Sony have a good selection of studios but not all of them are constantly good like ND,MM and PD, they should do better quality control and improve on the shortcoming that some of their studios have, for example..
Guerrilla Games: need better stories/writing in their games, they never got this right, I did some checking on the credits of Killzone game and didn't find a "creative director", this position is responsible for the overall writing/ characters/ embedded storytelling/ world feel/immersion/ pacing.
SSM: they need to take GOW to the next step in both game play and story, after 6 games, gamers want to move on, they must find a way to recapture that sense of amazement we felt with the early games, they should have done what Jeff planed to do and evolve it into a non-liner inter connected game world like Zelda/ Batman Arkham.
Japan Studio: they should be more ambitious, they have been making small scale games for a while and they have the talent to do better and bigger, now lets look at how the studio can improve..
- Gravity rush is a great fun game with originality, the challenge mission were well done and made me come back for more, but the limited budget for the game held it back, they did try to compensate using creativity by implementing comic book style story panels, but the experience would have been much better with voiced and animated cut scenes and more interaction with in the world.
- Soul Sacrifice: the game is great on both SP/MP, the dark story is fantastic, but like Gravity Rush it is held back by presentation, this time only using narration and some illustrations, also the game has huge franchise potential and should not be tied to only the Vita, Sony should seriously bring this to the PS4 and recreate the wold using next gen graphics, this game has the potential to replace GOW.
Evolution Studios: with PD already making the worlds biggest driving franchise Evolution have a crises of relevancy, they should just be restructured to assist on GT development or try making another genre, maybe take a crack at a Twisted Metal reboot.
Quantic Dream: yes I know they are an independent 2nd party, but it wouldn't hurt to give them constructive advice and a bit of needed hindsight, Beyond was a very well acted and presented game that kept me intrigued throughout, BUT! the game design that was intended to make the game simpler actually made it cumbersome, walking from one place to the next ended up being a chore and ended up breaking immersion many times, Telltale Games do these adventure games better and ironically they were influenced by Heavy Rain, no shame in QD taking inspiration in return.
now lets talk about the man in charge, I think Shuhei Yoshida is a great guy and good at developer relations but I have to say he misses many things when it comes to actual game production and supervision, sometimes being very hands off with games like StarHawk and Twisted Metal, they were good but could have been great. SASBR could have done with better presentation and less self indulgence, filing it with b-list 3rd party characters didn't help, the MP for GOW:A was out of place, a co-op titan hunting game like Monster Hunter would have been more fitting IMOO.
So sometimes Sony 1st party games end up great and sometimes they are a miss, they are not as consistent as Nintendo because they don't have a legendary game designer like Miyamoto supervising overall. I think Sony should put together a production supervision team selected from ND and MM and also bring in Keiji Inafune full time, he did a great job producing Soul Sacrifice.
Also Yoshida infamously passed on publishing Daemon Souls because he thought it was "crap", he also has a bad "hands off" policy when it comes to matters of publishing exclusive 3rd party Japan games like Tales, Yakuza, Suikoden, Valkuria Chronicls3 and left gamers alone begging publishers without doing things to help on PS gamers behalf, I know it can be done because MS(in the good old days) worked with Namco to publish Tales of Visparia in the west only months after the Japan release. now Sony have a "3rd party production" team so I hope addressing this issue is part of their mandate.
one last wish I have is for Sony to make a SP expansions for DCUO, people want to play as Superman/Batman/GL/Flash, make them based on Classic DC events like Crisis/ Blackest night, this would really be awesome and will very likely bring new players to the online game.
Venturing into a post-apocalyptic world, Bandai Namco resurrects the forgotten treasure, Sand Land: will it capture the magic of the Manga?
I enjoyed the demo so I'll be picking this up. The gameplay made me think of Metal Max Xeno so it sold me on it.
After the release of the horrid avatar update, Pokémon GO fans are trying to get items refunded. This has led to some getting threats of being banned.
Shift Up has released Stellar Blade day one update 1.002 on PS5, and those who preloaded the game should be notified of this update.
Do you really not know this is about the n-word or are you saying that black people can't get offended because it upsets you?
I can't believe they're censoring this game on day 1. Games just aren't the same.
/s in case it's needed. I'm fine with them making these changes that they might not have known is culturally insensitive to some people in the big ole world. But that's just me.
They are censoring something that is deemed offensive by Journalists quoting the offensive term verbatim. They are typing it intentionally in articles while in the game it's a wall texture saying Hard next to a unrelated 3d model sign that says R store. Is it offensive or not? Crazy town.
At least IGN just shows the term with a screenshot of the game. Because it's their "discovery" and to not show hypocrisy in their HUGE vitue signal.
Hard R is the not offensive way to describe an offensive term. Are they going to type "Ha$$ R" or not use the term now?
Oh, hey, I agree with you that IGN and other journalists are dumb. Not disagreement there. But, I think for a game going out to millions of people across the world? It's not something they want associated with them. It's just horrific PR.
Add to the horrific PR nightmare that this is the first major Korean-developed Sony-published title, if I'm not mistaken.
There aren't that many Korean developed titles in general. And the allowance of this only would drive a bigger fissure in east vs west especially after Final Fantasy XVI released featuring no black characters at all...
Not a good look for Sony regardless of how you personally feel about it or the people that talk about it.
I'm not saying it shouldn't have been changed. It's an easy fix and looks like it was an easy fix.
But the word HARD being too close to the letter R being a horrific PR nightmare and a indication of a racist developer is beyond crazy.
I only think they would be seen as an insensitive developer if they were informed of its implications and didn't remove it. I don't think it's a bad thing to not want to have an unintentional message in your game.
If you can't enjoy the game without knowing there are racial slurs plastered on the walls, you might actually be the snowflake.
"Hey why didn't you get that game? I heard it's got that hot Korean chick?"
"I was gonna, but then they removed a reference to the N word!"
So this could be misconstrued as a offensive slur to a group of people they patched it out no harm no foul and now your not buying the game because this effected YOU in a negative way?
I'm confused.your offended because they didn't want to offend anyone says a lot about you more then the studio.
I'm offended by the sight of blood a d violence and find violence to be very insensitive...
We can all play stupid and pretend to be offended by graphics and fake worlds.
I really enjoyed the demo.
I'm going to play through and max out on story mode then go to the challenge mode afterwards.
This game is very challenging but fun.
Especially for timing on the parrying and blocking.
Got the Deluxe Digital Edition (PS5) pre ordered.
:)
I agree about Guriella Games.
SSM; however, I disagree with. THEY DO EVERYTHING. They've worked on Uncharted, StarHawk, Killzone, Journey, inFAMOUS 2, basically anything exclusive they work on. Now it seems they've turned into 3 teams with 3 different directors supposedly working on 3 different games (I think they may be a 2 team game developer and 1 team assist). They are right at the top with ND, PD, and MM.
Japan Studio: Needs to release games more frequently and not 1 - 2 every 4 - 5 years.
Evolution Studios: It was a second hand studio at first, because they're a car racing game studio, and GT is already Sony's flagship racing game. However, I think they'll shine better on the PS4 since they have talent from all the best known racing studios / games under one roof (former Burnout, Need 4 Speed, Gran Turismo, WipeOut, and Project Gotham devs. are all working at Evolution).
Quantic Dream: They need to focus on Gameplay and mastering their presentation. If you have a game that's HEAVY on acting and story then Presentation, Graphics, and Audio need to be top notch. They need some work there (graphics are there), but they need to eliminate those quick awkward pauses when dialog is suppose to come, have perfect voice actors and audio, and get traditional gameplay and controls, back by context sensitive QTE's.
Sucker Punch: They just need that overall boost in quality, everything else is there. inFAMOUS SS seems to be their moment.
Sony's first party is amazing, and they're among the best in the industry. It's just some of their studios need a bit of guidance and training in a couple of areas their weak in. Maybe have those teams with a weak point work with another team that's good at their weakness.
Example:
Guerilla Games + Quantic Dream = Amazing graphical masterpiece with a good story, cast, and gameplay. (GG picks up on story and writing, QD picks up on Gameplay and controls)
Japan Studio + SSM = Last Guardian finally gets release date. (SSM settles down to make new games, JS learns about meeting deadlines and working through projects)
Dude, Miyamoto only has like 4 franchises to manage,
how many franchises, different people, different cultures has Yoshida to manage? Plus, i think you should really put things in perspective: Yoshida and the gang are making an amazing work of putting a quality standard over what WWS produces.
He didnt think DS was crap as SONY did publish it in Japan.
He thought the west wouldnt adopt it much.
Man, youre wrong is all sort of places...do you think that, because Keiji did a good work on a single game he should then be fit to oversee a dozen studios?
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one last wish I have is for Sony to make a SP expansions for DCUO, people want to play as Superman/Batman/GL/Flash, make them based on Classic DC events like Crisis/ Blackest night, this would really be awesome and will very likely bring new players to the online game.
"
Think about it for a second: if they made it SP and based off those events, it would be gigantically unbalanced in the MP.
super awesome read, agreed 100%
I was a bit disappointed with KZ SF, sure it's a decent game and looks stunning but feels uneven and lack the awesome aura, intensity, soundtrack and atmosphere of KZ2
hell even the death animation/shooting feel is better in KZ2/Kz3 and both from last gen
i don't understand how last gen KZ2/KZ3 have better death animation/bullet physics, these aspects are dependent on technology and the PS4 is a damn beast compared to ps3, definitely rushed, i hope they do KZ4
Stop hating on killzone sf its better than any launch game.
I agree that God of War needs a shakeup.
GoW3 was brilliant but likely because of the story.
Ascension on the other hand just felt repetitive and didn't have a great story to fall back on.
Japan Studio need to make another Tokyo Jungle, maybe give it a much larger budget. That was one of the best new IP's to come out of lastgen... IMO
Evolution Studios need to make a new Motorstorm, it was unfortunate that the last title about apocalypse came out when Japan had their very own apocalypse, nobody could have predicted that.
Quantic Dream had a masterpiece with Heavy Rain but Beyond unfortunately did not live up. They do need to go back to the drawing board with almost every mechanic but the genre itself should definitely continue.