RPG Site: "In my preparation for a meeting with the legendary boss of FF14 to talk about his team’s latest game, I reread the transcript of our first meeting - almost twelve years prior, when he first took over Square’s beleaguered MMO and embarked on a worldwide apology tour. RPG Site was one of the outlets Yoshida spoke to back then, when he was a relative unknown promising to work a miracle on a truly broken game. Fast forward to 2023, and he’s in the big chair: producing the latest main-line Final Fantasy, backed by a team of veterans from across the company. Two of those veterans - art director Hiroshi Minagawa, and localization boss Michael Christopher Koji Fox, flanked Yoshida in the interview room. The discussion touches on fan expectation, hopes, fears, what sets FF16 apart - and plans for the future."
Wccftech interviewed Owlcat's Creative Director Alexander Mishulin about the upcoming cRPG Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, due in early December.
Jim Ryan has departed Sony Interactive Entertainment, after roughly 30 years at the company.
Less live service nonsense, I hope. Maybe more than one or two first-party releases a year would be nice as well. It'd be nice if they fixed the PS+ price hike too, but that's less likely because the only reason they would have increased the price in the first place is if it wasn't making them enough money to satisfy shareholders.
We won't see the real effects of Jim leaving for another 2-3 years and it all depends on who is replacing him.
With how much money they make, I really doubt we'll see the end of Live Service experiments at Sony. Even if it's last few have been... under-whelming.
@crazyCoconuts @Crows90
Sony's definition of live service is pretty broad. Stuff like Gran Turismo 7 and MLB The Show count for them. Helldivers 2 will count. I'm not sure if they're including Marathon or Destiny 2 as Bungie remains seperate from Playstation Studios
@plague, sorry man, that's reaching. Has Sony actually followed through with any real life service games?
Oh please, the last ps+ price hike was 6 years ago in 2017 while Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime etc. raise their price nearly every year.
Unlike those services, the PS+ price hike wasn't by dollar amount, it was by percentage. Across the board the prices for each PS+ tier increased about 30%. The lowest tier went up by way less than the highest tier. It's a clear money-grab, especially when they haven't even offered more Classics to warrant the huge increase on the Premium tier.
Also, unrelated, but it's still bad when those other services increase the price of their subscriptions as well, so I don't understand the use of this argument.
"a clear money grab"- how is that clear? They were already MUCH cheaper than their competition in terms of annual so they brought that a little more in line. I think they were losing money on that $99/year Extra plan in my guestimation
There's no way they would buy Bungie for the life service stuff to drop those plans after this guy leaves.
"We won't see the real effects of Jim leaving for another 2-3 years and it all depends on who is replacing him."
I believe we´ll have news regarding the future of Playstation rather sooner than later.
As Ryan steps down next month, demands for what´s next for Playstation will not only be made by gamers, but shareholders, investors and board directors.
PS games on PC will still to be a thing? Will those games come to PC sooner or even later?
Day One Playstation games on PS Plus will be a thing? Will those games be released sooner on the service? There´ll be AAA third party day one releases on the service?
GaaS will continue to be a focus?
Will Playstation continue and invest in third party exclusives?
Will Playstation establish new partnerships with Microsoft and or Nintendo?
Will Playstation continue and invest in acquisition of studios? Will they now invest in publishers as well?
There will be more PSVR2 games from first party studios?
There´s lots of questions that needs to be addressed by the new leadership.
Of course, Totoki also might answer all of it with a single note: "All of Playstation future plans and direction, remains the same" and call it a day.
Day One Playstation games on PS Plus will be a thing? Will those games be released sooner on the service? There´ll be AAA third party day one releases on the service?
I don't see this happening. The only reason ms did it is cause they were desperate imo. I'd rather Sony not do day one. I'm also of the mindset I prefer to physically own my games not rent or digitally have them. I've got no issue paying for a game I will truly enjoy.
@shinoff2183
"I don't see this happening."
Just because you don´t see it happening doesn´t mean it won´t happen.
I don´t think you remember but there´s a lot of "I don't see this happening" type of comment in the comment history of many people here regarding both Playstation games on PC and some Playstation "Gamepass" type of service.
"The only reason ms did it is cause they were desperate imo."
By the time MS announced day one first party games on Gamepass the general opinion were that it would never happen! All that bs talk about "it´s not sustainable" blah blah bah.
Now we have not only all of the first party games day one on Gamepass but AAA third party games day one as well.
Imo, PS Plus will never outperform Gamepass if Sony is not willing to heavily invest on it specially now after that 40% price hike, and yet, they had the nerve to remove Spider-Man from its content list.
According to FTC documents MS had made more profit out revenue in 2022 than Sony, while numbers from both Bethesda and Activision weren´t even accounted.
You might think Sony have nothing to worry about, but that sudden retirement announcement does sound an alarm, and things about to change, again. Like it or not.
“Less live service nonsense, I hope.”
Don’t bet on it. All the top grossing games are live service games. It’s apparently where the masses want to spend their money.
I just hope an actual gamer gets the position. I wouldn’t mind Herman Hulst. He knows how gaming development works inside out.
At the end of the day, if you want to run a billion dollar company, you need to make money for the shareholders. If not they will throw you out like yesterdays garbage.
Do you for real think he's the reason why we'll get 10 live-service games over the span of 8 years, a long with singleplayer masterpieces?
Regarding the "price hike" it's the first in 6 years, and still cheaper than GamePass, even thou it became a better service.
What is it you're actually crying about?
A return to the old Sony hopefully, way less focus on gaas, don't overly secretive about what games you have coming, keep providing AAA single player games.
Basically do what they have always done before Jim.
just to let you know, he has worked for sony, for 30 years.
so .... your comment doesnt rly make a whole lot of sense.
He was the boss of sony's game department for 4 years. All those years Sony has been arrogant and secretive, so I would say that the comment is valid.
Clear messaging about what is coming up content wise. Can’t say it’s only possible on PS5 than have the same game run on PS4 or run without SSD on PC’s
I hope they really go back and get Shawn Layden who was starting to have a really good synergy with gamers
Shawn layden
Andrew house
Jack Trenton
Please get one of these
And please put some more focus on Japanese market. MS have been growing their business in Japan and TGS showed how much they are investing yet Sony seems to care less and less
Do 2 shows/presentations a year. One totally focused on 3rd party content and the other all about 1st-2nd party exclusive content
Less focus on GAAS because there are enough 3rd party big games doing GAAS and companies like PlayStation and Xbox get 30%. They have bungie who will keep doing GAAS so let the other studios do more traditional games
Acquire some more studios or even smaller publishers to grow the PlayStation strength. Like Sony themselves said PlayStation is very important to the core of their business. I believe owning square and capcom would do well for PlayStation (Sony has close to 20 billion in acquisition funds and they can get both square and capcom for less than 20)
I agree withwith everything neutralgamer, especially about the Japan gmfocus, and bringing back if possible one of those guys. Specifically layden
His run as CEO is why I stopped mainly gaming on Playstation. No fun first party games, no actual exclusives everything just goes to PC, the censorship that started, and the straw that broke was the PS+ price hike. It all screams arrogance of a company in the lead that just doesn't care what it does it's all about money. I just want old Sony that made wild exclusives like Crash and Spyro got Japanese publishers on their side and was the friendliest place for any dev to put whatever they wanted on console.
Short but cool interview, yoshi p and his crew seem like a good bunch.
I am so pumped for ff16, I probably haven't been this excited since ffx.
The game just looks amazing, and when you have the talent that they have working on this then it just throws all worrys out the window
Get the feeling this will be my game of year, I can see it already, just finished zelda and the last few hrs really soured me on top of some other things so it'll be between this, spiderman and starfield.
Been such a great yr for gaming and there is still so much to come.
The game seem packed with action. Really hyped for this game
My favorite part from the interview:
"Yoshida: My biggest thing, and I guess it's my biggest worry - but the one thing that I’m looking for is how people think of the story. I want to know how people think when they get to the end of the game and they've finished watching all the way to the end of the credits, and what they feel at that moment. How will they feel? That's what I want to know. I want to know if they're going to say, 'this was the greatest thing ever', or 'this was a really interesting story'. I'm just waiting to see how the fans react to the story, because that's what we've put so much effort into."