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[James Sawyer Ford]

 

[Dolomite]

From the Horse's mouth

 

[Hugare]

From the Horse's mouth

Yeah, this kinda tells it all

Jason's article is probably on point

Hate him or not, the guy gets right more often than he gets wrong

 

[[Sigma]]

Yeah, this kinda tells it all

Jason's article is probably on point

Hate him or not, the guy gets right more often than he gets wrong

It does imo.

 

[saintjules]

 

[Thirty7ven]

Sony: Gets overwhelmingly popular with its PS4 in large due to their tight focus on big blockbuster single player experiences
Sony: continues this exact strategy with its PS5


Journalists:

Americans are obsessed with the underdog story, which has become a bit pastiche all things considered, but in turn that means that they tend to overvalue he who is chasing, and love to spell the end for he who sits at the lead. It’s basic, binary, miopic, but it’s so easy to generate conflict that way. EA, Activision, etc so many garbage companies out there and yet the focus is on Sony.

 

[Unknown?]

Lol, what a damage control. His narrative was exaggerated. Cool.

 

[Fake]

From the Horse's mouth

You missed the stream. David calls out Jason and Jason blocked David on twitter. ALL THIS RIGHT NOW lmao. You're missing the party.

BTW, this tweet was before David find out Jason was saying they're liers.

 

[Bryank75]

the fact that they rely on ps to deliver profits so much should also mean they should get the lion share of the budget no? tlou2 made like $240 million in the first three days. thats a $50 million game assuming costs have doubled since they used to make uncharted games for $20 million. they spend far far more on movies.

no one is saying they need to lose billions, but surely they can afford to invest some of those billions back into their most profitable division.

i also think strong sales of Miles post launch suggest that people were waiting to pick up the ps5 to buy it. no one wants to play games on ps4 anymore. the fact that it came back into the top ten after missing a couple of months means that these games will have legs. making them cross gen is not going to help with the sales.

I heard TLOU2 was close to 200 million to make.

 

[FrankWza]

Do I have this right?
Shrier says 2019.
Ross says 2020.
Is that the technicality?

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Do I have this right?
Shrier says 2019.
Ross says 2020.
Is that the technicality?

I think Ross also means 2019

He left in in 2019 but announced it in 2020

 

[Humdinger]

Uproar because Jason Schreier article? LOL

I guess you haven't noticed the dozen other threads hating on Jim Ryan. This is just the latest.

 

[FatKingBallman]

I guess you haven't noticed the dozen other threads hating on Jim Ryan. This is just the latest.

Yeah, because Jason's article.

 

[Humdinger]

Yeah, because Jason's article.

No, the problems predate his article. His article only came out a few days ago. The hate has been bubbling around for quite a while now. Guess you missed it.

To be honest, I ignored most of it, too. It's the internet.

 

[The artful mincer]

Sorta, but those figures are out a little. Looking at accessible figures to give some ballparks, the best general response I can find is from 2017, where you'll pull in $15m per 1 million copies sold on average. If you're a first party title, you'll make more per sale as there will be less platform cuts, and if you have a good digital attachment rate you'll have higher profit margins.

So, as digital out paces physical in 2021, let's just go ahead and bump that up to $20m per 1 million copies sold as our ballpark figure. By that metric, you'll need to shift 5 million copies for a $100 million dollar game just to break even. Assuming no additional revenue streams and all copies are sold at full price, game budgets of $100 million and more are pretty dangerous. If you're Call of Duty, where you'll move 30 million software units alone and have extensive micro-transaction support, or if you're GTA - V's budget was rumoured to exceed $200 million - you can bare the expenditure because your return is going to exceed 1:10. If you're TLOUII, whose last confirmed sales figures were 4 million units, and we know that a good portion of its sales since then were at discounted prices, $100 million dollar budgets are a luxury that you'll need a deep-pocketed publisher to back, and one who's prepared to accept a tiny return on investment.

If Sony are moving to a blockbuster focus, then I suspect indulgent six year development cycle's like TLOUII's won't be happening too often in the future, unless they're making their own GTA-sized micro-transaction behemoth. I'm not the biggest fan of that approach, but from a pure business perspective, it makes sense: if Jim Ryan wants big profits for PlayStation, Uncharted is more valuable than interesting titles like Shadow of the Colossus.

Those numbers are way off

Link via ubisoft https://www.resetera.com/threads/ub...y-ms-nintendo-take-12-in-cogs-per-game.22783/

Publisher gets 55% retail 70% digital.

First parties get 70% retail 95% digital.

 

[SlimySnake]

I heard TLOU2 was close to 200 million to make.

nah. games dont cost that much to make. their main cost is the amount of money it costs to run a studio. nd is roughly 300 people. thats 300 people working on a game for 3 years. that doesnt cost $200 million.

you can look up how much u2 and u3 cost. 150 people working 2 years cost $20 million. 300 people working 2 years would cost $40. an extra year would cost an extra $10 million which would bring it up to $50 million. add in a big marketing budget and you are looking at $75-100 million max.

Rockstar had all of their 7 studios and 3,000 employees make rdr2. thats a game that cost $200 million.

 

[saintjules]

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Those numbers are way off

Link via ubisoft https://www.resetera.com/threads/ub...y-ms-nintendo-take-12-in-cogs-per-game.22783/

Publisher gets 55% retail 70% digital.

First parties get 70% retail 95% digital.

I saw the chart. I'm surprised royalties are that much (20% of whatever the retail price is). I thought royalties were more like 5%.

 

[DForce]

Jeff was able to add more clarity to the situation.

Oregon-based Sony Bend, best known for the 2019 open-world action game Days Gone, tried unsuccessfully to pitch a sequel that year, according to people familiar with the proposal. Although the first game had been profitable, its development had been lengthy and critical reception was mixed, so a Days Gone 2 wasn’t seen as a viable option.

Instead, one team at the studio was assigned to help Naughty Dog with a multiplayer game while a second group was assigned to work on a new Uncharted game with supervision from Naughty Dog. Some staff, including top leads, were unhappy with this arrangement and left. Bend's developers feared they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog, and the studio’s leadership asked to be taken off the Uncharted project. They got their wish last month and are now working on a new game of their own that will be part of a brand new franchise.

(I'm only sharing this guy's tweet because it was being quoted in the comment section)


The problem with Jason's article is that it made it seem like Bend Studio was forced to help Naughty Dog work on other IPs.

Jeff Ross elaborates on the situation by saying there's not a lot to work going on during early days of development and working with Naughty Dog gave the developers something to do. Some people feared that they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog and that's obviously didn't happen.

 

[ArtHands]

From the Horse's mouth

So basically the rumor is true

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Jeff was able to add more clarity to the situation.



(I'm only sharing this guy's tweet because it was being quoted in the comment section)


The problem with Jason's article is that it made it seem like Bend Studio was forced to help Naughty Dog work on other IPs.

Jeff Ross elaborates on the situation by saying there's not a lot to work going on during early days of development and working with Naughty Dog gave the developers something to do. Some people feared that they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog and that's obviously didn't happen.

You never know. Jeff Ross might be lying himself. But assuming he's truthful (sounds reasonable what he said), it goes to show dirt diggers like Jason Scheirer doing his (I interviewed 8 people out of a 100 person studio and here's the deal) is dangerous.

Even if Jason S is 100% regurgitating what someone said without spin, exaggeration or lies, telling the world what's going on based on some random employee interviews which probably aren't even high level employees means nothing.

I'll give you an example. With covid, many people may have noticed the number of products on a shelf has reduced. The variety and selection isn't there.

If Jason S interviewed some low level people why some brands have less variety on the shelf they might say take a guess and say they sell bad or make little money, so the company gassed them.

That might be true.

But the real reason could also be (true story), demand for some products during covid is so high at grocery stores, the supplier and stores cant keep up with demand. So they met and agreed on focusing on making and shelving the best selling products which the supplier factories can churn more out of (efficiencies) instead of making batches of the 18th best selling product which involves downtime adjusting machines and ingredients. The product might be lousy on profits, but if it's a top seller, you got to keep customers happy.

So you can see it's dangerous to take gospel from a handful of random people at companies.

Now if Jason S can prove he interview half the people including the bosses and directors, then ok, that might be enough different points of view to form a decent narrative that sticks, but his "I interviewed 2% of workers" is not the kind of thing that should stick.

 

[bender]

I love how he loathes his audience, at least until it's time to shill his latest book. You'd figure most 30 year olds would learn that the vocal minority of any fan base are hardly representative of the whole.

 

[kuncol02]

nah. games dont cost that much to make. their main cost is the amount of money it costs to run a studio. nd is roughly 300 people. thats 300 people working on a game for 3 years. that doesnt cost $200 million.

you can look up how much u2 and u3 cost. 150 people working 2 years cost $20 million. 300 people working 2 years would cost $40. an extra year would cost an extra $10 million which would bring it up to $50 million. add in a big marketing budget and you are looking at $75-100 million max.

Rockstar had all of their 7 studios and 3,000 employees make rdr2. thats a game that cost $200 million.

"Approximately 2,100 people developed The Last of Us Part II over several years, led by the 350-person team at Naughty Dog. Sony Interactive Entertainment published the action-adventure game in June 2020 for the PlayStation 4."
"A sequel to the 2013 game The Last of Us, core development on Part II began after the 2014 release of The Last of Us Remastered."

 

[ZehDon]

Those numbers are way off

Link via ubisoft https://www.resetera.com/threads/ub...y-ms-nintendo-take-12-in-cogs-per-game.22783/

Publisher gets 55% retail 70% digital.

First parties get 70% retail 95% digital.

Thanks for providing more concrete figures. Ok, so at USD$60.00 per title sold, 1 million retail sales generate USD$60m in revenue. With the above split, USD$33m in revenue take home for retail. Presuming a corporate tax rate of 20% - the nominal from 2018 for USA - they'll enjoy roughly USD$26.4m. So, my initial figure of $20m take home was rather conservative, and would be out by around a quarter based on Ubisoft's projections. So, if I projected 5 million sales to cover a USD$100m game, then you'd need roughly 3.75m sales to break even on that cost. That'll go up once you factor in the usual marketing campaign and so forth. So, call it 4 million to be safe. So, I was over by about a million units, and StreetsofBeige was under by about 600k units - so, they win with the smaller deficit

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Thanks for providing more concrete figures. Ok, so at USD$60.00 per title sold, 1 million retail sales generate USD$60m in revenue. With the above split, USD$33m in revenue take home for retail. Presuming a corporate tax rate of 20% - the nominal from 2018 for USA - they'll enjoy roughly USD$26.4m. So, my initial figure of $20m take home was rather conservative, and would be out by around a quarter based on Ubisoft's projections. So, if I projected 5 million sales to cover a USD$100m game, then you'd need roughly 3.75m sales to break even on that cost. That'll go up once you factor in the usual marketing campaign and so forth. So, call it 4 million to be safe. So, I was over by about a million units, and StreetsofBeige was under by about 600k units - so, they win with the smaller deficit

You dont apply 20% corporate tax against net revenue. You apply the tax rate to final profit.

Your estimated unit sales needed at full price will come down.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

So Bend got their game cancelled or it didn't get cancelled ?
They might have been helping ND with new Uncharted or not ?

Honestly why is this such a big deal either way ?

What exactly is the outrage here ? Am I missing something ?

 

[SlimySnake]

"Approximately 2,100 people developed The Last of Us Part II over several years, led by the 350-person team at Naughty Dog. Sony Interactive Entertainment published the action-adventure game in June 2020 for the PlayStation 4."
"A sequel to the 2013 game The Last of Us, core development on Part II began after the 2014 release of The Last of Us Remastered."

those are outsourced studios in third world countries like india that cost pennies compared to western studios. every studio uses them. witcher 3 also outsourced to over 1500 people and the total cost of the game was around $81 million more than half of which was the marketing budget.

and naughty dog made 2 games after tlou part 1. u4 and uLL. both games had the entire studio working on it with a small skeleton crew doing preproduction work for tlou2. tlou 2 started production in august 2017. the game came out in june 2020. its actual dev time was a little less than 3 years.

2013-2016 costs to run the studio was uncharted 4's budget.
2016-2017 costs to run the studio was Uncharted lost legacy's budget.
2017-2020 was tlou2's budget.

i dont care if you are in silicon valley or los angeles. it doesnt cost $66 million a year to run a company of 350 devs. you are looking at half that.

 

[johnjohn]

Things seems to be a mess over at Sony.

 

[AdjudicatorHead]

Things seems to be a mess over at Sony.

No? They literally don’t seem to be a mess at all? Their studios seem to be working incredibly efficiently, firing on all cylinders pumping out AAA games. Sony are still giving full creative control to their devs according to Jeff, and he said Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst are excellent at their jobs.

What is with all this doom posting?

 

[ArtHands]

No? They literally don’t seem to be a mess at all? Their studios seem to be working incredibly efficiently, firing on all cylinders pumping out AAA games. Sony are still giving full creative control to their devs according to Jeff, and he said Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst are excellent at their jobs.

What is with all this doom posting?

Seems their employees are pretty unhappy though.

Just like Amazon.

 

[NahaNago]

Things seems to be a mess over at Sony.

Not really and yes. They are still pumping out amazing first party games and we have horizon zero sequel , ratchet and clank, and god of war coming out within a year so they seem to be doing something right. They mostly just have a pr and marketing problem.

 

[SuperYoshi]

We'll see if Sony produces result's. So far PS5 is doing that and next year looks very solid for Sony.

 

[Mobile Suit Gooch]

Please no more paid remasters ...if your gonna recycle your old ips go back to the ps1/ps2 years...give us socom/syphon filter.....otherwise I’m pretty sure most people’s ps5s are gonna look like mine

You have a dirty room.

 

[anothertech]

Some people just like to stir up shit.

I love how the journalist acts like he knows more than the dev.

Entertaining tho.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

5 million copies of Days Gone sold?

Now what percentage of that 5 million were $60 sales and what percentage were $30 or less?

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Jeff was able to add more clarity to the situation.



(I'm only sharing this guy's tweet because it was being quoted in the comment section)


The problem with Jason's article is that it made it seem like Bend Studio was forced to help Naughty Dog work on other IPs.

Jeff Ross elaborates on the situation by saying there's not a lot to work going on during early days of development and working with Naughty Dog gave the developers something to do. Some people feared that they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog and that's obviously didn't happen.

Yup, but Jason mixed poison with honey here. The report itself is true but not as he painted it in an extremely negative way for clicks. Also he's disrespectful and a snowflake that bashes and insults everyone but can't man-up and take criticism.

 

[thebigmanjosh]

So Bend got their game cancelled or it didn't get cancelled ?
They might have been helping ND with new Uncharted or not ?

Honestly why is this such a big deal either way ?

What exactly is the outrage here ? Am I missing something ?

Bend was in preproduction in 2019 pitching ideas to corporate, Days Gone 2 got the red light, instead of firing loads of staff they repurposed teams to help ND with TLOU Factions while Bend leadership put new
ideas together, and they’re now working on a new IP because they don’t want to just be a support studio.

Think that’s about it.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Yup, but Jason mixed poison with honey here. The report itself is true but not as he painted it in an extremely negative way for clicks. Also he's disrespectful and a snowflake that bashes and insults everyone but can't man-up an take criticism.

Assuming worst case scenario at $20 it'll be $100M, and $150M for $30. So I guess it's around $200-250M which is pretty decent. Sony did support them and trust them when they met as Jeff said, and holding Days Gone 2 and TLOU until this zombie craze goes down is wise to avoiding being samey and boring even if the production value is unmatched by others.

I think working on a new IP always feels fresh and opens much more room for creativity and shows your core talent if you deserve the praise you get for being a premium studio.

 

[Heisenberg007]

I don't understand.

Jason said Bend will become a Naughty Dog studio. Did it happen? No. It didn't. Bend is working on its own IP. So he was obviously wrong with his assumption.
Jeff said that Bend would not become an ND studio. It didn't. He was right.

Why are people bombasting Jeff here?

 

[Bo_Hazem]

So Bend got their game cancelled or it didn't get cancelled ?
They might have been helping ND with new Uncharted or not ?

Honestly why is this such a big deal either way ?

What exactly is the outrage here ? Am I missing something ?

They were setting with no work and eating free salary, so like any publishers on earth they were moved to help other studio, ND, on a project to accelerate things and to earn their money worth. When they got a fucking clue to what's next IP to work on they went back to work on it independently. Jeff explains that as being normal with any company and snowflakes and anti-Sony are outraged because he ended up praising Sony's attitude and approach that's still the same since forever of caring and not policing their devs and not forcing deadlines but caring more about the final quality product as they are famously known to be and made them the leaders.

So no drama = no fun, especially that Jeff shat on streaming services indirectly referring to GamePass which made them even more angry to have their holy service being described in a sensible way as "unsustainable" and most much bigger services like Netflix and Disney are still losing a ton of money with only Netflix being profitably lately after their massive originals output and gigantic subscription numbers vs a tiny 18M. Also talked about the raised price of GP would be extremely hard as MS will face a backlash.

It's a very long interview so might mess a lot of it and should watch it all in phases if you don't have more than 2-3 hours to spare for it.

 

[Varteras]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/destinbales/

Posted this in the other thread related to this topic. Whatever Bend is working on now, it's supposedly bigger than Days Gone.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Jeff's take on Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst, and he praises both and says that Jim is a game savvy not like some people think that he's a suit and tells a small story about him and praises the mastermind Hulst. Watch for like 6-7min from this timestamp:

 

[pratyush]

Jason acts like he is in involved in decision process just because he talks to few people. Pitches get rejected all the time and if you watch the God of War documentary, first pitch actually didn't go well from Santa Monica Studio as well. Bend Studio being asked to support ND isn't such a big deal and Jason made it out as if they were forced but these organizational decisions hardly ever are black and white. Jason didn't take it well when i suggested this on ERA but journalist don't understand what engineering work is and how much of an effort it really is. Writing stories on events without actually understanding the job can give you incorrect impression. And it's no secret, Jason thinks of a narrative and then moulds his story around it. Go check his piece on Harry Potter, he made an assumption on how developers must be appaled by JK Rowling and then in few weeks time, guess what a full article on how developers are upset about the situation article appeared.

His response to Jeff podcast is appalling. It seems he goes ape shit when someone even slightly contradicts him. The amount of smugness in suggesting that Jeff doesn't what is happening above his head and he knows is quite condescending and childish.

 

[SJRB]

So Bend got their game cancelled or it didn't get cancelled ?
They might have been helping ND with new Uncharted or not ?

Honestly why is this such a big deal either way ?

What exactly is the outrage here ? Am I missing something ?

Oh you know... "DRAMA". Sony/Playstation "mismanagement" is a hot clickbaity subject right now.

This is such a non-issue that it's blowing my mind it's getting this much traction. So a sequel got canceled - big deal, that shit happens ALL THE TIME.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Oh you know... "DRAMA". Sony/Playstation "mismanagement" is a hot clickbaity subject right now.

This is such a non-issue that it's blowing my mind it's getting this much traction. So a sequel got canceled - big deal, that shit happens ALL THE TIME.

Jeff said that Sony is being smart for not responding for this BS as whatever you say will only add penalty. Meaning you'll give trolls more attention that they don't deserve.

Timestamped:

 

[evanft]

What an insufferable little shit of a human being. Imagine actually getting up in the morning and thinking it's a good idea to make this post on a public forum.

 

[lh032]

Who cares, i welcome new IP instead.

 

[SJRB]

Jeff said that Sony is being smart for not responding for this BS as whatever you say will only add penalty. Meaning you'll give trolls more attention that they don't deserve.

Timestamped:

Jeff is right.

It's a slow news period with barely any new game releases and no big news from any of the bigger IPs. So of course people are going to actively look for "news" or at least something to talk about [or generate clicks...], bruteforce some "controversy" if necessary.

It's just so boring.

 

[Varteras]

What an insufferable little shit of a human being. Imagine actually getting up in the morning and thinking it's a good idea to make this post on a public forum.

I expect nothing less from the shitbag. He made a living creating hit pieces on companies that don't tow the line with his ideologies. He went out of his way to leak news on games that hadn't been officially announced. Was one of the most prolific writers on one of the most "woke" trash gaming websites on the internet. He has repeatedly shown his inability to gracefully speak with anyone that doesn't agree with him. Unfortunately, unlike Anita Sarkeesian, he's still around as a shit stain on the underwear of the industry.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

What an insufferable little shit of a human being. Imagine actually getting up in the morning and thinking it's a good idea to make this post on a public forum.

My favorite part was the end.

"It's so transparent."

He's like Star Treks Q. You just can not sneak anything past this intellect.