Against the success of Destiny 2, Bungie's input in the FPS and live-service spaces will be vital.
With Insomniac having left Resistance behind and Guerrilla having done the same with Killzone, Sony has ceded ground in the FPS space in favour of third-person narrative games. By acquiring Bungie, then, Sony is perhaps less focused on obtaining the Destiny IP, and is more set on harnessing the developer's vast live-service experience – an area where Sony is hardly well-represented in 2022.
A new studio based in Liverpool called Starlight Games is developing a futuristic sports title and is headed by the co-creator of WipEout.
Players had high expectations for Destiny’s latest content drop, Destiny 2: Into the Light. Not only did it have to live up to other content added due to a delay, it needed to give players faith the conclusion of the Light and Dark Saga will be worthwhile. - IS
Video games -- particularly AAA video games -- have become too expensive to make. The intel from every fly on the wall in every investor's room is there is an increasing level of caution about spending hundreds of millions just to release a single video game. And you can't blame them. Many AAA game budgets mean that you can print hundreds of millions in revenue, and not even turn a profit. If you are an investor, quite frankly, there are many easier ways to make a buck. AAA games have always been expensive to make though, but when did we go from expensive, to too expensive? A decade ago, AAA games were still expensive to make, but fears of "sustainability" didn't keep every CEO up at night. Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this, but more and more games are also revealing obvious signs of resource mismanagement, evident by development teams and budgets spiraling out of control with sometimes nothing substantial to show for it.
It’s a question that I’ve pondered myself too. How are these developers spending this much money? Also, like the article stated, I cannot tell where it’s even going. Perfect example was used with Starfield and Spiderman 2.
They claim they have to increase prices due to development costs exploding. Okay? Well, I’m finding myself spending less and less money on games than before due to the quality actually going down. With a few recent exceptions games are getting worse.
I thought these newer consoles and game engines are easier-therefore-cheaper to make games than previous ones. What has happened? Was it over hiring after the pandemic, like other tech companies?
I believe that it is due to this unsustainable rise in production costs that more and more companies are looking to AI tools to help ‘lower’ costs.
I genuinely believe it's mismanagement. Why are we seeing an influx of one person or games with a team no bigger than 10 create whole games with little to no budget? Unreal Engine 5 and I'm sure many other engines have plugins that have streamlined to many things you would have had to create and code back in the day.
For instance, before the cull, there were 3000 Devs working on COD alone. I'm a COD player but let's be real, there's been no innovation since 2019s MW. What exactly are those Devs doing? Even more so when so much of the new games are using recycled content
I've stated this in many other articles, but corporate greed, mismanagement and bloat and failing to understand the target audience and misaligned sales expectations as a result are the big reasons for these failures.
You'll see it in the way devs and publishers speak, every sequel needs to be "three times the size" of its predecessor, with hundreds of employees and over-indulgence. Wasted resources on the illusion of scale and scope. Misguided notions that if your budget balloons to three times that of the previous game you'll make three times the sales.
Compare the natural progression of games like Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum to City or Witcher 2 to Witcher 3 or God of War remake to Ragnarok and countless others. How is it that From Software continues to release successful games? Why don't we hear these excuses from Larian? These were games made by developers with a vision, passion and desire to improve their game in meaningful ways.
Then look at Suicide Squad Kill the Franchise and how it bloats well beyond its expected completion date and alienates its audience and middle fingers its purchasing power by wrapping a single player game in GAAS. Look at Starfield compared to Skyrim. Why couldn't Starfield have 5-10 carefully developed worlds with well written stories and focus? Why did it need all this bloat and excess that adds nothing to the quality of the game? How can No Man's Sky succeed where Starfield fails? Look at Mass Effect Andromeda compared to Mass Effect 3. Years of development and millions in cost to produce that mediocre fodder.
The narrative they want you to believe is that game budgets of triple A games are unsustainable, but it's typical corporate rubbish where they create the problem and then charge you more and dilute the quality of their games in favour of monetisation to solve it.
Greed from everyone involved including game reviewers, which are the greedy little goblins that help the lords screw over the gaming landscape.
The investors were asking them questions about how they plan to strengthen and grow the brand. COD, Fortnite, Minecraft, Halo, PUBG and many others become global phenomenons due to multiplayer, and Sony being a platform holder doesn't own any. So getting Bungie was a smart move.
I'm just excited to see what comes out of this whole partnership. Bungie has been doing this for a while now and with their experience could potentially save Playstation years of missteps. I would say Destiny was handled well, they had their problems as well and could have done some things better but it's just exciting to see what both Bungie and Playstation can learn from each other.
With that said, I'm not a huge fan of live-service games and I'm being cautiously optimistic about having more of them but I'm willing to give them a chance if they are done well. If they can achieve the quality of Playstation's single-player offering I feel like Playstation landscape is going to look quite different in about 5 years.
I just hope it doesn't go to their head and that they stay humble because that's when they do their best work.
What I find interesting as a single player gamer, is this fear and entitlement. I love single player. I know Sony knows that some gamers and I love single player games because we bought millions of copies of them.
There's this fear that Sony will abandon single player because they want to make 2-3 multiplayer games a year.
"I'm afraid they are going to make less single player games. Why spend money on making online games when they can spend that money on what I want?"
That's where the selfishness and entitlement comes in. Not all gamers play single player games. Even I can admit that there are those that love playing online. Personally, I don't care for it unless it's cooperative play. PVP gets stale for me. But I recognize some gamers love it.
Did Sony make less single player games when they made or published VR games like Astrobot, Iron Man, Farpoint or Blood and Truth? No. Horizon, Spider-Man, Days Gone, Ghost, Bloodborne, Ratchet and GOW were still made.
"I don't want Sony making VR games. It's just a gimmick. I want them to concentrate on what I want and spend money on that."
It's the same spew of fear and entitlement. Jumping to conclusions before anything has happen. But it makes sense for Sony to take care of single player gamers, online gamers and VR gamers that covers both. Sony can walk and chew gum. "But But But PS Vita. Vita wasn't PS4 or PS5. Sony doesn't play around when supporting home consoles. It'll be okay adding Bungie and possibly others to cover online where they lacked. Where the community said they lacked. Now that they are fixing it, there's this unnecessary complaint. Single player games are still going to come. Because they profit from them.
It is amazing how Bungie, a C-tier studio with predatory microtransactions, is being hailed here like they are the next coming just because that fits the fanboy narrative. People are actually excited that the company behind Eververse, sunsetting, and a transmog system that originally took 150 hours of total playtime just to max level it for a season are the ones that will be teaching Sony how to do live-service games.