I really wonder when we're going to begin to see the light on the other end of the tunnel. First with Xbox and now with PlayStation, it seems like there's a massive issue with the budgets going...
The layoffs come just days after Sony missed a PS5 sales target, which led to Sony’s stock price plummeting by $10 billion. While the PS5 outlook wasn’t what Sony was expecting, analysts also pointed toward a near decade low games margin — suggesting that the cost of making games is eating into Sony’s gaming margins.
I really wonder when we're going to begin to see the light on the other end of the tunnel. First with Xbox and now with PlayStation, it seems like there's a massive issue with the budgets going into making first party AAA games. They take too long, and they're set up to be too big to fail, so when they do (or even just perform okay), it's a disaster on the business end. Losing $10 billion in value because Sony doesn't know how to budget is insane. The gross incompetence of game industry executives has had an incredible human cost, and with just how long it takes to adjust course, it makes me worried about the future of the industry.
I wouldn't take stock movement that seriously, especially for megacorps like Sony. Zuckerberg could sneeze during an earnings call and meta stock would "lose" billions of dollars in valuation....
Losing $10 billion in value
I wouldn't take stock movement that seriously, especially for megacorps like Sony. Zuckerberg could sneeze during an earnings call and meta stock would "lose" billions of dollars in valuation. It's not actually all that big of a deal.
People talk about how AAA development needs to be leaner and less unwieldy, but that's what the layoffs are for, no?
I mean, the implication in the article is that it's at least relevant to the layoffs, but I get what you're saying. And I understand that laying people off is part of "balancing the budget," but...
I mean, the implication in the article is that it's at least relevant to the layoffs, but I get what you're saying. And I understand that laying people off is part of "balancing the budget," but it's hard for me to even see this as a necessary evil. To put the livelihoods of 900 people at risk because PlayStation hasn't made nearly as much money as they had hoped (it's not like they aren't profitable) is just really dehumanizing, which I suppose is par for the course with big corporations like these.
Sure, but that's just the journalist grasping at straws, not a real indication of anything. We actually don't know whether or not the playstation internal devs are net profitable. Sony doesn't...
Sure, but that's just the journalist grasping at straws, not a real indication of anything.
We actually don't know whether or not the playstation internal devs are net profitable. Sony doesn't tell us that in their financial reports, only the topline numbers for the entire conglomerate. I can see how some of them probably aren't right now. Spider Man 2, for instance, cost $500m in just development costs, and based on sales, made $700m. When you add in overhead, marketing, and all other associated costs, it's hard to see how they made a profit.
$500 million for Spiderman 2?? That seems insane considering the Avengers Infinity War movies cost about $400 million apiece, and they were some of the most expensive movie productions in history....
$500 million for Spiderman 2?? That seems insane considering the Avengers Infinity War movies cost about $400 million apiece, and they were some of the most expensive movie productions in history. At that budget, I don't see how the game could possibly turn a profit. I understand loss leaders can be intended to move consoles, but it still sounds like an unreasonable budget.
I wish more stockholders would see “some exec fucked the budget, so to correct it we’re firing hundreds of staff” the way I see it… which is “some exec fucked the budget” — so get rid of that exec...
I wish more stockholders would see “some exec fucked the budget, so to correct it we’re firing hundreds of staff” the way I see it… which is “some exec fucked the budget” — so get rid of that exec and bring in someone who can get things done without firing a bunch of people?
I know they’re ultimately just balancing money in versus money out, and staff are a big expense in any company… but if the exec fucked up, why do they get to keep their expensive as balls salary while all those other people lose out for no fault of their own???
Sad reality is that most stockholders hold zero interest in the product. As you said, it's just speculative money in/money out for them. Short of an executive getting into a political/legal...
Sad reality is that most stockholders hold zero interest in the product. As you said, it's just speculative money in/money out for them.
Short of an executive getting into a political/legal scandal, stocks don't care much about how they treat their company. Just that they hype up the product enough to keep the price going up. Up in the short term too, because many holders aren't staying long as they shift to the next big thing™️
I didn't have time to read the whole thread but, Insomniac had a leak of all their financials recently and if it's any consolation I think it's closer to $300m in development costs for the game,...
You're right, but it's really unnerving to think about how billions of dollars are just kind of floating around in a nebulous cloud of assets and will shift arbirarily in large amounts. It reminds...
You're right, but it's really unnerving to think about how billions of dollars are just kind of floating around in a nebulous cloud of assets and will shift arbirarily in large amounts.
It reminds me of weather patterns, and not in a great way.
That's not how it works, shares don't just get converted to cash: if someone buys or sells a share, there is someone else on the other side of tbe transaction selling or buying the share.
That's not how it works, shares don't just get converted to cash: if someone buys or sells a share, there is someone else on the other side of tbe transaction selling or buying the share.
I’ve always wondered about that, like, if I press a button to sell a share, does that not actually happen until a person is buying it? The nitty gritty reality of stocks is so weird to me…
I’ve always wondered about that, like, if I press a button to sell a share, does that not actually happen until a person is buying it? The nitty gritty reality of stocks is so weird to me…
Yes, when you press a button to sell (or buy) a share, it only happens once another market participant is doing the opposite. The reason you don't notice is that for most products, there are...
Yes, when you press a button to sell (or buy) a share, it only happens once another market participant is doing the opposite. The reason you don't notice is that for most products, there are participants that are constantly offering to buy and sell shares, so when you press you button, the action happens immediately. I say "participant" and not "person" because those tend to be hedge funds, hft, banks and other large financial institutions.
Those participants make a profit by offering a slightly lower buy price than sell price and pocketing the difference.
Yesn’t. Yes, there needs to be a buyer, but the buyer is what’s called a market maker in most cases. These are financial institutions which mediate buy and selling. So if you sell 5 Sony stock and...
Yesn’t. Yes, there needs to be a buyer, but the buyer is what’s called a market maker in most cases. These are financial institutions which mediate buy and selling. So if you sell 5 Sony stock and Bob buys 5 Sony stocks, what ends up happening is that you sell your 5 stocks to a market maker (citadel, for instance) and bob buys those 5 stocks from a market maker. The difference in the price that you sold it for and the price Bob bought it for is called the spread, and is how MMs make money.
In theory yes. In reality, they will scope the game the exact same and grind the smaller workforce to the bone, so they effectively spend less money but are in fact no making leaner games. Or...
People talk about how AAA development needs to be leaner and less unwieldy, but that's what the layoffs are for, no?
In theory yes. In reality, they will scope the game the exact same and grind the smaller workforce to the bone, so they effectively spend less money but are in fact no making leaner games.
Or maybe AI comes in faster than expected and causes a litany of other issues in the industry.
We actually don't know whether or not the playstation internal devs are net profitable.
we also can't directly compare net profits for first party games because they are both a product and a commodity. A game that loses $10m in raw revenue but moves 10m PS5's (which let's say, results in another $1m loss as an extremely insane estimate) but then proceeds to let Sony get 30% share of 1m more sales of AAA 3rd party games comes out as a $9m net positive. Which is how PS and MS have operated for decades.
The real goal of these manufacturers were to build confidence in a platform that they can then take parts of the earnings out of from other 3rd party devs. It has never worked out otherwise except for Nintendo who invested decades into their IP portfolio. MS has Halo as the "father of online multiplayer" and the bungled that. Sony arguably has nothing close to that sort of legacy system mover. So they need different tactics.
Sony’s been pretty clear on their earnings call that they’re shifting strategy - they explicitly said that they’re no longer going to push for console ownership numbers now that the ps5 is in its...
Sony’s been pretty clear on their earnings call that they’re shifting strategy - they explicitly said that they’re no longer going to push for console ownership numbers now that the ps5 is in its twilight years, which makes sense, they’ve definitely “won” in that corner of the market already.
I don’t think it’s outrageous to expect the studios to actually be net even now.
Sure. And the fact that we're calling a 3 year old system "twilight years" seems to be part of the problem. The PS4 was woefully underpowered and lasted 7 years. Granted, it had a Pro version, but...
Sure. And the fact that we're calling a 3 year old system "twilight years" seems to be part of the problem. The PS4 was woefully underpowered and lasted 7 years.
Granted, it had a Pro version, but that's exactly why I'm worried: AAA devs aren't hitting 100% of the the power of the PS5, why are we talking as if we're going to make a new iteration soonish (be it.a PS5 Pro or a PS6)?
I don’t think it’s outrageous to expect the studios to actually be net even now.
I do.
does Sony get that Mega Franchise that will sell 20m copies for a AA budget like Nintendo? Nope. Did it find it's Fortnite esque GaaS? I don't think so. Helldivers is in the right direction but doesn't sound like it's trying to do that
Is Sony going to, as the memes go, make "shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less (and I'm not kidding)"? I wouldn't bet on it. This is all guy feeling, so this is where I can easily be proven wrong
Is Sony going to rapidly adopt AI into a AAA gaming workflow to try and make games faster? I personally hope not, but even without my bias I don't see AI doing that heavy lifting for this current generation. Despite the hype, the tech isn't there yet for that level of production
So, how are they going to change if they don't do anything to change, except reduce their workforce and grind the survivors even more to the dust?
Why is it a problem? It just means that Sony thinks that they've saturated the market of people who want PS5s. We're talking about that because they said the PS5 is in its twilight years, implying...
Why is it a problem? It just means that Sony thinks that they've saturated the market of people who want PS5s. We're talking about that because they said the PS5 is in its twilight years, implying that they will do that.
So, how are they going to change if they don't do anything to change, except reduce their workforce and grind the survivors even more to the dust?
How do you know they're not doing anything to change? For one, there isn't going to be any Sony main franchise releases for the entire year per their earnings call. That's a change.
Secondly, the employees are already ground to nice, meat flavored dust. I don't think there's going to be any change in dust grinding, since it's always at maximum. And if you have less of them, then yes, you do less. I think new games will be smaller in scope and cut more corners graphically coming from first party Sony studios.
Because I don't see how the math works out. They sold about 45% the number of PS4's, but PS5 games cost an order of magnitude more to make. Clearly a $10 price hike won't make up that difference...
Why is it a problem? It just means that Sony thinks that they've saturated the market of people who want PS5s
Because I don't see how the math works out. They sold about 45% the number of PS4's, but PS5 games cost an order of magnitude more to make. Clearly a $10 price hike won't make up that difference and Sony hasn't tapped into that smash hit GaaS that can make up such costs.
Smaller install base, less revenue, and higher production costs. I don't see them clamoring to put everything on PC/Switch/Xbox ASAP, so where's the out?
How do you know they're not doing anything to change?
I'm sure they are doing something. They already did after all; a 9% reduction is huge in terms of revenue.
But I meant something in a healthy and sustainable way. Layoffs as they work in the US are neither. I hope to be proven wrong, and I admit a lot of my feelings are guts. But with the current industry at large, and my 1st/2nd/3rd hand experience in that industry I don't see the light. Games aren't collapsing anytime soon, but I see the cracks in the dam, and the broken windows.
To be frank, I've long had my goodwill for tech burned out. They've been trying to breach and leech users for over a decade now in all sorts of insidious ways and as time went on they stopped even trying to veil it in goodwill. Shareholders don't care about user privacy or artistic quality or worker morale, so it reflects on how companies manage employees. How am I as a creative supposed to be optimistic about such a mindset, one that doesn't seem interested In changing?
Secondly, the employees are already ground to nice, meat flavored dust. I don't think there's going to be any change in dust grinding, since it's always at maximum.
And that's where the industry always manages to surprises me. You don't think it can get worse or more creatively (or even morally) bankrupt and they manage to keep digging. That will probably be AI in 10+ years, but I'm sure they will pull out one more trick up the sleeve before we get to that point.
Of course the sad part is that workers themself enable this. Turnover in games is awful but supply is still high. That's the 3rd pillar of potential change and I still don't see that decreasing at a high enough rate to enact such change.
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, not layoffs caused by selfish executives looking for a quick wire to cut to increase profit margins for...
People talk about how AAA development needs to be leaner and less unwieldy, but that's what the layoffs are for, no?
Leaving people with who had no decision-making power to begin with stuck without a job to pay their bills doesn't even make AAA games leaner, anyways. They don't decide the scopes of the projects to begin with.
It's a mistake seen across every industry. Stop letting the suits run everything and instead start elevating your creatives/producers to management and leadership roles. Then you'll have someone...
It's a mistake seen across every industry. Stop letting the suits run everything and instead start elevating your creatives/producers to management and leadership roles. Then you'll have someone who can see both sides of the coin.
Just look at Disney. Iger retires, and then Chapek and all the Disney execs couldn't keep the wheels on for even two years before they asked Iger to come back, but even he is having trouble unfucking everything.
It may sound naive, but at some point we need to stop focusing so hard on growth and profit. Can we just make cool things for the sake of making cool things? The money will come, we don't need to race to the bottom.
Suits hold the money, so not much will change unless the fundamentals of the stock market or consumer expectations change. Funnily enough, Japan is more 50/50 on this. Some are ran by suits, but...
Stop letting the suits run everything and instead start elevating your creatives/producers to management and leadership roles.
Suits hold the money, so not much will change unless the fundamentals of the stock market or consumer expectations change.
Funnily enough, Japan is more 50/50 on this. Some are ran by suits, but other old developers did indeed end up as executives. I guess it makes sense for culture that has a larger basis on respect and seniority.
Can we just make cool things for the sake of making cool things? The money will come, we don't need to race to the bottom.
sadly, games have never been a surefire hit. AA/AAA Studios collapsing over a single middling release is a decades ld story. Then pn the indie level I remember the median income for a game beIng $2000 or so. Like most other mediums, it skews hard on the Pareto Principle.
There's no way to really avoid this outside of throwing money at creators to make what they want (which again is risky). Or otherwise give those creators some way to create without worrying about how to pay rent in this increasingly hostile economy. Otherwise, they gotta spend that time making what the suits want, or just surviving with a non-creator job.
Going back to my example with Iger at Disney, his whole thing was giving more power and control to creatives. It brought them a fuck ton of success and made Disney into even more of a juggernaut...
Going back to my example with Iger at Disney, his whole thing was giving more power and control to creatives. It brought them a fuck ton of success and made Disney into even more of a juggernaut than it already was. I would argue they squandered that when Bob left, and that's why they've been floundering. I'm sure there are similar examples for game studios and devs.
People can say "well that's not how it works" all they want. I agree with them, and that's why I'm calling for a paradigm shift. Stop trying to min/max profits and instead just ply your trade.
There's a Roger Deakins quote floating around somewhere that goes something like "a four hour film will make you millions of dollars and a three hour film will make you millions of dollars, so why not just make the four hour film?" That may be a little idealistic, but I agree with the sentiment.
You're preaching to the choir. I don't know what changed in the last 10-15 years, but the priorities and strategies of these top creative shifted drastically very recently (in the grand scheme of...
and that's why I'm calling for a paradigm shift. Stop trying to min/max profits and instead just ply your trade.
You're preaching to the choir. I don't know what changed in the last 10-15 years, but the priorities and strategies of these top creative shifted drastically very recently (in the grand scheme of history). As long as people continue to keep buying in, not much will change.
It seems like movies are in fact in a precarious state as it flounders between the streaming wars and the raw revenue of theatre's. Games so far don't show a sign of collapse financially.
I guess they gotta keep the demand for ever more powerful consoles and graphics cards going. In my opinion we are way past the point of diminishing returns, where hardware may be 5 times as...
I guess they gotta keep the demand for ever more powerful consoles and graphics cards going. In my opinion we are way past the point of diminishing returns, where hardware may be 5 times as powerful but we get decreasingly less extra graphically fidelity out of it. Of course I am biased because I grew up with 16-bit graphics and am generally perfectly happy with the level of detail in games from 2010 or so, but the younger generations are mostly playing games like Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox - that aren't exactly graphically intensive, so it will be interesting to see how long they can keep that race going.
It's a pretty damn large map, one they change dramatically every couple of months. But yes, in essence I'm agreeing...the majority of technical barriers that stood in the way of awesome gameplay...
It's a pretty damn large map, one they change dramatically every couple of months.
But yes, in essence I'm agreeing...the majority of technical barriers that stood in the way of awesome gameplay have melted away since about 2012 or so.
It's almost all been chasing the dragon of fidelity ever since. And it's a battle that doesn't need to be made if you choose a good art direction.
Borderlands 1 still looks good despite being 15 years old.
Maybe they’ll come to their senses and realize that people want to play fun games with their friends. People will pay millions for fun games that cost pennies to build. If I were a Sony executive...
Maybe they’ll come to their senses and realize that people want to play fun games with their friends. People will pay millions for fun games that cost pennies to build.
If I were a Sony executive I’d pay developers to demo their games to me and then buy the good ones for a lump sum. Don’t let a single game go on Steam without first going in front of some Sony employee.
That's what people think AI is going to do. I don't want to call it snake oil, but I've yet to think of a revolutionary piece of tech that met all its promises and expectations within the first...
People will pay millions for fun games that cost pennies to build.
That's what people think AI is going to do. I don't want to call it snake oil, but I've yet to think of a revolutionary piece of tech that met all its promises and expectations within the first decade of commercial usage. That's literally the job of marketing, but these kinds of new tech is always overhyped.
I’d pay developers to demo their games to me and then buy the good ones for a lump sum.
Most people pitching a game aren't close to finish. The best demos are a vertical slice and need money to expand on content. If a dev had a finished game these days they'd just self-publish more often than not.
Buying that for a lump sum is risky because they don't know how long they will take, or if they will even cross the finish line. That's a strategy that Epic did/is doing, but they are a storefront more than a publisher, and buying timed exclusivity is way cheaper than being a publishing wing.
They need to learn to just start making fun video games again, not interactive movies where the game basically plays for you or you are just watching glorified cutscenes with walking segments in...
They need to learn to just start making fun video games again, not interactive movies where the game basically plays for you or you are just watching glorified cutscenes with walking segments in between. Stop making games where a vast majority of playing time is walking around an open world just picking up things off the ground.
There is zero reason for the games having the insane budgets they have, especially as I can't remember the last time a AAA game brought something fun, fresh, and new.
Take that budget and spin up smaller studios working on original IPs. Stop chasing graphics, we reached diminishing returns two console generations ago. The fact that their executive team thinks that $500 million for Spiderman 2 was a worthwhile investment is absolutely insane.
Absolutely hate this style of generic PR buzzword-loaded bullshit statements that companies put out nowadays. Saying something while saying absolutely nothing at all.
“After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company,” says Ryan in an internal email to PlayStation employees. “We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community.”
Absolutely hate this style of generic PR buzzword-loaded bullshit statements that companies put out nowadays. Saying something while saying absolutely nothing at all.
I was going to comment on the same thing so I'll just add to your comment. Sony also has the convenient scape goat of Ryan leaving. He's gone in April and they can be like "Those layoffs were his...
I was going to comment on the same thing so I'll just add to your comment. Sony also has the convenient scape goat of Ryan leaving. He's gone in April and they can be like "Those layoffs were his doing but let's all be a happy family now!"
I really wonder when we're going to begin to see the light on the other end of the tunnel. First with Xbox and now with PlayStation, it seems like there's a massive issue with the budgets going into making first party AAA games. They take too long, and they're set up to be too big to fail, so when they do (or even just perform okay), it's a disaster on the business end. Losing $10 billion in value because Sony doesn't know how to budget is insane. The gross incompetence of game industry executives has had an incredible human cost, and with just how long it takes to adjust course, it makes me worried about the future of the industry.
I wouldn't take stock movement that seriously, especially for megacorps like Sony. Zuckerberg could sneeze during an earnings call and meta stock would "lose" billions of dollars in valuation. It's not actually all that big of a deal.
People talk about how AAA development needs to be leaner and less unwieldy, but that's what the layoffs are for, no?
I mean, the implication in the article is that it's at least relevant to the layoffs, but I get what you're saying. And I understand that laying people off is part of "balancing the budget," but it's hard for me to even see this as a necessary evil. To put the livelihoods of 900 people at risk because PlayStation hasn't made nearly as much money as they had hoped (it's not like they aren't profitable) is just really dehumanizing, which I suppose is par for the course with big corporations like these.
Like, I get it, but it sucks.
Sure, but that's just the journalist grasping at straws, not a real indication of anything.
We actually don't know whether or not the playstation internal devs are net profitable. Sony doesn't tell us that in their financial reports, only the topline numbers for the entire conglomerate. I can see how some of them probably aren't right now. Spider Man 2, for instance, cost $500m in just development costs, and based on sales, made $700m. When you add in overhead, marketing, and all other associated costs, it's hard to see how they made a profit.
$500 million for Spiderman 2?? That seems insane considering the Avengers Infinity War movies cost about $400 million apiece, and they were some of the most expensive movie productions in history. At that budget, I don't see how the game could possibly turn a profit. I understand loss leaders can be intended to move consoles, but it still sounds like an unreasonable budget.
Yep. So it’s not surprising changes need to be made…
…like laying off staff
I wish more stockholders would see “some exec fucked the budget, so to correct it we’re firing hundreds of staff” the way I see it… which is “some exec fucked the budget” — so get rid of that exec and bring in someone who can get things done without firing a bunch of people?
I know they’re ultimately just balancing money in versus money out, and staff are a big expense in any company… but if the exec fucked up, why do they get to keep their expensive as balls salary while all those other people lose out for no fault of their own???
Sad reality is that most stockholders hold zero interest in the product. As you said, it's just speculative money in/money out for them.
Short of an executive getting into a political/legal scandal, stocks don't care much about how they treat their company. Just that they hype up the product enough to keep the price going up. Up in the short term too, because many holders aren't staying long as they shift to the next big thing™️
I didn't have time to read the whole thread but, Insomniac had a leak of all their financials recently and if it's any consolation I think it's closer to $300m in development costs for the game, budget wise:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/insomniac-leak-spider-man-2-needed-to-sell-7-2-million-copies-to-be-profitable-budget-breakdown-and-the-reason-why-it-was-so-expensive-found.1665009/
Where did you pull the $500m number from? All the sources I see in a quick google is just $300m.
You're right, but it's really unnerving to think about how billions of dollars are just kind of floating around in a nebulous cloud of assets and will shift arbirarily in large amounts.
It reminds me of weather patterns, and not in a great way.
It’s not like the money disappeared. Put another way “$10 billion in Sony shares were converted to cash last week”.
That's not how it works, shares don't just get converted to cash: if someone buys or sells a share, there is someone else on the other side of tbe transaction selling or buying the share.
I’ve always wondered about that, like, if I press a button to sell a share, does that not actually happen until a person is buying it? The nitty gritty reality of stocks is so weird to me…
Yes, when you press a button to sell (or buy) a share, it only happens once another market participant is doing the opposite. The reason you don't notice is that for most products, there are participants that are constantly offering to buy and sell shares, so when you press you button, the action happens immediately. I say "participant" and not "person" because those tend to be hedge funds, hft, banks and other large financial institutions.
Those participants make a profit by offering a slightly lower buy price than sell price and pocketing the difference.
Yesn’t. Yes, there needs to be a buyer, but the buyer is what’s called a market maker in most cases. These are financial institutions which mediate buy and selling. So if you sell 5 Sony stock and Bob buys 5 Sony stocks, what ends up happening is that you sell your 5 stocks to a market maker (citadel, for instance) and bob buys those 5 stocks from a market maker. The difference in the price that you sold it for and the price Bob bought it for is called the spread, and is how MMs make money.
In theory yes. In reality, they will scope the game the exact same and grind the smaller workforce to the bone, so they effectively spend less money but are in fact no making leaner games.
Or maybe AI comes in faster than expected and causes a litany of other issues in the industry.
we also can't directly compare net profits for first party games because they are both a product and a commodity. A game that loses $10m in raw revenue but moves 10m PS5's (which let's say, results in another $1m loss as an extremely insane estimate) but then proceeds to let Sony get 30% share of 1m more sales of AAA 3rd party games comes out as a $9m net positive. Which is how PS and MS have operated for decades.
The real goal of these manufacturers were to build confidence in a platform that they can then take parts of the earnings out of from other 3rd party devs. It has never worked out otherwise except for Nintendo who invested decades into their IP portfolio. MS has Halo as the "father of online multiplayer" and the bungled that. Sony arguably has nothing close to that sort of legacy system mover. So they need different tactics.
Sony’s been pretty clear on their earnings call that they’re shifting strategy - they explicitly said that they’re no longer going to push for console ownership numbers now that the ps5 is in its twilight years, which makes sense, they’ve definitely “won” in that corner of the market already.
I don’t think it’s outrageous to expect the studios to actually be net even now.
Sure. And the fact that we're calling a 3 year old system "twilight years" seems to be part of the problem. The PS4 was woefully underpowered and lasted 7 years.
Granted, it had a Pro version, but that's exactly why I'm worried: AAA devs aren't hitting 100% of the the power of the PS5, why are we talking as if we're going to make a new iteration soonish (be it.a PS5 Pro or a PS6)?
I do.
So, how are they going to change if they don't do anything to change, except reduce their workforce and grind the survivors even more to the dust?
Why is it a problem? It just means that Sony thinks that they've saturated the market of people who want PS5s. We're talking about that because they said the PS5 is in its twilight years, implying that they will do that.
How do you know they're not doing anything to change? For one, there isn't going to be any Sony main franchise releases for the entire year per their earnings call. That's a change.
Secondly, the employees are already ground to nice, meat flavored dust. I don't think there's going to be any change in dust grinding, since it's always at maximum. And if you have less of them, then yes, you do less. I think new games will be smaller in scope and cut more corners graphically coming from first party Sony studios.
Because I don't see how the math works out. They sold about 45% the number of PS4's, but PS5 games cost an order of magnitude more to make. Clearly a $10 price hike won't make up that difference and Sony hasn't tapped into that smash hit GaaS that can make up such costs.
Smaller install base, less revenue, and higher production costs. I don't see them clamoring to put everything on PC/Switch/Xbox ASAP, so where's the out?
I'm sure they are doing something. They already did after all; a 9% reduction is huge in terms of revenue.
But I meant something in a healthy and sustainable way. Layoffs as they work in the US are neither. I hope to be proven wrong, and I admit a lot of my feelings are guts. But with the current industry at large, and my 1st/2nd/3rd hand experience in that industry I don't see the light. Games aren't collapsing anytime soon, but I see the cracks in the dam, and the broken windows.
To be frank, I've long had my goodwill for tech burned out. They've been trying to breach and leech users for over a decade now in all sorts of insidious ways and as time went on they stopped even trying to veil it in goodwill. Shareholders don't care about user privacy or artistic quality or worker morale, so it reflects on how companies manage employees. How am I as a creative supposed to be optimistic about such a mindset, one that doesn't seem interested In changing?
And that's where the industry always manages to surprises me. You don't think it can get worse or more creatively (or even morally) bankrupt and they manage to keep digging. That will probably be AI in 10+ years, but I'm sure they will pull out one more trick up the sleeve before we get to that point.
Of course the sad part is that workers themself enable this. Turnover in games is awful but supply is still high. That's the 3rd pillar of potential change and I still don't see that decreasing at a high enough rate to enact such change.
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, not layoffs caused by selfish executives looking for a quick wire to cut to increase profit margins for uncaring shareholders.
Leaving people with who had no decision-making power to begin with stuck without a job to pay their bills doesn't even make AAA games leaner, anyways. They don't decide the scopes of the projects to begin with.
It's a mistake seen across every industry. Stop letting the suits run everything and instead start elevating your creatives/producers to management and leadership roles. Then you'll have someone who can see both sides of the coin.
Just look at Disney. Iger retires, and then Chapek and all the Disney execs couldn't keep the wheels on for even two years before they asked Iger to come back, but even he is having trouble unfucking everything.
It may sound naive, but at some point we need to stop focusing so hard on growth and profit. Can we just make cool things for the sake of making cool things? The money will come, we don't need to race to the bottom.
Suits hold the money, so not much will change unless the fundamentals of the stock market or consumer expectations change.
Funnily enough, Japan is more 50/50 on this. Some are ran by suits, but other old developers did indeed end up as executives. I guess it makes sense for culture that has a larger basis on respect and seniority.
sadly, games have never been a surefire hit. AA/AAA Studios collapsing over a single middling release is a decades ld story. Then pn the indie level I remember the median income for a game beIng $2000 or so. Like most other mediums, it skews hard on the Pareto Principle.
There's no way to really avoid this outside of throwing money at creators to make what they want (which again is risky). Or otherwise give those creators some way to create without worrying about how to pay rent in this increasingly hostile economy. Otherwise, they gotta spend that time making what the suits want, or just surviving with a non-creator job.
Going back to my example with Iger at Disney, his whole thing was giving more power and control to creatives. It brought them a fuck ton of success and made Disney into even more of a juggernaut than it already was. I would argue they squandered that when Bob left, and that's why they've been floundering. I'm sure there are similar examples for game studios and devs.
People can say "well that's not how it works" all they want. I agree with them, and that's why I'm calling for a paradigm shift. Stop trying to min/max profits and instead just ply your trade.
There's a Roger Deakins quote floating around somewhere that goes something like "a four hour film will make you millions of dollars and a three hour film will make you millions of dollars, so why not just make the four hour film?" That may be a little idealistic, but I agree with the sentiment.
You're preaching to the choir. I don't know what changed in the last 10-15 years, but the priorities and strategies of these top creative shifted drastically very recently (in the grand scheme of history). As long as people continue to keep buying in, not much will change.
It seems like movies are in fact in a precarious state as it flounders between the streaming wars and the raw revenue of theatre's. Games so far don't show a sign of collapse financially.
I guess they gotta keep the demand for ever more powerful consoles and graphics cards going. In my opinion we are way past the point of diminishing returns, where hardware may be 5 times as powerful but we get decreasingly less extra graphically fidelity out of it. Of course I am biased because I grew up with 16-bit graphics and am generally perfectly happy with the level of detail in games from 2010 or so, but the younger generations are mostly playing games like Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox - that aren't exactly graphically intensive, so it will be interesting to see how long they can keep that race going.
Fortnite is definitely not a lightweight though. It scales down well, but it really makes my 970 show its age even at only 1080p.
Not really..Battlefield 1942 had 64 player matches in 2002.
Nowadays I'd say it would not be unreasonable to have an FPS with 1000 players in it
It's a pretty damn large map, one they change dramatically every couple of months.
But yes, in essence I'm agreeing...the majority of technical barriers that stood in the way of awesome gameplay have melted away since about 2012 or so.
It's almost all been chasing the dragon of fidelity ever since. And it's a battle that doesn't need to be made if you choose a good art direction.
Borderlands 1 still looks good despite being 15 years old.
Maybe they’ll come to their senses and realize that people want to play fun games with their friends. People will pay millions for fun games that cost pennies to build.
If I were a Sony executive I’d pay developers to demo their games to me and then buy the good ones for a lump sum. Don’t let a single game go on Steam without first going in front of some Sony employee.
That's what people think AI is going to do. I don't want to call it snake oil, but I've yet to think of a revolutionary piece of tech that met all its promises and expectations within the first decade of commercial usage. That's literally the job of marketing, but these kinds of new tech is always overhyped.
Most people pitching a game aren't close to finish. The best demos are a vertical slice and need money to expand on content. If a dev had a finished game these days they'd just self-publish more often than not.
Buying that for a lump sum is risky because they don't know how long they will take, or if they will even cross the finish line. That's a strategy that Epic did/is doing, but they are a storefront more than a publisher, and buying timed exclusivity is way cheaper than being a publishing wing.
They need to learn to just start making fun video games again, not interactive movies where the game basically plays for you or you are just watching glorified cutscenes with walking segments in between. Stop making games where a vast majority of playing time is walking around an open world just picking up things off the ground.
There is zero reason for the games having the insane budgets they have, especially as I can't remember the last time a AAA game brought something fun, fresh, and new.
Take that budget and spin up smaller studios working on original IPs. Stop chasing graphics, we reached diminishing returns two console generations ago. The fact that their executive team thinks that $500 million for Spiderman 2 was a worthwhile investment is absolutely insane.
Absolutely hate this style of generic PR buzzword-loaded bullshit statements that companies put out nowadays. Saying something while saying absolutely nothing at all.
I was going to comment on the same thing so I'll just add to your comment. Sony also has the convenient scape goat of Ryan leaving. He's gone in April and they can be like "Those layoffs were his doing but let's all be a happy family now!"