on Budget Concerns, Missed Deadlines
So basically all games.
They went ahead with Concord and Marathon, but for Kojima they’re like, ‘Nahhh, mate’. What is going on at Sony?
Concord and Marathon is probably why they are changing course and are cutting these money bleeding projects.
Has a bad case of shareholders; it’s usually fatal.
Concord seems to be one of the reason for this, Sony has started being more hands on about milestones etc and checking how the game is going, and apparently this was missing those milestones.
Its Kojima though, one of the biggest names in game creation. People like me buy games just because he worked on it. And its always a fire game. Sony can easily account for him while handling their other projects. He’s like Yoko Taro, except Square doesn’t let Yoko Taro make whatever he wants. But I still buy all his stuff because its always fire, even though I really don’t like Square Enix.
Sony is just burning every bridge possible. No idea why, but it seems like they are speedrunning ending their company, like every other company, but they just found new method to reduce time.
Nonsense is what
The weird one to me is that, if they’re going to cancel a Kojima game, they still haven’t cancelled Fairgames/Break-In/Project Espresso. One of those two is far more likely to break even.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that Sony must be trying to get out of gaming by sabotaging their gaming wing, aka, Playstation. Why else would they have made so many collosally bad decisions this past year.
Herman Hulst has got to be the absolute worst decision maker I’ve ever seen Sony put in place. This is the same company that smoothly handed Xbox their asses during the PS4 reveal and now they’re absolutely blowing it for the current gen and even the next gen before their PS6 is even a thought.
Simple. Xbox has been on a nonstop streak of foot shooting for a few years now. Sony, refusing to be outdone by their competitor, is showing everyone they can shoot their own foot much better
Alternatively; sony having pretty much won the console war knows they can enshittify without losing (too) much of their audience.
I was under the impression that the gaming part was the only profitable aspect left.
Death Stranding sold 20 million copies and they ditch the studio over a (probably really arbitrary) deadline? There‘s probably a little more to this but whatever the case Sony can‘t help but shoot itself in the foot.
This is the second large partnership he is part of that ends abruptly, it is possible he is hard to work with and could have an ego or work style that clashes with some others.
Gamers like his stuff, but he does seem to make odd decisions when it comes to celebrities on his projects (from an outsiders perspective).
And so far Death Stranding 2 has sold… just over 2 million. Perhaps a drop-off that steep had a hand in their willingness to light money on fire.
That might have contributed, but from what I have seen it basically broke even from it’s sales. If they haven’t lost money, this descision makes no sense. Kojima is basically Playstation royalty and his name carries so much weight in the industry. Especially since they were championing Physint as his triumphant return to the action espionage genre. I’ve never played one of his games and even I knew immediately this was a collosal fuck up on their part.
Given what a person can do with $8 million and an index fund targeting the Fortune 500 over 5-7 years, breaking even is probably not their goal. They don’t even want projects to fall even near that level.
Right, but it’s not just a spreadsheet descision. Kojima’s name carries immense weight and is one of the biggest in the industry. Just having him attached to your brand sells systems. The last time a company backstabbed him like this, they spent a decade making nothing but Pachinko and sports games.
Sony cutting him out is gonna be a lot more damaging to them than breaking even on a niche project. And let’s not forget that Physint won’t be nearly as niche as Death Stranding. It’s his return to the genre that made him famous.
That’s because this isn’t about deadlines or budgets, it’s about exclusivity. Sony wouldn’t give two fucks about a deadline or a budget if the game was exclusive to PS. Kojima probably told them “No” on the exclusivity and Sony pulled the plug. I think it makes sense but overall yeah, the end result is that Sony keeps shooting themselves in the foot. I don’t think their return to exclusivity is going to successful.
Like… They should have accounted for that. It’s fucking Kojima. Give him all the money and time he fuckin’ needs to cook.
Right? They should have treated him like those big name directors making avant-garde movies, even if the game takes years to make and doesn’t sell well, you are still bringing prestige to your platform just by having them.
Focusing on live service instead makes them closer to mobile games market, where you have a lot of money but very little respect.
They need that money for datacenters.
Mostly interesting that they immediately leaked this info to attempt damage control.
It wasn’t damage control when the size of Concord’s loss was leaked to the press.
“Physint” kinda sounds like their whole strategy right now
Sony is definitely int’ing right now
Physn’t
In video form if you prefer one-take Schreier: https://youtu.be/aOWwGl6d0Iw
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