Layden was never a PlayStation CEO and I don't hate him? He was fantastic as Chairman of PlayStation studios. He was great at building up the community and keeping a constant dialog going with the community and the industry. However I can still blame him for a decision he pushed into the company?
He was chairman of Worldwide Studios (not SIE) from March 2018 to September 2019, only during a year and a half, while Shuhei Yoshida was the head of Worldwide Studios and John Khodera was CEO of SIE (SCE back then).
He was there only during a year and a half, but was one of those who decided to expand to PC and mobile. You should thank him for that.
Totoki isn't a PlayStation guy either
The man doesn't even like games or respect PlayStation. I'm sure if HE could get away with it, he'd sell the department but shareholders will axe him.
Totoki is going to be CEO of SIE temporally until they put someone as the next SIE CEO once Jim officially leaves March 31th.
I know they exist, it's why I said comparatively. That hand full of games, three years into the gen, isn't anything to write home about, which is the opposite of what PS1,2,3 and 4 had.
Each new generation AAA get bigger, with more features and content, get more complex and allow to have more stuff on screen, with more variety and more detail.
This means more work to be done, so means they have to put more people to work on them and to develop them during longer period of times.
The AAA games released nowadays take from 5 to 9 years to be developed. This is more than the game released in the PS4 gen, which needed more time than the ones relesed in the PS3 gen, which was more than in the PS2 gen, and so on every generation until the pre Atari days.
ND only had the TLOU2 team while developing it, which was released in 2020. In 2019 they branched out their MP team to grow it and make an MP game instead of an MP mode, and as we know got announced but cancelled.
A few months after releasing TLOU2 they started another new SP game. And apparently early 2023 another new SP game. So they were working on 3 new games at the same time. While also making or overviewing all the remasters, ports, movie and tv show.
A lot has been written about these released remasters, ports and adaptations plus TLOU Online. But TLOU Online wasn't in a shape to be shown, in the same way that nowadays a AAA game that has been in the work during 3 years, which should be the case of the new SP game they have in a more advanced state, isn't in a shape to be shown.
They'll show it when ready, be patient. To show a new game during these 3 years means that during the TLOU2 development they should have had multiple big game teams, like the 3 or 4 Insomniac had. But it wasn't the case, they had only one.
Nowadays, thanks to Jim and Hermen, plus Neil as studio president, ND has, or had until TLOU Online got cancelled if it wasn't replaced by a 3rd SP game, apparently 3 teams working at the same time on new games, plus all the people from the remasters, ports and adaptations.
Give them the time they need to do their job. Asking a AAA team to show their next game under 3 years after releasing the previous one is stupid.
I don't disagree with that in principle but having to open it up to the PC market, after strongly denying they would do that when it launched shows;
A) Sony are liars
B) Sony have no direction and are making it up as they go along.
C) they are hurting real bad and need money desperately.
D) Don't care about the Playstation brand
E) any combination of the above.
F) None of the above is correct, companies like Sony have long term strategies with long term plans that get decided and take many years to be implemented, and things can't be annonced and must be kept secret until annonced. To be locked to their console would kill them because all the costs keep growing a lot but console / PS5 userbase can't/couldn't grow more than the record numbers they are achieving. So they needed to grow to PC, mobile nad movies to grow their brand, revenue and profits
Ps Vita failed because of the dumb memory slot and Sony stubbournly refusing to change it. The Vita, according to the metric that counts, is a highly successful, powerful, fun, versatile platform and is one of, if not the best handheld emulator money can buy.
The memory one was a bad decision, but there were more important ones that made it fail: one of the most important one was that big games for it costed almost the same than the console ones, but its installbase was too small to sell enough copies to make these games profitable, and on top of that required a lot of work and devs were too busy making home console gmes to make games for it.
The device and its games were perceived as too expensive and many players moved from portables to mobile gaming, people didn't need to by a device for it because already had a phone and games were "free".
So it didn't generate enough revenue or profit and didn't have enough users (these are the metrics that counts for devs/companies) so it was a big failer, even if we loved it.
More dumb decisions. Doubly dumb seems as Microsoft has just bought the mobile market.
No, according to Sony PS Portal is being very profitable. PS Plus is also generating Sony a gazillion money, and opening it to a gazillion users more, or to allow their current customers play or games everyhwere will make them earn even more revenue and profit. Which isn't dumb, it's a good business decision.
Dumb dumb dumb. I'm glad you don't call the shots.
You're being wrong in all the topics, so pretty likely will be in this one too.
Press Square to doubt.
Helldivers is only doing well on Steam. It's a bit of a flop console only, which is a shame.
You are totally wrong. It caused the 20th biggest CCU peak in Steam history, and Steam is a way bigger market than PlayStation, when according to their CEO is achieving pretty much similar numbers. This means that since PS is a much smaller market it should be higher in the raking, specially for the exclusives. It isn't a flop, it's a massive success.
Destiny 2 should have had VR2 support as the game has finished its final curtain call. It's still popular but without a proper sequel or successor in place, it's on borrowed time.
Destiny 2 is a 7 years old game, so even if it has been super successful it's starting its sunset stage. Bungie will release their next game next year and have more in the works, minimum a new IP plus more, pretty likely being Destiny 3 one of them.
No, they're not. Their userbase doesn't want GaaS, no one does.
The majority of the money paid by gamers are on GaaS and most of the most played games by their players are GaaS, most of the best selling games on their platform are GaaS and most of the top grossing games on their platform are GaaS.
If their userbase doesn't want them, then why they spend their time and money there?
Imagine thinking that Sony, the platform who championed single player games while the whole world erroneously shifted towards MP only, should focus more on GaaS, shooters and MP.
You're absolutely insane.
Evidence: Microsoft did what you suggest and they're doing terribly.
MS bought brands, empty shells with teams that were great in the past but lost their talent. So they are failing.
Sony invested instead in talented who made these and other top performing or great GaaS, shooters or MP games to make GaaS, shooters and MP. So Sony is having a great success with MLB, GT7, Helldivers 2 and pretty likely will also have it with Concord, Marathon, Fairgames, the Deviation game and maybe more.
And yes, the GaaS have been generating for years the majority of the game revenue and had the majority of the players. And these digital addons and GaaS are also the fastest growing revenue source. Revenue that is replacing the one from game sales.
This means that in the long term, even more considering AAA game budgets keep increasing, to be stuck in SP only would be a suicide for Sony or any other publisher. This is why all are investing in GaaS.
And with MS owning or acquiring many the best known shooter brand and teams and Tencent looking at others, since shooters are the best selling genre in PS5 Sony also would be fucked if they didn't get their own top performing shooters. They are working on them with top tier devs and released the first top hit: Helldivers 2.
Remember when consoles chased the bigger market of motion gaming? How did that work out for Microsoft.
That flux of new casual players for PS meant the best selling console in gaming history until today, the PS2.
For Microsoft meant that Xbox 360 became their most successful console ever until today.
And for Nintendo meant that Wii became their best selling home console ever, and thanks to also the casual approach of the DS, that Wii+DS became their most successful generation ever for them.
PC may be a bigger market, but why be a small fish in a big lake when you can be a shark in a swimming pool?
Sony aims to be a shark in all the lakes.
They are the top dogs in consoles.
In PC they were the top 20 (out of thousands) publisher with barely some ports, with Helldivers 2 (which continues as top 1 best seller in Steam since before its release) and more ports relesed since then will go higher in the ranking. And as they keep releasing more GaaS and ports of old games they'll keep growing.
Lol, lmao even. What planet do you live on? They're doing so well that they've just missed out on their sales projections, have no games this year and are porting all of their games to PC?
Talk about a successful console!!
I'm in a planet where Sony posted in their very recent fiscal report a revenue and profit increase YoY for the whole Sony, a big increase YoY in SIE revenue and a small decrease in SIE profits, and keeps a forecast for the full FY of improving SIE revenue and profit vs the previous FY.
Plus also having posted this quarter record hardware revenue, software revenue, 3rd party revenue (not 1st party because this year released SpiderMan 2 instead of GoWR+GT7+HFW in the previous one), game subs revenue, 1st party off console revenue and console brand MAU.
Many of these numbers being all time gaming history records for any console maker or at least Sony.
In a world where instead of "Sony haz no gamez" Sony has for this year TLOU2R, Helldivers 2, FFVII Rebirth, Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Concord and more, some of them to be annonced.
In a world where PS5 is only under 2.7M behind PS4 launch aligned and passing it would put it as their fastest selling console ever.
The damage to the brand is already done.
In your mind maybe. In the reality they are posting record numbers in most areas.
