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Jim Ryan for TMTPOST: "we don't want games that are OK, we want the best."

ZehDon

Member
LMAO look at you tryna shift the convo away from your nonsense 'Hollywood blockbuster' claim after I made you look stupid.

Your source is clearly reporting incorrect information. The game didn't release last year, it released in February this year. Looks like it's pulling a placeholder date and price.


And, look at you tryna lowball the number of exclusives Sony has just because they're cross-gen.

I wonder why Xbox fanboys never apply this same logic back to their platform? Lmfao
... your perception of this conversation is woeful. I did write "launched", which is incorrect - my error there, it's not what I actually meant, so I should use better wording. Absolutely right to point out my mistake there. To explain in full, the site I provided is from the largest video game retailer in the country - it's a web-archive link demonstrating the price All Stars opened for. From the site you posted:
The price becomes effective beginning April 6. Obviously, PlayStation Plus subscribers who have already added the game to their collections keep it as long as they maintain their subscription.
And if we look back, we can see that the price was dropped from its eye-watering opening dollar figure after a delay. Why do you think that was? I happily wager its because literally no one cared for it from the day it was revealed - which is why they added bots to help with low player numbers four months after launch. Sony doesn't want "games that are ok", remember.

As for "low balling" the number of exclusives, you posted "Sony has released 5-6 critically acclaimed exclusives for PS5 already". I didn't low-ball anything - half the games you listed are simply not PS5 exclusives. Instead of trying to score console war points, I suggest trying to understand why someone might write something. So, I will highlight that PlayStation fans apply this logic to Xbox's cross-gen and cross-platform releases, so it seems only fair that PlayStation fans would apply similar logic.
 

yurinka

Member
Closing Japan Studio which needed to culled years ago and cancelling Days Gone 2 are not signs of this. We're seeing signs that show the exact opposite of this
They didn't close Japan Studio. Now all 2nd party games will be handled by a single team globally (XDEV), so removed that part from Japan Studio, even if they will continue having 2nd party Japanese games. They also downsized Japan Studio internal development team and refocused the entire studio around the most successful team of Japan Studio: Team Asobi. So they rebranded Japan Studio as Team Asobi.

They didn't cancel Days Gone 2. They didn't greenlight its pitch or put it on hold for a while.

The only FP studio that's going to continue doing the Naughty Dog forumula is Naughty Dog.
The only FP studio that was doing the ND formula was Naughty Dog. But if you meant single player cinematic AAA, ND, Santa Monica, Insomniac, Bend, Guerrilla, Sucker Punch, Housemarque and so on (plus potential 2nd party games from typical parters like From Software, Kojipro, Quantic Dream, etc) will continue doing that even if they may have an additional team making a multiplayer game (or a single player game with a multiplayer game mode).
 

yurinka

Member
Mile Morales, FFVII Integrade, and Guilty Gear aren't PS5 exclusives - they're all available on PS4.
They are PlayStation consoles exclusives, aren't playable in other consoles.

So, 1 title of their entire launch year suite might be able to justify Sony's inflated pricing. This a problem for Sony. How long can they continue this before people just stop buying PS5 games at launch?

You live in a reality where PS5 gamers have unlimited income and are happy to buy over-priced games indefinitely. That's not going to hold forever - gamers aren't idiots.
PS4 and PS5 have been selling consoles at gaming history records, there are more games sold for PS4 than for any other console released in gaming history and engagement is higher in PS5 than in PS4. These guys have a thing or two regarding selling stuff.

After decades of budgets rising but prices not rising even to compensate inflation, this generation publishers will increase price. Not only in PlayStation, but they are also doing it on Xbox. The next gen AAA games, specially those who aren't mostly just a crossgen game made for previous gen but barely adding a few minor tweaks for next gen like extra resolution, fps or something like that, are being priced higher in next gen, not only from Sony. As long as publishers keep migrating to next gen more games and more publishers will have these prices that btw are cheaper than many AAA 16 bits games were.

They need more revenue to compensate rising costs. This is an option. Another one is to fill the game with microtransactions and gatcha. Another one is to chop the game into multiple DLCs. Another one is to release the game in more platforms. Another one is to don't price cut the game.
 

ZehDon

Member
They are PlayStation consoles exclusives, aren't playable in other consoles.
Correct. That's not what the other poster posted, though.

PS4 and PS5 have been selling consoles at gaming history records, there are more games sold for PS4 than for any other console released in gaming history and engagement is higher in PS5 than in PS4. These guys have a thing or two regarding selling stuff.

After decades of budgets rising but prices not rising even to compensate inflation, this generation publishers will increase price. Not only in PlayStation, but they are also doing it on Xbox. The next gen AAA games, specially those who aren't mostly just a crossgen game made for previous gen but barely adding a few minor tweaks for next gen like extra resolution, fps or something like that, are being priced higher in next gen, not only from Sony. As long as publishers keep migrating to next gen more games and more publishers will have these prices that btw are cheaper than many AAA 16 bits games were.

They need more revenue to compensate rising costs. This is an option. Another one is to fill the game with microtransactions and gatcha. Another one is to chop the game into multiple DLCs. Another one is to release the game in more platforms. Another one is to don't price cut the game.
This block here disproves itself, and has been posted and disproven dozens upon dozens of times.

If PlayStation - and everyone else, actually - is having the record profits you claim - at "gaming history records" - then... what is it that they're compensating for? They're literally making more money than anyone has ever made in the history of video games. What precisely about this scenario requires a price increase? The argument for inflation is non-sensical - the video game industry today is an order of magnitude bigger than it was even twenty years ago, being when inflation would actually apply. Sony first party titles, like God of War, can sell around 15 million copies. In yesteryear, even just a million copies sold was considered an absolute cultural phenomena; a sales juggernaut smashing industry records. Today, selling just one million copies is considered an unmitigated disaster. You don't need to "compensate inflation" when the entire industry has grown to be 10, 20, or 30 times its size.
Sony and Activision have raised their prices - all other major publishers haven't, or at least haven't committed one way or the other. Xbox certainly has not increased their prices, with all announced games available for pre-order at the standard AU$100.00. That's ignoring that any price increase from Xbox first party games is entirely offset by the existence of Gamepass, where they're available for AU$15.00 a month.
 
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JoeBudden

Member
... your perception of this conversation is woeful. I did write "launched", which is incorrect - my error there, it's not what I actually meant, so I should use better wording. Absolutely right to point out my mistake there. To explain in full, the site I provided is from the largest video game retailer in the country - it's a web-archive link demonstrating the price All Stars opened for. From the site you posted:

And if we look back, we can see that the price was dropped from its eye-watering opening dollar figure after a delay. Why do you think that was? I happily wager its because literally no one cared for it from the day it was revealed - which is why they added bots to help with low player numbers four months after launch. Sony doesn't want "games that are ok", remember.

As for "low balling" the number of exclusives, you posted "Sony has released 5-6 critically acclaimed exclusives for PS5 already". I didn't low-ball anything - half the games you listed are simply not PS5 exclusives. Instead of trying to score console war points, I suggest trying to understand why someone might write something. So, I will highlight that PlayStation fans apply this logic to Xbox's cross-gen and cross-platform releases, so it seems only fair that PlayStation fans would apply similar logic.

LMAO so you're going to continue to pivot to other console war topics away from your dumbass "Hollywood blockbusters" claim, and now argue semantics over Sony console exclusive vs PS5 exclusive, so you can salvage any sort of win here after getting embarrassed. You know exactly what i meant, so this is absolutely pathetic.

Why would anyone pay ANY price for an ONLINE multiplayer game that you can get for FREE on the service you require to play online? It's clear you didn't think this through. You're not even vetting your own links cause NOWHERE in that article does it state that the game was being sold for full price.

And cut out the "your perception is woeful" nonsense lmao. It's 2021. Who the hell speaks like that today? Just because we're all gamers doesn't mean we need to be neckbeards too.
 
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yurinka

Member
Correct. That's not what the other poster posted, though.



If PlayStation - and everyone else, actually - is having the record profits you claim - at "gaming history records" - then... what is it that they're compensating for? They're literally making more money than anyone has ever made in the history of video games. What precisely about this scenario requires a price increase? The argument for inflation is non-sensical - the video game industry today is an order of magnitude bigger than it was even twenty years ago, being when inflation would actually apply. Sony first party titles, like God of War, can sell around 15 million copies. In yesteryear, even just a million copies sold was considered an absolute cultural phenomena; a sales juggernaut smashing industry records. Today, selling just one million copies is considered an unmitigated disaster. You don't need to "compensate inflation" when the entire industry has grown to be 10, 20, or 30 times its size.
Sony and Activision have raised their prices - all other major publishers haven't, or at least haven't committed one way or the other. Xbox certainly has not increased their prices, with all announced games available for pre-order at the standard AU$100.00. That's ignoring that any price increase from Xbox first party games is entirely offset by the existence of Gamepass, where they're available for AU$15.00 a month.
Not everyone else. Only PlayStation posts record gaming history record revenues for a console owner. Only PS4 broke the PS2 record of 1500 million games sold for a console. PS5 is the best selling console ever on its life cycle point, Switch on its life cycle point (but Playstation consoles continue for longer in the market than Nintendo consoles & handhelds), PS4 is 2.5 million away of being the best selling console ever on its life cycle point and Sony.

The argument for inflation is how economics work. Over years prices get more expensive to get updated to inflation. Games have been a very rare case because they didn't update with inflation. And even more rare considering that a AAA development now costs around 200 millions and is sold at a lower price than decades ago a game was sold when its budget was like 10 times cheaper. And they did it when there were way less competition than now, now it's way more difficult to get attention between hundreds of games being released every month, and for that reason they now also spend way more in marketing than before. Only a few games every year sell 15 million copies, in fact only a few Sony games sold like that the generation or ever, not representative at all even for AAA games. Same happened back in the NES and SNES age Mario games also sold 15-20+ million units but wasn't representative of the other games, almost nobody sold that.

AAA games sold a million or two in the 16 bits age and that was a big success for many of them. Today when they sell a million or two is a fucking disaster and many of them do even if obviously don't share numbers. We even saw cases with games selling 4 or 5 millions with AAA multiplatform games and their publishers not being happy with that.

Not only Sony and Activision rised their prices for next gen. Look at EA, Square Enix or Gearbox with games like FIFA 22, Battlefield 2042 (for both games both on PS5 and Series X, prices are also rised on Xbox), FFVIIR Intergrade or Godfall. When their next gen games are more than minimum effort port basically all of them are rising the price. If Microsoft didn't rise their prices is because they still have to release their first next gen only game. They and all the other major publishers will end rising prices too as long as they move to make next gen only games or at least crossgen games with a substantial effort on the next gen version.
 
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JoeBudden

Member
Not everyone else. Only PlayStation posts record gaming history record revenues for a console owner. Only PS4 broke the PS2 record of 1500 million games sold for a console. PS5 is the best selling console ever on its life cycle point, Switch on its life cycle point (but Playstation consoles continue for longer in the market than Nintendo consoles & handhelds), PS4 is 2.5 million away of being the best selling console ever on its life cycle point and Sony.

The argument for inflation is how economics work. Over years prices get more expensive to get updated to inflation. Games have been a very rare case because they didn't update with inflation. And even more rare considering that a AAA development now costs around 200 millions and is sold at a lower price than decades ago a game was sold when its budget was like 10 times cheaper. And they did it when there were way less competition than now, now it's way more difficult to get attention between hundreds of games being released every month, and for that reason they now also spend way more in marketing than before. Only a few games every year sell 15 million copies, in fact only a few Sony games sold like that the generation or ever, not representative at all even for AAA games. Same happened back in the NES and SNES age Mario games also sold 15-20+ million units but wasn't representative of the other games, almost nobody sold that.

AAA games sold a million or two in the 16 bits age and that was a big success for many of them. Today when they sell a million or two is a fucking disaster and many of them do even if obviously don't share numbers. We even saw cases with games selling 4 or 5 millions with AAA multiplatform games and their publishers not being happy with that.

Not only Sony and Activision rised their prices for next gen. Look at EA, Square Enix or Gearbox with games like FIFA 22, Battlefield 2042 (for both games both on PS5 and Series X, prices are also rised on Xbox), FFVIIR Intergrade or Godfall. When their next gen games are more than minimum effort port basically all of them are rising the price. If Microsoft didn't rise their prices is because they still have to release their first next gen only game. They and all the other major publishers will end rising prices too as long as they move to make next gen only games or at least crossgen games with a substantial effort on the next gen version.

The first game to introduce next gen prices was actually NBA 2K21. Idk where this narrative that Sony came up with this new next gen price came from lol.

And, like you said, MS still has to release their first next gen game. Let's see if people keep the same energy when they see MS raise their prices too.
 

yurinka

Member
The first game to introduce next gen prices was actually NBA 2K21. Idk where this narrative that Sony came up with this new next gen price came from lol.

And, like you said, MS still has to release their first next gen game. Let's see if people keep the same energy when they see MS raise their prices too.
As I mentioned Gearbox was there day one with a 79.99€ game, Godfall: a next gen only launch day game. The next gen more expensive prices aren't a Sony/PS5 only thing. Other publishers like Square or EA are also using them, even on Xbox (as I mentioned, see FIFA 22 or Battlefield 2042 next gen Xbox prices).

The first next gen only AAA MS game is expected to be released late 2022 or 2023. I assume that at that point people will be used to these prices, will have realized that not only Sony is using them and that are also applied on Xbox, so people will stop using them as fanboy console wars ammo.

I want to see Jim Ryan's trophy list on his PSN account.

Show us you aren't just the money guy Jim.
He's a CEO, and doesn't need to be a hardcore player or good as games, or even to have a deep gaming knowledge, they have thousands of other employees for that.

He has been doing a great job making great numbers on his divisions during almost 30 years in the company, so they kept promoting him. Now he's the CEO, they are market leaders, they are breaking many records including making more money in their division than anybody else ever did in a console platform holder, and looking at their strategy seems they will continue doing it for several years.

What we should care about him is that he keeps the proper strategy, which as of now is to give as much great exclusive games for PS5 than ever had on their history: growing a lot their internal 1st party team, making acquisitions that make sense, improving their 2nd party side and spending more money on it and also going bold with top AAA and indie 3rd party exclusives and expanding their markets bringing PS Now and old ports to PC or even mobile, or bringing their top IPs to movies or tv series, and to keep working on their console features, hardware (PSVR2 coming soon, also working on PS6) and services (there's next gen PS Now improvements coming). That's basically what they are doing and sounds as a great strategy.
 
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ZehDon

Member
LMAO so you're going to continue to pivot to other console war topics away from your dumbass "Hollywood blockbusters" claim, and now argue semantics over Sony console exclusive vs PS5 exclusive, so you can salvage any sort of win here after getting embarrassed. You know exactly what i meant, so this is absolutely pathetic.

Why would anyone pay ANY price for an ONLINE multiplayer game that you can get for FREE on the service you require to play online? It's clear you didn't think this through. You're not even vetting your own links cause NOWHERE in that article does it state that the game was being sold for full price.

And cut out the "your perception is woeful" nonsense lmao. It's 2021. Who the hell speaks like that today? Just because we're all gamers doesn't mean we need to be neckbeards too.
What an absolutely disgraceful post. Not only are you not responding to what I've written, you're actively ignoring it so you can fling insults and console war bullshit. Don't bother replying - you're everything that's wrong with gaming and I don't really want to talk to you any more.

Not everyone else. Only PlayStation posts record gaming history record revenues for a console owner. Only PS4 broke the PS2 record of 1500 million games sold for a console. PS5 is the best selling console ever on its life cycle point, Switch on its life cycle point (but Playstation consoles continue for longer in the market than Nintendo consoles & handhelds), PS4 is 2.5 million away of being the best selling console ever on its life cycle point and Sony.

The argument for inflation is how economics work. Over years prices get more expensive to get updated to inflation. Games have been a very rare case because they didn't update with inflation. And even more rare considering that a AAA development now costs around 200 millions and is sold at a lower price than decades ago a game was sold when its budget was like 10 times cheaper. And they did it when there were way less competition than now, now it's way more difficult to get attention between hundreds of games being released every month, and for that reason they now also spend way more in marketing than before. Only a few games every year sell 15 million copies, in fact only a few Sony games sold like that the generation or ever, not representative at all even for AAA games. Same happened back in the NES and SNES age Mario games also sold 15-20+ million units but wasn't representative of the other games, almost nobody sold that.

AAA games sold a million or two in the 16 bits age and that was a big success for many of them. Today when they sell a million or two is a fucking disaster and many of them do even if obviously don't share numbers. We even saw cases with games selling 4 or 5 millions with AAA multiplatform games and their publishers not being happy with that.

Not only Sony and Activision rised their prices for next gen. Look at EA, Square Enix or Gearbox with games like FIFA 22, Battlefield 2042 (for both games both on PS5 and Series X, prices are also rised on Xbox), FFVIIR Intergrade or Godfall. When their next gen games are more than minimum effort port basically all of them are rising the price. If Microsoft didn't rise their prices is because they still have to release their first next gen only game. They and all the other major publishers will end rising prices too as long as they move to make next gen only games or at least crossgen games with a substantial effort on the next gen version.
This post is a tad scatter shot, jumping around between sentences and points that seem to contradict itself. In your previous post, we were talking publishers. Now you want to only talk about console owners... before going back to only talking about publishers. Which is it? Your figures also aren't correct - most AAA games do not cost US$200 million, average budgets have not increased 10x, and using isolated examples when we're discussing industry wide trends is pointless. I think you need to focus on or two points and make them a bit more clearly, because I can't really follow what you're trying to say.

With regards to game prices, maybe my post wasn't clear. I specifically highlighted that Sony and Activision are the only publishers to confirm a full next-gen price increase. Everyone else has failed to commit. EA has some titles costing more, some costing the same, and some with free next-gen upgrades. Basically the same for Square. And two of the four games you posted are PlayStation exclusives... that cost more because Sony committed to a price increase. I agree, however, that everyone will eventually raise their prices - because PlayStation raised them first and proved they could get away with it. Activision actually tried this back in the PS360 days with Modern Warfare 2, but it didn't catch on. This time it appears that it has. Anyway, this is getting a little off-topic. The point remains: Jim's comments suggest Sony isn't happy with anything but the best. Combined with Sony's price increase, means Sony's focus is squarely on sure-fire blockbusters. Games like All Stars and Godfall clearly don't meet the cut, so I doubt we'll see more games like that. And as I lamented in my post, I believe it means Sony's studios will continue their trend towards making very similiar styles of games.
 

JoeBudden

Member
What an absolutely disgraceful post. Not only are you not responding to what I've written, you're actively ignoring it so you can fling insults and console war bullshit. Don't bother replying - you're everything that's wrong with gaming and I don't really want to talk to you any more.

LMAO the irony in accusing me of ignoring your points. Fam, the only reason we had this back and forth is because you kept bringing in console war topics to deflect after looking stupid on your Hollywood blockbusters claim. Which you are still avoiding.

And now you don't wanna talk after 2/2 links you posted didn't even support your own console war arguments, that YOU shifted the convo to. Yeah, I bet you don't wanna talk anymore lmao. Your ego is absolutely hilarious.

Nah, man, YOU are what's wrong with gaming today. A fanboy going around spreading bullshit and nonsense in order to feel better about the platform his parents chose for him one Christmas day. You probably don't even realize the amount of times you contradicted yourself.
 
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JoeBudden

Member
As I mentioned Gearbox was there day one with a 79.99€ game, Godfall: a next gen only launch day game. The next gen more expensive prices aren't a Sony/PS5 only thing. Other publishers like Square or EA are also using them, even on Xbox (as I mentioned, see FIFA 22 or Battlefield 2042 next gen Xbox prices).

The first next gen only AAA MS game is expected to be released late 2022 or 2023. I assume that at that point people will be used to these prices, will have realized that not only Sony is using them and that are also applied on Xbox, so people will stop using them as fanboy console wars ammo.

The prices for NBA 2K21 were announced last summer ahead of next gen console launch so I think that was first (I could be wrong). Either way, we're splitting hairs here, and the overall point is this stuff isn't decided by a single company like fanboys want to suggest.

And, we're arguing with people who had no issue with MS paywalling F2P games (you know, the most popular games like Fortnite, Warzone and Apex) for over a generation, or triple dipping on their own games like Age of Empires 1-3 (the game got a HD remaster, and then a defininitive remaster again).

Their concerns over next gen pricing is phony and disingenuous.
 
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John Wick

Member
If that was the case Jimbo you wouldn't have released The Amazing Destruction All Stars and the critically acclaimed Godfall. Sometimes this guy just doesn't know when to shut his lying trap. We still believe in generations eh Jimbo?
 

Lupin25

Member
If that was the case Jimbo you wouldn't have released The Amazing Destruction All Stars and the critically acclaimed Godfall. Sometimes this guy just doesn't know when to shut his lying trap. We still believe in generations eh Jimbo?

Those are 3rd party, external studios, though...

If we’re talking about games released under his radar from WWS?

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Returnal, Demon’s Souls Remake, Sackboy: A New Adventure, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Astro’s Playroom, The Last of Us, Pt. II & Ghost of Tsushima.

That’s an astounding list in just one year, no matter what you think of the guy.

Then you’ll have Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Deathloop, GhostWire: Tokyo, Horizon II: Forbidden West, GT7 & God of War coming up soon.
 
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yurinka

Member
The prices for NBA 2K21 were announced last summer ahead of next gen console launch so I think that was first (I could be wrong). Either way, we're splitting hairs here, and the overall point is this stuff isn't decided by a single company like fanboys want to suggest.

And, we're arguing with people who had no issue with MS paywalling F2P games (you know, the most popular games like Fortnite, Warzone and Apex) for over a generation, or triple dipping on their own games like Age of Empires (the game got a HD remaster, and then a defininitive remaster again).

Their concerns over next gen pricing is phony and disingenuous.
To be fair, recently MS said they were going to stop paywalling F2P games.

If that was the case Jimbo you wouldn't have released The Amazing Destruction All Stars and the critically acclaimed Godfall. Sometimes this guy just doesn't know when to shut his lying trap. We still believe in generations eh Jimbo?
Are you joking?

The CEO doesn't decide what games are greenlighted to be developed on their console, and even less when they are 3rd party games like Godfall.

And he didn't lie, Sony is doing 100% what he said in the 'we believe in generations interview': all their PS5 games are using the next gen only features like dual sense features, 3d audio, faster loading times and so on, and they continue supporting PS4 as he said in that interview that they would do for at least a couple of years after PS5 launch because during that period even if they sell PS5 at record level as they expected back then, they would continue most of their players still on PS4. And as he said, PS4 as of now it has over 80 million monthly active users. Not consoles sold: monthly active users.
 
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nekrik

Member
malaysiamoji yes GIF by Maxis
 

yurinka

Member
This post is a tad scatter shot, jumping around between sentences and points that seem to contradict itself. In your previous post, we were talking publishers. Now you want to only talk about console owners... before going back to only talking about publishers. Which is it? Your figures also aren't correct - most AAA games do not cost US$200 million, average budgets have not increased 10x, and using isolated examples when we're discussing industry wide trends is pointless. I think you need to focus on or two points and make them a bit more clearly, because I can't really follow what you're trying to say.

I mix Sony as publisher and as platform owner because they are both and obviously both things are closely related for them since their published games are only a part of their gaming strategy.

My figures are correct: most current Sony top AAA games (and same goes with other top publishers) have a budgets of $150/$200M+, and in some cases only for development, not counting marketing which has a pretty similar budget. In fact the millions I said for 8 and 16 bit was too generous since many of these games were made by barely a dozen devs or less in a few months and their marketing budgets were a joke compared to the current ones.

The AAA budgets didn't increase 10X since the 8 and 16 bits, they increased way more since now their development last for 4 or 5 years or even more and over 1500 people are directly working on them (plus more indirectly or not listed in the game credits, which can be double checked in mobygames.com).

With regards to game prices, maybe my post wasn't clear. I specifically highlighted that Sony and Activision are the only publishers to confirm a full next-gen price increase. Everyone else has failed to commit. EA has some titles costing more, some costing the same, and some with free next-gen upgrades. Basically the same for Square. And two of the four games you posted are PlayStation exclusives... that cost more because Sony committed to a price increase. I agree, however, that everyone will eventually raise their prices - because PlayStation raised them first and proved they could get away with it. Activision actually tried this back in the PS360 days with Modern Warfare 2, but it didn't catch on. This time it appears that it has. Anyway, this is getting a little off-topic. The point remains: Jim's comments suggest Sony isn't happy with anything but the best. Combined with Sony's price increase, means Sony's focus is squarely on sure-fire blockbusters. Games like All Stars and Godfall clearly don't meet the cut, so I doubt we'll see more games like that. And as I lamented in my post, I believe it means Sony's studios will continue their trend towards making very similiar styles of games.
Activision and Sony also have games with the same price in both generations and with free next-gen upgrades. As I said, in games that mostly are only a previous gen game with minimal standard upgrades when porting it to next gen. The game that charge more for next gen games are traditionally those developed for next gen, or crossgen games with substantial extra next gen improvements in addition to the traditional ones. But in any case, over time all of them will end rising the AAA prices for next gen.

Godfall and Final Fantasy VIIR Intergrade are 3rd party timed exclusives, they will be released on Xbox sooner or later. But I assume they will debut there at a discounted price because of being old ports.

And again, the price isn't a Sony thing because publishers are the ones decide the price of their own games, not Sony. And 3rd party publishers are also charging extra in next gen both in Xbox and PS. Tell me, is Sony telling EA to sell the Xbox Series X version of FIFA or Battlefield for $70/80€?

Regarding Jim's words, no. They won't bet only on sure-fire blockbusters and won't 'continue' making very similar games. They stated and confirmed many times that will publish both huge AAA games and small games, single player and multiplayer games, western and Asian games, traditional game types and more experimental ones like Dreams/DeathStranding/Returnal/etc, and that aprox. half of the games they have under development are new IPs. Some of them will be weird VR stuff. They even will try with GaaS, mobile games and pretty likely will try again with FPS (pure speculation seeing they will get games from the CoD BO guys, the Destiny guys and that Guerrilla seems to be making a new Killzone with the Rainbow Six Siege guy). As always, some of them will be very successful like Ghost of Tsushima, Morales, TLOU2, Death Stranding or Astro's Playroom. Some of them will suck like Destruction All Stars. And they will take note of their performance for future projects.

He only said that obviously he and everybody else prefers and remembers the best games, and forgets the meh and bad games, so obviously they will try to make the best games they can. But obviously even if their exclusives dominated the GOTY awards candidates lists during over a decade, they are human and from time to time release some turd like everybody else. Games like Destruction All Stars or Godfal that maybe on their pitch or early stages sounded like promising great ideas but ended being bad games.
 
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John Wick

Member
To be fair, recently MS said they were going to stop paywalling F2P games.


Are you joking?

The CEO doesn't decide what games are greenlighted to be developed on their console, and even less when they are 3rd party games like Godfall.

And he didn't lie, Sony is doing 100% what he said in the 'we believe in generations interview': all their PS5 games are using the next gen only features like dual sense features, 3d audio, faster loading times and so on, and they continue supporting PS4 as he said in that interview that they would do for at least a couple of years after PS5 launch because during that period even if they sell PS5 at record level as they expected back then, they would continue most of their players still on PS4. And as he said, PS4 as of now it has over 80 million monthly active users. Not consoles sold: monthly active users.
Are you in denial? Or just plain dense?
He stated himself he wanted the best games. Now it's not his decision on what games get chosen? So why is he opening his stupid mouth for then?
No of course he didn't lie. Just after when MS confirmed crossgen games for Series consoles. Believe in generations means games made for PS5 only. Not including DualSense support etc. Sometimes the stupidity and denial of fanboys is ridiculous.
 

John Wick

Member
Not everyone else. Only PlayStation posts record gaming history record revenues for a console owner. Only PS4 broke the PS2 record of 1500 million games sold for a console. PS5 is the best selling console ever on its life cycle point, Switch on its life cycle point (but Playstation consoles continue for longer in the market than Nintendo consoles & handhelds), PS4 is 2.5 million away of being the best selling console ever on its life cycle point and Sony.

The argument for inflation is how economics work. Over years prices get more expensive to get updated to inflation. Games have been a very rare case because they didn't update with inflation. And even more rare considering that a AAA development now costs around 200 millions and is sold at a lower price than decades ago a game was sold when its budget was like 10 times cheaper. And they did it when there were way less competition than now, now it's way more difficult to get attention between hundreds of games being released every month, and for that reason they now also spend way more in marketing than before. Only a few games every year sell 15 million copies, in fact only a few Sony games sold like that the generation or ever, not representative at all even for AAA games. Same happened back in the NES and SNES age Mario games also sold 15-20+ million units but wasn't representative of the other games, almost nobody sold that.

AAA games sold a million or two in the 16 bits age and that was a big success for many of them. Today when they sell a million or two is a fucking disaster and many of them do even if obviously don't share numbers. We even saw cases with games selling 4 or 5 millions with AAA multiplatform games and their publishers not being happy with that.

Not only Sony and Activision rised their prices for next gen. Look at EA, Square Enix or Gearbox with games like FIFA 22, Battlefield 2042 (for both games both on PS5 and Series X, prices are also rised on Xbox), FFVIIR Intergrade or Godfall. When their next gen games are more than minimum effort port basically all of them are rising the price. If Microsoft didn't rise their prices is because they still have to release their first next gen only game. They and all the other major publishers will end rising prices too as long as they move to make next gen only games or at least crossgen games with a substantial effort on the next gen version.
So which games cost 200 million? Barring the Last of Us 2 which Sony game had a budget of 200 million development cost?
A game like GTA 5 would cost that much because of how big in scope it was and the production values while also being developed on multiple platforms. Stop posting figures without actual proof just because you think they might cost that much.
 
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The AAA budgets didn't increase 10X since the 8 and 16 bits, they increased way more since now their development last for 4 or 5 years or even more and over 1500 people are directly working on them (plus more indirectly or not listed in the game credits, which can be double checked in mobygames.com).

No of people playing games have also increased over 8-16bit era.

That should subsidise costs of game development for everyone.

All I know is, Sony is making money hand over fist. Regularly selling 20 million units per game they make.

There is no need to increase price. They should lower it to attract more people into buying day 1.
 

John Wick

Member
Those are 3rd party, external studios, though...

If we’re talking about games released under his radar from WWS?

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Returnal, Demon’s Souls Remake, Sackboy: A New Adventure, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Astro’s Playroom, The Last of Us, Pt. II & Ghost of Tsushima.

That’s an astounding list in just one year, no matter what you think of the guy.

Then you’ll have Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Deathloop, GhostWire: Tokyo, Horizon II: Forbidden West, GT7 & God of War coming up soon.
Apart from Returnal the rest are made by successful studios long before Jim Ryan added anything to Sony.
Also most of those games aren't an astounding list. 2 or 3 are gems the rest are just good games. You tried making out as though the whole list was TLOU 2 or DS level in quality when they aren't.
 
Those are 3rd party, external studios, though...

If we’re talking about games released under his radar from WWS?

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Returnal, Demon’s Souls Remake, Sackboy: A New Adventure, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Astro’s Playroom, The Last of Us, Pt. II & Ghost of Tsushima.

That’s an astounding list in just one year, no matter what you think of the guy.

Then you’ll have Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Deathloop, GhostWire: Tokyo, Horizon II: Forbidden West, GT7 & God of War coming up soon.
Do 3rd party games count or do they not count? Just curious because you're not consistent on this.
 

John Wick

Member
No of people playing games have also increased over 8-16bit era.

That should subsidise costs of game development for everyone.

All I know is, Sony is making money hand over fist. Regularly selling 20 million units per game they make.

There is no need to increase price. They should lower it to attract more people into buying day 1.
Bro we need to pay the devs because they should be paid for their work. Nothing is free we'll according to fanboy logic. Sony are well in their right to ask for more.
 

Interfectum

Member
Do 3rd party games count or do they not count? Just curious because you're not consistent on this.
I'd say third parties are harder to control. Like if Sony was pitched a game by a third party, sold on it, they signed a contract and the game ended up being shit, there's not much Sony as a game publisher can do beside I guess just cancel it.
 
All I know is, Sony is making money hand over fist. Regularly selling 20 million units per game they make.
This isn't true in two ways. First, Sony selling 20 million copies of a game is an exception, not a rule. Second, to get even close to that number, they have to substantially decrease the price of the game or bundle the game with consoles, and they do that fairly quickly after the game's release. So I can see why a price increase (and releasing on PC) might still be necessary.
 
Bro we need to pay the devs because they should be paid for their work. Nothing is free we'll according to fanboy logic. Sony are well in their right to ask for more.

Dev's will get paid the same amount as PS4 generation.

It's not like Jim Ryan will come out of his man cave to announce "Duh, we are charging $70 per game, so, um, 15% salary hike to everyone working for Sony."

Truth is, they might be cutting salary due to work from home and other excuses for all we know.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Dev's will get paid the same amount as PS4 generation.

It's not like Jim Ryan will come out of his man cave to announce "Duh, we are charging $70 per game, so, um, 15% salary hike to everyone working for Sony."

Truth is, they might be cutting salary due to work from home and other excuses for all we know.

People at Sony are well compensated. Lots of stock options when your under the studios umbrella. If your talking QA/QC staff, those people mostly unless they hold a senior position are hourly.
 

yurinka

Member
No of people playing games have also increased over 8-16bit era.

That should subsidise costs of game development for everyone.

All I know is, Sony is making money hand over fist. Regularly selling 20 million units per game they make.

There is no need to increase price. They should lower it to attract more people into buying day 1.
No, out of more than maybe a hundred games published Sony in all their history, only like maybe half a dozen or may have sold over 10 millions. And not sure if we got the confirmation of one of them selling over 20 million probably only one or two reached that (and obviously none of them is a PS5 launch window game).
 
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yurinka

Member
Are you in denial? Or just plain dense?
He stated himself he wanted the best games. Now it's not his decision on what games get chosen? So why is he opening his stupid mouth for then?
He's the CEO, he doesn't greenlight games. For 1st and 2nd party games, Hermen's team is who greenlights them. For 3rd party games, the publishers are who greenlight their own games.

But like any human being, he has a personal opinion on what type of games he likes and what type of games he thinks most people like. And what he said is just common sense: people (or he) prefers the best games and forgets the average or bad games, so they should focus on making great games, games that their potential customers would prefer to buy.

No of course he didn't lie. Just after when MS confirmed crossgen games for Series consoles. Believe in generations means games made for PS5 only. Not including DualSense support etc. Sometimes the stupidity and denial of fanboys is ridiculous.
Go and read the interview again.

He never said they were going to avoid crossgen games, it's something the interviewed assumed but he didn't say. And the 'we believe in generations' sentence is cut and put out of context for that reason. Reading the original full sentence -or better, the original full interview- you get what Jim meant.

He said that the active userbase of the previous generation still will be huge for a while so they planned to continue supporting it with new games for a while, but that at the same time they were going to have a new generation that it will bring new, next gen only features like adaptative triggers, haptic feedback, 3D audio, super fast SSD and so on that he wanted native games to support and take advantage of these exclusive new features to provide a more different and unique in the next gen.

Meaning:
-Sony was working to have great PS4 games for a couple of years or so after PS5 launch (not a lie, there are many big Sony and 3rd party games coming for PS4)
-He wanted native PS5 games to take advantage of the next gen features (not a lie, all native games support these features, and the exclusive ones take special advantage of them)
 
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yurinka

Member
So which games cost 200 million? Barring the Last of Us 2 which Sony game had a budget of 200 million development cost?
A game like GTA 5 would cost that much because of how big in scope it was and the production values while also being developed on multiple platforms. Stop posting figures without actual proof just because you think they might cost that much.
Some examples of the amount of people credited in the game taken from Moby Games, years of development (pretty likely including preproduction in most cases) taken from their wikipedia page:
TLOU2: 2331 people, 6 years
Horizon: 2141 people, 6 years
Spider-Man: 2252 people, 4 years
GoW 2018: 1759 people, around 4 years
GOT: 1796 people, over 5 years
Uncharted 4: 1689 people, around 5 years
Days Gone: 1679 people, 4 years
Sackboy: 1530 people, ??? years
Returnal: 1344 people, more than four years
Death Stranding: 1491 people, around 3 years

Games like Morales, Demon's Souls or Ratchet Rift Apart don't have the related info posted there.

As reference, a few examples:
Destiny: 1195 people(very likely doesn't include post-launch/DLC), around 4 years
Cyberpunk 2077: 3532 people, 4+ years (entered pre-production in 2016)

We also have to remember that the cost of developing (and publishing/releasing) a game, its total budget isn't only the cost of development itself, games also have a related marketing budget that often is pretty close to the development costs. The $500M investment in Destiny included development and marketing. Cyberpunk 2077 had a budget of $316 million (174 development, 142 marketing). And is salaries are super cheap in Poland compared to USA, UK, Finland, Netherlands or Japan.

So yes, Sony must have several games in the >$200M total budget ballpark, some of them $200M+ even only considering development costs and not marketing, or at least above $150M. And these games with around 2000 workers and around 5 years of work were mostly PS4 gen games, every generation there's a substantial increase in costs so the next gen only PS5 top AAA games pretty likely will be way above $200M.
 
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Lupin25

Member
Apart from Returnal the rest are made by successful studios long before Jim Ryan added anything to Sony.
Also most of those games aren't an astounding list. 2 or 3 are gems the rest are just good games. You tried making out as though the whole list was TLOU 2 or DS level in quality when they aren't.

Well, what you think in terms of quality of those games is subjective. Regardless, those are the games that have been published without much delay since he’s been promoted.



Do 3rd party games count or do they not count? Just curious because you're not consistent on this.

They do when it comes to PS5 consumer value, don’t they (that’s why I added them)?

As far as being under his developmental supervision?

No.
 
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ZehDon

Member
My figures are correct: most current Sony top AAA games (and same goes with other top publishers) have a budgets of $150/$200M+, and in some cases only for development, not counting marketing which has a pretty similar budget. In fact the millions I said for 8 and 16 bit was too generous since many of these games were made by barely a dozen devs or less in a few months and their marketing budgets were a joke compared to the current ones.
You're all over the page here. You need to focus on points and make them. This is the second time I've asked you to clarify what you're saying.

We are discussing industry wide trends - you're throwing statements about only Sony... and then tacking on "other top publishers". Your statement is incorrect in both counts; Jim Ryan lists their games around US$100m - and that was for one notably expensive title, meaning their other games aren't quite that expensive. We're also not discussing the industry's change from 1980 to 2021 in terms of budgets. Literally no one is talking about what was happening in 1980. I was quite specific when I said "twenty years ago", referring back to the OG Xbox and PlayStation 2 era of 2001. During this era, games stopped be able to be made by small teams and now required larger teams to produce. Budgets have not increased 10x. Your comparisons are disingenuous and you're pulling numbers out of thin air. Please start discussing things in good faith, and start backing up your numbers, or I'll stop replying.

Activision and Sony also have games with the same price in both generations and with free next-gen upgrades. As I said, in games that mostly are only a previous gen game with minimal standard upgrades when porting it to next gen. The game that charge more for next gen games are traditionally those developed for next gen, or crossgen games with substantial extra next gen improvements in addition to the traditional ones. But in any case, over time all of them will end rising the AAA prices for next gen.
This is word soup. Can you please clarify what you're saying?

Godfall and Final Fantasy VIIR Intergrade are 3rd party timed exclusives, they will be released on Xbox sooner or later. But I assume they will debut there at a discounted price because of being old ports.
Not only does this not have anything to do with what you're saying, it proves the opposite of your point. You might want to re-read this again.

And again, the price isn't a Sony thing because publishers are the ones decide the price of their own games, not Sony. And 3rd party publishers are also charging extra in next gen both in Xbox and PS. Tell me, is Sony telling EA to sell the Xbox Series X version of FIFA or Battlefield for $70/80€?
You're deliberating attempting to obfuscate the issue with outlandish statements. No one is claiming a vast international conspiracy with Sony at the vanguard. Sony, as a platform holder, demonstrated that they could simply raise the price of their first party games and fans would just pay more money. Everyone else followed suite when they realised there was free money to be had, and fanboys would actually defend the price increase because "next gen". Everything else you've posted is noise.

Some examples of the amount of people credited in the game taken from Moby Games, years of development (pretty likely including preproduction in most cases) taken from their wikipedia page:
TLOU2: 2331 people, 6 years
Horizon: 2141 people, 6 years
Spider-Man: 2252 people, 4 years
GoW 2018: 1759 people, around 4 years
GOT: 1796 people, over 5 years
Uncharted 4: 1689 people, around 5 years
Days Gone: 1679 people, 4 years
Sackboy: 1530 people, ??? years
Returnal: 1344 people, more than four years
Death Stranding: 1491 people, around 3 years...
Virtually everything you posted in this specific post is absolutely false. I'll concentrate on the top numbers, because you're deliberately mis-representing the development of these games to make garbage points.

For example, TLOUII did not have 2,331 people working on the game for six years. In fact, the game didn't even enter full production until late 2017. The estimated budget is around US$100m, and it is likely the game Jim Ryan was referring to in my above link... which indicates this specific budget was notably larger than the average Sony first party game.
According to the director of Days Gone, they were mostly 45 people for several years before "ballooning" up to 120 over the course of development. Estimated budget for Days Gone in that link becomes roughly US$28-38 million.
Returnal's developer, Housemarque, tops out at roughly 80 people at their peak. Returnal is a mid-budget Sony title, hence the push back on its AAA pricing.

This pattern is true for basically every single game you've posted. You're deliberately mis-presenting the development sizes, lengths, and budgets of these games. If this is all you're going to post, there's nothing worth discussing.
 

SLB1904

Banned
If that was the case Jimbo you wouldn't have released The Amazing Destruction All Stars and the critically acclaimed Godfall. Sometimes this guy just doesn't know when to shut his lying trap. We still believe in generations eh Jimbo?
yeah because want something is the same as having it. why is so hard for some of you to interpret a sentence?
 

yurinka

Member
You're all over the page here. You need to focus on points and make them. This is the second time I've asked you to clarify what you're saying.

We are discussing industry wide trends - you're throwing statements about only Sony... and then tacking on "other top publishers". Your statement is incorrect in both counts; Jim Ryan lists their games around US$100m - and that was for one notably expensive title, meaning their other games aren't quite that expensive. We're also not discussing the industry's change from 1980 to 2021 in terms of budgets. Literally no one is talking about what was happening in 1980. I was quite specific when I said "twenty years ago", referring back to the OG Xbox and PlayStation 2 era of 2001. During this era, games stopped be able to be made by small teams and now required larger teams to produce. Budgets have not increased 10x. Your comparisons are disingenuous and you're pulling numbers out of thin air. Please start discussing things in good faith, and start backing up your numbers, or I'll stop replying.
Bullshit. I explained it well and provided facts, it's just you that don't want to understand it and are avoiding the facts.

And please, don't lie. Ryan doesn't say 'around $100M' and doesn't say 'that was for one notably expensive title', he said 'THEY cost MORE THAN $100M'. And I proved that it's way higher than 100M and that it's the case for all the relatively recent top AAA Sony games, showing the examples of all the ones with their manpower listed in their game credits (via mobygames.com, a few games don't have their credits listed there so I didn't list them) and their development time mentioned by the devs (via wikipedia) and comparing them to a couple of other top AAA games whose budget we know because their creators mentioned it publicly. Games with budgets way higher than 100M and a manpower and dev time pretty similar to Sony to compare them.

I also highlighted Sony because this is a Sony thread and because I'm the one who decides the topic I mention, not you.

There's someone mentioning the AAA games from the 8 and 16 bits: myself. To explain that current prices are basically as they were then, or even cheaper when considering inflation. And also added that the development times and manpower, so their budget was way smaller then, to contrast it better with the current times and explain better why they need to rise the prices and when this issue started.

I didn't talk about PS2 generation, because this problem started way before, when I said: the 16 bit generation, that is when budgets started to grow generation after generation but prices kept more or less the same, and PS2 was only a generation more in the middle of these stairs where budgets kept increasing every generation.

As Ryan says in that interview, these budgets are becoming dangerous and risky. Every generation costs rise a lot, sales almost don't rise and prices kept getting smaller because they didn't update the release price with inflation and now they get discounted more and faster.

This is word soup. Can you please clarify what you're saying?
I said that 'Sony and Activision are the only publishers to confirm a full next-gen price increase' wasn't true. Like EA or Square, Sony or Activision have games with the same price in both generations and free next gen upgrades (in many cases those developed from previous gen and their next gen version is mostly a raw port). While at the same time they also have other games with a paid next gen update or different pricing for each generation (in many cases when there's additional next gen only stuff other than the basic, standar improvements).

Not only does this not have anything to do with what you're saying, it proves the opposite of your point. You might want to re-read this again.
There's nothing wrong with that. Godfall and FFVIIR Intergrade are 3rd party games, so their publishers decide their pricing. And they decided to sell these next gen games at 80€/$70 at launch. Over time, like all games -excluding Nintendo- will be discounted and will apply price cuts.

They are timed console exclusives, which means that some day in the future they will be released for Xbox, and very likely it will happen at a discounted price because it's very rare to see a year old or two years old game keeping the same price it had at launch. If cheaper in Xbox will be because of being old, because we already saw multiple $70/80€ games on Xbox.

Which also means that if Godfall and FFVIIR Intergrade would have been day one multis they would have cost $70/80€ on Xbox too. The reason that we're seeing more $70/80€ games on PS5 is because we're seeing more next gen focused AAA games there.

You're deliberating attempting to obfuscate the issue with outlandish statements. No one is claiming a vast international conspiracy with Sony at the vanguard. Sony, as a platform holder, demonstrated that they could simply raise the price of their first party games and fans would just pay more money. Everyone else followed suite when they realised there was free money to be had, and fanboys would actually defend the price increase because "next gen". Everything else you've posted is noise.
Bullshit, NBA2K and Godfall shown their next gen more expensive pricing at the same time than Sony. Other games like Intergrade, Battlefield 2042 announced their price later because these games were announced later.

Virtually everything you posted in this specific post is absolutely false. I'll concentrate on the top numbers, because you're deliberately mis-representing the development of these games to make garbage points.

For example, TLOUII did not have 2,331 people working on the game for six years. In fact, the game didn't even enter full production until late 2017. The estimated budget is around US$100m, and it is likely the game Jim Ryan was referring to in my above link... which indicates this specific budget was notably larger than the average Sony first party game.
According to the director of Days Gone, they were mostly 45 people for several years before "ballooning" up to 120 over the course of development. Estimated budget for Days Gone in that link becomes roughly US$28-38 million.
Returnal's developer, Housemarque, tops out at roughly 80 people at their peak. Returnal is a mid-budget Sony title, hence the push back on its AAA pricing.

This pattern is true for basically every single game you've posted. You're deliberately mis-presenting the development sizes, lengths, and budgets of these games. If this is all you're going to post, there's nothing worth discussing.
Bullshit.

I never said all these more than a thousand workers have been working during all the development time of the games. In preproduction there's always a way smaller team, part of it mainly only works in the early stages of the game, like in some cases concept artists, creative directors or some lead writers. Then it becomes bigger when they start production and develop the core of the game, and at the later part way more devs join the party, plus in the last parts the QA, localization, PR, CS, marketing guys and more join the party. It works in the same way for all AAA games. As an example in all games, testers aren't working during pre-production, and concept artists or creative directors aren't working after beta or RC stages.

But if you see the total manpower of a game and its development time, if both figures comparable to another game, then their development budget will be comparable.

Example:

Days Gone: 1679 people, 4 years
Destiny: 1195 people, around 4 years

Knowing the total budget for Destiny was around $500M (includes development and marketing, which often have similar budgets in AAA games), you must be crazy or to don't have any fucking idea about AAA game development to believe Days Gone was made by only 120 people or that did cost $28-38 million.

In addition to the lead studio developing the game (in Days Gone 120 people when mentioned in the interview, they later grew more) are only a small portion of the total amount of people that works in a AAA game as you can see in the over a thousand or two thousand people listed in many AAA games listed in my previous post and compare to the amount of workers that their lead studio have.

All lead studios who make AAA games have multiple support studios who work in the game. Most of the people are in outsourcing/support art & animation studios. As an example, Sony has Visual Arts Service Group, an art support team that excels on cinematics and works in many games like the ND, SSM, Bend, Insomniac ones. They also hire several external outsourcing studios spread around the world who also work for Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Capcom and so on. They also outsource work to other studios focused on music, audio design, dubbing or motion capture. Then there's teams in other offices from the publisher who handle testing, marketing, PR, CM, CS, localization, publishing, finances, legal and many more like the higher ups as are publisher/corporation, editorial team, producers on their side and so on. A huge amount of people who doesn't work for free. In moby games you can double check where all these over a thousand people comes from.

Btw Ryan doesn't say 'around $100M' and wasn't about this being an exceptional single game, he said 'THEY cost MORE THAN $100M'. And looking at the comparision I did is clear how Sony games compare to each other, or to other non-Sony top AAA games.

I also want to highlight that I listed the amount of people listed on the credits of the games (according to moby games), which means the total amount of people who worked in the game. And in many cases the list isn't complete because some studios don't include in the game credits people who leave the studio before the game ships, or don't list all their testers, or don't list the people of some support/outsourcing studios. Sometimes they only include the logo of the outsourcing studio or mention only a few studio bosses and not all their normal workers.
 
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John Wick

Member
Some examples of the amount of people credited in the game taken from Moby Games, years of development (pretty likely including preproduction in most cases) taken from their wikipedia page:
TLOU2: 2331 people, 6 years
Horizon: 2141 people, 6 years
Spider-Man: 2252 people, 4 years
GoW 2018: 1759 people, around 4 years
GOT: 1796 people, over 5 years
Uncharted 4: 1689 people, around 5 years
Days Gone: 1679 people, 4 years
Sackboy: 1530 people, ??? years
Returnal: 1344 people, more than four years
Death Stranding: 1491 people, around 3 years

Games like Morales, Demon's Souls or Ratchet Rift Apart don't have the related info posted there.

As reference, a few examples:
Destiny: 1195 people(very likely doesn't include post-launch/DLC), around 4 years
Cyberpunk 2077: 3532 people, 4+ years (entered pre-production in 2016)

We also have to remember that the cost of developing (and publishing/releasing) a game, its total budget isn't only the cost of development itself, games also have a related marketing budget that often is pretty close to the development costs. The $500M investment in Destiny included development and marketing. Cyberpunk 2077 had a budget of $316 million (174 development, 142 marketing). And is salaries are super cheap in Poland compared to USA, UK, Finland, Netherlands or Japan.

So yes, Sony must have several games in the >$200M total budget ballpark, some of them $200M+ even only considering development costs and not marketing, or at least above $150M. And these games with around 2000 workers and around 5 years of work were mostly PS4 gen games, every generation there's a substantial increase in costs so the next gen only PS5 top AAA games pretty likely will be way above $200M.
Again provide the proof not what you estimate in your opinion what the game cost. Providing how many people worked on a game or for how long by a 3rd party is meaningless. 2000 people worked on this game for 6 years. These are just numbers plucked out of the air without any context. Never do 2000 devs work on a game for 6 years. The amount goes up and down over the course of development. Again we don't have any idea what these games cost. Are you seriously trying to compare the cost of a game like GTA5 to Sony's one platform games? Or something like Assassins Creed Odyssey which is a huge game on multiple platforms?
 
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John Wick

Member
He's the CEO, he doesn't greenlight games. For 1st and 2nd party games, Hermen's team is who greenlights them. For 3rd party games, the publishers are who greenlight their own games.

But like any human being, he has a personal opinion on what type of games he likes and what type of games he thinks most people like. And what he said is just common sense: people (or he) prefers the best games and forgets the average or bad games, so they should focus on making great games, games that their potential customers would prefer to buy.


Go and read the interview again.

He never said they were going to avoid crossgen games, it's something the interviewed assumed but he didn't say. And the 'we believe in generations' sentence is cut and put out of context for that reason. Reading the original full sentence -or better, the original full interview- you get what Jim meant.

He said that the active userbase of the previous generation still will be huge for a while so they planned to continue supporting it with new games for a while, but that at the same time they were going to have a new generation that it will bring new, next gen only features like adaptative triggers, haptic feedback, 3D audio, super fast SSD and so on that he wanted native games to support and take advantage of these exclusive new features to provide a more different and unique in the next gen.

Meaning:
-Sony was working to have great PS4 games for a couple of years or so after PS5 launch (not a lie, there are many big Sony and 3rd party games coming for PS4)
-He wanted native PS5 games to take advantage of the next gen features (not a lie, all native games support these features, and the exclusive ones take special advantage of them)
You can give your take however you want. The fact is Jimbo Ryan never stated any of this before MS announced their strategy. If he had then you'd have a point but he didn't. Remember how the fanboys reacted to MS saying their Series games would be crossgen for the next 2 years? And how they reacted when Jimbo claimed we believe in generations??? Or how fanboys reacted when it dawned on them that some of the so called nextgen games were infact cross-gen games? That's when the denial and twisting started because surely Jimbo never stated that.
 

yurinka

Member
You can give your take however you want. The fact is Jimbo Ryan never stated any of this before MS announced their strategy. If he had then you'd have a point but he didn't. Remember how the fanboys reacted to MS saying their Series games would be crossgen for the next 2 years? And how they reacted when Jimbo claimed we believe in generations??? Or how fanboys reacted when it dawned on them that some of the so called nextgen games were infact cross-gen games? That's when the denial and twisting started because surely Jimbo never stated that.
Well, it wasn't something new: it's practically the same that PlayStation always did. When releasing a new console, they still support the old console, which keeps in the market during 2 or 3 years more, with some new games, mostly 3rd party. But often also with some stuff published by Sony, even including some great game.

Back in the past, in many generations crossgen games weren't possible becaus the arquitecture of the consoles were too different so it was very complicated and expensive to release a game at the same time in two generations, so sometimes instead of releasing crossgen games they supported both consoles releasing games for both.

In the same way, Sony always tried to support the next gen gimmick on the new gen games, specially using the first ones to show the ways to other devs. This gen haptic feedback, adaptative trigers, SSD and 3D audio have been a great idea and they work well, but remember all these launch window games in PS3 or PS4 trying to make some good use of the gyros (Lair, Motorstorm...) or the trackpad in PS4 (Infamous, etc).

And well, prefering great games over average/meh/bad games is just common sense, everyone agrees. People prefer great games, and game companies always aim to make great games, but since they are inperfect human beings many times they fail.

These are just numbers plucked out of the air without any context. Never do 2000 devs work on a game for 6 years.
These numbers I provided are facts, and I never said all these people were working during all these years. T

he source of the years of development is the wikipedia page of these games. I said the number of workers are the people credited in the staff roll of these games and the source is mobygames.com, who tracks the game credits of the games.

I explained that not all of them work during the whole development, and explained a bit who works in each part, since it pretty much works in the same way for most AAA games, something I know pretty well because I did work in a top AAA pulisher and have friends who work or did work in other ones.

My point was that you can get an aproximated idea of the budget of a game looking at the amount of people who worked on it and the years of development, because the main cost of a AAA is marketing and communications (like aprox. half of its budget), but from the other half aprox is the game development budget, and that is mostly salaries.

So of if you see two games with a similar amount of people working on it and a similar development time, their development budget will be similar. So I provided these numbers for recent AAA Sony games to compare themselves, and also provided these same numbers of a couple of other top AAA games that we know are big and we know their budget because the publishers publicly mentioned it, to see how Sony games compare to them and approximatedly have an idea of Sony's budget for AAA games.

The idea was also to show that what I heard of Sony's current/upcoming AAA games budget being in the $200M ballpark matches with that. With these numbers we can say that yes, most of these games should be over $200M, and a few of them even without including marketing they should reach the $200M with development alone. And it's something that matches Jimbo's words, who as shown in a previous post he recently said their AAA cost over $100M.

Are you seriously trying to compare the cost of a game like GTA5 to Sony's one platform games? Or something like Assassins Creed Odyssey which is a huge game on multiple platforms?
No, I never said the Sony games have the same cost than GTAV or ACO. Each AAA game has a different amount of staff or the same development time. If amount of manpower and development time is way bigger because there's more stuff to do (things like you imply like to make a bigger game or extra ports), then the development budget will be way more expensive. If manpower and dev time are smaller, then the dev budget will be smaller. This is what most affects the budget.

At the end, for whatever the reason is, the amount of work needed or cost, independently it's due to game size, platforms where it appears, genre, etc it's reflected on the amount of people who worked in the game and the development size of the game.

GTAV: 3773 people (360 version), 5 years (after GTAIV)
Assassins Creed Odyssey: 4585 people, 3 years (after AC Syndicate, same core team)

Note: the PC version of GTAV includes 4873 people in the credits, pretty likely the extra people is for the PS4 gen improvements, DLC and other post launch content specially for GTA Online, while the 360 version only listed people worked there until the original launch.

As you can see they have way more people working on them than recent Sony AAA games (which had around 2000 people and took around 5 years aprox. on average) while the dev time isn't too different, so the development budget of GTA and AC should be higher than Sony games. And comparing GTA to AC, a GTA is more expensive. In fact, Rockstar had controversies because they didn't include in the credits people who left during mid development, didn't do enough crunch, etc. so probably there's some extra hundred people who worked there but don't appear in the game credits.

We also have to consider that even if TLOU2 took 2331 people and 6 years may be somewhat close to the original GTAV version, TLOU2 it's a late PS4 game while GTAV was originally a PS360 game, an age where AAA games needed way less work. So the difference between GTAV and the AAA games released back then was way bigger so it would make more sense to compare with them instead.

GTAV was released in 2013, the same year the first TLOU was released, which had these numbers:
TLOU1 (PS3): 1338 people, 4 years
 
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Woggleman

Member
Great games are also different things to different people. People have different tastes. Releasing bugged and unplayable games like Cyberpunk 2077 is inexcusable and to their credit Sony did not let it back in PSN until it was at least playable but so far no major Sony games have released in that state. You might not like certain games but Death Stranding, TLOU2, GOT and other Sony exclusives were all functional and playable on release.
 

SSfox

Member
You can give your take however you want. The fact is Jimbo Ryan never stated any of this before MS announced their strategy. If he had then you'd have a point but he didn't. Remember how the fanboys reacted to MS saying their Series games would be crossgen for the next 2 years? And how they reacted when Jimbo claimed we believe in generations??? Or how fanboys reacted when it dawned on them that some of the so called nextgen games were infact cross-gen games? That's when the denial and twisting started because surely Jimbo never stated that.
Jimbo and Hermen don't seem to have a clear vision, announcing PS5 exclusives to then randomly turn those into crossgen ps4/ps5, porting randomly some ps games into PC, it's like 2 clowns that have no solid vision at all. Those two should be in a Circus, not is a SIE desk.

God Of War is looking to release on fall 2022, early 2023, and on PS4, Sony releasing their exclusives on the old gen 2 to 3 years after the new gen started is pretty weird to say the least, specially from Sony.

And then you have the GaaS deals, but still no news about a real game deal (cf like Bloodborne or Death Stranding), outside of some money hat for timed exclusives.

I mean Cerny made this masterpiece ps5 hardware so then the 2 idiots came and want to release everything on PS4 as well for 2 or 3 years, and i'm gonna say i'm really disappointed on the Sony fans that applaud this shit, specially the Sony fans that were trashing on Phil when he said Xbox will make cross gen for 2 years or so, i'm a Sony fan and i trashed Phil for it, and i trash much more Sony for this because first i'm a fan of PS Ips while i don't care about Xbox announced Ips, and also Sony, precisely Jimbo and Hermen lied and were dishonest about it.
 
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