Polygon (Microsoft-funded mouthpiece): Games like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth aren’t sustainable, and the Sony layoffs prove it

[Cool hand luke]

Games like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth aren’t sustainable, and the Sony layoffs prove it

Do you want mushroom-picking minigames or a healthy industry? You can’t have both

www.polygon.com

Sharing an absolutely absurd hit piece by Polygon on both FFVII Rebirth and Sony, where they create an admittedly non-existent link between Sony's layoffs and Rebirth's size.

There’s no direct connection between these two events

The obvious reference for bloat and padding would've been Starfield's copypasta procedurally-generated activities, but nope, he takes aim at Spiderman 2's 20 hour experience:

Sony’s Spider-Man 2, by Insomniac Games, is another recent example of a blockbuster with a focused story that’s then been laden with obvious padding.

The sloppily written article by Oli Welsh conflates development budget with development time in successive paragraphs and trips over its own feet.

To put it another way — Sony executives, facing the calculation that they could only get one to one and a half games per console generation out of their big studios, presumably thought: Why bother? Time to swing the ax. (Never mind that it was their own fixation on scale that got them there in the first place.)

But, in terms of pure calculation, they are right. The games are just too big. Something has to give. Every recent breakout success story in gaming — from Baldur’s Gate 3 to Palworld, and including Sony’s own Helldivers 2, made by a modest team of around 100 people...

Ed's note: BG3 and Helldivers took 7-8 years to develop.

The comments are even more insane, with the top rated crackpot suggesting Sony probably lost money on Spiderman 2 at 10million copies sold using slopmath.

Source for Microsoft funding:

 

[Polyh3dron]

no bitch. that's a whole new sentence.

Rebirth is a particularly striking example of the modern AAA game because it has such a clearly split personality. On the one hand, it’s a quirky, characterful, and dramatic RPG, with a propulsive narrative driven by nostalgia for the original game. It leans hard into fan service and has a very specific, very Final Fantasy flavor. On the other hand, it pads out its enormous running time with many generic design elements — open-world exploration, side questing, collectibles, card games — that seem to have little to do with its core identity, and that push it closer to other big, mainstream successes such as The Witcher 3 or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Tell me you never played the original Final Fantasy VII without telling me you never played the original Final Fantasy VII.

I swear, too many of these gaming journos know nothing about the games they're covering and it shows.

 

[Yobo]

Baldur's Gate 3...100 people

Guess the other 350 weren't being paid

 

[Johnic]

Ahh yes. This'll be the PR talk for the next few months.

MS is all about GamePass, fight? How many people did they fire, again? 10 000? That's not counting the gutted studios like 343 and The Initiative.

 

[PlacidusaX]

The same clowns that were called out for rating certain (inferior) Xbox One versions of games higher than the (superior) PS4 versions.

 

[saltyashell]

There’s a future in which we could still have Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but it’s a smaller project, with a smaller horizon and a lower budget, made more quickly by fewer people, and taking less time to play. Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so spectacular to look at. Would that really be such a bad thing? And how many more people have to lose their jobs before everyone in gaming — from the CEOs all the way down to the players — realizes that it’s time to leave this kind of game behind us?

He's trying to take an ostensibly pro worker position, but advocating for lower budgets will lead to fewer jobs and career opportunities, and lower wages for developers, artists, voice actors, etc., as well as promote increased offshoring of positions to developing countries for pennies on the dollar. This is basic fucking logic. I wish the editors of these outlets would employ just a tiny bit of critical thinking before immediately publishing crap like this.

 

[Yobo]

Insomniacs break even point was 5.5 million units on a $300 million budget

They are now at 10 million units. Between SM1 and Miles Morales they were averaging 20 million units each (probably closer to 30 million SM1 and 10 million MM). They have also released 2 other games in the period that Spiderman 2 was done development

 

[Danja]

I take this as they got word FF 6: Rebirth is selling well. They had to come up with something quickly

 

[Kokoloko]

Source for Microsoft funding:

And theres people who try to say MS doesnt have shills or pay people…
These people are the same type who think the government does there "bestest" to help people lol.

The fact that all of Sonys big games have made profit means they are fine.
I think apart from destruction all Stars they all have made great profit.

I think the world needs a petition for total transparency from MS.
Whoever MS or any of there employees give money to, for whatever reason, or whatever project they do, it needs to be out officially so people know whats happening.

 

[JAHGamer]

I hope Sony and Square are paying attention, all of the hate ff7 has been getting is coming directly from the Xbox community and its shills. These games should never go over there, and the sooner they leave the console space, the better.

 

[Cool hand luke]

He's trying to take an ostensibly pro worker position, but advocating for lower budgets will lead to fewer jobs and career opportunities, and lower wages for developers, artists, voice actors, etc., as well as promote increased offshoring of positions to developing countries for pennies on the dollar. This is basic fucking logic. I wish the editors of these outlets would employ just a tiny bit of critical thinking before immediately publishing crap like this.

That paragraph embodies how facile Oli's understanding of both game development and current market conditions are OR how two-faced his arguments are as long as there is a Sony to be slandered.

Is Oli railing against capitalistic tendencies or rooting for them?

"Won't somebody think of the workers????" juxtaposed with the revelation that 35% ROI is apparently inadequate for Oli. He also compares SM 2's ROI to Miles Morales, which was built on the foundation of SM1. Venom will likely see a higher ROI than SM2.

The fact is that companies over-hired in the age of free money and whatever growth projections that hiring was based on is no longer achievable with high interest rates. Unless you're Embracer (and maybe even then), your employee count is still above pre-COVID levels. We're not heading towards 0 or a crash, but we are going to see Xbox exit the console market because they're an inadequate competitor. And to be fair, there was probably only ever room for 1-2 players in the console space. Xbox's lifespan was artificially prolonged by Microsoft's bottomless money pit.

 

[Kokoloko]

I hope everyone has bought there copies of FF7 Rebirth. Stick it to ms and these shills.

I hope they leave console gaming asap

 

[Entropi]

I hope everyone has bought there copies of FF7 Rebirth. stick it to ms and these shills.

I hope they leave console gaming asap

I did my part.

 

[Airbus]

 

[saltyashell]

That paragraph embodies how facile Oli's understanding of both game development and current market conditions are OR how two-faced his arguments are as long as there is a Sony to be slandered.

Is Oli railing against capitalistic tendencies or rooting for them?

"Won't somebody think of the workers????" juxtaposed with the revelation that 35% ROI is apparently inadequate for Oli. He also compares SM 2's ROI to Miles Morales, which was built on the foundation of SM1. Venom will likely see a higher ROI than SM2.

The fact is that companies over-hired in the age of free money and whatever growth projections that hiring was based on is no longer achievable with high interest rates. Unless you're Embracer (and maybe even then), your employee count is still above pre-COVID levels. We're not heading towards 0 or a crash, but we are going to see Xbox exit the console market because they're an inadequate competitor. And to be fair, there was probably only ever room for 1-2 players in the console space. Xbox's lifespan was artificially prolonged by Microsoft's bottomless money pit.

FF7 Rebirth is currently sitting at a Metacritic 92 with well over 100 reviews. Even the MC player reviews are sitting at a 9.3 (even with the xbox review bombing factored in). The investment clearly paid off in terms of quality. How many games of any size and scope get into the 90s on MC in both critic and player reviews? Less than 5%? That's rarefied air. Yet he has the audacity to concern troll about budgets using this game as the example, especially when CBU3 clearly put their resources to excellent use.

If he was actually trying to argue this point in good faith, he should have used Starfield, which is a clear example of a recent mediocre, bloated, outdated and boring AAA game that could have been made with a fraction of the $200 billion they spent to make it.

 

[Yobo]

Funny I don't hear movie companies saying they need to cut budgets. You get the budget you can expect to reasonably return

You don't cut budget on the next Avengers because Morbius flopped.

You don't get ROI envy because the original Top Gun had an ROI of 24 and Top Gun Maverick had an ROI of 8. You don't hear movie studios saying we need to go back to make $15 million dollar blockbusters

 

[anonpuffs]

Yes, it's "unsustainable" to create the best games ever made, we should just stick to inferior products like the ones MS makes

 

[ethomaz]

Desperation.

Now that MS give up on exclusives they believes MS way is the right path.

Pathetic.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

they/them are right.

they are nor sustainable.....on Xbox.

 

[Puff]

Let me guess, Bethesda & Activision games putting day1 on gamepass is sustainable and making money. God, I hate gaming journalism.