Producer Naoki Yoshida, Art Director Hiroshi Minagawa and Localization Director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox talk about the new RPG, the challenge of moogles and much more.
After laying off numerous employees, Tim Sweeney, the company’s founder and CEO, sent an email about the situation. The 52-year-old businessman clarified why the layoffs happened and even shed some light on the future of Fortnite.
Good on them doing this at least.
“we’re offering a severance package that includes six months base pay and in the US/Canada/Brazil six months of Epic-paid healthcare. We’re offering to accelerate people’s stock option vesting schedule through the end of 2024 and are giving two additional years from today to exercise the options. In the US we’re also offering to vest any unearned profit sharing from their 401k. And we’ll provide benefits including career transition services and visa support where we can.”
Would be "too much" for us, but probably it's "not enough" for the greedy bastard...
Epic makes way too much money to have to lay people off of the spent that money smartly. Tim wasted money on exclusives for their store when it could have gone to paychecks for people.
Epic put all their eggs in one basket with fortnite, they should have continued with the development of unreal tournament and got that game going as an arena shooter that's free to play with a huge cosmetic cash shop.
But your CEO knows what their doing.... laying off people so the board doesn't see exactly how much you stuck. The usual playbook.
Jim Ryan oversaw the successful launch of the PlayStation 5. His four-year tenure was also marred by several flubs.
I understand why Sony is trying to develop gaas titles as even if only 1 or 2 are a hit that means a nice stream of revenue for them and a foundation for further gaas games to build on. Their single player games sell great but with gaming budgets getting bigger and bigger the more the games need to sell. So if they develop gaas games and get a hit that will help migrate some of the cost.
Bye Jim. You won’t be missed.
“But over the last two years, Ryan has overseen a PlayStation shift toward “games as a service,” a popular industry buzzword referring to video games, usually multiplayer, that can be monetized over long periods of time. It’s been an uncomfortable pivot for some of Sony’s studios, which have spent the last decade building out teams of experienced developers to make big, cinematic adventure games that are played solo."
If anyone has an idea what's going on atmosphere wise within gaming studios it's Jason Schreier
It's clear some of these studios just don't want to do it but are probably being forced
Look at NaughtyDog, a full on multiplayer game of Factions, I mean really? I highly doubt ND wanted to do that when it was probably going to be bundled in with TLOU2 or released a few months after like what Sucker Punch did with their co-op mode.
If you have two teams within a studio where they'd cycle between franchises then now one of them is most likely stuck doing a shitty GaaS game. We won't cycle, we'll be relying on the same team to do a single player game and it means we'll probably get more fatigued with a franchise as both teams will be working on something within that Universe like GG Horizon, their second team is apparently working on a multiplayer styled GaaS game when they could have most likely been working on a new IP. Cycling between franchises kept things fresh where the other team could probably afford to spend a bit longer on their game while the other releases theres but now we won't get that as they might feel more pressured to get a single player game out to feed an audience who's growing hungry for something they haven't had in a while.
It's messing with the flow of their studios and it's more annoying people who defend GaaS games don't see that.
It's different with people like Bungie being brought in as they were always doing GaaS games with Destiny but forcing your already first party studios to do it? That's just bullshit.
What developers are being made to make multiplayer modes for games now that weren't before Jim Ryan?
They made naughty dog make multiplayer modes since Uncharted 2. Socom team made MAG, guerilla was making Killzones, ghost of tsushima was made to have a multiplayer mode and was before his time...i just don't see the Jim Ryan era as the making single player developers make multiplayer games era.
Let's remember he became CEO in 2019. So let me know what developers he forced to make multiplayer games that hadn't been doing them before.
@Foxtrot
What evidence do you have to even suggest Sony is forcing Naughty Dog to work on Factions?
Seriously, I get that you have to make up lies to fit whatever narrative you have cooked up in your, but reality isn't for you. Is Naughty Dog also being forced to work on their New IP, rumored to be a single-player gamer, as well as the recent news of them moving forward with TLOU part 3? Were they forced to add online to the 1st game? To uncharted 2, 3 or 4? Plus, Factions is actually loved by many fans, so again, what evidence do you have to even suggest they are forced to work on it? Most of their major old studios are rumored to be working on single-player games, from Sucker Punch, Insomniac, Santa Monica, Naughty Dog to guerilla games. The new studios they purchased from Bungie to Haven Studios are the ones working on online games.
These are misinformation by articles that jumped the gun upon hearing “live service”. If Ryan was guilty of anything was that he wasn’t careful with choice of words at times, and didn’t explain where an explanation was necessary.
Here is what Sony has said when the question of live service focus was brought up:
“We will continue to publish the games that have served us so well over the years. These single player, graphically beautiful, narrative rich games will continue to be the bedrock of our first party publishing business”
Why is making live-service on top of wjat they were already doing an issue, when MS is only doing live service at the moment?
Starfield is live service, redfall is live service. They just aren’t calling it that. Ryan simply went out and use the word “live service”, so Sony gets the shit for it.
Under Jim F***ing Ryan:
Raises PS Plus from $60 to $80. So what improvements were made to make it worth $80???
Introduces 3 tiers to PS Plus. Does anybody actually subscribes to the Premium tier???
I didn't like the guy back when the PS4 launch was doing well and majority of the PS CEOs from the around the world were humbled by the consumer response but uncle Jimmy was arrogant AF when answering the media.
@VersusDMC
“What developers are being made to make multiplayer modes for games now that weren't before Jim Ryan?”
“They made naughty dog make multiplayer modes since Uncharted 2“
You know that was just a simple MP addition to the main game. Factions 2 was a full blown GaaS game large as their entire single player projects. Big difference.
Jim Ryan acquired Bungie to oversee their first party studio GaaS plans from what I understand in which they told Naughty Dog that Factions 2 wasn’t going to work as a GaaS revenue stream. It was then put in the back burner and they pulled the majority of the team off the project to work on their single player game.
@Northpoint
Sony raise and MS raised. MS selling point is monthly subscription to gamepass. Sony needed to compete and offer something of equal value, MS currently charging more for gamepass. PSPlus is also offering day one games from 3rd party publishers.
I don't believe this "will help them make single player games better" bullshit
Knowing what happens to any other company that gets a taste of that sweet GaaS money, the single player output will either be the same or fall behind and any extra revenue will go straight into making more GaaS games or high up executives pockets as bonuses.
We know how this works
Sony is no different that any other company, I think people need to take off those fanboy "console wars" glasses to see that.
It's better to be cautious now than reap the consequences later because we didn't act sooner, what's the worse that will happen? We're all wrong and everything turns out fine? It's a win / win.
What will you do? Don't Buy the gaas titles and risk job cuts and lay offs or buy it and support the studio growth and have more games out?
Sony's bread and butter isn't gaas games everyone knows that. Buying said gaas games helps everyone involved and yes that does help their single player output. You act like theyll see the gaas money and only do that.
Sony isn't turning into epic games just a one trick pony they've been in this buissness long enough and adapted. Hell Sony was even ahead of the curve allot of the times.
You're definitely overreacting.
"Don't Buy the gaas titles and risk job cuts and lay offs or buy it and support the studio growth and have more games out?"
So to show [publisher] we want more single player core titles from them, you're saying we should support their GaaS?
That is the absolute complete opposite to the concept of "vote with your wallet"
Lightning
That is such a bad argument if I’ve ever seen one
Overreacting? Lmao
Yeah people said the same about horse armour and loot boxes
Guess what happened…
@Taco and Fox
Btw this is SONY we're talking about they're not like the other publishers. They make some of the best SP games out there. Again there bread and butter is SP.
But sure you're right don't buy into Sony's LS and watch jobs get cut Sony will just sweep that 2.1b$ LS investment under the rug and Sony will pretend it never happened and hire SP programmers again like it's nothing.
They'll be ok with losing all those funds and make it all back by scrapping everything and doing Single player stuff again, like it never happened.....
Because that's how buissness works right?
@lightning77,
How about no and we send a message by not buying the games and letting the games fail? If it succeeds, they just make more and we never get what we really want. Have you ever heard of supply and demand? Isn't that how things are supposed to work?
@foxtrot
This community clearly is divided on such issues, they think you make stuff up, but really your just intelligent enough to see between the lines, and have witnessed what this industry does with new Initiatives. My best guess is the internal studios at playstation have enough say as a whole to make other higher ups see that Jim direction wasn't the right one, combined with the fans like you who as a whole also, do hold sway over such things to a company that listens.
For those who disagree, well, your either too young to understand this business still, or not enough street smart, either way, those of us who know, see this move as the best possible solution to what was most likely a terrible outcome for playstation had nothing been stopped. I sure hope what's been done is done, and whatever in development released, but apart from that, let the studios continue delivering that can deliver. But allow them to do that by whatever they deem fit through choice and freedom. That's what art is for, expression of freedom of ideas. And without that choice or freedom, you may still get art, but it won't be very good. And video games are still an art.
As others have already commented this, but it is because of the loss of freedom, we do not have naughty dogs next big title. Its taken forever now for Factions to release? Why. Because the devlopers never wanted it in the first place. I'm sure thats the case for many other developer projects as well. It's 1 thing to ask a studio to incorporate a multiplayer component and have it be successful when they want to do it, thats what happened with the last of us 1 multiplayer, but then to do what they've done with Factions, and it still not here, speaks all the facts anyone needs to hear.
And it will then propel new gaas games. This is not what I want at all. And it does not seem to be what the market want. They are too late for the party. Even Fortnite is scaling back. It will take resources from single player games no matter what
Let's ne honest, Gaas is doing well, it just nothing but greed. Most gamers can't see pass what they want. Fortnite is literally a cash cow, however Epic expecting it to make enough money to cover all their expenses is beyond stupid.
They are gonna use the profit to make more gaas games.....don't act that because it's sony they use all the gaas profits to please the single player crowd, they make them to get as much money as they can, nothing more nothing less. Don't come with this noble bs, they're a company, not a charity.
Thing is they need to back off AAA. Give attention to middle IPs which, once/if they become popular among that small created audience, could get tuned up to AAA.
It should be about creating an environment of creative risk instead of all the algorithmic money sink BS everything's become.
Wow, I think this is the first time I have seen you in a Sony related article not saying something laced with sheer Xbox fanboy filtered nonsense. Congratulations, you're making progress in talking like a regular person.
