Sony continues to plant seeds. The average gamer lacks the big pictures. What better way to start than from the ground up, its a huge part of their history.
Savage Games Studios joins the new PS Studios Mobile dividion
- Thread starter Darth Vader
- Start date
The Big picture is that the industry is consolidating at a break neck pace and sony isnt taking it seriously. Zenimax, Activision blizzard, Ubisoft (Thanks to a 15 percent investmet from tencent), and Ea looking for a buyer n just 2 years time. Meanwhile sony is buying these 2 bit garage startup studios. Im sorry but square, capcom, fromsoft these are the things they need tp focus on. This obsession with being cheap and going small is going to hurt them in the long run big time IMO.
Grr, if Sony are actually giving this attention to "PS mobile" games, at least this time around, it seems to bode ill for a new PSP.
I'm gonna end-up hacking that GPD Win 4 to get my portable gaming fix within a comfy form-factor, in place of Sony ever capitalizing on the demand, I just know it.
And that... just kind of bums me out in a weird way? I would perfer the option to do so officially for PS.
I'm gonna end-up hacking that GPD Win 4 to get my portable gaming fix within a comfy form-factor, in place of Sony ever capitalizing on the demand, I just know it.
And that... just kind of bums me out in a weird way? I would perfer the option to do so officially for PS.
Sony has ~$10B left to spend before Mar 2024. That means they need to make moves between now and like Summer 2023 so that deals close within the fiscal year. If the majority of that money is used by SIE (which I think it will), Something big is coming eventually. Either a publisher or a ton of smaller companies. I'm thinking a pub.
I get they are a business and everything but now is when you spend and figure out the details later. They need to protect certain IP that make the brand. Budgets and all that I get, but its not like any of studios i mentioned they should focus on are running deficits. Theyd be immediately profitable.
When has a small purchase hurt them, why would they do something to hurt their business?
Sony wont buy a big pub when their current 1st party can make better quality games than 9/10 of the big pubs. So all you folks living your fanboy fantasy better get use to the fact that Sony is not going to do what you hope or want them to do.
No one knows whats better for sei than sie themselves.
Mobile gaming is way bigger than console gaming in terms of revenue, where you think the development talent is going to migrate to next? Lots of you just see ip and overlook the talent behind that ip and where and what that talent is doing.
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Not a single first party studio sony has can replicate what sqaure enix can do. Not one. Just saying man.
Grr, if Sony are actually giving this attention to "PS mobile" games, at least this time around, it seems to bode ill for a new PSP.
I'm gonna end-up hacking that GPD Win 4 to get my portable gaming fix within a comfy form-factor, in place of Sony ever capitalizing on the demand, I just know it.
And that... just kind of bums me out in a weird way? I would perfer the option to do so officially for PS.
That would be so ideal... But why would Sony music hand-off that earnings value to the PS sector of Sony?
I'm gonna end-up hacking that GPD Win 4 to get my portable gaming fix within a comfy form-factor, in place of Sony ever capitalizing on the demand, I just know it.
And that... just kind of bums me out in a weird way? I would perfer the option to do so officially for PS.
I don't know who Savage Game Studios is, but I see they have offices in Helsinki and Berlin, which are (with Barcelona) probably the cities with probably the biggest pool of mobile gamedev talent and studios in the world.
Edit: I see their CEO is Michail Katkoff (Founder of Deconstructor of Fun, did work in the past in Digital Cholate like me, but in the Helsinki office, whose bosses after it went to create Supercell) and have as VC Play Ventures, who also have former Digital Chocolate employees (their CEO was my direct former boss in my studio).
They have many people, like their game director who came from Wargaming and are (or were, it's pretty common to cancel games under development in mobile gaming) working on a shooter:
https://venturebeat.com/games/savage-game-studios-raises-4-4-million-for-mobile-shooter-game/
I see in LinkedIn they also have former Supercell, King, Rovio, Kabam, Wooga, Yager, Glu, Rockstar, Ubisoft, IGG employees. As an example, their art director did work for 10 years at Rockstar.
Yes, Sony said they will make more mobile games, more PC ports of old games and more PS exclusive games than before. And that to do so they'll grow their internal studios and buy new ones plus they'll continue signing 3rd party exclusives.
Nothing new.
I wonder if Sony will move the mobile gaming studios and publishers they have under Sony Music to this new PlayStation Studios Mobile Division.As an example early this year they bought Lasengle (known as Delightworks game division before being sold to Sony) under Aniplex.
That company has as president Yoshinori Ono (former guy in charge of Street Fighter) and developed Fate/Grand Order, which generated to them a Billion per year and has been a worldwide top 10 top grossing mobile game for years, sometimes even above Pokemon Go.
Examples:
Yes:
That would be so ideal... But why would Sony music hand-off that earnings value to the PS sector of Sony?
This is BS when you consider PS4 1st party ip are selling at the same rate as the last few FF and KH games. Don't even have to mention Uncharted, TLoU and Spider-Man. Some of you all just want to stick your head in the sand and pick and choose parts of reality to make up false arguments.
Those are once in a generation games from maybe 4 studios tops. Sony needs more fire power. Them even announcing this like it’s something to be excited about is beyond tone deaf about what fans actually want as far as acquiring companies goes. This is in the backdrop of them increasing the prices last week. Sony has no first party rpg studios and the idea that they don’t need to do anything because 5 years from now if one of their studios started today to make an rpg is ridiculous. Unless this acquisition is a head fake for the next good one, idk man.
Optics regarding console pricing is a non-issue when talking about game output. Also GG just literally released an RPG in HFW. Again some of yall are getting emotional after the price increase and are out here making up straight bullshit.
FF15 have a meta of 77
KH 3 have a meta of 83
HFW have a meta of 88
HZD have a meta of 89
Fallout 4 and Fallout NV have metas lower than both Horizon games
SIE can compete in the RPG space, fuck what you heard.
I think you are missing the point. The user you are replying to is not talking about metacritic score comparisons but rather a specific type of game. Sure some PS first party IPs have RPG mechanics but none are what I would consider an actual JRPG. No SIE studio produces anything like FF16, FF14, Tactics Ogre, Front Mission Kingdom Hearts or even Bravely Default period. That's why Sony pays to lock down exclusivity.
SIE has JRPGs IPs that they could dust off but they have no one to create them now Japan Studio is no more.
These "garage startup studios" have key people who made the most succesful new IPs of Ubisoft (Haven), or the best selling one until now (Destiny, Firewalk & Bungie), or are key people from CoD (Deviation) and in this case this studio has people from top mobile gaming companies that had more players and generated more money than Square, Capcom and FromSoft combined. Mobile gaming makes more money and has more players than console, and grows way faster than console, a pretty much stagnant market with very little growth.
Having said that, as Hermen said to invest in mobile doesn't affect their ventures in console. They'll continue growing there too. And well, all the companies you mentioned continued and will continue releasing their games -or at least most of them, they key ones- on PS because PS is the clear leading platform in AAA gaming.
And well, in fact Sony already make themselves games more successful than the Square Enix, Capcom and From Software ones by themselves an in a single console brand. You may love them but they aren't that big and important.
These SIE JRPG IPs are dead because back then nobody bought them and only 4 guys in gaming forums are interested so see them back. After decades of dozens of unprofitable games and money pit projects they changed the leadership of Japan Studio, reduced its size and split it into two: Team Asobi for thier internal game development part and their XDEV Japanese studio for the 2nd party publishing of externally developed games.
It's way more profitable for Sony to simply pay people like Square or Sega to get some JRPG exclusives.
PS Studios make games better reviewed, more awarded and better selling than the Square Enix games. And multiple of them per year. This generation will see almost a dozen games PS Studios game selling over 10M copies, some of them even over 20M copies, and in a single console brand.
To get SE would be a good plus for them to secure the JRPG genre from external acquisitions that could keep them outside PS or PS Plus. But they are more than fine without them.
If they don't make JRPGs by themselves it's because they prefer to work in other, more mainstream and successful genres.
Because they are a diferent division but the same company/corporation. And as a company/corporation will be more optimal and successful by having a structure that makes more sense.
To move Lasengle and the gaming part of Aniplex and rest of Sony Music to SIE, and particularly the mobile gaming teams under this new PS Studios Mobile Division would benefit both sides: the new SIE team and Lasengle/Aniplex etc because they could help each other and share stuff tools, marketing and a lot of work that is being done twice and could make a lot of synergies. Many duplied stuff could be merged into a more powerful and efficient single one.
It's like if SIE would make their own movies and tv series ignoring that Sony has Sony Pictures. What they do is to have an initiative with Sony Pictures where SIE only licenses them the IPs, provide them any material they may need and overview them a bit, and then Sony Pictures are the ones who handle the work of actually making them or license or sell them to whoever makes sense. Their movies are made by the movies division. So I think games should be the same: even if some of theme use IPs owned by other division or whatever, games should be made in their gaming division.
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Ok, but clearly sie have been even more successful without any in house japan based 1st party studios. Would be nice to have a strong japan based dev but every time they have made an ip designed for that region that ip end up bombing, why they not dusting off old rpg. So then why should they keep investing into that space when they can put that money towards what works and ip that is region agnostic?
Please read again these posts, I explained where they did work before and SIE's strategy for mobile gaming:
Savage Games Studios joins the new PS Studios Mobile dividion
"As we assured you before with our plans to bring select titles to PC, our efforts beyond console in no way diminish our commitment to the PlayStation community" Laugh Our mobile gaming efforts will be similarly additive, providing more ways for more people to engage with our content, and...icon-era.com
Savage Games Studios joins the new PS Studios Mobile dividion
"As we assured you before with our plans to bring select titles to PC, our efforts beyond console in no way diminish our commitment to the PlayStation community" Laugh Our mobile gaming efforts will be similarly additive, providing more ways for more people to engage with our content, and...
Please notice that strategy and acquisition is for SIE/PS Studios only. Sony has more mobile (and even console) gaming development and publishing teams like Lasengle or Aniplex but are under Sony Music, other division where they also even make anime.
I don't get why Sony doesn't put all their gaming stuff under their division, all their cinema and animation stuff under Sony Pictures and all their music stuff under Sony Music.
They probably don't do it for certain obscure logistical or data entry-related reasons. They could have system databases set up in a way where the weird sorting of certain things under certain divisions just works better as-is.
Also, certain divisions probably benefit very much from the way things are, like the mobile games under the mobile division, given that makes mobile's numbers look a lot better to shareholders.
In terms of the general strategy I agree with you. I just also think Sony have to tread a clear line on this and not start conditioning people to expect a certain, regular timeframe for, say, new 1P releases to come to PC, or even to PS+ in the Collection or Catalog. Do enough to leave people open to the idea that, hey, maybe this game comes to PC at some point at all, or by X date. Maybe it's come to PS+.
But IMO that's as much as they need to be transparent about, if the main business model is still console and still maximizing sales of new software releases. I do think they need to beef up the Game Trails stuff for Premium, though, and start standardizing more 1P and 3P games to have Trails of some sort a month or so before the games release. It could be a very effective way of combating the Day 1 releases from Microsoft into GamePass of both the 1P and 3P variety.
An actual new PSP or Vita successor is pretty much not going to happen. Too much of an uphill battle with Nintendo, and then they'd have to worry about spitting up 1P software dev between PS4 (at least until GOW Ragnaork's out, that's supposed to be the last cross-gen game from Sony aside from maybe the MLB The Show titles), PS5, and a new PS portable.
The idea I had was Sony making a PS4-tier companion portable/hybrid device for instant on-the-road gaming of digital PS4 games, maybe some native ports of less-demanding PS5 games, streaming of other PS5 games and the such. Then smaller devs, particularly those in Japan, still wanting to make games for PS4 could target that AND a new portable, with BC support on PS5s. The portable could be made at mass scale and also positioned to sell for a profit from Day 1.
However, in light of the mobile plans that seem to be taking shape, I think an even better option for them is to just release a new premium smartphone with base PS4-level of performance and able to natively play digital PS4 games, stream PS5 games, be the best device for Sony's mobile game output and have seamless integration for PS+ features and content. And of course, do all the stuff you'd expect a premium smartphone to do.
Key would be designing PS controller-style inputs for it that feel natural and don't feel awkward. The Xperia Play's form factor is a nice starting place, IMHO, but it'd be really neat if the buttons were more like a proper PS controller's, just replace the thumbstick with thumbpads, and make the screen pivotable and rotatable into a tate display.
I don't think such a device would be cheap, probably $699 easy or even more but if it comes with a high-quality screen, speaker system, camera, gyro functions (they could effectively build some version of the DualSense features into it) and decent enough storage, they position it right and they'd get a lot of people wanting to buy it (the price would make it so Sony gets very high profit margins off it anyway), others get it as part of some ongoing mobile data plan with carriers.
That's honestly probably the best hope for a new Sony portable; no matter what it's going to involve smartphone and mobile too but this could actually make it the definitive mobile device for their library over pretty much everything else, even Steam Deck, for some very obvious reasons.
I keep seeing a lot of people saying sony should just buy all these different companies ASAP but what I don't see are people giving time tables for these purchases! Do you think if Sony just announced they bought capcom, Square, and let's say WB tomorrow do you think they would all go thru at the same time? Do you think the Bungie purchase would of gone thru as smoothly if they announced they bought another big company before it the purchase went thru?
Like These purchases need to be spread out here and there. These small purchases can happen with little to no problem at the same time but no company weather it be amazon, or microsoft can just buy take two, ea, ubisoft, CD projeck Red at the same time or even within the span of a year or two and just expect them to all go thru past the FTC.
Sony has to react smartly and not spend too much of their budget on certain companies. If they buy Capcom, Square, and other big Japanese companies they might not have enough left to buy any American companies and loose a lot of games their North American Audience wants to play. Also Sony has other divisions they need to same some of that money for as well, One thing that really helps Sony is that they are the biggest provider of camera lenses and provide them for things like the iphone or any smart phone really and if they need to acquire some company making strides in that department they gotta use some of that money as well!
Hmm. Curious to see what they mean by 'Expand to cross-platform where relevant' means for a mobile title.They line up with Sony's strategy that they already announced. They will focus on their console business and they will make more console exclusives than ever before by increasing existing internal development teams, buying more and signing 2nd and 3rd party exclusives. And as secondary business they'll also grow their game subs, VR, a few PC ports of old games per year, mobile gaming and movies/tv shows.
Regarding their mobile gaming specific strategy, the idea is to acquire or partner expecienced, estabished and successful mobile gaming talent to build their internal PS Studios mobile division where in addition to publish their own games they'd also publish externally developed games. And to do it being faithful to PS Studios values:
https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/irday/pdf/2022/GNS_E.pdf
I'd say cases like Genshin Impact, Fortnite or PUBG. Or some Square Enix games (emulated very old games). They are available both in mobile and console.
In this case they could apply it with Destiny, which is getting a mobile game. They could make a mobile version of Destiny 2. Or could also release PS1, PSP or PS2 classics emulated on mobile.
Or as happens in Switch, to port some mobile games to console. Example: they make a new Singstar or Locoroco for mobile but release an enhaced version for PS4 & PS5.
They said many times that their main focus will continue to make new games for PS, and that their increased PC and mobile efforts won't affect it, and that they'll continue growing their existing internal studios and that will continue acquiring more.
They also have been clear saying that other than with Bungie (and maybe the exception of MLB) don't plan to release their new games day one on PC (and in particular shown their planned amount of games for this FY and the one that ends in 2026), they will continue being PS only and that won't port all their games to PC, only a few per year. Hermen said they'll experiment with different distances between the original PS release and the PC port but that as reference he saw ok the case of Days Gone which was around a couple years. It will be aprox. the same distance for Morales. But we also have TLOU, which will be like 10 years, or Spider-Man and GoW 2018 (around 4 years).
I think their idea regarding portables is to expand their PSN store to PC and mobile. So you'll be able to play their PC ports or cloud gaming on the PC portables and buy their PC games there on PSN or use remote play for PS5 games.
Regarding mobile the market, it is split between many smartphones and tablets so doesn't make sense they should make their mobile games exclusive to a device: like all mobile games they should available for any modern smartphone or tablet. With optional usage of a controller, which could be a DS or the attachable one they recently licensed.
The good thing about mobile and PC is that they have a huge userbase because it covers a ton of devices. Their games aren't exclusive to a single one like Vita. Being limited to a userbase of a few millions is what made Vita fail and why publishers support mobile instead.