Idk man, COD sold 10m every years
Destiny 2 got a shit ton of players
FF14 is Square main revenue sources
Fortnite single handedly save Epic Games
2K NBA, EA football games
As much as we hated it, that is where revenues came from.
David Jaffe: Herman Hulst pushed for playstation's Japan Studios closure.
- Thread starter John Elden Ring
- Start date
Destiny 2 got a shit ton of players
FF14 is Square main revenue sources
Fortnite single handedly save Epic Games
2K NBA, EA football games
As much as we hated it, that is where revenues came from.
@Eternal_Wings
I know you has been kind obssessed with Jap singleplayer games. The problem is well, even Jap publishers trying to pivoting to other mean as well.
With the sucess of FFVII mobile and MonHun mobile, I think Capcom and Square will definitely trying to pivot to mobile. Even Totoki himself scrutinised Jim Ryan's mobile venture failure.
I am not trying to defend GaaS here but AAA games's budgets as been exploding so they need something to foot the bills.
The problem is Sony should do it without canibalizing SP output, that should be worrisome
I know you has been kind obssessed with Jap singleplayer games. The problem is well, even Jap publishers trying to pivoting to other mean as well.
With the sucess of FFVII mobile and MonHun mobile, I think Capcom and Square will definitely trying to pivot to mobile. Even Totoki himself scrutinised Jim Ryan's mobile venture failure.
I am not trying to defend GaaS here but AAA games's budgets as been exploding so they need something to foot the bills.
The problem is Sony should do it without canibalizing SP output, that should be worrisome
I think the poster was more alluding to the fact the CEO of Sony didn't alert anyone within the company he was gonna a meet with their Top divisions main rival to strike a deal which could have possibly undermined Playstation in the long run. The entire company was caught off guard and I'm sure that played a role in why it quickly fell apart
why ? Ppl always complain oh no poor Japan studio and 99% of the time they neither own or play Japan studio games. Knack snd gravity rush sold like sht. Where was all this live for japan studio when it came to spend money on their games? Japan studio was mostly a glorified support studio with no major hits or financial success in over a decade. Like MM they had a staff of over 200 and what did they produce with? Knack? Gravity rush? Which wasn’t bad but didn’t set they world on fire.while most ps studios elevated themselves in the ps4 era Japan studio was still stuck in the ps2 or early ps3 era.
They didn't close Japan Studio.
Japan Studio's XDEV 2nd party publishing team branched out into their own office (in the same building they were when labeled as Japan Studio) where they are growing and working in more games (Death Stranding Director's Cut, Rise of the Ronin, Death Stranding 2, Stellar Blade etc) than they ever did before. Now in addition to Japanese games they also handle the SIE published games from the rest of Asia. Nothing new, the XDEV (2nd publishing) teams from EU and NA also branched out from local dev teams where they originally were.
They merged the different Japan Studio internal development teams into one of them (Team Asobi) and changed the management team making some firings and promoting the Team Asobi leader to head of the studio. Team Asobi continues working in the same building where they were with the Japan Studio label but in a new office where they are also growing and plan to be 100 people soon.
It's always sad to see people fired, but after like almost 3 decades with no hit game and even a few turds or money sinks released I think it was need to do some changes.
Polyphony has been growing and now has 2 teams.
Their Japanese 2nd party publishing team now have their own office, has been growing, is working in more games than ever before and now also covering the other Asian countries.
They merged their Japan Studio internal development teams into Team Asobi, gave them a new office leaded by them and now are growing.
The Japanese Shuhei Yoshida is leading what he wanted: a division to support indies.
Their 3rd party relations team is headed by a Japanese ex-Capcom executive.
Sony Music (where PlayStation was born) acquired Lasengle, the Japanese studio who made them that super successful mobile game -specially in Asia/Japan- and also makes console games like Melty Blood. Plus also has Aniplex and other stuff where they make more Japanese games like the ForwardWorks ones.
They signed many big and small Japanese 3rd party exclusives like Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Forspoken (on paper when announced looked really promising), Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter 6 and Resident Evil 4 generation exclusives, RE4 and RE Village VR exclusivity and many more. More than MS and Nintendo combined.
They don't have any issue against Japanese studios at all.
Shawn Layden was already fired, and Shuhei Yoshida is now helping indies.
Most of the Sony GaaS were greenlighted before the Jimbo+Hermen era, most of the games greenlighted by Jimbo+Hermen aren't GaaS.
So you should ask Layden and Shuhei as PS Studio heads and John Kodera as SIE CEO more than Hermen or Jimbo.
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JS was mismanaged to hell thanks to Mena Sato. Their doom was not focusing on creating AAA games. Gravity Rush, WKC etc. weren’t that bad but also not successful. This is why Team Asobi will create AAA Platformer as Astrobot and maybe Ape Escape.
Ueda's game still nowhere to be seen.
Kinda sad actually because his PS2 games are some of my favorite.
yeah it was shortsighted we are really missing out on knack 3. Japan studio was dysfunctional and ps leadership tried to say it but it didn’t want to be saved. PS wanted to make games that had world wide appeal by Japan studio leadership wanted to make games that that specifically targeted the Japanese market, games that all bombed. Japan studio was barely turn a profit. Does your boss keep paying u of your level of production barely breaks even? They brought in Allen Becker to turn Japan studio around when the ps4 launch and after an entire gen he still couldn’t turn things around. It internal culture was restart to change except for team asobi. Becker used to be head of Santa Monica and they brought him in specifically to turn the studio around. His goal was
"For Japan Studio to be relevant globally in two and a half years."
How did that turn out, 7 yrs later Japan studio was still struggling. The goal was 2 yrs they gave it 7. When he left it’s when they closed it. Obviously they thought it out careful.
I can't blame the strategy, Japan Studio was not very productive, and they were a bit lacking compared to Sony's premiere studios. I suppose they were ok as a support studio, but it would have been nice to have them produce Demon's Souls sequels or other more heavy hitting exclusives.
Okay but that doesn't mean they don't need studios in Japan, it's a huge part of the appeal of PlayStation.
If people wanted a big american gamer box, they would have bought an Xbox.
They need to lean into their heritage and culture more.
Playstation's culture is international. There are strong trends in Japan, US, and Europe. Where AAA development is strong in Japan, Playstation supports and partners with it. Recently Playstation had strong partnerships with From and Square. Playstation is heavily promoting Tekken 8. Kojima Productions is very tight with Playstation and we know they're working on Death Stranding 2 as a first party.
It would be awesome to see Playstation spread even more internationally into South Asia and South America.
True but for a company with its roots in Japan, there is very little development under 1st party in that country and I agree that it would be nice to see more of a spread but Japan should be a part of that and should be a pronounced focus IMO.
I think Sony is having really strong relationship with Japanese game devs
Capcom makes 2 VR titles only for PSVR2, SE deals, Sony owned a chunk of FS shares, Bandai Namco is pushing PS5 the main platform for their big titles, Koei Tecmo works with SIE publishing again.
You seem not to understand the core‘s discrepancy. It’s not about their 3rd Party content. They don’t develop their own Japanese games. Final Fantasy, Silent Hill are not their own created franchises. PlayStation Japan is definitely lacking this. They rely too much on 3rd Party and that’s not a good prospect.
Sony needs to buy/establish Japanese studios. Japan has lot of talents to be discovered and some developer legends being right now unemployed. Everyone who is against Sony developing more own created Japanese content is selfish and egoistic. Hell PlayStation‘s 1st Party output is 90% western stuff (Europe & NA).
I remember reading somewhere that the creator of Wild Arms said something like this. Back in 2018 his team pitched a project to SIE, presumaly a JRPG, but they rejected the idea.
He went to Square, they also rejected it. The two biggest publishers doesn't want to fund a JRPG game from a known creator, then you know....