nolifebr

@Heino - That one was rumored to have a 3 month exclusivity deal with Microsoft, but hard to know if it will be announced around that time frime since it's a small team and it might take a while to develop the PS5 version.

This will sell really well on PlayStation since there's pretty much no game like it on the platform. The Crew MotorFest tried but it didn't reach the quality that the Forza Horizon games have.

The YouTuber TacticalBrit already confirmed that the concept art is based on a location in Gibraltar.

So no Bluepoint or Bend Studio until early/mid PS6. What a great administration to have some of their studios release one game or not even that for an entire generation.

@RBMango - With Disney being one of the publishers that really supports the classics program, Hit And Run wouldn't be that impossible to be honest. What would make it difficult would be if they were planning to re-release the game themselves (the same goes for GTA or Silent Hill)

This can be good if done right. Consoles don't have anything close to a proper MOBA, unlike Concord, which was just another in the middle of an already saturated genre. Bet will be cross-play with PC as well, which could garantee some success right away, depending on the model (F2P, paid, etc.)

I have no problem with the more colorful childish look. At least it would be something different from the sad dad template that Sony has been releasing for the last 15 years (which I like too, don't get me wrong).

He also confirms that the Final Fantasy VII remake titles will no longer be PlayStation exclusives.

@ThomasHL - That studio got shutdown even before it revealed its first game. John moved to Fantastic Pixel Castle (an studio owned by NetEase) since and it's writing for a MMO they're developing.

I guess those people would complain about Nintendo pushing Pokemon back in the late 90s as well. Nintendo released 5 Pokemon games, 1 anime and 4 animated movies in the first five years of the IP. I doubt they would have done this if the sales of the games and the success of the anime hadn't been great.

Now Sony can't push a IP that sold more than 30 million copies with just two games + DLC to other medias just because...

Interesting that they mentioned that the OS team leaved the "two big firmware updates per year" thing behind. Apparently we will see more significant updates more frequently.

Sony is kinda screwed, isn't? Most companies don't see the benefit of doing third party exclusives anymore while Sony itself don't have enough studios do produce multiple exclusives per year.

Well, you reap what you sow. If Arrowhead's idea was to give the community a voice, now the community finds itself in charge of running the game (and rightly so as they were encouraged to do so)

Meanwhile Activision is laughing at selling COD for $70 every year with each skin pack costing $20.

Well, I guess pretty much nothing will change when regarding to games. Quite surprising given that Sony's CEO said their main focus now is acquiring IP.

And personally I was expecting to see they (SIE) way more aggressive in acquiring IPs/studios/manpower etc since it is very clear that they have pipeline problems producing games for their own console (which is the cashcow of the company). Maybe after Bungie and Firewalk, they might think 10 times before making any move in this direction.

Also, the whole game is confirmed to be heavily inspired by Akira and Cowboy Bebop. The game takes place in an alternative universe in which humanity is already able to travel through space in the 1980s.

This is supposed to be their return to the "classic" Naughty Dog action-adventure genre (so I guess it's more Jak and Uncharted than TLOU). Druckmann's interview with NYT about the game cites Crash Bandicoot specifically.

@Netret0120 - Druckmann said that the whole studio went under a major restructuring after TLOU2. Their goal now is to be able to produce multiple projects at the same time and become an "IP powerhouse" studio going forward. Also said that a team of ~250 people have been working on Intergalactic since 2020, so who the hell knows what the rest of the studio is working at the moment (I think they might have 550~650 folks working there). One another curious thing is that this game (Intergalactic) is being co-directed by Matthew Gallant (TLOU 1 Remake) and Kurt Margenau (TLOU 2), but Naughty Dog still has 3 other game directors in the studio working on something else: Anthony Newman (co-directed TLOU 2), Shaun Escayg (co-directed Uncharted TLL) and Mark Richard Davies (worked on COD MW2019)

@Bluemoon2008 - Of course there is a reason, the man just wants something new after spending 30 years in the same ***** company. Why don't people just accept this?

@Rob_230 He has been working with Greg Rice (former Double Fine's publishing head) on PlayStation's indie initiative for years. We probably won't see many changes.

@The_Wailing_Doom He was the head of the division for a while. He already confirmed that he was supposed to leave Sony years ago because he was no longer interested in focusing on giant triple-A games. He only stayed because Sony created a whole new division to work with/promote indies.

@get2sammyb - Well, if that's the case, why not port Uncharted, Killzone, Days Gone and so on to Xbox and Nintendo platforms since those IPs are pretty much dormant nowadays?

I have the impression that Sony has no idea what they are doing at the moment. Not a good look on the 30th birthday year of their platform to be honest.

Sony pays for the entire development to have a mere 5-year exclusivity deal? Crazy times.

The funny thing is to see Sony talking at every investors call that they need to own more IPs but in the end of the day they are losing them.

@Juga_Juga - Nope. This one is a remake and Sony's remakes don't have any upgrade.

Remakes: Full price (U$70), no upgrade
Remasters: Discounted price (U$50), paid upgrade (U$10)

@djlard - Returnal, Ratchet, Spider-Man 2, Astro Bot, Horizon COTM.

Sony will start to release their single player games Day 1 on PC sooner than people thought.

I don't think even the Venom spin-off is happening. After the layoffs, they probably want to get everyone at the studio focusing on their big projects and release them ASAP (Wolverine > SM3 > X-Men).

Now we just wait and see if Wolverine might end up being a 2025 game (which would be insane)

Nixxes also did "original" work on Concord as some of the maps were made by them.

@Xeno_Aura - It was literally pulling the images from the last post in the Official News section that pretty much all PS5 games have in their own hub. This is not something new or anything like that. The Official News row/tab in games has been there since the launch of the console in 2020.

Devs already have any and all permission to do this by the way, Gran Turismo 7 for example changes its background to the most recent "Official News" one every time an update is released, EA changed the background of EA FC 24 to an FC 25 ad last week, no one complained about that.

I don't see any reason not to believe that this really wasn't a bug. They just released a new firmware that is still rolling out worldwide. Remembering that the same firmware broke Final Fantasy 16 and they fixed it soon after. Maybe we should start theorizing that Sony now hates Square and is trying to sabotage their games.

It's already fixed. But I guess some people will keep pushing the story that it wasn't a bug.

And I feel sorry for the guy, the amount of hate he was receiving on Twitter simply for saying "settle down" is ridiculous. I wouldn't leave my house on a weekend to go back to the office and fix a bug that, despite being annoying, wasn't making any game unable to play.

It's a shame that now people are going to have to find something else to be angry about.

It's fixed on my end.

Well, yeah. One of the Product Manager at Sony confirmed it's a bug.

This seems to be a bug to be honest. Some games are getting "official" news from months or even years ago.

I mean, yeah. This is pretty much known since 2018 as noted in the article. At some point it would become the studio's main project to finally release it.

Guerrilla itself already confirmed in 2023 that this and the next single-player Horizon were in development.

By the way, this project started before Jim Ryan got promoted to CEO and ruined every Sony studio as everyone likes to say.

I guess this will probably be Sony's approach from now on... When one of their studios wants to announce something, it will be in a State Of Play.

They might return with showcases when they start to promote the PS6 in four or five years.

A hundred-word article wasn't necessary to explain why these remasters exist.

"Why do unnecessary remasters exist? Because they sell well enough to justify their existence."

That's it.

Let's say that Sony has scheduled the release of Ghost Of Tsushima 2 for the middle of 2025. What would be the difference if it was announced now or a month before it's released?

I doubt people will allow that game to succeed. Whatever they show next, it will get downvoted, criticized and so on because it's a "proper Sony game". At least the studio will take a lot more care from now on.

Since Sony's games-as-a-service will probably fail miserably, I'm guessing we'll see Sony games coming out on PC on Day 1 very, very soon (maybe some even on Xbox as well).

Totoki wants to see the profits. Releasing a game that cost 200, 250 million to make just for one platform doesn't seem like a very smart business system. Sony probably counted ($) on these live service games and it seems clear to me that that's not going to happen, so the money will have to come from somewhere else.

Either we will see that, or Sony increasing the price of their games to 80 or 90 dollars.

@S1ayeR74 - Rumors say 600 to 700 actually. There's no way this hardware costs less than 600 american bucks in today's economy.

I wouldn't expect Nintendo's console to come so cheap either (at least Switch levels of cheap). Probably 400 or 450 dollars.

I'm not worried about the lack of the drive because it will probably be compatible with the drives that are sold separately for the Slim.

I mean, Tom Henderson said months ago that it would come without a disc drive and with "only" 1TB of internal storage to reduce its initial price tag. The drive and an M2 SSD can be bought separately if the user wants.

@TheTraditional - Don't know about the game, but Haven is far more secured than Firewalk in case Fairgames fails hard as Concord. Haven is developing a lot of cloud, AI and back end tools that supposedly other Sony Studios will use in game development in the future.

@13th-UwU - You've already answered your own question my friend.

One studio is freaking Naughty Dog, historically known for making some of the best single player games out there while the other is Firewalk, which was created from scratch to work on Concord.

Naughty Dog could have released Factions, but who would maintain the game? Who would release the weekly updates, new skins, new modes, maps, etc.?

@13th-UwU - Wait, so would you rather see Naughty Dog working exclusively on Factions 2 for 6, 8 years instead of keep making single player games? From what I remember, ND itself confirmed that this is what would have happened if they had continued with that project.

I find the whole "money was lost while studios could have continued making single player games" thing funny when Naughty Dog actually seems to bee the only Sony studio affected by this. And I have great doubts as to whether we would be playing or even seeing their new single player game even if Factions2/Online had never existed. Horizon Online has been in development since 2018 and it looks like that have not affected any Guerrilla's ability to develop and launch Forbidden West and its expansion.

Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, Bend and so on have not been shut down, so "quality games with good stories" are still coming, they're just taking longer because that's how the nature of game development is at the moment. They have not been canceled just because Sony bought studios that are focused on live service games.

@Sanquine - It is complicated. Even if Uncharted 5, for example, was a great single player game with a good multiplayer mode, I bet there would be people complaining about the update rate, addition of skins, etc. People would require from the game as if it were like any other live service game.

GT7 is a great example of this, just go to GT Planet and see if people are happy with the updates (which are free) that the game has been releasing since its launch.

@TheDaddyOtaku - Concord is the name of the fictional galaxy that the game takes place.

@get2sammyb - Sony had some great multiplayer games in the PS3 generation, but we need to remember that the current community they created in the PS4 generation has a hatred for any type of multiplayer game.

I don't know how many times I've seen YouTubers and different people commenting on Concord or Fairgames saying that this isn't the kind of game the PlayStation community wants (I saw some even mentioning Astro as well). Sony has created a whole army of people who only play these third-person single player games that cost 200, 300 million. I have no idea how they are going to reverse this (if they do)

It's a shame for the studio and I feel like the lesson Sony will take away from this is: Let's invest in existing franchises because nobody wants new IPs.

Sony wouldn't spend that 3 billion on single player studios like everyone dreams about. Sony had tried to buy Leyou (owner of Digital Extremes, which makes Warframe) some time before closing with Bungie. Sony was desperate to have a studio/publisher specialized in games as a service, which makes sense since they pretty much had nothing in that area.

@OldGamer999 - Funny thing is that I doubt we would be playing their new game by now even if TLOU Online never existed.

I mean, Naughty Dog has gone through a pandemic, a canceled project and a mega restructuring. A new IP nowadays, with the quality we know from Naughty Dog would probably take 5 to 6 years to be made anyway. Perhaps the project would have already been announced, but Naughty Dog itself has already stated that it regretted announcing TLOU2 so early.

ND ​​would have to double or triple in size to be able to support TLOU Online while continuing to make single player games.

I always see people saying "oh, but TLOU Online didn't need to be a live service game", but I'm pretty sure everyone would complain if the game went more than a month without updates. That game would require recurring addition of new skins, maps, events and so on not die in 1 year.

@PuppetMaster - Sony has all the possible data to consider resurrecting old IPs. If they haven't done with any so far, it's because they don't believe is worth.

Where were the "PlayStation fans" when Japan Studio's last games like Gravity Rush bombed before it closed? Probably all of Japan Studio's games from its last 5 years of existance haven't sold as much as one Horizon game, just to give you some perspective.

I'm not even the target audience for these games as a service, despite being an active Warzone user, but there's no denying that it's extremely beneficial to have a game like this in your portfolio. And why the hell Sony is the only one not allowed to have it?

Anyway, Sony won't be able to keep making 3 or 4 games costing 300 million dollars a year, at some point the rope will break and things will get ugly for them. If people really want them to focus only on single-player games, folks better get ready for 100 dollar games or 8~10h games costing a full 70 bucks in the very near future.

@PuppetMaster - In other words, spending three billion on dormant IPs that no one is sure would yield a return just because the "PS fans would love it", is that the logic?

Just remembering that Sony was determined to get into this live service area because before buying Bungie they tried to buy Leyou/Digital Extremes and lost the "bid war" to Tencent.

People love to theorize that they should have invested all that money in studios that make singleplayer games, but I believe that simply wouldn't happen. Sony wanted and is unlikely to give up on pushing live service games (and it would be extremely stupid not to try since it is extremely clear that this is where a lot of the industry's money is at the moment).

Folks should be happy that traditional studios like Naughty Dog or Santa Monica weren't turned into support studios for these games.

I thought after the whole "Sony is spending $200-$300 million and and need 5~7 years to produce games" and "low profit margins" topics people would finally understood why Sony needs a few successful live-service games.

By the way, the project seems to be that "Gummy Bear" game: https://twitter.com/Bungie/status/1692594057594429472

"One of our favorite incubation projects is a team-based action game inspired by several genres in a brand-new, science-fantasy universe.

It draws inspiration from fighting games, platformers, MOBAs, life sims, and frog-type games, wrapped up in a lighthearted, comedic world."