Ian Fisher writes: With the next-gen PlayStation console possibly being shown off later this month, Sony is obviously gearing up for a console launch within the next year and are of course they’re doing things that are required when spending truckloads of cash: trimming a bit of fat. Issuing lay-offs or making certain studios redundant is never a nice thing, but in the world of business it’s required to ease up the pressure one may feel upon their purse strings. Even then, the continued parting of ways Sony is doing with key 2nd party studios, the latest of which is SuperBot Entertainment, is distressing for various reasons.
From the cosmos to crash-landing back on good old planet Earth, come read through the best sci-fi-nastically games on the PS3
Starhawk over Warhawk?...... Dude, NO ONE should listen to you.
Odd choices for "best" more like you settled as these being the "best" that available to you at the time, cause a lot of these blow or were average to poor performers that ended up in bargain bin.
Missing too many great sci-fi titles here. The Void, The Resistance Series, Killzone 2 and 3, Enslaved, man.. there were so many, this is redicu-list.
I agree that Starhawk shouldn't be above Warhawk, however I must say that Starhawk multiplayer was incredible for its time! Many people wrote it off bc the single player was quite terrible, bc it was basically 1 huge tutorial for the multiplayer. But I can tell you never spent any significant amount of time in MP. It was doing incredibly tense base building w air, foot and land vehicle (and mech!) combat long before Fortnite was ever a thing.
I bet it would have been much better received if it had just ditched the story mode all together. So many people like yourself completely wrote it off based on reviews by reviewers that let the criticism of single player weigh heavily on their scores. I bet you didn't even play it.
There's also the less acclaimed 'assault on dark Athena'
( also, not saying this to you specifically but there's both resistance and killzone games on the list, it's amazing how even something so simple and innocent as a game list can be turned into misinformed vitriol here lol )
Glad to see Resonance of Fate. Enslaved was pretty good too. I’m sure there are others nobody has listed but I’m too tired to try and think of anything
Sony has recruited Bungie's head of revenue Jaremy Rich to head up its live-service gaming division, Rich has announced on social media.
Please do not put Destiny’s monetization into Sony’s first party games. The monetization is what’s driving players away from Destiny.
The new temp boss is the sony cfo bean counter so i can see this being a thing get every penny.
@car
The new boss did a interview in japan he wants to tap into the mobile market like nintendio so he give 0 fucks about gamers/fans
https://www.pushsquare.com/...
@Cacabunga
You only speak for you and those who think like you, but most fans will support what they want. Playstation and PC fans are literally supporting Helldivers 2 and that is a gaas. Maybe you wouldn't, but many more would if they like it.
@Redemption-64
Look, Im not making any judgement calls about this guy, but I will say that Helldivers 2 GaaS model is unique to Helldivers, and legit the only other game I can think of thats similiar was the Avengers game except HD2 pass is still better.
The fact that you can earn in game currency in a way that doesnt make you feel like you have to grind forever, as well you being able work on that pass that you bought...on your own time without a time limit...that right there is fucking huge to me, and I can't name any game other than avengers that avoided trapping players with FOMO logic...I think GaaS on HD2 shouldn't be compared to the rest of the industry...it should be copied.
Cacabunga
Helldivers 2...
Redemption-64
In Europe it's a 60 40 split favoring PC.
In the US its a 60 40 split favoring PS5.
So PlayStation owners supported the game just fine, it's not getting carried by PC or anything like that.
@just_looken,
I'm perfectly fine with the way Nintendo entered the mobile market, I never touched their mobile games, meanwhile, the console/handheld stayed the way it is. As for being a bean counter, he's probably going to reel in these massive budgets that Sony's studios have had lately, I haven't played Spiderman 2, but I cannot see how they almost tripled the budget for that game.
@Redemption-64,
That's an exception to the rule, I'm expecting a lot of these GAAS games from Sony to fail, to be fair, they only need a few to succeed, but I would have preferred that they put more of their resources into other types of games.
True their monetization is driving players away and at the same time, their decision to chop out content and convoluted systems is keeping new players away from the game.
I don't think that will happen based on how things worked out at Naughty Dog now that we know what we do, seems they had the option to fully commit to live service games or stay making single player experences so they gave up on their live service game. We are not sure how things came about with Bend making a live service game but I hope that was not a forced situation. Sony doesnt seem like they are forcing studios to switch up but we will see, Sony's bread and butter is single player games it is how they dominated the console market.
Yeah, I though Sony learned something from all their failures in the LS segment under Bungie´s disastrous leadership and supervision which led to games been cancelled, studios closed and all the people laid off.
Looks like Bungie still plays a major role in Sony´s LS initiative and Sony is not backtracking on their GaaS plans.
Are we forgetting that Destiny is also a highly successful franchise? I feel like that definitely deserves mention here.
Besides, there is no reason why a person cant learn from past experiences.
I agree, people act as if Destiny flopped when it came out lol it took 9 to 10 years for the numbers to fall yet people are still playing it add the success of Helldivers 2 no wonder Sony is going forward down this path.
Personally, I see no problem with Sony also having service games as long as they make good ones, and more importantly they deliver the AAA story driven games that they are known for. So yeah, I agree 100% with you.
I mean, this person made some pretty bad decisions at Bungie. I hope they've learned from them because I definitely don't see those type of ideas as good for PlaySation in general.
Honestly, what’s to learn from? How to make people happily continuously dump money into a single game over its life-time? Buy season passes continuously for several years with a smile on our faces?
GaaS is a design decision that is everything wrong with this industry. The fact that Helldivers 2 did so well and people defend the monetization because it was $40 and is a fun game, scares the sh*t out of me to see that the door is open and all shift will probably be to replicate that in future games. We already know the ROI for traditional game dev cost isn’t doing it for them.
I thought with Jimbo leaving we’d see a change for the better… I’m not so sure now.
Service games are being offered by everyone. Sony cannot afford to only create single player AAA games. No one can. They already said they will be doing both.
Ps5 gamers in 2023 seemed to play more live service types of games, so regardless to how people feel about them, numbers don’t lie and Sony is going where the money is. I mean look at the excitement around Helldivers2, people are showing that they want live service games.
They play long-time existing live service games like CoD, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, and the like. Mass majority of new live service games are considered failures and aren't moving gamers away from older games.
Yep the huge issue with live service is they need paid players along with a reason to play them.
You forgot mobile market that also taps into that player base as well as the eve online style games there is only a certain amount of krakens/whales blind supporters compared to the amount of live service games we have its not sustainable math wise.
700 restaurants making food for every seat for 1000-3000 eaters just does not work out
Christopher
I am not a big live service fan and literally own zero of the games you listed, but that is not true, unless you call games that aren't the top games to be failures.
There are tons of live service games that are profitable.
Games don't have to be the biggest game ever they just need to make more than they cost.
I challenge you to show professionally prepared data that shows that more live service games fail than make enough to keep going.
Because all the data that I have seen shows that live service is less of a gamble than making a big AAA budget game which needs to survive off retail sales.
I sometimes wonder if we're at saturation point, where it's hard for a new game to join those ranks unless it's particularly exceptional, people only have so much time and money to devote to these types of games.
Lol it's not even a quarter of the ps5s sold. Helldivers may have been a hit but let's not say most are enjoying it because truth is most(the real most ) don't care about it.
I play what is fun. If a live service game is good I’ll play it as long as its not a money scheme which Helldivers is not.
And Im a single player gamer.
How do you kill a franchise that already been killed?
Destiny’s grind, cash-in-on-playbass-cha-Ching, and pop-culture-insertion mainstream-me-too bs totally killed any rep Bungie had. Sony/Bungie, if you are doing this to ward-off players, it’s already working.
Sony has patented to add multiple dialogue modes to let players switch between how many conversations with NPCs they want in the game.
Sony is like the only ones outta the 3 that has atuff like like this pop up changing thing in ways.
Sony in the past has always been first at bat with new ideas/tech but in the end never fully use it or just toss it away.
I think they did use some but yeah most usually never happened but at least they thought about it. Sony seeks things like this and other, Nintendo seek different ways of playing going by there different controler designs and console designs.
some of the other stuff sony want's/owns never used
https://gamerant.com/sony-p...
https://gamerant.com/sony-p...
https://www.eurogamer.net/s...
https://metro.co.uk/2023/03...
https://decrypt.co/114754/s...
monitor/adjust game difficultly as you play
https://www.techradar.com/g...
Sony nfts
https://www.theblock.co/pos...
Pay ai to play the game for you
https://thebusinessofesport...
Oh all the above last 12 months
I just imagine a evil scientist with test subjects when it comes down to sony recent patent reports.
I think Sony got themselves into an unfortunate situation in regards to PS3 hardware pricing and adoption rate not being as quick as they perhaps wanted.
While I am against the fact that Sony had shutdown studios like Liverpool and have ended partnerships with studios like SuperBot, I can understand if its because they have decided to properly consolidate the games they will be making.
Hopefully things turn out much better with the PS4. Cant wait to see its unveiling.
If the games dont do well after sony publishes them, they get cut.. Thats the way it goes.. Not to say the games they made were bad but they didnt do too well in sales or didnt live up to sonys expectations.. Nx gen is going to cost way too much to risk publishing 1/2 assed games so they will keep the strong ones like Naughtydog, studio japan, Santa Monica, etc & probably divide those into other teams & hire new talent to work with them
That was way too boring to read very far. They took way too many words to say anything. It could have been a quarter the size. You don't need to write a book to get your point across. I have no idea what the point is though since I stopped reading.
SuperBot isn't much of a loss since they'have only ever created one game, and it isn't selling as expected.
Insomniac made their own choice, and it is well known that Sony tried to purchase them, but they want to do their own thing....bad move on Insomniac's part.
Eat Sleep Play isn't much of a loss with having only developed Calling All Cars and a couple of Twisted metal games.
Lighthouse Interactive made a couple of good multiplayer games, but the single player for Starhawk wasn't all that good, so they have nobody but themselves to blame for turning to the mobile phone market.
Zipper Interactive was my favorite studio during the PS2 days, but the people running the studio didn't listen to the fans, and ultimately screwed up one of the most popular franchises on the PS2....SOCOM. These guy were a bunch of morons and deserved to get shut down.
Sony Liverpool was just an unproductive studio, so ...whatever.
The best game developers in the entire industry are:
- Naughty Dog
- Polyphony Digital
- Sony Santa Monica
- Guerrilla Games
- Guerrilla Cambridge
- Sony Bend
- Sucker Punch
- Media Molecule
- Evolution Studios
- Team Ico
- Sony Online Entertainment
I'm sorry, what was this article written for again? What a waste of time lol
Sony have BIG name studios as it is...I never heard of Super Massive games before PS All Stars was announced, and Sony Liverpool only really made the Wipeout series this gen...
Sony Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) were famed for the F1 series on PS1 too...
I will miss 'Wipeout' though...fond memories ;(