PlayStation Studios Development

Started by the-pi-guy, Mar 27, 2015, 08:29 PM

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Horizon

Mar 24, 2023, 02:28 PM Last Edit: Mar 24, 2023, 02:31 PM by Horizon
Linkedin numbers apart from PD and Asobi( Sourced from interviews)

Naughty Dog801
Insomniac524
Guerrilla421
Santa Monica344
Gran Turismo/PD300
Firesprite247
Sucker Punch189
Haven121
San Diego120
Bend119
Media Molecule105
Housemarque105
London103
Bluepoint75
Asobi60
Pixelopus20



Insomniac is pretty insane.

Some of Sony's other studios seem to have put in quite a bit of work to have better output, and I'm hopeful that it ends up being fruitful.  

Naughty Dog seems to have a small army of producers to work on different titles.
Guerrilla has expanded quite a bit to work on single player and multiplayer titles.
Firesprite seems to be working on a large number of titles.
Bungie is massive and seems to be working on quite a few things.
Santa Monica too.


I think in a lot of respects this generation has been better first party wise than last gen.
Last gen it was basically Driveclub, Knack, Killzone SF, inFamous, The Order, Tearaway, Bloodborne. Personally my favorite game ever with lots of mid tier titles.
This gen so far we've had Demon's Souls, Returnal, Spider-man, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, and some more.

I feel like this gen has been more consistently good, whereas last gen had the highest highs and the lowest lows.  Hard to compare, since Bloodborne is my favorite title ever.
But I'm hopeful the second half continues to be great.
I think Sony needs a few more core teams who around 100-200 or another team who are between 300-500.

BananaKing

Insomniac is pretty insane.

Some of Sony's other studios seem to have put in quite a bit of work to have better output, and I'm hopeful that it ends up being fruitful.  

Naughty Dog seems to have a small army of producers to work on different titles.
Guerrilla has expanded quite a bit to work on single player and multiplayer titles.
Firesprite seems to be working on a large number of titles.
Bungie is massive and seems to be working on quite a few things.
Santa Monica too.


I think in a lot of respects this generation has been better first party wise than last gen.
Last gen it was basically Driveclub, Knack, Killzone SF, inFamous, The Order, Tearaway, Bloodborne. Personally my favorite game ever with lots of mid tier titles.
This gen so far we've had Demon's Souls, Returnal, Spider-man, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, and some more.

I feel like this gen has been more consistently good, whereas last gen had the highest highs and the lowest lows.  Hard to compare, since Bloodborne is my favorite title ever.
But I'm hopeful the second half continues to be great.
Last gen started slow and a bit week. But later on it had some great bangers. Lets not forget that horizon 2, gow:r and gt7, spiderman are all on PS4 as well

the-pi-guy

Linkedin numbers apart from PD and Asobi( Sourced from interviews)

Naughty Dog801
Insomniac524
Guerrilla421
Santa Monica344
Gran Turismo/PD300
Firesprite247
Sucker Punch189
Haven121
San Diego120
Bend119
Media Molecule105
Housemarque105
London103
Bluepoint75
Asobi60
Pixelopus20

Based on previous interviews compared to linkedin, Naughty Dog is usually weirdly high. ND would say they have around 300, even though their LinkedIn says 600. They are probably closer to 400-500 now.

Firesprite seems oddly low. They've been posting that they have over 300 people.

The rest I think are probably within 10% of the actual.


Quote
I think Sony needs a few more core teams who around 100-200 or another team who are between 300-500.
I think I'd like to see double that.  8)

Horizon

Genuinely intrigued to see Bluepoint's project as they don't seem to be expanding as quickly as other studios. Not sure if it is harder to attract talent in Austin or they want to stay smaller.

I think Sony needs to acquire the likes of Arrowhead, Deviation and another 100 team studio. You're just not going to get another studio like Insomniac sadly.

BananaKing

Genuinely intrigued to see Bluepoint's project as they don't seem to be expanding as quickly as other studios. Not sure if it is harder to attract talent in Austin or they want to stay smaller.

I think Sony needs to acquire the likes of Arrowhead, Deviation and another 100 team studio. You're just not going to get another studio like Insomniac sadly.
Insomniace are one of a kind. But let's be honest, they are working on an IP they had for 4 gens (ratchet). And an already established IP with its characters ready (spiderman) that uses the same map/area for all its games. Context is important to understand why they are so efficient

Im mostly looking forward to what SSM and Sony bend are doing. We know bend is doing a new IP. And Cory is working on something (i really hope its not a star wars game)

the-pi-guy

Insomniace are one of a kind. But let's be honest, they are working on an IP they had for 4 gens (ratchet). And an already established IP with its characters ready (spiderman) that uses the same map/area for all its games. Context is important to understand why they are so efficient
I would say even beyond the points you've made; they're good at scoping.  

Even when they do make new IPs, they still come out quickly. 2013-2014, they launched 2 new IPs (even though one of them was not good) and a Ratchet and Clank title. 3 games in 2 years.

I feel like if we were to compare to ND,
ND is like "We're going to spend 6 months making this simulation to flip a boat as realistically as possible."
IG is like "We're going to spend 6 months making half of this game."

I think IG does things more procedurally.
They both do the mocap stuff, and then ND is like we're going to do more of this by hand, so that it's more perfect.  

At least that's my educated guess... based on how the finished products come out, some interviews, and how quickly Insomniac is able to patch stuff in.

the-pi-guy

Sony has been extremely lean development wise for a very long time.
I think even with Bungie bringing like 850+ developers, Sony probably has ~4,000 developers. 
Compare that to Ubisoft which has like one studio by itself that hires that many people.  And overall hires like 22,000 people.
Activision and EA have like 11,000 people, hard to say how many of those are developers. 

The difference might be that Sony outsources way more.

But still I would be curious to see if Sony decides to undergo a lot of growth. They were relatively close to XGS in size. But with the Activision acquisition, MS will have like 3x as many people...

BananaKing

Sony has been extremely lean development wise for a very long time.
I think even with Bungie bringing like 850+ developers, Sony probably has ~4,000 developers.  
Compare that to Ubisoft which has like one studio by itself that hires that many people.  And overall hires like 22,000 people.
Activision and EA have like 11,000 people, hard to say how many of those are developers.  

The difference might be that Sony outsources way more.

But still I would be curious to see if Sony decides to undergo a lot of growth. They were relatively close to XGS in size. But with the Activision acquisition, MS will have like 3x as many people...
Sony uses a lot of support studios. They even started acquiring some

Horizon

Mar 27, 2023, 08:20 AM Last Edit: Mar 27, 2023, 08:32 AM by Horizon
Guerrilla's decima engine is really good at procedural as well. It's excellent at building large diverse lands and probably a reason why Horizon development has less people than other games.

Sony has been extremely lean development wise for a very long time.
I think even with Bungie bringing like 850+ developers, Sony probably has ~4,000 developers.  
Compare that to Ubisoft which has like one studio by itself that hires that many people.  And overall hires like 22,000 people.
Activision and EA have like 11,000 people, hard to say how many of those are developers.  

The difference might be that Sony outsources way more.

But still I would be curious to see if Sony decides to undergo a lot of growth. They were relatively close to XGS in size. But with the Activision acquisition, MS will have like 3x as many people...
The acquisitions and growth in studios Sony made in 2021 grew their workface by 20%. It will be interesting to see if Sony will drawn into an arms race with MS. MS reason for acquiring publishers is because they need to feed game pass. Perhaps Sony takes a HBO approach and has less but higher quality releases. Either way I am sure we're going to find out their direction in the next 12 months.

kitler53

MS isn't going to be able to afford all these developers if they keep "giving" away all their work on gamepass.  

i'm only a few months into ps+ extra and my spend is down massively.  MS is full of shame thinking they can get this service up to multi hundreds of millions of susbscribers.  there is a reason consoles max out around 1 hundred million.   that's MS's ceiling for gamepass.


Featured Artist: Vanessa Hudgens

Horizon

MS isn't going to be able to afford all these developers if they keep "giving" away all their work on gamepass.  

i'm only a few months into ps+ extra and my spend is down massively.  MS is full of shame thinking they can get this service up to multi hundreds of millions of susbscribers.  there is a reason consoles max out around 1 hundred million.   that's MS's ceiling for gamepass.
They've been suckered into the billion gamers PR nonsense. There aren't 1 billion games who want to play high definition graphic games. There are probably 250 million people tops. What there are is a bunch of gamers who will play candy crush or some casual crud.

kitler53

They've been suckered into the billion gamers PR nonsense. There aren't 1 billion games who want to play high definition graphic games. There are probably 250 million people tops. What there are is a bunch of gamers who will play candy crush or some casual crud.
yeah, exactly.   i don't want to call the people that play candy crush any bad names or anything.   they are gamers for sure.  but like.. nothing is going to get my mom (that plays those ipad games) to play stuff like starfield, CoD, hellblade.   especially not at $150 a year.   she plays free-to-play games on ipad for a few minutes a day and her needs are met.  

....and even of the people that play these types of games there are a ton of people that just buy 1 game a year and are satisfied.   games like GTA.






Featured Artist: Vanessa Hudgens

Legend

Guerrilla's decima engine is really good at procedural as well. It's excellent at building large diverse lands and probably a reason why Horizon development has less people than other games.
Most open world engines are pretty good nowadays at procedural stuff, but decima is the only one I know of that does real time procedural generation on the gpu while you play. It's a pretty great system.

the-pi-guy

Dang Naughty Dog worked with Valve:





the-pi-guy

Last of Us PC port is apparently rough.

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