Media Molecule will no longer provide live support to Dreams starting this September, as the team will shift its focus to a new, yet to be announced, project.
Yeah I'm really surprised. They had such huge ambition here and we haven't heard of anything for so long, I was convinced they were about to release the PS5 "create" functionality that uses Dreams, along with a marketplace to monetize people's creations
Sorry but no... Unfortunately Dreams was a bust. Time to focus on something new. Media Molecule is a very good developer, no need for them to continue wasting time on this. I'm excited for their next project.
I really, really hope that the new game is just as much a revolution on the play create share idea as dreams was to LBP, I will be very disappointed if they're doing some other "Tearaway" or another kind of game. This is what MM does well, they need to stick to it. The market needs a game engine trainer to get new developers going out there. I now make games in UE5 because of Dreams, and I'm sure a lot of talent is being spawned out there by new Dreamers learning how game development works... Sony would be VERY unwise to force MM into another direction, and I fear if they do, they'll end up going the way of Evolution Studios, Zipper, and all the other great Sony studios who made fantastic games but ended up getting disbanded anyway. Sony struck gold with a brand new genre of game with MM, and I sure hope they don't manage to screw that up.
I feel really bad for those who are locked in a months-long or even years long development cycle for their games who now have been abandoned... I personally was in the middle of prepping my VR Bowling Game "We Bowling in VR" to be updated again in the hopes of VR2 support coming, but now that's been trashed. I no longer have a desire to invest more time into this game knowing they're just going to throw it all away, even if we can keep creating in it. I feel this was a big mistake on their end, both MM and Sony... but I'd love to be proven wrong when they do announce the new project. If it isn't a revolution on the PCS genre, and isn't as in-depth or more as Dreams was, I do not want it. Period.
They struck creative gold, not financial gold, and it will die as a result of that. Sadly, the game wasn't a commercial success nor monetized well. Bet that the next game is LB4 or something more limited. Ppl vote with their wallets and they voted Dreams out. Hence the state of our industry. Valheim is a shoe string game no better than a Dreams creation yet is hailed as creative brilliance. 10 mil players. Dreams will fade into the ether. Sad times.
Nobody claimed Valheim "creatively brilliant". It was just a really solid survival game that gained traction fast, and now the dev is very, very actively supporting it. Saying it's no better than a Dream's creation though? Let's be real here. Outside of what MM put out, themselves, using it, your average game was of the quality of the $1 shovelware you'll find dumped on Steam in droves every week.
@Mad, that's not to say there were not many thousands of truly amazing experiences produced in Dreams.
I think MM dropped the ball by not promoting those experiences well enough, by not making them accessible enough, and I think Sony dropped the ball by not promoting Dreams at all, as they tend to do with so much of their golden talent. They just kinda left it to die after a few presentations on stage. If they had been smart, Dreams would have been included as a PS4 bundle that carried over to PS5 as well. If monetization was a problem, make it a subscription service for creators... but in return for us having to pay for access to create content in it, we get to take our games and export them to other popular engines like Unreal from there.. The benefit being the user-friendly interface to learn how to make those games, and being able to lean on the community to help with things like asset creation, etc...
It was probably one of the most innovative, ambitious projects ever taken on in gaming, and it died a very unfair death.
Maybe someone at one of those companies will take something from ideas like this... that was Dreams' biggest limitation, no ability to take anything out of it, it was stuck in the Dreamiverse. I would love to port my games to UE5 without having to completely rewrite them from the ground up. I get there are legal challenges to face when taking content out of Dreams, especially content others helped me create that I sourced from the Dreamiverse, but that's something I'd have to sort out upon trying to publish my game to another engine, not Sony. All they have to do is notify other users "This user wants to export a game containing your content to another engine for release, do you approve?", and whoever says no, I have to go back and make that part again myself. Problem solved.
Valheim is not solid. It has the worst character creator ever. It has awful combat, grfx, ai, and mediocre procedural maps. The survival mechanics are average. The production is terrible. The technical quality is that of a Dreams creation. Obviously nobody has made such a fully fledged game but in terms of quality i mean. Valheim is trash. The worst game i have played in years.
You can only support something that isn't financially sustainable for so long. I bought the game EA, day 0 at $30, not a pinch of mtx, and terrible sales. It obviously flopped despite 90 Opencritic. I blame Sony, not Mm. Sony mismanaged a brilliant product.
First, they should've implored Mm to create a more substantial campaign and they should've marketed it as a GAME, not an.....engine?
Second, it needed a PC release long ago. Those tools on PC makes sense.
Third, it needed a rebirth on PS5 at launch. DualSense tinkering. Adding haptic feedback etc to creations day 1 PS5. RTX? Visual fidelity etc. Though the engine probably limits this.
Fourth, it just wasn't marketed well, ever. From the reveal trailer a decade ago to now most ppl dunno what Dreams is. It's a brilliant game that Sony fumbled and now Mm has to make something more limited in order to survive. LBP4 incoming.
Also, the creation was perhaps too ambitious for the masses. It was a lot to learn. I also believe Mm should've focused on annual, highly produced games within the game. once a year at least have a multi hour, legit game with trophies and market it. The bat game was too little too late. Dreams needed more substantial experiences and Mm needed to provide that. I still love Dreams but i'm sad to think what could've been.
Yeah I loved creating fun, simple levels in LBP. Dreams was just too overwhelming by comparison for someone that just likes the simplistic tools of LBP.
Yes, how dare Sony let them make what they want. They should have been forced to churn out a yearly mind numbing platformer so Sony could add to their bottom line.
@EvertonFC I have no trouble accepting it. They're a relatively small studio and were allowed to focus on an entirely original and highly complex passion project (way harder than cranking out an FPS or something), which is a rare amount of freedom for an acquired studio in this industry. It would be unacceptable if Sony first parties as a whole only released one game, but this isn't that.
Sony isn't Microsoft, they don't "mismanage". If MM put out 1 game in 13yrs it's because that's just how long they wanted to take and Sony gave them that freedom.
Let’s be honest, if this was a Microsoft studio, the sentiment would be different.
13 years between games isn’t great and if this was a Microsoft studio, the majority of the comments would be jumping all over the fact it took 13 years and was now ending live support.
But the work MM do put out is typically fantastic. Shame it’s losing support, almost picked this up again digitally last week after selling my physical copy some time ago.
This is very sad to hear, I had hoped that it would have been a day 1 PSVR2 title that reinvigorated the community.
Hopefully they are working on an evolution of the concept, not just an abandonment.
This game could have had an audience on PC but of all the games Sony ported they failed to release this one.
Really sucks It did not get a PC port. This one has so many possibilities there.
1 game since LBP2 (13 years) has been unacceptable imo, great studio though just mismanaged by Sony.