I feel like a lot of this is quantity vs quality. 2012 seems like a particularly good year for quantity.
But it's an interesting comparison I think.
In 2012, Mass Media Games, ThatGameCompany, United Front Games, Superbot Entertainment, The Workshop, Zindagi Games, Lightbox Interactive, Eat Sleep Play, Nihilistic Software, and perhaps a few others developed a lot of the remasters, and new games for Sony. Whereas everything in 2022 was internally driven.
This year was a particularly bad year for external development, with nothing developed externally. It's rather strange. Sony didn't publish a single external game this year. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this was the first time that's ever happened.
It's not terribly surprising to see fewer games released, as it takes longer to make games, but this seems like a particularly surprising difference.
1.) How do you feel about quantity Sony vs quality Sony?
2.) Do you think that the future will have a better balance of quality and quantity?
It's a tad disappointing for me. I think Ragnarok is amazing, but it feels like it could have been a better year.
I think there are a lot of things going on.
As mentioned above, games tend to take longer. It wasn't uncommon to see a game take 1 to 3 years during the PS3 era, and now we see large teams taking 4-6 years pretty regularly.
Sony seems like they restarted their external development or something, or maybe had major issues besides covid. They used to have a lot of partnerships with their studios. Sony Santa Monica worked with The Workshop and San Diego worked with United Front and Zindagi. This seems to be something that Sony is getting away from, and rather pushing XDev to play that part, but they don't seem to have enough resources to make up for it yet.
I think there's also a factor of Sony not taking as much credit/not taking control of IPs as much. If you look at Journey, that was a small title that Sony published. Yet Kena was published by Ember Labs, despite seeming like both games got a similar amount of support from Sony. I might be completely wrong about the amount of support that both games got, but there aren't really any comparable cases today.
But it's an interesting comparison I think.
2012 | 2022 |
PS3: Jak and Daxter Collection Killzone Trilogy LittleBigPlanet Karting MLB 12 PlayStation All Stars Ratchet & Clank Collection Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault Sorcery Sports Champions 2 Starhawk Twisted Metal Wonderbook Journey Unfinished Swan Motorstorm RC PSV: Gravity Rush LittleBigPlanet Vita Little Deviants MLB The Show Modnation Racers Resistance: Burning Skies Uncharted: Golden Abyss Unit 13 Wipeout 2048 | PS5: God of War Ragnarok Gran Turismo 7 Horizon: Forbidden West MLB The Show 22 The Last of Us Part I Uncharted Legacy of Thieves PC: God of War Spider-man Miles Morales Spiderman: Remastered Sackboy: A Big Adventure Uncharted Legacy of Thieves |
In 2012, Mass Media Games, ThatGameCompany, United Front Games, Superbot Entertainment, The Workshop, Zindagi Games, Lightbox Interactive, Eat Sleep Play, Nihilistic Software, and perhaps a few others developed a lot of the remasters, and new games for Sony. Whereas everything in 2022 was internally driven.
This year was a particularly bad year for external development, with nothing developed externally. It's rather strange. Sony didn't publish a single external game this year. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this was the first time that's ever happened.
It's not terribly surprising to see fewer games released, as it takes longer to make games, but this seems like a particularly surprising difference.
1.) How do you feel about quantity Sony vs quality Sony?
2.) Do you think that the future will have a better balance of quality and quantity?
It's a tad disappointing for me. I think Ragnarok is amazing, but it feels like it could have been a better year.
I think there are a lot of things going on.
As mentioned above, games tend to take longer. It wasn't uncommon to see a game take 1 to 3 years during the PS3 era, and now we see large teams taking 4-6 years pretty regularly.
Sony seems like they restarted their external development or something, or maybe had major issues besides covid. They used to have a lot of partnerships with their studios. Sony Santa Monica worked with The Workshop and San Diego worked with United Front and Zindagi. This seems to be something that Sony is getting away from, and rather pushing XDev to play that part, but they don't seem to have enough resources to make up for it yet.
I think there's also a factor of Sony not taking as much credit/not taking control of IPs as much. If you look at Journey, that was a small title that Sony published. Yet Kena was published by Ember Labs, despite seeming like both games got a similar amount of support from Sony. I might be completely wrong about the amount of support that both games got, but there aren't really any comparable cases today.