Video game companies are bad | Take-Two sack 580 people (5% of workforce)

You’d never get a Vib Ribbon, Parappa The Rapper, EyeToy, Singstar, WipEout or LocoRoco out of Sony these days.

Comparing the entire software line up of the PlayStation 1 and 2 to what we’re graced with now is actually laughable.

Looking at Wikipedia, I’m amazed their London Studio doesn’t appear to have released anything since 2019?!

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Supporting My Local Mule Sanctuary Since 11/11/2014.

Good one Sony, it's never enough. Capitalism will eat itself.

twitter.com/shinobi602/status/1762602395245097057

It's never the top people that get sacked is it :simper:

Victor Mildew wrote:It's never the top people that get sacked is it

But then who would think of the shareholders :wub:

Mafro wrote:It's a shame modern Sony's first party studios are just there to churn out basically the same third-person AAA cinematic game in different skins over and over again. They've got strawberry float all identity about them now.

It also seems like Sony's big exclusives are now largely from American developers. Especially with the originally Playstation in the mid-to-late 90s, there was a distinctly British feel about a lot of the output.

Now it feels like you've got the ever-present Japanese side of things, and all the third-person games you've mentioned coming largely.from America. A lot of the quirky British and European exclusives have faded away and don't really define Playstation anymore.

I would also say that a lot of niche Japanese titles from the PS1/2 era have dried up as well, perhaps due to costs involved and having to play it extremely safe.

On the subject of games costing too much, Tekken bod Katsuhiro Harada posted about this

twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/1760182225143009473

Development costs are now 10 times more expensive than in the 90's and more than double or nearly triple the cost of Tekken 7. Even the Fight Lounge servers are costly to maintain. In the past there weren't so many specs and there wasn't online. Plus they didn't have such high resolution and high definition. Now, So many people want the game to run and be supported for a long time. It costs money to continually update the game for that reason. However, he probably only keeps good memories of the old games he experienced as a boy and does not pay attention to these changing times and increasing costs. The economic situation and everything else is changing. If we simply do nothing as he suggests, the game will simply stop running in a few months. I think that is what he wants. So there is no point in talking to him about these realities. He wants us to stop economic activity and stop updating and supporting the game.

Christopher wrote:Maybe it’s time to end the arms race of bigger and better hardware as well as software? I’m sure iterative hardware releases would be enough going forward until costs are cheaper then move onto more powerful hardware?

People don't buy games because they're technically superior to other games anymore. We no longer live in a world where a new console provides entertainment possibilities that didn't exist on a prior console.

This has been true for a while now (and part of the reason why I've been harping on for so long that there actually might not be a Switch 2 in the works) but because the companies are run by, well, idiots, I can see there being new hardware within the next couple of years. But people buy consoles for the games that are available on them (which is why the Xbox community reacted so negatively to the news that their previously exclusive IP would be appearing on 'rival' hardware), or because of attachment to a particular brand (usually fostered due to the games previously available through that brand), not because one has slightly higher spec than the other.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. The US is the biggest player in gaming outside of Japan, yet laws and structures there make unionizing difficult, and most actual game devs lack the resources to risk starting their own projects. If the major players within the industry do gamble on new hardware, the prospect of Chinese military action in Taiwan will scupper global access to critical parts, meaning any interest in future consoles will be irrelevant as consumers won't be able to find any consoles to purchase.

Microsoft's recent overtures came across as in bad faith (those leaked emails didn't help) but at their core the message wasn't necessarily incorrect: the industry needs to look at one another as potential collaborators rather than enemies, because the continual arms race isn't working for anyone, apart from shareholders and very rich consumers (and the shareholders will start to drift away eventually, as you can't just fire your workforce to create profits every time). Some kind of stability is needed.

Maybe just make games with affordable tech and forget about online functionality. Nobody is forcing Sony or anybody else to continually up the ante in terms of technology.

The industry's obsession with hyper-realism is certainly not helped.

Video game sales are still quite firmly tied to hardware cycles though. They flag after a certain point in a console's lifetime then spike again once the next generation comes around. Games companies have a rich history of trying to throw new add ons or hardware revisions to get sales back up to where they want them to be, and I can't really see that changing.

The point that made me wonder about the rising costs of "AAA" game development was when I read about some aspects of Forza Mototsport.

The game has "a fully procedural cloud system" and "hardware accelerated convolution reverb (that) accurately reproduces how sounds in Forza interact within an acoustic space, dynamically adapting to its surroundings and creating a realistic and detailed soundscape."

I mean, why on earth would this be necessary? How much do these kinds of things cost? Was it things like this, piling up on top of each other, that has helped contribute to where we are now?

Note This isn't a dig at Xbox. Many developers have done this; it's just a good example.

Herdanos wrote:We no longer live in a world where a new console provides entertainment possibilities that didn't exist on a prior console.

I'd put this a different way - the majority of the most popular games no longer fundamentally require the latest generation of hardware.

I disagree with the point as you state it. VR is the obvious innovator, support for it notwithstanding. Astrobot demonstrated novel use of dualsense haptics that felt actually next gen, it's just not been repeated since. Ratchet utilises fast loading in a pretty integral way. It's not that the new consoles don't provide new possibilities, it's that they've not found mainstream use.

VR isn't going to drive anything forward within the mainstream, though. Most people lack the funds to buy the hardware, and depending on your home circumstances, might struggle to physically accommodate the space required (though I say this as someone who is admittedly ignorant of its exact demands).

Drumstick wrote:Maybe just make games with affordable tech and forget about online functionality. Nobody is forcing Sony or anybody else to continually up the ante in terms of technology.

The industry's obsession with hyper-realism is certainly not helped.

this

jawa_ wrote:The point that made me wonder about the rising costs of "AAA" game development was when I read about some aspects of Forza Mototsport.

The game has "a fully procedural cloud system" and "hardware accelerated convolution reverb (that) accurately reproduces how sounds in Forza interact within an acoustic space, dynamically adapting to its surroundings and creating a realistic and detailed soundscape."

I mean, why on earth would this be necessary? How much do these kinds of things cost? Was it things like this, piling up on top of each other, that has helped contribute to where we are now?

Note This isn't a dig at Xbox. Many developers have done this; it's just a good example.

"Our game does nothing new" isn't marketable to an audience that is largely wedded to technological advances though. Immersive features described in some flowery marketing terms will get an enthusiast audience off a current game onto the sequel.

If big budget games were less detailed to save costs we would most likely just end up with slightly less detailed games still not selling well enough to keep investors happy.

It's the same thing with your campaign against games being released for £70. People who buy one or two new games a year and have stopped doing so are probably not going to start buying new releases again if they were all suddenly £50.

I think it would be great to have more, smaller titles released more regularly for sub £40 but that alone isn't going to mitigate the risk of investors not putting the money up in the first place because they're only looking to make returns on the next big blockbuster and because the audience does largely agree with that approach.

Cuttooth wrote:...but that alone isn't going to mitigate the risk of investors not putting the money up in the first place because they're only looking to make returns on the next big blockbuster and because the audience does largely agree with that approach.

I don't disagree, Cuttooth. That's exactly where we are with "AAA" gaming; games have to be massive blockbusters or else they're failures. I wonder how long investors in gaming will think that the risk of hitting gold is worth it? Maybe there are less risky investments.

I think the problem a lot of studios are finding themselves stuck in, is that they think bigger, prettier games, nearly always yields a better result, a bigger return on the investment. When this just isn't the case, especially when the extra costs involved in producing the game are passed on to the customer, with a lot of new games costing £70+ and people often having less disposable income now, less time to sit down and enjoy their hobby. This means people are just a lot more selective about what they buy, but at the same time, if games started to look simpler, were smaller, a portion of the fanbase would then kick off.

Are Nintendo at more of a sweet spot? Maybe a little? I still think the Switch needs an upgrade for some titles, but we have still got some visually amazing games on the system, Mario Odyssey, both Zelda games, MP Remaster to name a handful, if we still got older style, Pokemon games in a Pokemon version of the 2D HD style we've seen in Octopath Traveller, I'd probably not be as desperate for a Switch 2 in this case, but this feels like the developers aren't being given the time rather than the hardware being the only bottle neck.

There does also come a point, from a graphical point of view where it does feel like diminishing returns, new hardware is inevitable though, but I can see why some companies want to get as much as possible out of one piece before moving on. I still don't get why Sony and Microsoft seem intent on releasing new hardware again though, with cross gen still being such a factor (especially for PS4), both would be better to just focus on their current 'new' consoles for a good few years before releasing new hardware, again. Really poor of Sony to lay off nearly a thousand staff and then still expect folk to cough up for a PS5 Pro :fp:

jawa_ wrote:
Cuttooth wrote:...but that alone isn't going to mitigate the risk of investors not putting the money up in the first place because they're only looking to make returns on the next big blockbuster and because the audience does largely agree with that approach.

I don't disagree, Cuttooth. That's exactly where we are with "AAA" gaming; games have to be massive blockbusters or else they're failures. I wonder how long investors in gaming will think that the risk of hitting gold is worth it? Maybe there are less risky investments.

They've already decided it isn't worth it, that's why there are so many layoffs and cancelled projects at the moment.

Surprised they haven't blamed retro gamers yet or the online marketplace being oversaturated. Console games well over a decade old still being on sale is actually a relatively new phenomenon brought about by digital store fronts. Physical releases used to have a designated print run before ultimately being removed from sale, with excess stock effectively being bought back by the console manufacturer. By 2002 Sony believed the budget lines that publishers had introduced to bring back many of their old titles had gotten so cheap (under £10) that it was actually devaluing the market and put a stop to it.

You look at something like WRC from EA most recently. That has crashed in value and is currently at Amazon for £21. Well is it any surprise when EA's rally title has to go up against WRC titles on the digital store fronts that are as low as £1.59.

Another area Nintendo are ahead of the current curve, as they don't do discounts on their third party stuff. They believe they're worth over £40, and that's generally where they stay. This in turn conditions the customer not to expect a price cut.

Video game companies are bad | Take-Two sack 580 people (5% of workforce)

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