The thing that still frustrates me with the discussions around cost is it always seems like one or the other and nothing in between. These studios could choose to make smaller scale games that makes great use of art direction/styles while still using all the modern tech and advanced lighting and particles and such and cut costs dramatically. There are so many unique gameplay ideas still not utilized that don't require open world or photorealistic depictions of cinematic movies that could still be A class in presentation. It seems like games can only be the big budget western AAA or indie and nothing in between. It is like there is no room for any game to deviate from the latest trends in this industry.
Very much agree with this. Again, it's maybe the
only thing I will give Microsoft some props for with their roadmap, even if a lot of it was from buying up 3P devs and pubs: they have a good (on paper) balance of AAA and AA titles, and a few indie-style 1P as well.
In practice, well, it hasn't exactly been panning out. Starfield was their biggest AAA gamble for a good while and was at most only average, and a commercial letdown. Hellblade 2 looks pretty good, but I struggle to tell if it's upper AA or a smaller AAA style game; the vibes make me feel the former and that's good in and of itself, but after Starfield will that be enough? Avowed disappointed me heavily after the new update shown; even if it's a good game, the art style just isn't appealing. Forza Motorsport has been more or less a windfall of a botched game from top to bottom.
Conversely, at least among traditional titles Sony's roadmap for 1P-developed games seems much more AAA-focused, but the quality is a lot more consistent. Even so, it doesn't seem like the number of games is that much and they're taking longer to develop than ever, so it would REALLY be good if they had 1P AA titles to fill in the gaps. Instead they've been relying on a lot of 2P deals like with Rise of the Ronin, and timed exclusives for 3P AAA like with Final Fantasy. But, knowing Sony want to increase their profit margins, how sustainable are those approaches on their own?
The GaaS stuff was meant to help with that, but two of the biggest games they had going are either cancelled (Factions 2) or basically on ice (the Spiderman GaaS). Realistically, how big do they expect Helldivers 2, Fairgame$ or Concord to hit? So if the GaaS aren't going to be reliable in increasing things, and we can see the sales & revenue on PC are decreasing (therefore becoming less of a strategy worth pursuing), and the timed exclusives don't necessarily increase profit margins...wouldn't it make sense to bring back more 1P AA titles?
I guess in a way games like Miles Morales do fit that mold, but whether that becomes standard or not we have to wait and see. Even so, they are still tied to big AAA games with sequels taking 5-6 years to make, so it doesn't fully address the release schedule problem or margins issue in a consistent manner, unless they're releasing multiple Miles Morales-like expansions yearly alongside at least 1-2 new big AAA releases, maybe 1 GaaS, maybe 1-2 2P titles (AA and AAA) and 1-2 3P AA/AAA timed exclusives.
If Sony have to acquire a few more 3P studios or 1-2 3P publishers to get that type of expansion internally, then so be it. At the very least if those rumors about Sega & Bandai-Namco were true, at least they seem willing to try some AA 2P deals with big 3P devs/pubs, even leveraging some legacy IP in certain instances. That's a good sign.
