Sony Bend's PS5 Game Cancellation Could Be Seen Coming, Says Ex Dev

Say it with me people: THANKS JIM RYAN....

Give us DAYS GONE 2 already!

It's not that surprising, since they went nearly 6 years without showing anything of it

Doesn't really make sense, if it wasn't making enough progress why cancel it and start completely over on something new that's going to take even longer lol

@Americansamurai1 And maybe have another Concord on their hands? No shot, this was the right call, I mean they should of been doing a SP from the start but you know where I'm coming from lol

Honestly, allowing flawed and troubled development to continue way longer than it should've done is how we ended up with Redfall.

@ShadowRJ oh man I totally forgot about red fall. I mean we all did…. But talk about a forgettable game. At least concord failed on such an epic scale we won’t soon forget it. Redfall didn’t even have the courtesy of being an epic failure.

@Oram77 that's what I'm saying , it wasn't about the progress of the project it was the quality and overall outlook. If progress was the main factor the horizon co-op game would have been cancelled a long time ago since it's been in development since like 2018.

The ex-Devs of Bend sure like to bash the crap out of this development studio after they leave, don't they?

@Oram77 the crazy part is, even though I could care less if we ever got a day's gone sequel, if they were just put on that instead of any live service then they prob would have launched days gone 2 by now if you look at the dev cycle. That would have been much better then no game at all, whether you liked the first one and thought it should have gotten a sequel or not.

@StitchJones I also felt we don't need a Days gone 2, apprently the top brass of Bend didn't want to either, how true that is I'm not sure.

@Oram77 If Sony Brass was smart, they would have put Bend on a reboot of the Socom series for a multiplayer shooter. They did the syphon filter games. Not sure who is left there, but between the 3rd person action that was syphon filter and days gone, I'm sure they would have had enough chops to get Socom going again. There's not enough 3rd person competitive online shooters in our world. I think it would have done great

The wasted money and time these companies miss-manage is almost illegally insane.
You could probably feed the starving of the world.

@StitchJones And that is why I said at the top, this was Jim Ryan's fault, he went and chased the golden goose (GAAS) and made studios work on game that weren't in their forte.

@Americansamurai1 Why keep paying money out to make something over the next 4-5yrs to get enough progress and content made to release knowing that it will never sell enough copies to make back the costs of a 7-8yr development cycle. It it was ready to be released in the next year, that may break even or make a bit of Profit but with Progress so 'slow', its better to write off what you've invested than keep pouring money in...

@Americansamurai1 You're falling into the sunk cost fallacy - because they've spent three years on it, they have to keep spending on it or they've lost all that time and effort and money.

But that time and effort and money is gone no matter what happens.

Moving forward, can they be more successful working on something new, or trying to work themselves out of a dead end? Sometimes you need a fresh start, because what you're trying just isn't working.

Could have made a sequel to DG 10x over the amount of time and money spent on snicker live service failures, I mean games. Stick to what you know.

@RobN what I'm saying is progress was not why it was cancelled, it was the quality and overall outlook of the project that caused it to get cancelled.

Sadly Days Gone doesn't work in UEVR, or else I would have bought it long time ago. Seems like the kind of game that would be awesome in first person VR.

@Americansamurai1 Maybe.

They weren't asking "can it recoup 3 years of development plus what it will cost to finish," they were asking whether spending the next year (or whatever the expectation was) finishing it would be more productive than spending the next year starting over. The expected quality of the end product certainly matters in that decision, as does expected sales based on that quality and the overall market.

But the time and resources you've spent so far matter less than how close to the finish line you are - so the progress is important. Add to that the pace of the prior three years, as opposed to the pace needed to wrap it up and sell it (and no guarantee you can change the pace), and the progress so far is incredibly important.

@RobN Sony has shown that they give devs time to finish their game when they see promise in it, look at helldivers 2, it was given 8 years of development and started over. Bend game was cancelled because they didn't see promise in it.

The cumulative years of development across all their studios that Sony has wasted on live service bandwagoning is quite something. And better not think about man hours.

I'm surprised Bend is still going tbh, Days Gone was a great game but other than that they haven't made anything that great personally. I think they've worked on some spin offs from other devs IP's and Syphon Filter which I've never played.

Hopefully there next game is either Days Gone 2 or something similar with an open world setting with looting and crafting.

@Oram77 Yes old Jimbo made mistakes. But to be fair, i think Bend Studio also made mistakes and they needs a big restructure.

I mean, they worked on Days Gone for 6 years and the game was came out with a lot of performances issues and mixed receptions. Fun fact; Days Gone was Bend Studio first and only game for PS4.

After Days Gone, another 6 years has passed and they didn't produced any new games beside Days Gone remastered for PS5 and the project was assisted by Climax Studios. With PS5 generation left at least 2-3 years, i don't see Bend will release a brand new game for PS5.

Compare to other Sony 1st party studios like Sucker Punch who managed to released Tsushima Legend mode + DLC expansion + PS5 version and Ghost of Yotei in the same time frame and both studios also has the same numbers of employee. I'm not gonna compare Bend with ND, Insomniac, Guerilla, or Santa Monica cause that would be unfair.

With how slow Bend Studio works, I'm surprised they didn't get closed down by Sony. But maybe they will if they can't even release one good game that sold well...

Every time I see Bend mentioned, I bang my head on my desk.

When I bought my original PS5 I was looking forward to Days Gone 2 within a few years.

It would have made a tidy profit. The stupidity is off the scale. Everyone lost.

Developing these Live Service games is like spending all your spare cash on lottery tickets instead of putting it in savings or shares.

You have a one in a million chance of winning big, but in reality are guaranteed to end up with nothing.

Where as the other option will always leave you with a nice pot.

@OldGamer999 The could have made several double AA and have money to spare like a Dark Cloud, MediEvil, Wild Arms, ICO.

@PuppetMaster It was the worst firstparty title in performance release to date i think.

Bend must have as many cancelled or rejected projects now as they do releases. Crazy mismanagement.

People always act like Bend got thrown under the bus by Sony, but the reality is that the Days Gone 2 pitch was for a "fully co-op shared world game". I mean, that sounds pretty live service to me, or live service adjacent.

Here's the reality, Bend have released one game in the last 13 years and it's reception was most certainly "mixed" (it was a 71 on metacritic, which I do think is very harsh but it was also a technical mess at launch).

@Perturbator There aint a game on the planet that works in UE anything these days unfortunately.

Dang. This, Concord, Bungies issues. I hope they fix it these problems.

Just give us days gone 2 already 😭🙏

@Flaming_Kaiser That could be true. I've played it from PS+ with all patches and it has some weird frame drops here and there and even crashed iirc. Other Sony 1st party games runs pretty smooth.

@Oram77 "I also felt we don't need a Days gone 2, apprently the top brass of Bend didn't want to either, how true that is I'm not sure."
Sure we need a part 2!. The game ends with 3 cliffhangers, I want to know how it turns out!!

@Zeke68 I suppose you are right, but didn't the PS5 remaster add to the story or something like, I haven't played it so I can't confirm. Either way I just want Bend working on things which they are best at.

@Oram77 No it didn't, the ending(s) are the same.

Sony made a lot of good decisions but telling Bend Studios to make something different was not one.
We would already had a sequel to Days Gone out and almost a third by now if they let them continue.
DaysGone was a good game. It was an open world game.
The Last of Us is not the same. A good title but it’s linear like Uncharted. They are great and deeply loved. But totally different.

It’s been a hard gen with the first party line up.

They should just shut this wreck of a studio down.

@Oram77 Didnt they want to make it like that themselves though? Days Gone was a in a terrible on release i think it was one of the worst releases there where from a FP studio. Also liveservice works but not everything needs to be a liveservice someone should tell that to the suits.

@T-Bone09 It just didnt sell that great untill the massive discounted price.

@Flaming_Kaiser

Over 8 million copies on PS4 sounds good to me. Selling that under 2 years is not a bad accomplishment. Before the discounted price.
Selling over 10 million units for PS4 and PC. Don’t see how that’s not good.

The review of the game was 2 weeks before the game was released. The whole launch was overly exaggerated on how bad it was. They fixed the issues at launch.

The was the worst release by far its not even close. It took ages for it to be finished another point. And if it was a massive succes part 2 would have he made. So a few things that could have happened i didnt make enough money, it took to long, their new pitch was not good. For how long it took the game was also not the best and highest quality.