They did say they will downsize the GAAS plan so i am not shocked, but boy, does it suck losing a Twisted Metal game.
PlayStation is “Reevaluating how we operate” due to recent layoffs. Twisted Metal Canceled due to layoffs! |UP| Guerilla loses 10% of its staff.
- Thread starter Gamernyc78
- Start date
Seeing how it moved from Lucid Game sand Jason saying the project was still in concept/pre-production phase and not Greenlit for full production at Firesprite still, looks like my thought that Twisted Metal in the current year and what it looks like was probably a very challenging concept to figure out was pretty spot on.
Where did they ever say they will "downsize" the plan? I understand Jim Ryan announced 12 live service titles, and of those 6 are now delayed/cancelled/questionable, but that's just kind of how development goes. Especially with unannounced games.
In the same statement from November 2023 where Totoki announced 6 games by FY 2025, and questioned the other 6, he also said this:
Sony Commits to Launch Just Six of PlayStation's 12 Live Service Games by March 2026 - IGN
Sony president Hiroki Totoki has said the company is reviewing PlayStation's live service game push amid development trouble that has already seen Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game hit with setbacks.
Were you referring to something else?
Yeah, that's the one. But i think Factions was part of it as well. So i think they really will drop the 12 games to 6, maybe even 4 cause they are seeing all the new ones are failing.Where did they ever say they will "downsize" the plan? I understand Jim Ryan announced 12 live service titles, and of those 6 are now delayed/cancelled/questionable, but that's just kind of how development goes. Especially with unannounced games.
In the same statement from November 2023 where Totoki announced 6 games by FY 2025, and questioned the other 6, he also said this:
Sony Commits to Launch Just Six of PlayStation's 12 Live Service Games by March 2026 - IGN
Sony president Hiroki Totoki has said the company is reviewing PlayStation's live service game push amid development trouble that has already seen Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game hit with setbacks.www.ign.com
Were you referring to something else?
Foamstars and Suicide squad come to mind.
It's sad because Sony had the perfect formula for surviving in this online world. They should've kept Sony Online Entertainment as their multiplayer publisher, and kept PS Home alive and updated it for next gen.
It would've gave London Studio something to do since they made PS Home and let their singleplayer studios stay singleplayer while Sony Online funded GaaS.
en.wikipedia.org
Now we get the worst of both worlds, singleplayer studios who got tied up in GaaS for years but they also never see the light of day so we can't even play what they worked on for all these years.
It would've gave London Studio something to do since they made PS Home and let their singleplayer studios stay singleplayer while Sony Online funded GaaS.
Daybreak Game Company - Wikipedia
Now we get the worst of both worlds, singleplayer studios who got tied up in GaaS for years but they also never see the light of day so we can't even play what they worked on for all these years.
Yeah, Playstation used to make high end multiplayer modes.It's sad because Sony had the perfect formula for surviving in this online world. They should've kept Sony Online Entertainment as their multiplayer publisher, and kept PS Home alive and updated it for next gen.
It would've gave London Studio something to do since they made PS Home and let their singleplayer studios stay singleplayer while Sony Online funded GaaS.
Daybreak Game Company - Wikipedia
Now we get the worst of both worlds, singleplayer studios who got tied up in GaaS for years but they also never see the light of day so we can't even play what they worked on for all these years.
OP
OP
Looking at the list, it seems like all the GAAS projects were doing bad and not coming together. PS fans were demanding Sony to cancel them all so this is what they did.
The fanbase got what they wanted. For once, Sony listened to your wishes
The fanbase got what they wanted. For once, Sony listened to your wishes
Looking at the list, it seems like all the GAAS projects were doing bad and not coming together. PS fans were demanding Sony to cancel them all so this is what they did.
The fanbase got what they wanted. For once, Sony listened to your wishes
Hiroki Totoki (11/2023):
"we want to enlarge this kind of service, and that's the unchanged policy of our company"
The only thing that's meaningfully changed since this statement is the overwhelming success of the live service game Helldivers 2 and its day-1 release on Steam.
This, combined with a seemingly light release schedule, doesn't seem to point to a company that is firing on all cylinders. Still dig my PS5 but it hasn't felt nearly as essential as any of the previous PS consoles to me ...
If they listened, they would done that in 2021, while not burning cash.Looking at the list, it seems like all the GAAS projects were doing bad and not coming together. PS fans were demanding Sony to cancel them all so this is what they did.
The fanbase got what they wanted. For once, Sony listened to your wishes
Jobs would be saved and projects progressed if not released.
OP
OP
No, what we wanted was for them to never fall for this trap to begin with. They leapt before they looked, and now employees are paying the price for it when it should be the execs that made these stupid decisions.Looking at the list, it seems like all the GAAS projects were doing bad and not coming together. PS fans were demanding Sony to cancel them all so this is what they did.
The fanbase got what they wanted. For once, Sony listened to your wishes
This is like when they started putting their games on PC. Naughty Dog wrote an entire article about how they'll start developing with PC in mind, and their entire development pipeline will be altered to cater to PC. And then their PC ports ended up selling horribly
and now PS5 isn't the sole platform, which will make games take longer to make. Sony had the perfect strategy last generation, and they upended all of that in chase of pennies. GAAS immediately exploded overnight and overtook single player investment almost instantly, before they even had a proven system or an actual plan.
1 year of horrible decisions made without much thought has sent SIE back 5+ years. Current Sony is just braindead with ZERO foresight and the employees and PS fans are paying for it.
Looking at the list, it seems like all the GAAS projects were doing bad and not coming together. PS fans were demanding Sony to cancel them all so this is what they did.
The fanbase got what they wanted. For once, Sony listened to your wishes
I wouldn't say they're all cancelled. For example, Marathon is still coming, and I suspect Concord and Fairgame$ are as well. But Fairgame$ could be a bit further out, maybe with changes being done.
But it definitely seems like the affected teams and games here are the GaaS stuff; they have a hit in Helldivers 2 now and it's best to support that game and the studio. It's also possible, that some of the cuts are to make room for a smaller M&A, although I wouldn't put much belief into that right now.
10-12 GaaS titles was always kind of ridiculous anyway, just to hope 1-2 of them succeeded. You can cut that down by more than half and ensure all of that halved amount hit varying levels of success. Some modest, some huge.
IMO, it would be a good idea if they tried segmenting the big AAA games into smaller "parts" (but think more like Scenarios for games like Shining Force III, or expansions like Miles Morales and Lost Legacy). So instead of one big AAA game with 25-30 hours taking 6-7 years to make on a $300 million budget before it even sees the light of day, break it up into smaller 8-10 hour AA-budget, AAA-scope parts/installments maybe costing $60 - $75 million each, release the installments in intervals of 2 years at $30 or $40 each.
Then after the installments have been released, say after 4-6 years or even longer in some cases, compile it all into a single game and port it to PC with enhancements & extra content, let console owners get the enhancements & extra content a la carte for a small price (bonus or hidden content in previous installments can be unlocked this way plus with new installments unlocking that content in older installments by default), and by that point they probably already have another AAA game they're releasing in a similar format on the console.
Honestly, I think it's the best way to make AAA non-GaaS titles that aren't, say, GTA levels of big, viable. This way you aren't sacrificing quality, the overall budgets can probably be cheaper, you get more in revenue & profits per installment, gamers can start playing the adventure sooner, the cheaper MSRP ($30 per installment should probably be the sweet spot) entices more people to buy each part at launch (if they did a per-game subscription model that would open it up for even more people to jump in Day 1, likely), and more.
The important part is that the installments don't feel "episodic"; you still want it to feel like the high-value AAA experience when all's said and done, and each installment should feel like a whole game unto itself. Basically, avoid the Marvel Disney+ problem where they write what feel like should be movies, and then just break the movie up into a bunch of irregularly paced episodes. If Sony took this approach with the 1P AAA games they need to feel like full experiences both when played together as a singular game and when played individually as installments.
But if you ask me, that will open up some creative possibilities for storytelling, because now you have to craft the story to where it works on the micro (installment) and macro (singular unified experience) levels simultaneously. And the game design/structure for challenge should reflect that as well. For example you still get your big cool set-pieces, fleshing out of mechanics and full ramp-up difficulty curve in each installment, but maybe the second installment on the whole is harder in challenge than the first, and the third more than the second. Also if being clever with it, each installment introducing at least one new big gameplay mechanic that builds on top of those established in the first part.
That approach for future 1P AAA narrative-driven epics could work, IMO.
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An out of date/ expired statement from september 2023
These recent developing news shows the opposite direction
That's how you get games bloated just for the sake of extending playtime, there is a place for long and short games.
there is a place for 40$, 50$ and 70$ games too, but here we are...
I think they are revaluating how they do budgets and how they greenlite specific projects. Tighter budgets for larger studios like Insomniac, Naughty Dog, gureilla ect.
Smaller studios like Bend believe are unaffected.