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Quantic Dream has no interest in ending Sony exclusivity

Cyberia

Member
Paris games studio Quantic Dream will remain an exclusive Sony partner in the long term, according to the studio's co-CEO.

In an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine, Guillaume de Fondaumière said that it was the nature of the Sony partnership that has spurred the studio to remain an exclusive PlayStation developer.

"We proved with Heavy Rain that we can be profitable by making a game for just one platform. Would we have made more money by going multi-platform? Of course, but on the other hand, we wouldn't be working with Sony as a publisher," he said.

"This isn't a partnership where we are forced by a big company into giving immediate results. That's fantastic for a studio like us. Ever since we started our partnership, Sony just said it was going to give us the money to build these games and we said we were going to work as hard as we could and reward it for its trust.

"We're certainly not going to change partner for the sake of making more money; that's not the philosophy behind our studio. As long as we can create the games we want to create, we'll stay with Sony."

de Fondaumière explained that Sony signed a partnership with Quantic Dream in 2006 and had fully funded the Heavy Rain project. He said the game, which has sold more than 2 million copies since its release in February 2010, was "highly profitable".

A rush of awards for the game followed, from BAFTAs to Game of the Years, and de Fondaumière believes this could have created conflict with a publisher, had it not been Sony.

"There was this one thing about our partnership with Sony," he said.

"After the success of Heavy Rain we sort of knew they were going to ask us to make a Heavy Rain 2, and we said please understand we're not going to do that. We said we still believe we can do so much more with something else, and they accepted our idea."


http://www.computerandvideogames.co...erest-in-ending-sony-exclusivity-says-co-ceo/
 
Is QD privately owned or publicly traded? If private, then why burn bridges for the sake of possible financial gain when you seem to be doing fine as it is?
 

Reiko

Banned
Why would they?

Sony is an excellent publisher.

More importantly...

raining-money2l0jfb.jpg
 
if Beyond sells well, I think Sony will buy them out.

actually, if Cage already express no interest of going multi, then there's no point of Sony to buy them out. just keep doing what they've been doing so far. why spent money buying them when they're not going anywhere
 

Derrick01

Banned
Sony's one of the very few pubs who would publish the kinds of games QD wants to make with no demands so of course he wants to stay with them.
 
They just seem like niche games, I just cant imagine sony turning a profit on anything they make.

HR actually manage to gain new audience I think, and it sold really well for this kind of genre. I was very surprised that I almost didn't get a copy on my local import store since people are buying it day one.
 
Tell that to LightBox, Eat Sleep Play, Sanzaru, Superbot, Liverpool, etc

Sanzaru's Sly sold more in its first month than the Sucker Punch games. And they're already working on another Sony project. So i'm guessing that they aren't too upset with them.
 
There's no reason to keep dead weight if the games aren't selling. What are they suppose to do? Cater to mediocre studios, just for the heck of it?

Exactly. Sony was an excellent publisher to them, but their games didn't sell well, unfortunately. Plus, Liverpool was an internal studio, so they had no choice of publisher anyways.
 

Dabanton

Member
They've got it sweet for now. Why go anywhere else? Being exclusive has it's own benefits that making a multiplat doesn't.
 
Hard to beat the creative freedom that Sony usually provides.

What other publisher would accept a refusal to change a games cover for example.
Or even publish Heavy Rain at all
 

mclem

Member
They just seem like niche games, I just cant imagine sony turning a profit on anything they make.

To be fair, when a console manufacturer is publishing it adds in another goal beyond simple profit; Quantic Dream's games do serve to add variety to the portfolio of titles on the system making it interesting to more potential buyers. A console publisher has an incentive to publish a loss-leader title if it gets more people into their ecosystem.
 
Exactly. Sony was an excellent publisher to them, but their games didn't sell well, unfortunately. Plus, Liverpool was an internal studio, so they had no choice of publisher anyways.

Yea! And with Eat Sleep Play, Jaffe announced he was leaving the studio just days before Twisted Metal's release. I mean how much confidence does such a move instill on the studio? I am sure the suits at Sony love Jaffe, he did create God of War and Twisted Metal after all, but leaving like that....Sony had to bail out.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I think the risk with an arrangement like this is that if all is going well, you have a long-term partner who is willing to really go out on a limb for you... but if something goes south (and that something could even be external to you, it could be something inside the company as well), they'll cut you off pretty rapidly and it might be harder to make the transition under duress than if you plan it.

What I'm saying is that I feel like Cage is betting his entire company on every game they make.
 

Crawl

Member
To be fair, when a console manufacturer is publishing it adds in another goal beyond simple profit; Quantic Dream's games do serve to add variety to the portfolio of titles on the system making it interesting to more potential buyers. A console publisher has an incentive to publish a loss-leader title if it gets more people into their ecosystem.

Yet microsoft makes no exclusives and they have just as many console sales =/.
 
I think the risk with an arrangement like this is that if all is going well, you have a long-term partner who is willing to really go out on a limb for you... but if something goes south (and that something could even be external to you, it could be something inside the company as well), they'll cut you off pretty rapidly and it might be harder to make the transition under duress than if you plan it.

What I'm saying is that I feel like Cage is betting his entire company on every game they make.

But if Sony were to cut them loose, wouldn't another publisher jump at the chance to have a multi-plat game from the makers of Heavy Rain on their schedule?
 
Sanzaru's Sly sold more in its first month than the Sucker Punch games. And they're already working on another Sony project. So i'm guessing that they aren't too upset with them.

It's pretty crazy how things turned out. After that marketing blunder everyone was expecting a huge bomb. Sales weren't phenomonal, but the pricing and cross-buy must have worked well enough.
 
But if Sony were to cut them loose, wouldn't another publisher jump at the chance to have a multi-plat game from the makers of Heavy Rain on their schedule?

The only way Sony is going to cut them loose...is if their games stop selling.

No publisher is going to pick up a failing studio in today's market.
 

Gunsmithx

Member
I think the risk with an arrangement like this is that if all is going well, you have a long-term partner who is willing to really go out on a limb for you... but if something goes south (and that something could even be external to you, it could be something inside the company as well), they'll cut you off pretty rapidly and it might be harder to make the transition under duress than if you plan it.

What I'm saying is that I feel like Cage is betting his entire company on every game they make.

I agree with this, but I think he values the fact that Sony would go out on a limb and support what he wants(as you say, for the moment) then he would some more stable perhaps but with less freedom.
 

nib95

Banned
Sony really needs to buy QD. The stuff they're putting out is brilliant and quite unique, at least in the current market. I like that they're at least trying things different.
 
I think the risk with an arrangement like this is that if all is going well, you have a long-term partner who is willing to really go out on a limb for you... but if something goes south (and that something could even be external to you, it could be something inside the company as well), they'll cut you off pretty rapidly and it might be harder to make the transition under duress than if you plan it.

What I'm saying is that I feel like Cage is betting his entire company on every game they make.

QD games share the unique role as team ico games or Journey where Sony care more about diversifying their portfolio and attracting new audience instead of simply sales number and profits, Sony's tolerance to these kind of games are much bigger than their other games catering to the typical core gamer who like shooters.

any other publishers would have cut Journey in the middle of development when you read their development hell story, same with team ico, Ico and SoTC are not huge seller, but Sony keep greenlight their games.

so unless QD fucked up big time and end up in development hell like Last Guardian, I think they're one of the safer dev team under Sony.
 
Sony really needs to buy QD. The stuff they're putting out is brilliant and quite unique, at least in the current market. I like that they're at least trying things different.

They will. After Beyond is a hit, Sony will write them a check. They did the same thing with Media Molecule, remember?
 

test_account

XP-39C²
Tell that to LightBox, Eat Sleep Play, Sanzaru, Superbot, Liverpool, etc
PS Allstars Battle Royale was advertised, and i didnt hear any complains from Superbot during the developement cycle. When someone makes a game that doesnt end up being financially successful, there is always the risk of not getting hired again to produce another game.
 

DieH@rd

Banned
They will. After Beyond is a hit, Sony will write them a check. They did the same thing with Media Molecule, remember?

The only difference is, MM was very small and QD has 200 people. Creation process of their games is also very different. QD games demand much more resources and time.
 
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