Sony’s factories are “going to be running flat out” to manufacture enough PlayStation 4 hardware to meet demand, Sony Europe boss Jim Ryan has said.
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.
As Reggie says, What's Wrong With You?
Remember folks, the original D2 we vanilla purchasers bought IS NOT the version you get today. It's gone.
Are they? Are the f****** insane?
Why are they focusing still on GaaS and if so why someone from a failing let down of a company like Bungie who clearly hasn’t been a good investment for them.
I’d understand if this was hypothetical someone behind Helldivers II, someone super popular and successful for them.
Sony are making some stupid ass decisions lately, it’s annoying.
It feels like the common trend to wallstreetify companies rather than have them being run by people who are actually interested in the output of the industry.
Bungie has been one of if not the worst offender in this live service crud. Whatever this guy touches will most likely be absolute shite. This live service fad is on its way out anyway, publishers continue pushing out failure after failure.
Wtf Hiroki. Come on now my guy. We're supposed to be moving away from live service. You have one, and a good one at that. What exactly are you hoping for? If you come out with 2 your taking people away from HD2, it's redundant. On top of that you get someone from Bungie!? That purchase was so fn stupid. Get your heads out of your asses.
Please, for the love of God, don’t model every GaaS from Sony after Destiny’s model. That model sucked.
Look to Arrowhead. I’d argue they’ve made the best GaaS game to date.
But but but Jim Ryan. You can't blame it on him anymore. Find another scapegoat.
As I said before, many online games are going to be GaaS games. Hell Divers 2 is a GaaS game. GT7 is a GaaS game. Gamers have said time and time again that they want road maps for games. Which is maps, items, weapons, skins, etc etc for online games and to continue to get more. Some of it will be free. Sure. But some of it will be paid. Get used it. You can deny it. But that's what online for Many games are becoming.
Single player games will still be offered. And that's where I'll always be. But the old style of getting a game and it having an online component for free is about over. You wanted an online game with longevity and the only way to offer that is to monetize it. Shit ain't free for developers to keep a game going for some time by producing more content for it and giving it away for free.
Some developers will do that because they want their fans to think how pro consumer they are by giving content away for online. But if the numbers don't add up, they'll either change to monetizing their game or shutting their servers down because it's not making money. And many have shown that if a game doesn't continue to get new content, you bolt and move on to the next game.
You asked for it, you got it. As others have said, you played games like cod and destiny online and didn't bat an eye to go against it. Shitting on Jim who retired won't make it go away. You want GaaS to go away, stop playing online like I do. And stop buying all the micro transaction shit. And tell a friend to do the same. And stop whining like bitches if you can't do that.
Have you played GT7?
Every week the races change and their free
When new cars come, there free
New tracks, always free
How is it a live service just cos’ it rotates track layouts once a week
They got helldivers 2 and destiny. What i dont get is why they need so many. In a crowded field maybe a Socom one would be nice they canceled the twisted metal one. Sony dropped the ball on a GTA clone like the getaway the last gta came out in 2013. Why make the sam first person gaas over and over.
I already knew this guy was probably gonna be worse than Jim given his words in interviews. He's even more of a straight business man tha Jim ever was. Good thing he's just temporary, and i hope whoever they hire to take over puts things back on track to what made people pive PlayStation to start with, cause this aint it.
Honestly i still say just put Shuhei in there, he's still in the company so it would be extremely practical.
Former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has said that the PS5 is "on track" to become SIE's "most successful console ever."
Now he wants to say good things about PS after he laid off a bunch of ppl.
Real classy Jimmy.
Is that the worst you can come up with? Because if I was criticizing Microsoft I could easily list a dozen things only one of which would be the 5000+ people they have fired from their gaming divisions in the past 16 months including everyone who worked on producing physical games.
Let me remind you that PS5 is selling faster than PS4, they just had the hit live service game Helldivers, Spider-Man is still charting, they have already released Granblue Fantasy, Rise of The Ronin, and Final Fantasy Rebirth and Stellar Blade is right around the corner, they also have Silent Hill and two Kojima games in the works. They also have all the big gatcha coming out of Japan, Korea and China lined up for their consoles, which let me remind you that Genshin and Honkai Star Rail made close to a billion dollars last month alone.
They also have PlayStation Portal which is selling as fast as they can make them, and just around the corner they have a 33.5tf console coming out which don't listen to the BS is going to be awesome and supporting it is going to be easy since every game already has two modes so "quality" mode will only need to be unlocked for PS5 Pro's and existing games will be able to easily have PSSR enabled for them.
So yeah, things are looking really good for PlayStation, and the second half of the generation is going to be huge when all the PlayStation developers start releasing their PS5 Pro Enabled games.
"Is that the worst you can come up with?"
I'm. Sorry what? Its called facts. I forgot you love Jim Ryan even if he doesn't know or care about you. None of them do. The sooner you touch grass and grow up the better.
Ok cool so what's the point of saying all that? I know all that.
@Lightning
Except it wasn’t a fact. Ryan has left PlayStation already. The layoffs that we saw with every publisher recently were after Ryan. So nice try.
"Except it wasn’t a fact. Ryan has left PlayStation already. The layoffs that we saw with every publisher recently were after Ryan. So nice try."
That was all Ryan before he left clearly. He stepped down officially a few days ago. He was doing his good byes he even took a picture with the London Studio only to shut them down days later. Don't try and shift blame or change history it was all him.
I thought the layoffs were bad. It's bad when Microsoft does it and when Phil Spenser spoke about it 99% of the comments on this site were about how Xbox sucks. When someone is commenting on how Sony layoff people, you instantly find persons that run to defend Sony. This type of behavior is not good for gaming. Remain consistent in your principles no matter who is doing the wrongdoings. Stop waving your pompoms to one side because these companies don't care about you or their employees.
Omg https://en-as-com.cdn.amppr...
Not even a few days ago just yesterday he left.
Hiroki Totoki is temporarily taking Jim's spot doing Jim's work for 7 months until he was gone April 1 . Now anymore foolish deflection from you ppl?
@divine
Layoffs are bad, but we get these guys with zero credibility, who all of a sudden want to bring up layoffs because an article says something they don’t like. All the while they never bothered when MS did more than twice the layoffs after spending 68 billion to destroy multiplatform segment of gaming. The double standard SHOULD be mentioned.
I just want to see those single player first party games.. i do not like the silence from ww studios
I'm sure you also would say the same thing about Phil Spencer to be logically consistent.
You tell us, he laid of orders of magnitude more people than Sony did, and you remained silent.
Are you guy's defending Jim Ryan just because he was part of playstation?
The guy did nothing good for the industry the entire time he was head of playstation.
It's his bad decision's that got people fired .
@Frost really now? Go find the article and look through the comments and you'll see my comment mocking MS. This isn't about MS though just the usual whataboutism from you.
But cool keep making up more stories it's in your head kiddo.
Funny to see Jim Ryan is suddenly a hero on here now.
Fun fact:
MS laid off 1900 employees from MS studios.
Sony laid off 900 employees from Sony Interactive Studios.
I hope you liked the classy MS after spending 68 BILLION on buying up the industry, then firing people.
I have PS so why would it upset. I'm not a weirdo did Jim Ryan do lay offs or not?
Because you always seem to be upset when PlayStation is going good.
And Ryan retired in September. Sony laid off 900 employees recently. Every other large publisher did as well, including MS which laid off the most developers at 1900.
For the sake of proving your objectivity, please show me any comment you made about how MS showed its class by laying off developers after spending 69 billion on cannabalizing the industry. No joke, did you make any comment like that?
It's your head wanna see fanboy in everyone else because you are one. Not how it works I'm afraid.
Ryan announced his retirement in September. He was still in office Hiroki was training under Ryan hence why we've heard from Hiroki and not Ryan. Ryan officially left yesterday.
That's means Ryan did those lay offs. For God sakes just google it since it's so hard hard for you to understand.
"Sony laid off 900 employees recently. Every other large publisher did as well, including MS which laid off the most developers at 1900."
Yeah... No duh...
Wait class? MS showed no class they were candid about the lay offs and their strategy. They said no patronizing words as far as I know.
Other than that I don't know what you're even talking about. What comments do I have?
Haha bravo! way to ignore what I said, conveniently. But, that answers my question. You need say no more.
I'm sure he was saying good things about playstation before they laid people off, not sure of your point
He lays off ppl and shut down a studio then wants to say good things about PS, not hard to understand. He was saying good things because he worked there, of course he said good things at the company he worked for.
They all do, so I don't know what you mean.
You say that like Phil didn't just give thousands of people the axe while you stood in silence. We see your hypocrisy... We know you're mad that your box just got the Dreamcast treatment, but at least try to remain objective.
Nice wrong assumption as always. You're a funny guy though.
Where I mocked MS
https://n4g.com/comments/re...
Anything else I can shut you on? You know know first hand I'm good at that
Ps5 is a turd of a console. If it outsells the ps2 Itll be the greatest paper tiger in gaming history. All pop and no fizzle.
Also Jim Ryan by the way everyone PS2 now sold 160 million total.
Still yes ps5 is a fantastic console if the games library in it's later half follows past cycles of showing off what the true hardware capabilities are we are still yet to see it's best games.
Rockstar is going to make the console sing with GTA 6.
With Xbox floundering talk of EU stores no longer stocking the games going third party fanbase is more divided than ever and Nintendo doing its own thing even delaying (rumour) switch 2 till next year PlayStation is running seemingly unopposed I'm not sure if that's a good thing but it's the reality we are in
So should you keep staff you don't need in any other business? That's called socialism.
And yet it lacks exclusive..... I remember the PS3 days when Sony was underdog and releasing exclusive after exclusive
5 exclusives this year before it’s even April/may
Ff7
Stellar blade
Hell divers 2
Granblue
Rise of ronin
Silent hill remake conning soon too + can’t wait to see what their game for Xmas is
3 years in, and PS5 has more exclusives than PS3 after the same time frame.
What ya chewing?
So again I'm baffled by the responses from this forum defending a guy's statement when Sony themselves:
A) had to cut the same % of workers as MS and had to close some studios (reason unknown for Sony since N4G established that it's not capitalism or needs to make a profit).
https://n4g.com/news/259282...
B ) mentioned in an Investor's call that the console was entering the latter half of the life cycle and was expecting a decline in sales due to missed projections.
https://www.pushsquare.com/...
But hey it's great news for Sony because if they are on track to be the most successful console ever.
So just picture what they would have achieved if they had met sales expectations and not cut jobs.
Perhaps selling twice as much as the Ps2 console?
Beating Quest3 for VR unit sold?
London Studio would be working on Blood & truth 2?
***had to cut the same % of workers as MS***
I agree they suck, but playing % game is weird.
***mentioned in an Investor's call that the console was entering the latter half of the life cycle and was expecting a decline in sales due to missed projections. ***
No no no. You don't get it. It's both! /s
Yeah, I don't understand how you can say it will be most successful unless you talk about the total revenue it brings in, which is an unfair comparison considering price increases and market reach.
*** London Studio would be working on Blood & truth 2? ***
Or, now hear me out, something actually good? :P
"I agree they suck, but playing % game is weird."
It's the metric used in business and finance to evaluate the situation of a company (health, performance, etc)
For example, stating I only cut 5 jobs from a staff of 10 is much worse than cutting 100 jobs from a staff of 1000 hence why you always see a % of the total workforce when there's a layoff.
In the case of both companies, it's around 8%, and by business practice, it's a healthy move showing that they are willing to trim due to expectations of lower sales.
I do wish that the ppl from London Studio are affected by new projects within Sony (if they are still employed) or that they are working on a new VR idea. They are talented folks who managed to create great games with the limited resources or mandates that they had.
***It's the metric used in business and finance to evaluate the situation of a company (health, performance, etc) ***
People aren't percentages to me, I guess.
1. MS laid off thousands of people, several times more than Sony did.
2. PS5 is nearly 4 years old, new consoles typically drop 6-8 years after the previous, with the previous being supported up to 10 years total. There is nothing out of the ordinary by saying PS5 is in the latter half of its generation.
3. London Studio didn't make money... so they got closed. Nothing out of the ordinary there either.
@Frosty
I'm sure you have sources other than your beliefs to demonstrate that Microsoft laid off several times more compared to Sony, especially in regards to Xbox and Playstation since we saw the same pattern here on N4G where MS announces Layoff to cheer off the community with MS can't manage jack Sh*t followed by a similar wave from Sony simply due to different date for the fiscal year.
In 2022 MS laid off 1000 jobs out of all MS (1%) In 2022 Sony announced 90 layoffs from Playstation only.
Regarding console life, I believe that you forgot a pandemic slowed everything to a crawl hence why ppl still feel that we have yet to have true PS5 and Xbox Series X experience but that's my point of view.
totally agree with you on last point regarding London Studio.
It's hard to say if it will become more successful than the PS2. I know it will do very well overall. As a gamer I can't keep up with all the stuff releasing this year
currently at 50 Million, expected to sell 22+ Million this year
there's no doubt the PS5 will be breaking some records
GTA 6 launch will also bring a massive boost to PS5 Sales and the all new 33 teraflop PS5 Professional model
i think GTA6 is gonna help the console seel a shit ton, but 160 mio iii dunno.
maybe hes talking about hoe much money it brings in due to games sold on it. who knows.
Ps5 is easily the worst console in Playstation history. It's not even close. Vita was better.
PlayStation Podcast returns with Pacific Drive and Helldivers 2 talk. And the gang says goodbye to an old friend.
I think Jim is getting positive send-off since on mostly on his watch xbox turned into a multiplatform machine.
what a beautiful thing.
Lol damn i smell alot of overtime....
They better be, if not history will repeat itself
gotta burn that midnight oil.