2012 Sony vs 2022 Sony

Started by the-pi-guy, Dec 06, 2022, 03:54 PM

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the-pi-guy

Dec 06, 2022, 03:54 PM Last Edit: Dec 06, 2022, 04:24 PM by the-pi-guy
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.

20122022
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.

kitler53

2012 >>> 2022

don't get me wrong,.. quality is important.  i don't want sony making shame games.   ...but i'm getting tired of just a couple massive AAAA titles and huge gaps between.  what really sets 2012 apart are the smaller titles that were great quality but less ambitious:

Journey
Unfinished Swan
Gravity Rush
Little Big Planet Vita

sony needs to fund a studio that churns out small experimental titles quickly.  classic style games like 2D platformers, twin stick shooters, and brawlers.   weirdly different games like flower, unfinished swan, and echochrome.   while these titles don't set sales records they fill in the "something for everyone" gap that has gotten pretty big on consoles these days.

oh sure,.. indies are filling this gap a bit.   TMNT shredders revenge was fantastic in the classics area.   Stray was a "weird" game that i'm glad exists.   but the quality on indies is often times not the best.   sony should be making sure there are games in this space that are as fantastic in quality as a game like GoW:R.


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darkknightkryta

It's not Sony Quanitity vs Sony Quality.
It's Sony Quantity+ Quality vs Sony Quality.
There's a reason I mentioned a year or so ago that there isn't much from Sony that's interesting me.  It isn't because I wasn't interested in Sony games, it's because Sony's output has been demolished.

the-pi-guy

It's not Sony Quanitity vs Sony Quality.
It's Sony Quantity+ Quality vs Sony Quality.
There's a reason I mentioned a year or so ago that there isn't much from Sony that's interesting me.  It isn't because I wasn't interested in Sony games, it's because Sony's output has been demolished.
Not saying the 2012 games were bad quality, just that they weren't 100 million dollar productions like GT, Horizon or God of War were this year.

kitler53

i like that some of sony's games are 100 million dollar productions.   i think that's a good thing because that's what it takes to get a GoW.    

just, ya know,.. have a 50 or so 2 million dollar productions as well...


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Legend

late to the party and echoing everyone else, but yeah I really wish Sony published smaller games again. I really enjoyed 6 games from them in 2012.
Journey
Unfinished Swan
Gravity Rush
Little Big Planet Vita

sony needs to fund a studio that churns out small experimental titles quickly.  classic style games like 2D platformers, twin stick shooters, and brawlers.   weirdly different games like flower, unfinished swan, and echochrome.   while these titles don't set sales records they fill in the "something for everyone" gap that has gotten pretty big on consoles these days.

oh sure,.. indies are filling this gap a bit.   TMNT shredders revenge was fantastic in the classics area.   Stray was a "weird" game that i'm glad exists.   but the quality on indies is often times not the best.   sony should be making sure there are games in this space that are as fantastic in quality as a game like GoW:R.

Even indies have been getting more competitive. They take far longer to develop and unlike before, many indie publishers exist that are fighting for the good games. Gone are the years where you could give a small group of devs a short amount of time and expect great results. Journey took 3 years, while Stray took 7 years for example.

kitler53

late to the party and echoing everyone else, but yeah I really wish Sony published smaller games again. I really enjoyed 6 games from them in 2012.Even indies have been getting more competitive. They take far longer to develop and unlike before, many indie publishers exist that are fighting for the good games. Gone are the years where you could give a small group of devs a short amount of time and expect great results. Journey took 3 years, while Stray took 7 years for example.
it's not entirely about years though.  

a game like GoW must of had 400 people working on it.   how many did stray or journey have?   I think hello games (no man's sky) was just 20.  I think supergiant games (hades) is 20 as well.  

so 400 / 20 = 20 games in six years instead of one?  ..or about 3 a year.  I'll take that trade.  I'll bet sony can make them more efficiently then an indie. and even if none of them sell 20 million units individually,.  collectively they could.   even just 1 breakout like journey can punch well above it's wait on RoI. 

but the $$ isn't entirely the point.  as a console owner it's Sony's job to convince people that this platform is worth buying.  these small titles really allows you to get to specific gamers that want something more than just GoW, CoD, and AC.  those titles are clearly important but the lineup is shallow these days in both quantity and variety. 


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