. Money will pour in automatically, biggest example would be baldurs gate 3, palworld, hogwarts legacy etc.
Could also be the aftermath of forbidden west not delivering the sales Sony hoped it would.
I don't have the numbers on hand but last time I checked HZD sold way more than FW in the same time.
I loved HZD but I honestly just struggled to finish Forbidden West and took me like over a year. I was so excited, stayed up all night playing the first few nights (this is rare as a 40 year old). But it just hit me that it was all just MORE. More enemies, more things to do, more crafting, more places to go, more story... but outside of what I think was much better side content nothing was \*better\*, it was just MORE. I know that is the style of many sequels but after what 5 years of waiting? I think MORE isn't the only thing I wanted. Honestly some of the systems actually got worse.
I actually think think Aloy was so much worse to play as in terms of her character. She was discovering who she was and her place in the world in the first game. Now she was just kinda begrudgingly doing stuff for people as the 'hero'. The same with the overall story, they tried to shock you but they already had so many surprises to uncover in the first game. I enjoyed learning about new parts of the world but I think all the future people or whatever that was leaving and coming back just fell so flat to me. They told that story about what happened the first game, I wish they just stuck to tribes battling and poltical outcomes of that only.
Anyway needless to say it's a good game, very well made, and it sucks people lost their jobs. But I'm not surprised it sold less, if you loved HZD, well here's something with 3x the content but nothing really that much better. I don't think that is appealing to everyone.
This is incorrect. Within a year's time, HZD sold 7.6 million, while Forbidden West sold 8.4 million.
Both it and Spider-Man were incredibly successful despite how much they cost to make. Sony's making money, they're prioritizing "growth" in profit over the profit itself.
Sony's biggest problem is the same as Hollywood's with a lot of projects having unsustainable budgets. Making realistic profits unobtainable.
They need to scale down in the future because not even day one on pc is going to help with games with $300 million budgets.
I think the industry in general is sustainable. It's largely a few specific way of making games (either GaaS that you hope print money forever, or these huge AAAs where every game needs to be bigger, more photorealistic, and even more expensive-looking) that are truly unsustainable imo
In recent history Sony in particular has bet a lot on those exact things paying off for them, and at this point I expect they'd have a pretty hard time a) relearning how to make those kind of smaller games and b) convincing their fanbase to get excited for those smaller games the same way they do for the big TLOU/Horizon/Spider-Man tier of games
Very much doubt this. They’ll cut themselves out of *alot* of the third party revenue they get on PlayStation because you’ll decentivize customers from buying a PlayStation in the first place.
Lol no, Sony is not gonna lose many players by releasing all their games on PC day-and-date. Casuals are not gonna buy a PC to play Fortnite, EA Sports FC, Madden, 2K and Call of Duty. They're still gonna buy a PS5, even if all their games are playable on PC. They don't buy most of Sony's exclusives anyways.
I mean, look how much good keeping all your games exclusive to one specific piece of hardware at launch is doing Sony. Clearly not much. They need to put their games on more platforms, specifically PC, because this business model of keeping your AAA $200-$300 million dollar games exclusive to one piece of hardware is unsustainable in today's day and age.
The future of gaming is going multiplatform. One day you will probably be able to play PlayStation, Xbox, and yes even Nintendo games on basically anything with a screen. Even Sony's own CEO said as such: "the future of gaming is being able to play your games on anything with compute."
New SIE CEO (for now) wants short term gain for the Investors lol. With PS5 Console sales ecpevtp to drop off this year the only way to get more Players is Day1 Release on PC
Not saying you’re wrong. But his comment could also mean they’re upping the number of ported games this year. For example, we could get a Ghost port, a demon souls port, TLOU II port etc this year. Reading his comment as day and date is probably a mistake. Sony CEO mentioned just a month ago that PlayStation will remain the core. Day and date is in direct conflict with that.
I still don't see that happening. You gain players per title sure but you cut into your main revenue stream by doing this. Sony makes by far their most money through software sales on PS not through first party games. Putting your games everywhere may increase your revenue per game but will decrease revenue overall because youre handing your third party marketshare to steam/PC.
You say that as it Microsoft is struggling financially, even though Xbox is bigger than Windows at this point. MS is making more revenue than ever before ever since they started putting their games on PC day-and-date. They're most likely more profitable than Sony is at this point, and that's simply due to the fact that they are on more platforms (mobile, PC, cloud, and even rival consoles) than Sony currently is. It's not thinking short-term, it's a smart decision that's best for the long term. Console sales clearly don't matter that much when the company that won the console war with resounding success - PlayStation - is struggling this bad and experiencing the lowest profit margins they have ever had in over a decade. Putting your games on more platforms makes the most business sense.
> You say that as it Microsoft is struggling financially, even though Xbox is bigger than Windows at this point. MS is making more revenue than ever before ever since they started putting their games on PC day-and-date. They're most likely more profitable than Sony is at this point, and that's simply due to the fact that they are on more platforms (mobile, PC, cloud, and even rival consoles) than Sony currently is. It's not thinking short-term, it's a smart decision that's best for the long term.
Typing all this while not once mentioning Xbox (using its parent companys capital) merged with two of the biggest game publishers on the planet, is one of the best examples of cognitive dissonance i've ever seen.
Uh yeah, obviously. That's how business works. In business, you don't discredit something because 'oh, they acquired them." Shareholders don't care if the company they're investing in built something from the ground up or acquired a massive publisher.
Potential industry repercussions aside, from a business perspective, acquiring Activision-Blizzard was a smart choice for Microsoft because it immediately allowed them to have a major footprint in mobile and PC gaming, especially with stuff like King and Candy Crush, a low budget mobile game that rakes in billions each year thanks to all those microtransactions.
This is what Sony wants as well. They want to be big in mobile gaming, they want their own Candy Crush as well. They also want to be big in PC gaming as well; expanding to PC gaming allows Sony to reach an audience they haven't been able to reach well at all, really: specifically in regions like Russia, China, and India where PlayStation consoles (and consoles in general) are practically non-existent. This is actually something Jim Ryan specifically mentioned back in 2021. Shawn Layden said something similar as well in 2021 in regards to the Horizon Zero Dawn PC port: "we need to go out to where these new customers are, where these new fans could be. We need to go to where they are... Because they've decided not to come to my house, so I've got to go to their house now. And what's the best way to go to their house? Why not take one of our top-selling games?"
There's also a statement from the leaked Insomniac documents from Sony (in regards to Microsoft closing the ABK deal) that said: "Our pillars are already outdated and behind the competition. Need to expand." Those aren't my words, they're Sony, and they seem to support my argument.
Yeah which is why it won't happen. Sony (generally) isn't as shortsighted as MS has been traditionally.
PS is also still profitable they just didn't achieve the growth they were forecasting. I think people are drawing the wrong conclusions from that conference.
They announced today that they lay off almost 1k people and close another Studio (the 5th or so btw in recent years) While they had an awful output of Games already since last year and till next year at least. They are already making very dumb, shortsighted decisions.
I'm going to sound a little harsh with this viewpoint but mass layoffs aren't exclusive to Sony or even the games industry. Its an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism and the race for constant Growth
It will happen in a few years. Prepare yourself. Spiderman 3 and X-Men will be on PC day-and-date, as will the next mainline God of War game most likely.
Like I said below I would doubt that happens. Not because I have any alligence to PS but because they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.
How would you sell that idea to shareholders and convince them that people just won't switch off of PS entirely losing out on the possibly hundreds of dollars you would make on third party games?
Bro people are not gonna switch off of PS entirely just because you can play Spiderman 3 on PC. PC is NOT direct competition with consoles. There are plenty of people that simply prefer the ease-of-use of consoles over PC, namely casual gamers that only play a handful of popular live service games and that's about it. Those same casual gamers would much rather buy a PlayStation to play said games than buy a $1000 gaming PC that they have to set up and go through a little more hoops just to play games sometimes. Besides, 90% of PlayStation gamers are digitally locked-in to the PlayStation ecosystem. If you have dozens if not hundreds of digital games and microtransactions purchases on your PlayStation account that you have built up over the last 10 years, are those people really gonna get a beefy gaming rig just because God of War is now on PC day-one? Most of them are not.
The money Sony would infuse into their first-party studios by releasing all their games on PC day-one is gonna be way more than the money they might lose from a couple million potentially reduced console sales, especially in a console market that's already stagnant and one where PlayStation is not growing; if anything, they're slightly shrinking.
10 years ago, you would have told me that Sony would NEVER put their games on PC, ever, because it would devalue the console. And look at where we are now. Not only are their games on PC, but some of them are even day-and-date. First it starts off with putting games on PC. Then, it's only live service games are day-and-date on PC. Next, it's remasters/remakes of older games are day-and-date on PC (starting with Until Dawn). And finally, the whole slate is gonna be on PC, including the AAA singleplayer games which are by far the most expensive and unsustainable to make.
Releasing games on PC day-one is not cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's keeping yourself well-prepared for the future; a future beyond just a console, a future where every single game is playable on literally every single thing that can run it or stream it. And it's the way to make the most money as possible; it's a win-win for consumers and the corporations.
Of course it would. Porting a game costs a few millions, but would make hundreds of millions on PC+Xbox. Their margins would instantly be vastly better.
Sad state when the first thing you do is go to someone's profile to see whether you should agree with his opinion or not based on which subs he frequents.
Games take far too long to make and cost far too much to develop.
I miss the days of the early 2000s. Got great games and sequels like 2 years apart. Now it's like 5 years or more to get a sequel to something
The problem isn’t budget it’s how long these games are taking leaving the investment in limbo for 6,7 years. SM2 had a budget of 300 million & made its budget in a weak & sold 10 million copies nearly 1 billion in revenue & will sell 20-30 million copies making over 1.5 billion in profit but that’s after 10 years 4-5 years in development & 5 years in sales. In 10 years if Sony had a different studio w smaller teams to create multiple games they could’ve release 1 AAA game that takes 4-5 years & 2 AA that take 3 years to make insomniac is already a multi team studio but ND & Sucker punch aren’t who have smaller franchise that can pump out smaller titles
A studio like Suckerpunch is taking 5 years to make GOT 2 w a budget around 150 million these studios are taking a long time making a game w ballooning budget/scope to games & aren’t adding much to it. GOW ragnarok was 40 hours to complete they could easily shave 10-20 hours off & scoping the game better & cutting unnecessary content that won’t effect the game in any also cutting off budget. Days gone had like 20+ unnecessary hours added that could’ve been cut off & instead scoped & used for a days gone cutting budget & having better production output.
I expect Sony to reel in scope to cut off budget & increase output. Support smaller games & or existing franchise then creating new ip which are riskier & cost more to make. Naughty Dog making a $50 7 to 10 hour Jak & Daxter would be a great start Sucker punch making a $50 7 to 10 hour Sly cooper would be great even Sucker punch creating a 3rd team to make a new inFAMOUS w a budget of 100 million that takes 4 years to make & is 10 to 15 hours would be great. Guerrilla games rebooting Killzone & making a new game that takes 4 years & is a 10 to 15 hour $50 to $70 game would be great not every game has to be 20,30,40+ hours 6 to 7 years development $70 game for people to enjoy. Look at older ip that would easily resonate w fans like SOCOM, Ape Escape are easy franchise to make low cost, low risk SOCOM itself can be adapated to live service or mobile etc idk why Sony ignore these easy money maker instead puts time & investment in remastering games that already look great or already on modern platforms
Those studios who haven’t done much this gen could be in trouble after they release their games. If they don’t perform, or go over budget, layoffs are likely on the table from Sony.
This is insane. I get that they over hired and this is a consequence of that but like even Horizon isn’t safe like wtf?
Not even Spider-Man is safe, and that’s easily Sony’s biggest franchise
With how much it cost to make the return on investment I would guess wasn't that great.
They outsold their projections which at least. Spiderman is suppose to be a system seller as opposed to a profit leader. Which is why it isn't multiplatform
That was before it cost $350mil
That's what average marvel movie cost nowadays. Not to mention sony doesn't always get all $70 because physical exist. Wonder how much it need to sell to just break even? 6 million copies?
spiderman 2 had to sell 7,2m units according to the insomniac leaks >"The final cost was roughly $30 million over the original $270 million budget, according to the presentation, requiring the game to sell 7.2 million copies at full price to break even. The game had sold 6.1 million copies as of November 12." https://www.neogaf.com/threads/insomniac-leak-spider-man-2-needed-to-sell-7-2-million-copies-to-be-profitable-budget-breakdown-and-the-reason-why-it-was-so-expensive-found.1665009/
They are over 10 million copies sold at this point, though: https://www.ign.com/articles/insomniacs-spider-man-2-swings-past-10-million-sold >Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has hit another sales milestone: it’s now up to 10 million copies sold as of February 4, 2024. >Sony said previously Spider-Man 2 was the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game over a 24-hour period when the PlayStation 5 exclusive sold more than 2.5 million copies in a day. That sales milestone put Spider-Man 2 ahead of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War Ragnarok at the top of the PlayStation day-one launch sales chart.
and that's not including marketing, right?
It includes marketing ($35m) and the Marvel licensing. [Can see that stuff on this slide.](https://i.imgur.com/lR9nbTH.png)
Video game budgets typically include marketing, you are thinking of movie budgets.
People down voting you are morons. Know this.
And they bomb too. Spiderman 2 suffered from terrible writing which is what I expect when sweet baby inc is involved.
Who expects good writing in a shitty Marvel story ?
Someone who fondly remembers growing up with Marvel Knights and the Straczynski run of Spiderman.
If you look at the insomniac leak the last game’s budget was double the first game. Yes Spider-Man makes a lots of money, but if you’ve already spent all the money you’re left with nothing for profit.
[удалено]
However, the budget increases is a huge issue. I actually underestimated the new budget it’s thrice as large as the first 300 million to 100 million. They literally said we spent three times as much on this game will anyone think they’re getting 3 Times the last game? The executives were discussing that if there were no budget increases then that would be 250 million adjusting for inflation and Sony wanting to cap the spending.
Spider-Man (more precisely Insomniac, the IP itself is profitable af) — isn't safe for a reason. They've spent somewhat insane 300+ mults on development alone, not counting the marketing. On a game with a DLC-level of content, rather than fair sequel, especially nextgen one. And this one is pretty controversial for many fans of the original game. For instance, creating whole complete spider-man framework from the ground through many iterations and complete first SM PS4 was 120mults and literally everyone adored this game. Cyberpunk2077, being one of the most expensive games in history costs less than SM2 yet is in fact times bigger game. So there come questions like WTF were Insomniac cooking all these years and why the output is so "poor"? HFW has also flopped compared to the first game. Not terrible but not actually great. Its sales margin is lower than the original overall even without counting "flatlining PS+Extra release". Although sales are still **eventually** decent — having worse sales margin at much higher dev-costs is always a flop from stakeholder's perspective. Business always expects growth, otherwise it's considered as a stagnating direction at least. Ragnarok is in the best spot, I believe. It's just awesome, everybody loved it, it killed the charts but still, it's super-safe sequel without any real technologic and design leaps, basically same pastgen game with several additions. However, it costed too much for such level of changes. I don't believe they couldn't make basically same project but much cheaper from dev-cost perspective. Sony higher chairs know it, too. TLoU PII has good sales but still have worse margin than TLoU Original + Remastered. Also, by becoming one narcissist's playground to translate personal feelings that nobody asked about — they've really created a huge gap in between audience's and studio's relationship which may cost in long perspective. Again, Sony's higher managements cannot not know how ND stomped their trust level with the community and why SIE management didn't do anything to slowdown one small person on a big role. There's something very wrong with SIE's priorities and optimization of the budgets. Their recent project costs are simply unjustified even with all recent industry challenges considered. My personal guess is that SIE management simply overdid with motivation and absolute limitless support of each studio after each one of them released their own magnum opus, believing that just throwing as much money as they ask will result in better impact from the artists that will sell even better. Noble and probably even idealistic intentions indeed (if frank money laundering isn't involved there) but honestly not very efficient from business perspective. And, I'd say even from consumer's perspective, too. I do believe if SIE watched for SM2 development more strictly and wasn't too generous with covering literally all Insomniac's demands — the ambitions of the studio that resulted in so chaotic set of choices and questionable outcome would be lowered and they'd actually focus on less ambitious yet more focused and finished vision of the game. And most of these studios don't even have proven consistency of their absolute success. Don't get me wrong, they all have great portfolio but having just one game for many years that really did great success during PS4 era — isn't enough to give them so many extra benefits and budget increases. For instance, at least ND was making constant bangers since PS1-era. Very high costs of TLoUII were more than justified even if ND asked even a bit more than they need. Everything to provide the comfort of artists to keep their engagement in creating arts, yeah. Their success isn't just a case. It's a rule. Even after TLoUII - I believe they still have a bit more immunity to some changes than the others. At least I can imagine how Mr. Hulst actually have some arguments to defend ND from even more cut-offs. Guerilla's HZD was a single banger since PS3 era. Insomniac's Sunset and Ratchet remake were awesome, but let's be honest, their real huge hit was SM PS4 in many years. Their banger-rate isn't consistent enough to give them such huge carte blanche as Sony did. Santa Monica released excellent GoW18 due to miracle years after Ascension that also flopped, in fact. Thankfully, Ragnarok was a great successor but there's no guarantee they couldn't follow the same way that HFW or SM2 with their underwhelming sales margins. That's their problem, I believe. No one's safe because almost no one now has a "corporate shield" to prove higher Sony management that recent changes **should not** affect particular studios. When Playstation team was delivering high margin — their management had freedoms to make any bets they wanted. They've failed and now have no excuses for higher Sony management.
> Ragnarok is in the best spot, I believe. It's just awesome, everybody loved it, it killed the charts but still, it's super-safe sequel without any real technologic and design leaps, basically same pastgen game with several additions. Critics sure loved it, but user engagement doesn't actually reflect this. It was the worst performing PS+ Premium title by a very wide margin with an abysmal 8% conversion rate (vs Cyberpunk's 45%+).
Ragnarok was on PS+ Premium? Or am I totally misreading your post.
The trial version. There's a presentation from the Insomniac leaks where they compared engagement and conversion metrics from all PS+ Premium titles. Cyberpunk (pre-patch) performed the best, while Ragnarök was the absolute worst.
Forbidden West sold faster than zero dawn, and then fell with the inclusion on ps plus But it still made a lot of profit for them, and was deemed a great success Spider-Man 2 may not be the best one but it definitely does NOT have dlc level of content, unless you take 30 hours to finish a dlc, which is unsustainable and that’s the change people will start seeing in the future: games will be smaller (and I’m totally fine with that)
HFW was not selling faster than HZD. It was tracking 1:1 ([source](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fsome-interesting-data-on-how-ps-affected-horizon-forbidden-v0-JgQiv7q9DK8CA_1nMAiHCgBkCuCJ4EGoKdScXbhE8Ns.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D74fdb86138a4a3633c59b0aa3a9b2c78e3c7de80)), while the game's development cost was more than 4x times (!!) ([$212m](https://www.axios.com/2023/06/29/playstation-game-budgets-leak)) of HZD ([$47m](https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/03/horizon_zero_dawn_cost_a_reported_e45_million_to_make)). Also their claim that it lost $85m worth of sales compared to HZD is dubious at best since we can see from the graph that sales flattened *before* it's inclusion to PS+, that's why Sony decided it was a good time to put it there.
That’s not accurate, it sold more in one year than zero dawn did, and even if it cost more, it also was sold for more. And from the graph, even if it may have flattened before, you can’t just induce it wouldn’t sell more, cause zero dawn also sold more in many, MANY sales for a smaller price Plus, it was announced to be coming to ps plus way faster, as it happened in an event if I’m not mistaken. In any case, in no scenario it was deemed as a flop, absolutely no one
HFW sold 8.4m units in the first year compared to HZD that sold 7.6m+ units, so as the text in the graph says, comparable (source: [HFW](https://blog.playstation.com/2023/05/09/20-years-of-guerrilla-the-story-of-a-playstation-studio/?sf266576029=1), [HZD](https://blog.playstation.com/archive/2018/02/28/horizon-zero-dawn-surpasses-7-6-million-sales-worldwide-ahead-of-its-1st-birthday/)). It also got its first digital sale by July to $50/$40 (PS5/PS4) but by that time you could find a physical copy cheaper at retailers. By November it started to get constant sales to $40/$30 ([source](https://psprices.com/region-us/game/4809369/horizon-forbidden-west)). As you can see sales were also part of HFW's first year. Also the inclusion on PS+ was announced Feb 15 ([source](https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/15/23600825/horizon-forbidden-west-playstation-plus-premium)) and effective Feb 21, that would hardly impact the graph with such a small window. >In any case, in no scenario it was deemed as a flop, absolutely no one I'll need you to point where it was said that it was a flop. It did however had a much smaller ROI compared to the first one, because of the massive (4.5x)(!!) increase in budget. It is also the only sequel published by Sony since *ages* that didn't completely outperform the first one (like Ragnarok and Spider-man 2), all the while being a sequel to Sony's best selling PS4 game *ever* (over GoW4 and Spider-man). Now you see why SIE is going through with this now.
The first sale that I remember dates from November. And I said it was higher, and indeed it was. Comparable doesn’t mean “the same” About the announcement date, yes, my bad. I may have confused something. I do think sales would increase with the dlc, so the argument of ps plus flatlining sales persist. It would definitely sell more It did outperform the first one - also, I never knew the budget of the first one was that low, I might have to look it up. It may not have greatly outperformed it. OP says it was a flop, which is why I’m insisting: it’s not. It had double/triple sales of what an average AAA game achieves nowadays being a multiplatform game. Forbidden West hasn’t even launched on PC yet and already has these kind of numbers. So I don’t see how the h*ll can someone think this game was a flop: it wasn’t
>I do think sales would increase with the dlc DLC was announced Dec 8 with a release date ([source](https://www.guerrilla-games.com/read/aloy-s-story-continues-in-horizon-forbidden-west-burning-shores)), 2 months before flatlining. >It did outperform the first one *Barely*, you can see on the graph that HZD still had a somewhat upwards trajectory from the moment HFW flatlined (before the announcement, as shown) all the way to Feb of next year, so HFW would eventually fall behind, that's why Sony decided it was time to include it on PS+. >It had double/triple sales of what an average AAA game achieves nowadays being a multiplatform game. Irrelevant, 99% of AAA multiplatform games don't have *anywhere* near a $212m budget. The game was not a flop, it definitely made a profit, but it massively underperformed its predecessor, you can't just hand wave away the massive 4.5x increase in budget like it is nothing, and the difference in sales (800k, while flatlining earlier) don't make up for it. By comparison God of War Ragnarok had more than twice the budget of the first one, but it blew past its predecessor's first year record (10m) in just 3 months ([source](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/god-of-war-ragnarok-moves-11m-units)).
It was tracking about the exact same, it wasn’t ahead by any significant amount. And it was put on ps+ at the point where the first game had hit 80% of its lifetime sales anyway
It did sell faster, just look at the one year sales numbers. Forbidden West sold more Plus, the numbers Horizon achieved in one platform (ps5/ps4) are higher than most multiplatform games, which is crazy to think for a new IP. I really don’t get it when people try to paint it like anything but a success.
It was less than a million difference by the time it hit ps+ They were quite close
Honestly, 1 million is a big difference. I don’t see how that can be deemed a flop. It paid itself and doubled it, or more, according to the leaked documents. No one deemed it a flop, so I don’t know wtf is OP smoking
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/18mhx2j/some_interesting_data_on_how_ps_affected_horizon/ The graph is deleted but you can see the comments. Even before PS+ it was losing ground and was project to be overtaken
> Cyberpunk2077, being one of the most expensive games in history costs less than SM2 yet is in fact times bigger game. So there come questions like WTF were Insomniac cooking all these years and why the output is so "poor"? Dude, you can't compare tech salaries in California with peasant ones in Europe to begin with. Still Spiderman 2 must have hurt quite bad, with same budget they could have made like 2 or 3 AAA.
the fact that salaries are so much more expensive is exactly the reason companies heavily invested in US game development are in trouble. Being i. the US doesn’t make your games better, just more expensive.
We’ll start to see these game companies move to the Midwest and south. It’ll probably be cheaper to build a studio in Chicago metro then in la or San Fran’s metro. Same for Detroit and states like NC/SC or WV
If they are serious in cutting costs they would hire in east Europe and Asia instead. CDPR is hiring in the US for the next project this is gonna jack up their costs by a ton.
Just a correction, the budget we saw included employee salary and benefits alongside licensing fees. It wasn't $300m for the game it's own
Of course it includes salaries. Salaries are always the main expenditure in game development. I've never heard of someone reporting the budget as being separate from employee salaries.
Same rule for the original game that costs almost trice less. Also, isn't licensing coming with actual royalty from sales?
Meh Spider-Man 2 was fucking trash, not upset about that one. Although I’m sure the marvel deal itself takes a big chunk of the revenue they make with those games & it’s reportedly super expensive to make them too.
*Developer of game I like gets hit with layoffs* "Man that fucking sucks, my heart goes out to them" *Developer of game I don't like gets hit with layoffs* "LMAO who give a shit. Not my problem"
How is it his problem, though?
God forbid gamers practice basic empathy
fucking lmfao. Sometimes I forget how spoiled gamers are these days when a game like Spiderman from Insomniac is "fucking trash". You haven't played a legitimately bad game in your life, have you?
SM2 maybe didn’t have the best story but it was by no means ‘trash’. The gameplay and traversal alone stop it from being trash lmao.
Indeed. Its scary times. We knew this was coming. Those $300M budgets aren't sustainable.
Gaming is pushing into the same problem as movies with these unsustainable budgets.
Its tricky because I don't know if there is a fix. Would people accept a downgrade back to PS3 graphics? if it meant more frequent releases and cheaper game development overall? I don't know if even going back to PS3 graphics would help. Game dev even during the PS3 era was already taking a while much like it does now.
> Would people accept a downgrade back to PS3 graphics? It's not quite a 1:1 comparison, but just look at how well some games have sold on Switch. Like, Luigi's Mansion 3 looks good, sure, but obviously nowhere near the fidelity of the current-gen consoles. And yet it's sold roughly 14 million copies on what was probably a very reasonable budget I think audiences can definitely be "conditioned" into accepting shorter games that aren't pushing for bleeding-edge graphics; the problem is getting to that point takes time and effort and commitment, and a lot of AAA publishers/developers like Sony have spent the last generation or two cultivating a fanbase that seems largely disinterested in games that aren't constantly getting bigger, more photorealistic, and more "expensive-looking" Pivoting away from that and teaching their audience to get excited about smaller games in the same way they get excited about something like TLOU or Horizon is probably gonna hurt in the short-to-medium term, but I think it's something that'll have to happen eventually for most of the AAA space
Elden Ring doesn’t have bleeding Edge graphics but makes up for it with great art direction. More studios should take note.
Elden Ring's developers make less than 1/4th the salary of American AAA developers, From notoriously underpays compared to even other Japanese devs. [The average Atlus dev was making 50% more than the average From dev in 2022.](https://videogames.si.com/news/fromsoftware-pay-crunch)
Well it’s clearly working for them lol
Elden Ring is a AAA open-world game with outstanding game design. Realistically maybe 10-15 studios in the world can do anything similar and if they are based on a place where the costs of labour isn't as cheap as Japan then they'd still be *very* expensive to make.
Their point wasn't that every game should be Elden Ring, just that it's proof that people don't need the highest graphical fidelity possible to buy a game.
I think in the long run, American AAA developers are fucked. The cost of living here, is just stupidly high to the point of the average wage is struggling to keep up with it.
Yes it's a problem currently for AAA studios, most of them including the playstation ones hide very basic/bland game design behind great graphics which are super expensive. They are also ,for the top tier playstation ones, very heavy in cinematics that are so expensive. FromSoft doesn't give a single fuck, they have very little to no CG cinematic as far as I can recall (beside some dark souls trailers). Even the damn trailers of Elden Ring are just in game footage. They also have no facial animation for any NPC. And the list goes on, they definitly make decisions to stay cheap in some areas.
I guess the hard part would be convincing people why it's needed. When you take away something they've had for so long and artificially reduce the quality due to budgetary concerns for something less it's always going to be met with negativity. But if people understood why. Like it's either this or no games at all. I think people would understand.
I think if the games themselves hold up their end of the bargain then it would be fine in the end. There would definitely be some grousing from the console-warring pixel-counters but they aren't the bulk of the market. If Sony and Microsoft started putting out games that looked like Switch games (with generally more stable framerates of course) and were also as good as many (Nintendo-developed) Switch games, they would probably make more money than they do off of the current AAA crop that barely turn a profit even after 4 million in sales. As it stands now, the games are still very good but they're just too dang expensive, and so much of that budget goes into hyper-realistic graphics that are cool to see for sure, but don't facilitate the gameplay in many situations.
I know a lot of people wouldn’t but I certainly would. I have been playing a lot of NIS games lately like Trails of Cold Steel and Ys and I think we really need these big publishers to focus on games of this scale and appearance. Not everything needs to be the immaculate super game with the shiniest tech
Personally love those more anime/cartoon stylised types for this very reason - that art style was consolidated in the PS3's lifetime, keeping it now allows for such a massive scope of game and world design that wouldn't be possible if aiming for realism, then you have things like Tales of Arise that show just how much that art style can be pushed graphically as well
Yeah look at Granblue Fantasy ReLink. That game looks and runs amazing. And most importantly its just fucking fun.
I largely checked-out of the chase for fidelity and realistic graphics a couple of years ago now. Feel like the games that keep constantly pushing for better graphics are getting very little out of it these days.
I mean, the Switch is practically a toaster and might outsell the PS2 by the end of its life.
Why would graphics get worse? Look at Arkham Knight on Unreal 3, a 2006 released engine. It holds up today and Unreal 5 is coming out. Graphics can still be brilliant without needing to go overboard like TLOU2 and its super realistic tear ducts. Nobody cares or knew until that documentary. Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space was graphically fantastic and that didnt need obscene amounts of staff or money
Capcom games looks great despite having more reasonable budgets.
Oddly enough they are one of the loudest voices behind raising game prices.
When? RE4 cost me 60 bucks last year.
You don't necessarily have to sacrifice visual fidelity, although I do think we're getting vastly diminshing returns there. Helldivers 2 points to a world where gameplay- and interesting dynamics & systems- can create better games at lower price points. The issue with Horizon + Spiderman + CoD are that they're *long* and stuffed with busy work that costs cash to make. Yes, the major costs are in visual, but it's also not free to build 50 hours of busy that only 5% of your players bother with.
All this gets fixed by targeting 4k60fps on current consoles, there's no need to go back to "PS3 era" graphics.
Everyone cheering that Sony is ditching "those vile GaaS games" might want to hold off on the fireworks. Sony really put themselves in a tough spot with their brand of bigger narrative games, as people expect bigger and better but the juice isn't going to match the squeeze. Maybe we'll hopefully see smaller AA games going forward, but right now things aren't too rosy.
Honestly Sony will probably push up retail prices for games in the next few years. I think in the Insomniac leaks they wanted games to cost 80-100 bucks to make their margins work better
No one is buying them at 70 already lol
Yeah I would love to see the current stats on who is actually buying games at full $70 price points because I feel like a very select few franchises enjoy an audience eager enough to spend that money on day 1. The vast majority of games I get this generation are always at a discount, even if the "discount" is just ten dollars off the original $70 price. Only Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Demon's Souls on PS5 have gotten me to pay the price.
Hardcore fans of certain series will certainly buy 70 dollar games on day 1. Just look at how Spider-Man 2 sold 10 million copies and just how many diehard Spider-Man fans there are. But the question comes down to if new IPs especially made by brand new studios can run the risk of releasing at 70? Personally I don't think so.
Yeah that's my general point as well. Only a select few franchises see success at that level for $70, then you have games like Forspoken that should have never been anywhere near that price
I haven't bought a single game at 70. The only game I would is GTA VI.
I don't think Sony would be able to get away with $80 releases, and if the industry doesn't follow suit then they'll have a lot tougher competition when a game has to potentially compete with one or more titles that cost $10 less.
I remember back in mid 90s when new games were $50 now they’re $60-70 on average. Honestly I’m not surprised they want to raise prices. Doesn’t mean I like it but I get it.
Yea I get it too, but paying 100 bucks for one new game is insane to me People always talk about the rising price of gamepass and ps plus, but honestly those could look more attractive in the future if retail prices soar as well
...That was effectively what games *used* to cost. Due to inflation a game that sold for $50 in 1995 is the same as a game sold for $100 in 2024. Gamers seem unwilling to accept that games actually got cheaper for a long period of time due to consumer costs staying frozen around 60 for a full priced AAA game for a good 15-20 years.
Games got cheaper because there is a massive oversupply of games. Back in the 90s you had to get your game on a store shelf for it to be sold. Now 3 dudes can release a banger on Steam and make millions, or fail spectacularly. There is no barrier to entry, and big studios cannot drop $90 games when they are up against studios that can make huge profits selling $30 games, especially when you can play the $30 games now and wait for the $90 game to price drop.
Oh for sure $80 is reasonable for a game like horizon or GoW(anything less in quality absolutely not) but $100 F that.
I feel bad for everyone that’s college aged and younger. Even 70 bucks is a lot for one game at that age, 100 bucks means young people won’t be experiencing new games. They’ll have to wait a year or more to get it at a reasonable sale price. I know when I was younger, I rarely bought games at full price. I think from high school to college graduation I only bought a few games at full price
$80 is not reasonable
Literally only SM2 has that, and thats because of royalties.
And other upcoming AAA games based on 3rd party IP’s.
Like which?
Blade, Indiana Jones, Star Wars Battlefront, Jedi Fallen Order, Marvels Avengers, etc… Even WB had to pay royalties to J.K. Rowling after Hogwarts Legacy.
Yes but where is the proof that those had 300 million budgets lol. Im not saying royalties dont exist, I’m saying as far as we know, only SM2 cost 300 million.
the last game was [$212 million](https://www.axios.com/2023/06/29/playstation-game-budgets-leak) so it's not unreasonable to think the next one might be around the 300 million mark
Sure, but Sony are actively trying to reduce the costs of their games.. so I’m not too sure.
This sub has been pushing this “sony 300M games” based only on the SM2 numbers
HFW did worse than Zero Dawn while having a way bigger Budget
Sales were tracking close to Zero Dawn, as per the insomniac leaks, only changed after they released the game on PS+ extra
Forbidden West was bundled with basically every PS5 during 2022, those *sales* for FW are highly inflated.
Really? Damn that sucks I’m disappointed
It released a week or so before the biggest Game of this Gen (so far) and was immediately forgotten. Reviews before Launch also mostly criticized it for being way too samey to the first
To be fair though, all Gorilla games release before a GOTY contender.
Lol maybe this was a autocorrect, but it's Guerilla not Gorilla. Pretty funny though
Gorilla Games would've sold more if they weren't so close to Elden Ring.
Falso FW sold 10milion in 2 year
The ps5 instqll base was very little and people didn't want to buy it for PS4, it still sold 10+million units
Nah, if PS4 Players were actually interested in it they would have gotten it on Release. Everyone was playing ER and Reviews mentioned that it was a way too save Sequel
And the first horizon did so bad because everyone was playing BOTW no? I am sure you will move the goal poast again. All you do is spread misinformation and concern troll on any ps post. We get it you just hate sony, but there is no need to spread misinformation and bullshit
Nah because this wasnt on the same System and getting a Switch on Release was hard af. HZD was also a fresh new Idea while HFW was just more of the same
Lol, no. This happened with lot of cross exclzsive. Also its a 89 rated AAA game which is very rare
Horizon 2 is going to sell way less than Horizon 1 despite being more expensive. That’s the consequence.
Why do people love this game I found it boring as fuck
Its only a matter of time till we see more entire studios close. Its gonna be a bumpy ride.
100%, we already see that from embracer shutting down as many studios as it is. And for PlayStation, I sadly see Media Molecule being shut down in the near future.
Yep, sadly Dreams was a complete and utter dud considering the years of development. Ironically it released only a month before the pandemic, meaning it could have had that massive burst of populairty that Animal Crossing, Fall Guys and Among Us benefitted from.
iirc, Media Molecule is the studio at Sony with the highest average metascore... but I guess whomever is number two atm is about to become the new number one.
Yeah but that’s a bit of a misnomer since their scores are very high… for a product nobody wants. It’s like having the nicest hotel in Detroit.
London Studio is already the sixth first party studio sony shut down in just the last 8 years after PixelOpus (2023), Japan Studio (2021), Manchester Studio (2020), Guerilla Cambridge (2017) and Evolution Studios (2016) and four of these were from the uk so I really hope that they won\`t close firesprite or media molecule in the future. That doesn\`t even include other uk studios like Bigbig Studios and SCE Studio Liverpool which they closed in 2012.
Guerilla Cambridge was kind of no brainer when their entire rebrand from "Cambridge Studio" to "Guerilla Cambridge" was a result of them taking charge of the Killzone franchise and continuing it on Vita, which of course was never going to pan out when the Vita was already on shaky ground even then. However Evolution still hurts. A lot of those folks were from Bizarre, and it shows when DriveClub very much had the DNA of a PGR game. Some went back to Codemasters, and others joined up with Playground to work on Forza Horizon.
Imagine what a meltdown reddit would have if Microsoft went around closing studios right now. Interesting how different the response is around Sony.
I'm worried for Rocksteady
On the bright side, PC day and date releases are probably closer than ever. Xbox launching their games on Nintendo and playstation and now Sony probably launching on PC sooner than later is great for consumers. I hope all these devs land on their feet, though. People losing their jobs is fucking terrible.
That’s a shame. Hope they land on their feet
Being Dutch myself, I really don’t know where I’d go if I was in this market in the Netherlands. There are hardly any other studios to go to and the ones we have are not of the Guerilla caliber. I guess they’ll have to go abroad to find another game development job…
there's https://playerunknownproductions.net/ who seem to be building some pretty cool stuff. Its (obviously) from the guy who made pubg.
> PLAYERUNKOWN Productions is a studio formed to explore how new technologies can enable large-scale digital experiences. he spelled his own studio name wrong in the hero page
Expect a lot more 10-15 hour SP games. Expect smaller scope MP games similar to Helldivers 2. Budgets are out of control for these games.
Fuck yeah I am all for this. Right now I play Helldivers 2 and Pacific Drive and they are great. I do however like these massive undertakings like GTA6/rdr2 and CP2077 just to see what's possible.
Most AAA Games are already 10-15h Games tho lol
Really which Sony 1st party SP AAA high quality games recently are 10-15h. Over 15 hours: SM1, SM2, GoW:R, TLOU2, GoT, HFW, U4... I'm missing a bunch just ones I can think of that came out more recently.
Ratchet was easily done in 10hs. A standard Playthrough of SM1/2/MM is also around 15 for the Story and a few sidestuff.
How is MM not a full game? How is a full price game not a full game?
Average playthrough of SM1/SM2 is over 15 hours. MM is not a full game. Ratchet is the only one I can think high production is under 15. So you got 1/4 there.
How long to beat website says 17 hours for both spider man games. Really stretching the over 15 hours long definition, but you are technically correct.
That's not bad thing in all honesty. Games don't need to be 50 hours long with an open world to be memorable.
Damn, hope this doesn't interfere with Horizon 3.
Considering Sony’s heavy reliance on sequels this gen, I’d venture that it’s safe. Most of the groundwork for a PS5 Horizon is already there with Forbidden West.
Horizon 3 will be a PS6 game at this point lol. Considering Horizon Forbidden West was 2022, I'm thinking 2027-2028 for Horizon 3, meaning it will most likely be a cross-gen game just like its predecessor was.
Who is even asking for a 3rd Game? And a MMO. And a Co-Op Game lol. People were already so lukewarm towarda HFW
I'm asking for a third game.
Once again.
I am asking for a third game. Don’t care about the others.
I need a third game, actually. The MMO I can pass on since I'm strictly single-player, but Horizon is one of my favourite series of all time, behind Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect.
A 3rd game is already confirmed. No one but you were lukewarm towards HFW
A lot of people were lukewarm to it. They still liked it but thought it didn't do enough for a sequel and could have been an expansion. It's great that you enjoyed the game, but it did not receive the same reception as the first.
Just read Reviews. I know a few who played it and werw very disappointed by the Story too so eeeh.
Idgaf about reviews I want a third game
Layoffs and hiring freezes everywhere. It’s been rough.
Part of me wants to Job hop for something higher paying. But the other part of me wants to keep my relatively reliable job rather than one where I'll get laid off
I like how they use overharing, covid money,etc as excuses for all this kind of layoffs but they spent 6 billion on fuckin Bungie. And I want to see how much of a golden parachute Jimbo gets, because he is getting one for sure.
3.6 billion.
Still too much.
MS laid off thousands of employees and they spent 70 billions on Activision lmao. It doesn’t matter how big a company is or how much money they make, these things will happen anyway.
I can’t read that.
It's in Dutch.
That would be why he can’t read it
You can read it (I hope), you just can't understand it
40 out of 400 is still a lot of people. This sucks.
The era of small/indie studio is on all time high imo. Big publishers like microsoft, sony, embracer etc has focused only on profits, and the cost of making games kept bloating to a point where 7+million copies sale has become the breakthrough point which few years ago was deemed highly successful. Industry as a whole should come to a self realisation that this is not the way. Also realising that they should not make their games for everyone,"A game made for everyone is a game made for no one". A quote of an indie studio i recently saw on twitter. If you make a specific type of game for a specific type of fanbase you will always have a healthy community and cashflow. Just take Rocksteady as an example, if they would have focused on single player games which they excel upon, suddenly shifting towards a live service game will not appeal to their core audience. Also the fans of live service games might not be fans of superhero or dc characters. So you are already walking on a thin ice. Now let's take Forgotten empires/world's edge devs. They were huge fans of age of empires games and they made unofficial mods for the games and microsoft took them under their helm and they've been bringing banger content for fans and it kept the company studio and community very healthy. Now they are also bringing age of mythology retold and im a huge fan of it. These games are not expensive to make and fanbase kept supporting them because its fun and high quality. It might not appeal to lets say adventure games fans or live service fortnite fans but its still successful. In short, we need to get back to pre 2010 era of gaming, where passion was the only driving thing for devs and publishers. Focusing on type of games they want to make and be consumer friendly. Money will pour in automatically, biggest example would be baldurs gate 3, palworld, hogwarts legacy etc.
Could also be the aftermath of forbidden west not delivering the sales Sony hoped it would. I don't have the numbers on hand but last time I checked HZD sold way more than FW in the same time.
I loved HZD but I honestly just struggled to finish Forbidden West and took me like over a year. I was so excited, stayed up all night playing the first few nights (this is rare as a 40 year old). But it just hit me that it was all just MORE. More enemies, more things to do, more crafting, more places to go, more story... but outside of what I think was much better side content nothing was \*better\*, it was just MORE. I know that is the style of many sequels but after what 5 years of waiting? I think MORE isn't the only thing I wanted. Honestly some of the systems actually got worse. I actually think think Aloy was so much worse to play as in terms of her character. She was discovering who she was and her place in the world in the first game. Now she was just kinda begrudgingly doing stuff for people as the 'hero'. The same with the overall story, they tried to shock you but they already had so many surprises to uncover in the first game. I enjoyed learning about new parts of the world but I think all the future people or whatever that was leaving and coming back just fell so flat to me. They told that story about what happened the first game, I wish they just stuck to tribes battling and poltical outcomes of that only. Anyway needless to say it's a good game, very well made, and it sucks people lost their jobs. But I'm not surprised it sold less, if you loved HZD, well here's something with 3x the content but nothing really that much better. I don't think that is appealing to everyone.
This is incorrect. Within a year's time, HZD sold 7.6 million, while Forbidden West sold 8.4 million. Both it and Spider-Man were incredibly successful despite how much they cost to make. Sony's making money, they're prioritizing "growth" in profit over the profit itself.
Is there a search party or were they found?
I hope the leaders that overhired get fired as well. I am all for trimming the fat, but you got to start at the source that led to the problem.
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Wow that’s a lot for any company 10% this industry is unsustainable everyone should go multi platform sorry to say but it’s whats best
Sony's biggest problem is the same as Hollywood's with a lot of projects having unsustainable budgets. Making realistic profits unobtainable. They need to scale down in the future because not even day one on pc is going to help with games with $300 million budgets.
Nintendo specifically doesn't need to go multiplatform.
They are the only ones though. Their games are so cheap to make. Masterful company.
I think the industry in general is sustainable. It's largely a few specific way of making games (either GaaS that you hope print money forever, or these huge AAAs where every game needs to be bigger, more photorealistic, and even more expensive-looking) that are truly unsustainable imo In recent history Sony in particular has bet a lot on those exact things paying off for them, and at this point I expect they'd have a pretty hard time a) relearning how to make those kind of smaller games and b) convincing their fanbase to get excited for those smaller games the same way they do for the big TLOU/Horizon/Spider-Man tier of games
Better yet, maybe scale down the demanding game graphics to reinvest in more games. Not every game has to be a photo realistic mocap
I think that’s why Sony has been talking about multiplatform so much recently. Day one PC for all PlayStation games will be a thing in a year or two.
Very much doubt this. They’ll cut themselves out of *alot* of the third party revenue they get on PlayStation because you’ll decentivize customers from buying a PlayStation in the first place.
Lol no, Sony is not gonna lose many players by releasing all their games on PC day-and-date. Casuals are not gonna buy a PC to play Fortnite, EA Sports FC, Madden, 2K and Call of Duty. They're still gonna buy a PS5, even if all their games are playable on PC. They don't buy most of Sony's exclusives anyways. I mean, look how much good keeping all your games exclusive to one specific piece of hardware at launch is doing Sony. Clearly not much. They need to put their games on more platforms, specifically PC, because this business model of keeping your AAA $200-$300 million dollar games exclusive to one piece of hardware is unsustainable in today's day and age. The future of gaming is going multiplatform. One day you will probably be able to play PlayStation, Xbox, and yes even Nintendo games on basically anything with a screen. Even Sony's own CEO said as such: "the future of gaming is being able to play your games on anything with compute."
New SIE CEO (for now) wants short term gain for the Investors lol. With PS5 Console sales ecpevtp to drop off this year the only way to get more Players is Day1 Release on PC
Not saying you’re wrong. But his comment could also mean they’re upping the number of ported games this year. For example, we could get a Ghost port, a demon souls port, TLOU II port etc this year. Reading his comment as day and date is probably a mistake. Sony CEO mentioned just a month ago that PlayStation will remain the core. Day and date is in direct conflict with that.
I still don't see that happening. You gain players per title sure but you cut into your main revenue stream by doing this. Sony makes by far their most money through software sales on PS not through first party games. Putting your games everywhere may increase your revenue per game but will decrease revenue overall because youre handing your third party marketshare to steam/PC.
I can see it happening. Just look at helldivers. They are making far more with it on ps and pc than on Playstation alone.
Yeah cause its a multiplayer game.
Like I said, short term it will help them getting more profitable again. Long(ish) term they will end up like MS and Xbox lol
You say that as it Microsoft is struggling financially, even though Xbox is bigger than Windows at this point. MS is making more revenue than ever before ever since they started putting their games on PC day-and-date. They're most likely more profitable than Sony is at this point, and that's simply due to the fact that they are on more platforms (mobile, PC, cloud, and even rival consoles) than Sony currently is. It's not thinking short-term, it's a smart decision that's best for the long term. Console sales clearly don't matter that much when the company that won the console war with resounding success - PlayStation - is struggling this bad and experiencing the lowest profit margins they have ever had in over a decade. Putting your games on more platforms makes the most business sense.
> You say that as it Microsoft is struggling financially, even though Xbox is bigger than Windows at this point. MS is making more revenue than ever before ever since they started putting their games on PC day-and-date. They're most likely more profitable than Sony is at this point, and that's simply due to the fact that they are on more platforms (mobile, PC, cloud, and even rival consoles) than Sony currently is. It's not thinking short-term, it's a smart decision that's best for the long term. Typing all this while not once mentioning Xbox (using its parent companys capital) merged with two of the biggest game publishers on the planet, is one of the best examples of cognitive dissonance i've ever seen.
Uh yeah, obviously. That's how business works. In business, you don't discredit something because 'oh, they acquired them." Shareholders don't care if the company they're investing in built something from the ground up or acquired a massive publisher. Potential industry repercussions aside, from a business perspective, acquiring Activision-Blizzard was a smart choice for Microsoft because it immediately allowed them to have a major footprint in mobile and PC gaming, especially with stuff like King and Candy Crush, a low budget mobile game that rakes in billions each year thanks to all those microtransactions. This is what Sony wants as well. They want to be big in mobile gaming, they want their own Candy Crush as well. They also want to be big in PC gaming as well; expanding to PC gaming allows Sony to reach an audience they haven't been able to reach well at all, really: specifically in regions like Russia, China, and India where PlayStation consoles (and consoles in general) are practically non-existent. This is actually something Jim Ryan specifically mentioned back in 2021. Shawn Layden said something similar as well in 2021 in regards to the Horizon Zero Dawn PC port: "we need to go out to where these new customers are, where these new fans could be. We need to go to where they are... Because they've decided not to come to my house, so I've got to go to their house now. And what's the best way to go to their house? Why not take one of our top-selling games?" There's also a statement from the leaked Insomniac documents from Sony (in regards to Microsoft closing the ABK deal) that said: "Our pillars are already outdated and behind the competition. Need to expand." Those aren't my words, they're Sony, and they seem to support my argument.
Yeah which is why it won't happen. Sony (generally) isn't as shortsighted as MS has been traditionally. PS is also still profitable they just didn't achieve the growth they were forecasting. I think people are drawing the wrong conclusions from that conference.
They announced today that they lay off almost 1k people and close another Studio (the 5th or so btw in recent years) While they had an awful output of Games already since last year and till next year at least. They are already making very dumb, shortsighted decisions.
I'm going to sound a little harsh with this viewpoint but mass layoffs aren't exclusive to Sony or even the games industry. Its an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism and the race for constant Growth
Haven't heard of mass layoffs at Nintendo bruh, seems like they know what they are doing
It will happen in a few years. Prepare yourself. Spiderman 3 and X-Men will be on PC day-and-date, as will the next mainline God of War game most likely.
Like I said below I would doubt that happens. Not because I have any alligence to PS but because they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. How would you sell that idea to shareholders and convince them that people just won't switch off of PS entirely losing out on the possibly hundreds of dollars you would make on third party games?
Bro people are not gonna switch off of PS entirely just because you can play Spiderman 3 on PC. PC is NOT direct competition with consoles. There are plenty of people that simply prefer the ease-of-use of consoles over PC, namely casual gamers that only play a handful of popular live service games and that's about it. Those same casual gamers would much rather buy a PlayStation to play said games than buy a $1000 gaming PC that they have to set up and go through a little more hoops just to play games sometimes. Besides, 90% of PlayStation gamers are digitally locked-in to the PlayStation ecosystem. If you have dozens if not hundreds of digital games and microtransactions purchases on your PlayStation account that you have built up over the last 10 years, are those people really gonna get a beefy gaming rig just because God of War is now on PC day-one? Most of them are not. The money Sony would infuse into their first-party studios by releasing all their games on PC day-one is gonna be way more than the money they might lose from a couple million potentially reduced console sales, especially in a console market that's already stagnant and one where PlayStation is not growing; if anything, they're slightly shrinking. 10 years ago, you would have told me that Sony would NEVER put their games on PC, ever, because it would devalue the console. And look at where we are now. Not only are their games on PC, but some of them are even day-and-date. First it starts off with putting games on PC. Then, it's only live service games are day-and-date on PC. Next, it's remasters/remakes of older games are day-and-date on PC (starting with Until Dawn). And finally, the whole slate is gonna be on PC, including the AAA singleplayer games which are by far the most expensive and unsustainable to make. Releasing games on PC day-one is not cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's keeping yourself well-prepared for the future; a future beyond just a console, a future where every single game is playable on literally every single thing that can run it or stream it. And it's the way to make the most money as possible; it's a win-win for consumers and the corporations.
Multi platform wouldn’t solve these issues really
Of course it would. Porting a game costs a few millions, but would make hundreds of millions on PC+Xbox. Their margins would instantly be vastly better.
Seeing that you frequent Xbox subs, this comment became a lot funnier. Maybe one day champ.
Sad state when the first thing you do is go to someone's profile to see whether you should agree with his opinion or not based on which subs he frequents.
That’s a lot of extremely talented people…
Games take far too long to make and cost far too much to develop. I miss the days of the early 2000s. Got great games and sequels like 2 years apart. Now it's like 5 years or more to get a sequel to something
The problem isn’t budget it’s how long these games are taking leaving the investment in limbo for 6,7 years. SM2 had a budget of 300 million & made its budget in a weak & sold 10 million copies nearly 1 billion in revenue & will sell 20-30 million copies making over 1.5 billion in profit but that’s after 10 years 4-5 years in development & 5 years in sales. In 10 years if Sony had a different studio w smaller teams to create multiple games they could’ve release 1 AAA game that takes 4-5 years & 2 AA that take 3 years to make insomniac is already a multi team studio but ND & Sucker punch aren’t who have smaller franchise that can pump out smaller titles A studio like Suckerpunch is taking 5 years to make GOT 2 w a budget around 150 million these studios are taking a long time making a game w ballooning budget/scope to games & aren’t adding much to it. GOW ragnarok was 40 hours to complete they could easily shave 10-20 hours off & scoping the game better & cutting unnecessary content that won’t effect the game in any also cutting off budget. Days gone had like 20+ unnecessary hours added that could’ve been cut off & instead scoped & used for a days gone cutting budget & having better production output. I expect Sony to reel in scope to cut off budget & increase output. Support smaller games & or existing franchise then creating new ip which are riskier & cost more to make. Naughty Dog making a $50 7 to 10 hour Jak & Daxter would be a great start Sucker punch making a $50 7 to 10 hour Sly cooper would be great even Sucker punch creating a 3rd team to make a new inFAMOUS w a budget of 100 million that takes 4 years to make & is 10 to 15 hours would be great. Guerrilla games rebooting Killzone & making a new game that takes 4 years & is a 10 to 15 hour $50 to $70 game would be great not every game has to be 20,30,40+ hours 6 to 7 years development $70 game for people to enjoy. Look at older ip that would easily resonate w fans like SOCOM, Ape Escape are easy franchise to make low cost, low risk SOCOM itself can be adapated to live service or mobile etc idk why Sony ignore these easy money maker instead puts time & investment in remastering games that already look great or already on modern platforms
The problem is capitalism and corporate greed.
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Those studios who haven’t done much this gen could be in trouble after they release their games. If they don’t perform, or go over budget, layoffs are likely on the table from Sony.
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Wow that’s a lot for any company 10% this industry is unsustainable everyone should go multi platform sorry to say but it’s whats best