You personally considering that Sony didn't release enough trailers from this remaster/remake/port of a 10 year old game that "only" sold 4M doesn't mean SIE distanced themselves from it and doesn't mean it's going to be a financial failure.
In the same way ports that cost a handful millions get profitable by selling just a few tens of thousand of units, this remake/remaster won't need to sell several millions to be profitable.
They did some improvements and changes, so may have had spent a some millions more on it, but not much, let's say maybe around a dozen or so, maybe around two dozen. They won't even need to sell 1M during its whole lifetime to recoup the investment.
And even if they wouldn't achieve it, they would consider it as an investment to help support the upcoming movie and (if it exists) sequel, plus also to grow a bit their PC userbase and library.
What do you mean by BAU? I've been working for two decades in the industry and never heard about it.
Regarding signing with them other project, Sony wanted to have an updated Until Dawn so signed some former devs to do it. They don't have other remaster/remake/port to ask them to do.
Apparently Sony is doing the sequel inhouse with other former Supermassive devs at Firesprite together with some people who worked in places like Rocksteady, ND, Rockstar, etc. (Plus as we know Liverpool Studio, Evolution and Bizarre Creations).
This remake barely changes the original: updates visuals, the camera, some story options but apparently is pretty much the same. Barely nothing with the work that would have required to turn it into a VR game: they would have needed to change almost everything plus heavily downgrading the visuals instead of improving them.
I mean, in things like cutscenes when you're in a tv the devs only make what you see and a bit more, they normally don't put anything (or almost) in the areas you don't see to save resources and focus them in what you see because they know you can't move during the cutscene. Instead of in VR they have to do all the detail in the character and the room because the player can move the head during the cutscene.
And for VR there are other "rules" regarding how to do good cutscenes, scene change/camera transitions, handling camera distance and proportions etc. And well, obviously gameplay in VR changes a lot too from controls to what you can see or not (so what they have to render or keep it in memory).
One of the different projects I've been working on is a cinematic adventure VR game and things change a lot from traditional games. A ton of these things I mentioned and more have to be designed for VR because there are many weird things in VR. One of them is the sweet spot to look at things: you have to place the key things in a spot of around aprx. 1.5 to 3 meters (can't remember the exact numbers) away from the user. Closer would feel too close and invasive to the personal space of the player, and in more distance would feel too far to focus your eyes on it properly to get proper detail.
Things like scale and distance became way more important in VR and are way more limited than in games for 2D displays.
Like what issues?
No, you're throwing (sometiomes hyperbolic doomer) speculations like saying that if this is going to be a disaster, that Sony distanced themselves from the game, that they screw up this remake, that aren't marketing it accordingly and the pricing may be wrong etc.
I'm explaining and putting into context the (pretty likely) reasoning behind their related decisions, and explaining why some of your doomer assumptions that use only evidence that comes out of your ass are wrong. Using as base how things normally work in the industry or how Sony has been behaving recently.
So there you have it: they are also marketing for them, but did prefer to highlight other games instead in the SoP itself.
The free DLC only had a single trailer until now, in that SoP. Until Dawn had appeared in multiple places including SoP. As an example these two recent videos you just mentioned.
They are simply updating a 10 years old game that sold 4M to port it to PC, make a movie and meybe also make a sequel. It is not the next GoW or Spider-Man game, they don't need it to make a huge marketing campaing for it and they don't need to feature it in every single SoP.
They know their budget and have the market data to have a pretty good sales estimation and what it makes sense for them to spend on marketing for each thing.
To explain you why you are wrong / why your expectatives for their marketing are unrealistic with some examples to put it into context is not a strawman.
They are just rehashing a 10 years old game with ok sales, which performed good for its niche but low for the SIE AAA games context. So obviously won't spent a big marketing budget for it.
Its marketing maskes more sense to be closer to the PC ports or remasters than to the release of one of their tentpole games.
Do you have any source from Sony saying that there won't be a $10 upgrade?
I don't remember Sony saying anything about if will be or not a $10 upgrade, same they charged in every PS4 game they significatively improved for PS5.
I understand the $10 upgrade for the remasters in some cases with extra content, and not including the $10 for Demon's Souls or TLOUP1, since they were PS3 games and also really rebuild them from basically scratch and remade most of it.
I think Until Dawn may be somewhere in the middle, but I feel it's closer to the remasters of PS4 games with extra juice, which got upgrade.
We'll have to see the final work they did put in Until Dawn, but seems to me that even if they apparently did put it way more work than in the typical remaster (also moved to new engine, this requires work) also sound to me maybe somewhat more equivalent to extra content done in cases like giving you the 2nd game if you only had one when upgrading in the Uncharted collection, or getting the Ikki Island DLC when upgrading in GoT, or getting the new stuff in Death Stranding Director's Cut.
I never said they were founders, I just stated the fact that many Firesprite workers previously did work at Supermassive.
This is a PS5+PC remake/remaster of a PS4 game that wasn't a super seller, not a new game. In case of Demon's Souls and TLOU, they were PS3 titles and one started the Souls who are super popular now and the other one a 20M+ seller that got the very succesful tv show.
I think that in terms of marketing budget and sale expectations Until Dawn makes more sense closer to remasters and PC ports, not to the release of a brand new game and even less a tentpole one.
Until had until now 3 PS Blog posts:
- Announcement post + trailer in January (plus appearance in SoP)
- Update with extra info and comparisions in August
- PC version specific details in September
HFW PC got three posts from announcement to release: announcement, PC specific stuff and release. As reference, the GoT PC port got two: announcement and PC specs. Uncharted Collection (including the PC port) got 5.
Regarding Firewall Ultra, it got 5 posts, but it was a PSVR2 online MP game, something pretty niche, but still a brand new game. So got more marketing than a remaster/port.
