Bloomberg: Why PlayStation Fans Are Cheering CEO’s Departure

[Cool hand luke]

Fanfiction based on fanfiction.

 

[Say1nMan]

It's a wait and see for the games coming from Haven and Concord. Sony already has Gran Turismo and MLB The Show doing good for them plus the addition of Bungie about to transition from Destiny to Marathon. I don't pay much attention from stuff coming from Forbes and Bloomberg since both outlets have clowns writing for them. This article is pretty much about fearing that all PS studios are abandoning single player which would be pretty stupid of PlayStation to do we all know that. Mentioning Guerilla and Insomniac well they both have past experiences making MP. In fact, the article needs to get it history right with Guerilla. Guerilla didn't established itself as being an AAA single player studio until Horizon Zero Dawn. Prior to that they were all Killzone and multiplayer. And why the fuck is the article bringing up PSVR2 and Portal? Lol. PSVR2 is already doing decent for a niche device and Portal might do the same.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

How can they conclude that when none of these games got to market yet?

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

Yes, MLB has been in the market for many years doing a good job, but as I remember the first MLB that moved to GaaS approach was MLB 21. In Sony's fiscal reports at the time they mentioned that the switch to GaaS was going to be big and important change, and later they highlighted in a report that the game was very successful and even highlighted improvement in their fiscal reports, and for MLB 22 too.

They didn't share specific numbers, but Gran Turismo 7 had the best launch month in the history of the series in US (biggest gaming market) and also achieved great sales in the other tracked countries and regions, etc. Back in December the GT series achieved 90M copies, which meant GTS+GT7 sold 10M copies in 4 years and a half.

Regarding Firewall Ultra yes, it's a VR game so I assume they don't expect it to be the next Fortnite: I assume their expectatives is that it will be pretty niches.


People from Naughty Dog like Druckmann mentioned multiple times they pitched their projects. Same goes with SSM, Cory or Jaffe mentioned they pitched their games. The Days Gone directors also explained that their studio is who pitches the games to Sony. Hermen also mentioned that the studios are the ones who pitch them their games.

It isn't something rare, when I did work at Ubisoft we also pitched our own games. In my case I event went once to the HQ to make a final greenlight approval meeting with the editorial team to convice them to greenlight our next game, a new IP that we were pitching to them.

So, suddenly when SIE management wanted GaaS, all developers pitched GaaS at the same time! It was all a coincidence!?!

 

[Danja]

What is clear is that things aren't smooth sailing behind the scenes. Obviously these journalists are in takedown mode always when it comes to Playstation. But, something definitely up behind the scenes and I definitely think they bit off more than they can chew going head first into GaaS.

Stupid leadership of the past left them with their pants down in the current climate. They had all the ingredients for GaaS success coming off PS3. So many games that could have just been remastered and retooled to become Gaas-like.

Letting Rocket League go was such a boneheaded decision, but they got complacent.

I do hope they can get a hit from their many investments tho, they've given us a lot over the years and I definitely don't want to see them fail... tho they annoy me these days.

 

[Danja]

So, suddenly when SIE management wanted GaaS, all developers pitched GaaS at the same time! It was all a coincidence!?!

Hermen is the fault here for this.

 

[Kokoloko]

Forbes….
FFS people we need to stop taking article from Bloomberg, Eurogamer and Forbes seriously.
They literally have a FUD article about PS every month… like clockwork…. one after the other. Without fail…

You might as well post an Xbot fan opinion tweet and say its a article. They probably get the go ahead from Phil and the discord

 

[flaccidsnake]

What is clear is that things aren't smooth sailing behind the scenes. Obviously these journalists are in takedown mode always when it comes to Playstation. But, something definitely up behind the scenes and I definitely think they bit off more than they can chew going head first into GaaS.

Stupid leadership of the past left them with their pants down in the current climate. They had all the ingredients for GaaS success coming off PS3. So many games that could have just been remastered and retooled to become Gaas-like.

Letting Rocket League go was such a boneheaded decision, but they got complacent.

I do hope they can get a hit from their many investments tho, they've given us a lot over the years and I definitely don't want to see them fail... tho they annoy me these days.

if anything ryan-era playstation is behind the curve on service games. they let 3rd parties carry online gaming in the ps4 years and now there's braindrain.

 

[Deleted member 223]

All Paul Tassi articles should come with a thread title disclaimer with name included. Same for Takashi and a few other "press" clowns.

All clickbait, hardly if ever substance, ton of concern trolling and a lot of nothing gossip.

 

[flaccidsnake]

It's a wait and see for the games coming from Haven and Concord. Sony already has Gran Turismo and MLB The Show doing good for them plus the addition of Bungie about to transition from Destiny to Marathon. I don't pay much attention from stuff coming from Forbes and Bloomberg since both outlets have clowns writing for them. This article is pretty much about fearing that all PS studios are abandoning single player which would be pretty stupid of PlayStation to do we all know that. Mentioning Guerilla and Insomniac well they both have past experiences making MP. In fact, the article needs to get it history right with Guerilla. Guerilla didn't established itself as being an AAA single player studio until Horizon Zero Dawn. Prior to that they were all Killzone and multiplayer. And why the fuck is the article bringing up PSVR2 and Portal? Lol. PSVR2 is already doing decent for a niche device and Portal might do the same.

Good points. I don't know about PSVR2 though. It feels like misstep. PSVR practically took the PSP/Vita slot as a 2nd class device with strictly 2nd class developer support. PSVR2 is looking like the Vita moment to me, just about DoA.

Portal on the other hand, makes absolutely no sense to get mad at. It's a fucking controller. You can get the $200 Elite with luxury components, or you can get the $200 Portal with the screen that goes around the house. These are no downside peripherals you can simply ignore if you don't need them. They don't need special developer support, and they don't devalue your existing purchases.

 

[Cool hand luke]

What is clear is that things aren't smooth sailing behind the scenes. Obviously these journalists are in takedown mode always when it comes to Playstation. But, something definitely up behind the scenes and I definitely think they bit off more than they can chew going head first into GaaS.

Stupid leadership of the past left them with their pants down in the current climate. They had all the ingredients for GaaS success coming off PS3. So many games that could have just been remastered and retooled to become Gaas-like.

Letting Rocket League go was such a boneheaded decision, but they got complacent.

I do hope they can get a hit from their many investments tho, they've given us a lot over the years and I definitely don't want to see them fail... tho they annoy me these days.

Just to be clear, this is an article based on a comment in Bloomberg that 'insiders' were concerned. 'Insiders' were also concerned about Sony's focus on AAA blockbusters some years ago, and those are unlikely to be the same insiders. Unless it's widespread or high-up AND detrimental to Sony functioning, then it's non-news.

 

[Swift_Star]

PS fans are cheering because they fell for Xbots' shitty narratives.

 

[Danja]

Just to be clear, this is an article based on a comment in Bloomberg that 'insiders' were concerned. 'Insiders' were also concerned about Sony's focus on AAA blockbusters some years ago, and those are unlikely to be the same insiders. Unless it's widespread or high-up AND detrimental to Sony functioning, then it's non-news.

Yes I know this is a nothing-burger as I said so initially. I'm just stating my own opinions overall mostly. I just think things are bit messy since we really haven't seen much of anything though they've been saying we were suppose to have gotten at least 2 live service games already.

 

[Yurinka]

So, suddenly when SIE management wanted GaaS, all developers pitched GaaS at the same time! It was all a coincidence!?!

No, SIE management didn't publicly mentioned that they wanted to bet more on GaaS until the Jim Ryan era, but Sony has been making GaaS games since the PS3 era, and many of the upcoming Sony GaaS weren't greenlighted by Hermen or Jim. They already were under production.

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

No, SIE management didn't publicly mentioned that they wanted to bet more on GaaS until the Jim Ryan era, but Sony has been making GaaS games since the PS3 era, and many of the upcoming Sony GaaS weren't greenlighted by Hermen or Jim. They already were under production.

We haven't heard of GaaS games till end of 2020 a year after Jim took over, and almost all of them haven't released yet which means they weren't in production when Jim took over. Jim also acquired and contracted many developers who are making GaaS.
Sony made multiplayer and GaaS games during PS3 era, but not at the scale demonstrated now. And 90% of them had a Phil Spencer level of failure.

 

[Shmunter]

Sony rep will suffer if they rollout multiple failures in a row. And I’m not talking the admirable failure of some niche cult classic, but uninspired by the numbers surprise mechanic casino garbage. A perilous gamble.

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

Sony rep will suffer if they rollout multiple failures in a row. And I’m not talking the admirable failure of some niche cult classic, but uninspired by the numbers surprise mechanic casino garbage. A perilous gamble.

Problem is when developing many of them with AAA budget. Even if only one of them fails, it will cause a massive loss and lay offs.

 

[Petekilla]

Crunching doesn't really help though. Insomniac doesn't crunch and they're the most productive 1st party studio.

They don’t make detailed games like Rockstar and Naughty Dog though.

 

[Yurinka]

We haven't heard of GaaS games till end of 2020 a year after Jim took over, and almost all of them haven't released yet which means they weren't in production when Jim took over.

Jim also acquired and contracted many developers who are making GaaS.
Sony made multiplayer and GaaS games during PS3 era, but not at the scale demonstrated now. And 90% of them had a Phil Spencer level of failure.

Hermen is the fault here for this.

Jim became CEO in April 2019 and Hermen in November 2019.

List of Sony GaaS games released/to be released since then but greenlighted by previous CEOs:

• Dreams (known to be in delopment years before they became CEO)
• Destruction All Stars (released February 2021, must have been greenlighted earlier)
• Gran Turismo 7 (started after Gran Turismo Sport launch, which also is GaaS)
• Firewall Ultra (started after Firewall Zero Hour launch)
• Convallaria (if it's a GaaS -I think won't-, its first video was published March 2019)
• Helldivers 2 (started in 2015/2016 after Helldivers 1 launch)
• Concord (studio founded in 2018)
• Horizon Online (its game director Simon Larouche working on it since Feb. 2018 according to his LinkedIn)
• London Studio new IP (their previous game was released in May 2019 and before that they had 2 teams)
• Destiny 2 (already released when acquired)
• Marathon (already in development when acquired)
• Matter/new Bungie IP (already in development when acquired)

These games didn't appear out of nothing when Jim became CEO: we know now, and many even then, that these teams were working on these games even if we still didn't know the name or know almost nothing about them.

Or well, it's simply stupid to think these teams were doing nothing during years, they obviously started to work on them after the previous project was released or even before.

On top of this, Sony released GaaS games like Little Big Planet, PS Home or Gran Turismo Sport to name some of them before Jim and Hermen became CEOs.

During the Jimbo era Sony acquired way more non-GaaS studios than GaaS studios, only acquired 3 GaaS studios:

• 4 non-GaaS dev studios: Insomniac, Housemarque, Bluepoint, Firesprite
• 3 GaaS dev studios: Bungie, Haven and Firewalk
• 2 support & porting studios: Nixxes, Fabrik, Valkyrie Entertainment
• 1 mobile dev studio: Savage
• Plus companies like EVO or Audeze
• Outside SIE (not by Jim Ryan) they acquired Lasengle, Crunchyroll Games and not sure if more

And tell me, I could accept as failures Destruction AllStars or maybe even Dreams (bot not grenlighted by him) but where's the level of failure of MLB 21/22/23, Gran Turismo 7, Destiny 2 or Firewall Ultra?

Crunching doesn't really help though. Insomniac doesn't crunch and they're the most productive 1st party studio.

They don’t make detailed games like Rockstar and Naughty Dog though.

In the past almost all studios, including Insomniac, crunched. Nowadays most studios, including Insomniac, don't crunch.

if anything ryan-era playstation is behind the curve on service games. they let 3rd parties carry online gaming in the ps4 years and now there's braindrain.

List of the first 1st party known games greenlighted in the Jim and Hermen era:

• Death Stranding 2 (started after DS1 launch)
• New open world IP by Bend, which was pitched by Bend after Days Gone (Sony/PS Studios/Jim/Hermen approved the first pitch that Bend sent them after Days Gone 1, which was this new IP, they never received a Days Gone 2 pitch because the Bend studio boss blocked the directors from sending it to Sony)
• Ghost of Tsushima 2 (started after GoT1 launch)
• Unannounced ND game(s) under development, at least one of them SP (started after TLOU2 launch, not sure when)
• Wolverine (started after Morales launch)
• Team Asobi's next game (a 3d action platformer with humor bigger than the Astros) and multiple prototypes)
• Deviation's game (studio founded in 2020)
• Housemarque next game (started after Returnal release)
• Fairgame$ (even if they started to work on it at Google, maybe started production at Sony)
• Horizon 3 (pretty likely started after HFW release)
• Insomniac game with MP (pretty likely started after Rift Apart)
• Next GoW, set in a new mythology (started after GoWR)

Most games greenlighted by Hermen and Jim aren't GaaS. Plus read the list in the top of this post to see all the Sony GaaS greenlighted by previous CEOs.