REAL TALK: if Sony themselfs doesn't see Nintendo as a competitor, what stops them from porting a game like Horizon Zero Dawn to the Switch 2?

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Etifilio

Etifilio

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27 Jun 2023
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For what Hermen said in the presentation, I assume the idea is to lure Switch users with a kid friendly adaptation and then if they want to play the real "tentpole" Horizon games -specially the recent ones- then they should buy a PS5.
or a PC, cause there's no Horizon game that's exclusive to PlayStation currently, and there won't be one for the next 2 years (being optimistic)
 
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Zzero

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Well, tell this to Sony and Lego.
I think its more likely that the numbers for profitability only add up for the dev if they also have a Switch version and for some godforsaken reason Sony really wants a Lego Horizon game so they went along with it.

That said, I will repeat my previous warning. This game is NOT by the team that made the Lego IP games and, outside of those, Lego games have largely been failures (the recent Fortnite one seems to be doing well but prior then that it was a lot of Lego Island/Lego Worlds/Lego Drive type stillborn stuff.) The games made it big because Lego Star Wars and other games like that were a breath of fresh air for IP cash-ins a decade and a half ago. Remove the team that made the games great and you soon burn and then lose the audience too.
 

xollowsob

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Astro Bot is the last game that will appear on another platform.
Bloodborne is the last title that will appear on other platforms
Secondly what’s all this talk about Switch 2 ports as though it is already a resounding success.
Switch 2 won't be as popular as switch, but there's still 150 million potential sales.
It will start with 0 users just like the Wii U.
Potential sales and projections were used on the Wii u and PS5.
By the time it releases the PS5 will have 80 million users.
Sony will sell 20 million consoles by Xmas?
 

Muddasar

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Bloodborne is the last title that will appear on other platforms

Switch 2 won't be as popular as switch, but there's still 150 million potential sales.

Potential sales and projections were used on the Wii u and PS5.

Sony will sell 20 million consoles by Xmas?

You thought you did something there by bringing up Bloodborne? Bloodborne has a higher chance of appearing on PC than Astro Bot for obvious reasons.

Why they hell you do want a Sony Mascot Platformer dedicated to Sony history on your Steam machine.

Switch 2 isn’t releasing this year but most likely spring 2025 and no one knows potential or projected sales for it.

Sony is projecting 18.5M units sold this fiscal which is roughly 80 million units total.

For every massive success Nintendo have also had a massive failure.

I doubt the competition will simply let Nintendo have the Handheld/Hybrid market this time to themselves.
 

Zzero

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Isn’t there rumors that Sony is onto a new native handheld console? If that’s true, that’s enough proof Sony actually sees Nintendo as a competitor.
There's rumors, but there aren't any credible ones. Fact is that every R&D department is going to kick around specs on stuff, Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, but there's been very little smoke and zero fire so far.
 

Neversummer

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now it is: they'll launch LEGO Horizon on Switch to entice Switch users to buy a PS5 to play Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, soon it'll be: they'll port Zero Dawn and Forbidden West to entice Switch users to buy a PS5 to play Horizon 3, you know what would entice people to buy the hardware to play the game? keeping it Only On PlayStation... 🤯 yeah, i know, crazy right?
Honestly instead of buying the sinking Paramount they should buy Lego.

Lego is in a rise & pushing heavy to become almost a metaverse in the toys form. Lego toys collab with a bunch of ip even Lego Horizon & Lego Zelda, they even have Lego Mario toys. Lego themselves have push video games big with becoming a staple player in Fortnite turning all skins in Fortnite into Lego version which can be played in Lego For tote the Minecraft competitor. Sony buying Lego would give Sony there own Minecraft that’s tied with Fortnite & Lego Fortnite will continue to grow as more content & ip collabs with Fortnite. Also the Lego movies. If Sony acquired Lego they would have Lego toys that collab with all brands including MS & Nintendo, Lego is pushing video games Lego Horizon visually looks great imagine that exclusive first party turning PS ip into Lego form having both toys & games to have good business synergy. Lego is also pushing movies & animation which Sony could all combine with Lego toys, games & movies/anime. Lego could also have good synergies with the metaverse like imagine combing your avatar in PS home with a Legofied version there would be a lot of potential & Sony could have a spot competing with Roblox, Meta, VR Chat, Fortnite etc

And honestly looking at Sony business they lack any presence in merchandise/toys that is universal & liked by kids, adults & family.

It’s still crazy Sony wanted to buy Paramount. Lego probably wouldn’t sell but they are worth less then 10 billion & would bring a ton of value.
 

Neversummer

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There's rumors, but there aren't any credible ones. Fact is that every R&D department is going to kick around specs on stuff, Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, but there's been very little smoke and zero fire so far.
100% the PS6 will be a hybrid handheld that could be dock to a tv.

Mobile/handhelds are the future. Everyone is shifting & focusing on mobility & accessibility
 

Neversummer

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if LEGO Horizon Adventures sells 5M+ copies on the Switch... at this point, what's stopping them from bringing similar games like Sackboy? Astro? with the excuse of finding new audiences to entice to buy a PlayStation to play sequels (that they're also going to put on there)
Lego Horizon will easily sell 5+ million copies.

Horizon mainline sells 20+ million. And the only reason forbidden west didn’t sell past 10+ million is because Sony put HFW on PS+ killing off the rest of the sells on PS. Also the PC release of HFW makes the game less desirable to buy as it’s no longer the special exclusive game only playable on PS & just another 3rd party open world game that could be bought in deep discount on PC or given out for free on PS+

Also what makes Kojima game that’s more experimental & comes from a 2nd/3rd party not release on PC day n date? Kojima isn’t 1st party & Death stranding is more niche game that could make the excuse to release on PC day 1 because it’s a niche game w a small but hardcore audience.
 

Neversummer

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or a PC, cause there's no Horizon game that's exclusive to PlayStation currently, and there won't be one for the next 2 years (being optimistic)
The excuse of PS singleplayer games going to PC to entice PC player to come to PS doesn’t make sense. If your gonna port your mainline games to there preferred platform they will just wait.

It actually makes more sense if Horizon Zero Dawn & Forbidden West where permanent exclusive but this Lego Horizon game went to PC day n date or the Horizon Online game since PC players can get a taste of the Horizon world but not the mainline & that would make them bend the knee to further explore the Horizon universe by buying Horizon on PS buying a PS console & who knows maybe they buy other exclusive games on PS console & or dlc/mtx/3rd party if they enjoy playing on PS console.

There strategy of PC port is ass backwards. It’s solely to make more money in the short term harming & diminishing PS console in the short to long term. Instead of looking at other ways to bring profits like merchandise/toys, movies/anime, parks, AA cheaper games in different genres to pull new audience & profit from hardcore fans who would by any game from the ip to support what they like.

This is what Nintendo does they make a new Mario spin off every year & release merchandise/toys & now there expanding with parks, movies/anime, live service/mobile
 
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Old Gamer

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This is all Sony's decision to try and draw people outside of the PS ecosystem into it. And I've said this a million times, it's an idiotic idea but that's where their mindset is.
They're fucking moronic. They got to where they are by bringing in casuals with social games like Singstar, which was brutally shut down during the PS4 gen.

Instead of appealing to casuals within their own platform, American management planted irrational hatred for handhelds and cut off social gaming.
 
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Englishy

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With Horizon, nothing's stopping them. HZD is a safe IP; cartoonish violence (robot dinosaurs), sold tens of millions of copies, easy to play. I would be more surprised if it wasn't a Switch 2 launch game.

It's a horrible long-term move to give people less reasons to buy your hardware, and you would expect PlayStation leadership to learn from Xbox and the mistakes they made. But if all of your thinking and goals are short-term (i.e., they're not thinking about the PS6) then it makes sense. They want to make all of their quarterly and fiscal numbers look incredible, and the fastest way to do that is to maximize all of their IP.

Uncharted and Spider-Man are probably going to make their way to Switch 2 as well. Terrible move, but don't be surprised when it happens.
 

xollowsob

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You thought you did something there by bringing up Bloodborne? Bloodborne has a higher chance of appearing on PC than Astro Bot for obvious reasons.
Bloodborne will not get a remake, remaster, port or sequel this gen.
Why they hell you do want a Sony Mascot Platformer dedicated to Sony history on your Steam machine.
I don't want. I'm just saying, these are the times we live in where everything runs on everything. A dream of Microsoft's so they can shape the industry into paying for the hardware, so that MS can profit from the software.
Switch 2 isn’t releasing this year but most likely spring 2025 and no one knows potential or projected sales for it.
Projected sales are 150 million, same as switch. Sony used PS4 rejected sales to wangle some better deals from AMD and third party Devs.
Sony is projecting 18.5M units sold this fiscal which is roughly 80 million units total.
Best of luck to them.
For every massive success Nintendo have also had a massive failure.
Nintendo are like windows, one good release and one shit release. Switch 2 has a potential to flop.
I doubt the competition will simply let Nintendo have the Handheld/Hybrid market this time to themselves.
Nintendo have dominated the handheld market since the Gameboy, with the exception of when the PSP launched.
Microsoft had the chance to release a handheld on a few occasions and had they timed it right, they could have made a good foothold in that arena.
Sony have no interest in making a handheld device, if they did, they wouldn't have released the slap-in-the-face-with-a-middle-finger that was Portal.
Steam deck is a meme.
 

Box

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Isn’t there rumors that Sony is onto a new native handheld console? If that’s true, that’s enough proof Sony actually sees Nintendo as a competitor.

Switch 2 is Handheld that will have Sony games
 

Yurinka

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I think its more likely that the numbers for profitability only add up for the dev if they also have a Switch version and for some godforsaken reason Sony really wants a Lego Horizon game so they went along with it.

That said, I will repeat my previous warning. This game is NOT by the team that made the Lego IP games and, outside of those, Lego games have largely been failures (the recent Fortnite one seems to be doing well but prior then that it was a lot of Lego Island/Lego Worlds/Lego Drive type stillborn stuff.) The games made it big because Lego Star Wars and other games like that were a breath of fresh air for IP cash-ins a decade and a half ago. Remove the team that made the games great and you soon burn and then lose the audience too.
This game isn't comparable to Lego Island/Movie/Dimensions/Worlds/Drive, the ones that rely only in the Lego IP (several of them made by Traveller Tales btw).

It's more comparable instead to Lego Star Wars/Indiana Jones/TLOR/Batman/Harry Potter/Pirates of the Caribbean/DC/Marvel/etc: the combination of Lego with a popular IP, which in this case would be a SIE one.

I assume they thought that could repeat the huge success that these Lego games of other popular IPs had but using SIE IPs instead. And they saw that these games sold particularly well on Nintendo devices, being one of the few rare exceptions where a 3rd party game sells very well there. So maybe they also considered Switch because of that. And maybe also release it on PC day one to experiment what happens with this type of game (we don't know if it's a GaaS or not, but doesn't seem to be the case).

Traveller Tales are very talented and succesful with the type of games they made, included many Lego games. But also are Guerrilla and this team they got for this game, who worked on stuff like Howgarts Legacy, Disney Infinity 3, For Honor and others, and before they made games like Split Second.

And in this case will be published and marketed by SIE, which is a top tier publisher more successful than the ones who published the other Lego games, including the TT ones (WB, Lucasarts, Eidos).
 
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Zzero

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This game isn't comparable to Lego Island/Movie/Dimensions/Worlds/Drive, the ones that rely only in the Lego IP (several of them made by Traveller Tales btw).

It's more comparable instead to Lego Star Wars/Indiana Jones/TLOR/Batman/Harry Potter/Pirates of the Caribbean/DC/Marvel/etc: the combination of Lego with a popular IP, which in this case would be a SIE one.

I assume they thought that could repeat the huge success that these Lego games of other popular IPs had but using SIE IPs instead. And they saw that these games sold particularly well on Nintendo devices, being one of the few rare exceptions where a 3rd party game sells very well there. So maybe they also considered Switch because of that. And maybe also release it on PC day one to experiment what happens with this type of game (we don't know if it's a GaaS or not, but doesn't seem to be the case).

Traveller Tales are very talented and succesful with the type of games they made, included many Lego games. But also are Guerrilla and this team they got for this game, who worked on stuff like Howgarts Legacy, Disney Infinity 3, For Honor and others, and before they made games like Split Second.

And in this case will be published and marketed by SIE, which is a top tier publisher more successful than the ones who published the other Lego games, including the TT ones (WB, Lucasarts, Eidos).
Gobo did support for stuff like HL and For Honor but this is their first project as the lead studio (Pure and S/S don't count since that was a different studio with a different team outside of the two founders.) Being the lead dev is a big deal and I won't believe they are up to the challenge until the game comes out and is actually good.
 

Yurinka

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Gobo did support for stuff like HL and For Honor but this is their first project as the lead studio (Pure and S/S don't count since that was a different studio with a different team outside of the two founders.) Being the lead dev is a big deal and I won't believe they are up to the challenge until the game comes out and is actually good.
Yes, they worked in For Honor too.

Nothing leads to think Gobo will be the lead team. It has been announced as codevelopment. I assume the logical is that Guerrilla would be the lead and would provide direction, production, high level design and maybe the game engine coding, while Gobo would handle mostly art, low level and gameplay programming being overviewed and when needed supported by Guerrilla and the typical huge amount of Sony internal and external support teams.

I think Guerrilla will do basically the concept/creative part and then all the repetitive, brick and mortar stuff will be done by Gobo as support team. Basically the same than in Horizon CoM.
 
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Zzero

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Yes, they worked in For Honor too.

Nothing leads to think Gobo will be the lead team. It has been announced as codevelopment. I assume the logical is that Guerrilla would be the lead and would provide direction, production, high level design and maybe the game engine coding, while Gobo would handle mostly art, low level and gameplay programming being overviewed and when needed supported by Guerrilla and the typical huge amount of Sony internal and external support teams.

I think Guerrilla will do basically the concept/creative part and then all the repetitive, brick and mortar stuff will be done by Gobo as support team. Basically the same than in Horizon CoM.
If they were just doing grunt work their name wouldn't have been up there on stage. Its pretty obvious to me that they will be the lead studio with Guerilla just being there to okay stuff.