Sony already owns the IP they could just put another studio to work on it if they wanted they don't need arrowhead to do it lol
With success of Helldivers Sony can't let Arrowhead remain independent |UP| Rumor of acquisition is unsubstantiated as per Arrowhead. 10 mil sales?
- Thread starter Etifilio
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All these developers have recently published on Xbox and Kojima has an Xbox exclusive announced. Weird definition of ownership. I forgot that Epic usurped genDesign. Sucks man.
Gendesign has a publishing deal with Epic for their next game.
Similar to what Remedy had with Alan Wake 2.
They don’t own Gendesign.
Doesn’t Sony partners w Arc System Work? I just know get treaded like gods by Sony in the FGC Guilty Gear Strive was a game that had the PS tournament feature & was a mainline game in EVO when it release
Huh?
It was a critical and sales bust.
I wish they didn't dump it though as adding multiplayer could of made it Sony's Gears.
The game was profitable? Shibobi said it was years ago back in the PS4 gen. Sony only dumped the IP because of critical reception.
And Multiplayer was meant for the sequel they had already spoken about it.
I think it's only a guess from a random internet user, but I totally thing will happen.
2nd party relatively deccent studios in the past that continue alive and independent:
- NanaOn-Sha (now makes music and visual arts performances)
- Kadokawa
- Media.Vision (Wild Arms, Valkyria Chronicles, Chaos Ring - but no news from them since 2 years ago)
- Matrix Software (Alundra, White Knight Chronicles: Origins, Omega Labyrinth series. In recent years did mostly mobile, portable or arcade games and ports for Square Enix/Taito, Level 5 or Bandai Namco)
- Clap Hanz (after doing Everybody's Golf since PS1 until PS4/PSVR, they released their own golf game for mobile 3 years ago)
- Giant Sparrow
- Thatgamecompany (after working with Sony they lost most of their talent and only released Sky 5 years ago for mobile phones, later ported to more stuff)
- Level 5
- Q-Games (in recent years made mobile games, PixelJunk Eden 2 for Switch and rereleased Tomorrow Children in PS4/PS5)
- Supermassive (dying)
- Arrowhead
- Ballistic Moon (mostly Supermassive talent)
- Traveller Tales (owned by WB)
- Ready at Dawn (owned by Meta)
- Sanzaru (owned by Meta)
- Ninja Theory (owned by MS)
- Chinese Room (owned by Sumo)
- Kuju and subsidiaries like Zoe Mode (subsidiary of Curve Games, owned by Catalis)
- Climax Studios (owned by Keywords, who also often works as outsourcing for Sony)
- FromSoft/Acquire/Kadokawa Games (owned by Kadokawa)
- Quantic Dream (owned by Netease)
- Sumo Digital (owned by Tencent)
- Team Ninja (owned by Koei Tecmo)
Fun fact: Sumo Digital also worked in games like God of War Ragnarok as one of the outsourcing teams. I think Sony will continue working with them but won't acquire them because they are owned by Tencent.
GenDesign were barely a few guys who got fired for not being able to complete The Last Guardian and not having a clear creative vision for it, turning it into a money pit and having to need external help to complete the project.
Mostly for PR reasons they kept GenDesign/Ueda in an "external consultor" role.
Many years after releasing TLG, we still don't know what GenDesign is doing. I don't think both sides will want to join again. But other than that, if GenDesign ends releasing something for consoles I think Sony would be happy to support it via PlayStation Indies marketing support. But that's all.
Sony won't buy Quantic Dream because they are already owned by Netease. But when they left QD said they were going to work in their own projects but that kept their door open to work for Sony somewhere in the future. So maybe some day, maybe after their current internal projects, they may do another 2nd party game.
Supermassive is a sinking ship, recently firing 30% of their staff. Way before that, Sony had some of their good talent in Firesprite, and also part of their talent already left from Super Massive to join Ballistic Moon. So if Sony has to acquire someone, maybe Ballistic Moon makes more sense and just poach a few people more if needed.
I think Sony may end acquiring FromSoft or Kadokawa, but isn't easy for different reasons. But what we know for sure is that Sony has investment on both and made a deal with Kadokawa to help them bring their games and anime to a global market. And From Soft wants to work with them again.
Kojima said don't want to sell, but with DS2 and Physint seems will continue their long term relationship with Sony, specially with Sony making movie adaptations of his stuff and letting him play with their movie stuff toys for his games.
Lucid made a turd with Destruction AllStars and Firesprite already poached talent from them. No need to waste money on them, maybe just to poach a few folks more if needed.
Team Ninja is an interesting one, but I think they need to improve their quality and prestige level a bit more before reaching a level where they'd quality to become an interesting acquisition.
Sony partners with Arc System Works for some kind of exclusives, as they did with basically any Japanese console 3rd party dev in the PS4/PS5 era that isn't exclusive to Nintendo.
Really? I don't think this is true. People were saying this about 343i replacing Bungie on Halo and now look at how irrelevant that IP is today.
Certain studios just have a certain quality to their dev culture and are truly "in tune" with certain IP and game concepts. You replace them, you lose the magic and people will notice.
I would definitely not say Arrowhead are replaceable in this scenario or just swappable with some other studio you want to drop in there.
I'm sure the killzone studio could do as good or better with the IP
Could they? It's not a good idea to assume, especially considering Guerrilla haven't made a shooter since 2013, over a decade.
Plus if they were to take on Helldivers they'd either need to increase studio size or scale back on one of their other projects. But even so I say...you've got Arrowhead right there. Keep working with them (even if there's no M&A) on Helldivers, make that a strong strategic partnership.
And Guerrilla can focus more on IP they want like Horizon, or Killzone, or a new IP.
I just don't think they should acquire this studio like the thread suggests based on Helldivers 2 being a success so far
They should be acquired... They are a good studio and they corner an area Sony has been weak in since the early 2010's.
A recipe for complete failure, exactly what Xbox executives would com up with.
Helldivers is all about the devs not the IP.
They already were successful before and they are apparently being ultra successful.
2nd most played Steam game right now, 20th highest CCU peak in Steam history, top 1 seller in Steam for over a month with top tier user retention and apparently similar numbers in PS. A massive hit, coming from a previously smallish team with previous successful but no huge hits and now big IPs, because Sony owns Helldivers.
So for a relatively very cheap price they'd have a top hit maker who has a big projection who grew from indie/AA to AAA for this game and grow even more. And it's in a country where they have no other 1P team but there are several great AAA games, so have potential to grow way more poaching nearby studios giving Sony presence in the area.
And well, if Sony doesn't go for them, others will, which could keep them away to continue working with Sony in Helldivers 3 or other potential future games Sony may be interested in.
So it would be a great acquisition due to multiple reasons.
Arrowhead's expertise that makes them unique, particularly between their 1st and 2nd party teams, is 3rd person coop multiplayer.
Bungie are masters on creating top tier, industry shifting FPS, MP & GaaS.
Firewalk is basically a shooter dream team with people from many top shooter studios, mostly from old school Bungie and CoD.
Haven has a huge track record on top selling AAA games, particularly open worlds, top new IPs and also including but not limited to shooters and GaaS.
Deviation (+their apparently spinoff) is basically a CoD team working for Sony with people from other AAA teams.
I'm pretty sure they'll make pretty differentiated games each one on their own way, even if all may do live service shooters.
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Yeah let's water down Helldivers to just a live service shooter lol. Bungie games are multiplatform at least for now.
Helldivers is an extraction co-op shooter. There's nothing like it out there right now
It's definitely an underserved market and Sony would be silly to not capitalize on it. Not everyone wants to play PvP battle royal
Days Gone didnt have a good critical reception either. I think ready at dawn was a more talented studio, they should of kept them
That doesnt always workout well. They havea lack of studios anyway, they need more