Little Chicken
Gold Member
It was overshadowed by Foamstars.
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Don't look now, but PlayStations Live Service initiative is off to a killer start...
- Thread starter Men_in_Boxes
- Start date
Mahavastu
Member
One thing Sony promised was that the Gaas games are somewhat added efforts and do not reduce the work on PS5 exclusive non-Gaas titles by their internal studios.
The longer the time frame between Spiderman 2 and the next PS5 exclusive by an Sony internal studio (for some just saying '1st party' mean also '2nd party'), the more this part failed
That studios like Naughty dogs still have nothing to show in this generation after allegedly working for years on TLOU online might be a symptom of that.
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yurinka
Member
No, they failed because they were bad games. Destiny 2, GT7, MLB and Helldivers 2 are very successful GaaaS because they are good games, they give the players of that niches what they want.
No, he's retiring because he's old. The Live Service initiative wasn't created by him and is being very succcessful, part of PS has been breaking records in almost every KPI.
Jim Ryan retires being the most successful CEO of a console maker in gaming history. They just posted $30B for 2023, pretty likely more than Tencent has posted/will post for this year. So pretty likely will also retire leaving Sony as the top grossing gaming company, something Sony never achieved.
A few folks complaining in forums isn't reprensentative of what over 100M PS players think. And obviously that opinion doesn't mean a shit regarding the success or not of an initiative. It's only the personal opinion of a few guys.
So far Destiny 2, Gran Turismo 7, MLB and Helldivers are a big success. I assume Firewall Ultra failed if their devs are shutting down, and there's TLOU Online cancelled because ND wanted to focus on SP and the GaaS was going to require them too much work.
We'll see the other ones.
No, Bungie decided to do it as a consequence of the acquisittion because being inside Sony they weren't going to need these people because they already have people in Sony doing that same job for all their studios.
When Sony acquired them were about 900 people, grew and with these firings they temporally went down from 1200 to 1100 aprox. They continued growing are now around 1500 people.
One of the reasons Sony acquired Bungie was to help oher GaaS under development, and the first one released since they implementted that process is Helldivers 2, which is having a great sucess.
They didn't delay 6 games beyond FY2025.
He said that out of the 12, half of them were secured (some already released) to be released on time before April 2026. They were still evaluating some, but no longer had that April 2026 milestone because some weren't going to achieve it (so we know some won't achieve it, but are less than 6). Some months later they cancelled TLOU Online.
No, to cancel games is normal in game development. In this case ND wanted to focus on SP games and the GaaS was going to require to remove resoures from there, and they prefered to kill the GaaS instead.
Not rue, and if so they are wrong. Gran Turismo 7, MLB, Destiny 2 and Helldivers 2 are very successful games. Jim Ryan said that they didn't expect all of them to be massive hits at all, that they only counted with maybe only a handful would be huge hits.
It isn't he first, it's the fourth. You could even say it's the fift if you count Destiny 2.
I assume once people realizes games like Gran Turismo 7, MLB, Helldivers 2 and Destiny 2 are successful games.
And that GaaS have the majority of players in gaming, and generate the majority of revenue in gaming. Plus these percentages are growing every year. In console too.
This generation they shown and released TLOUP1+pc port, TLOUP2 Remaster, Uncharted Collection + pc port. Plus a movie and a tv show. They were working on TLOU Online but cancelled it and are working on a least two new SP games, one them started around 2020/2021 and the other one early 2023.
For the first time they have been working on 3 new games at he same time, and to grow these teams requires time. AAA development also requires time, nowadays from 5 to 9 years aprox. So it's too early for them to show these games.
This is true, all known teams working on GaaS already worked on GaaS (Bungie x 2, Firewalk, Haven, Deviation, Polyphony, London Studio) previously already worked on GaaS or are external (Arrowhead, First Contact/Firewall Ultra) or are new teams built in the studio out from their MP teams (ND, Guerrilla, Firesprite) separate them from the SP games teams.
Helldivers 2 has been released barely 3 months after Spider-Man 2
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FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
It's not a smash hit at all. I'll wait till it sells 10 million and then we can say that.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Dear Diary…
As for HD2 success it is odd simply because the game is still not fixed as far as I know for crashes and matchmaking. Anyone else would’ve been 2/10 LOLed off the internet. The game is an anomaly.
We shall see how it does in a month or two, how much and what kind of support it gets, etc.
I refunded but would gladly pick it up once the crashes are resolved.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
We can all agree success boils down to amount of investment vs amount of revenue. We don't know how much the game cost vs what they brought in, but we do know that it surpassed Arrowhead Studios expectations, as well as just about everyone paying attention.
I don't see it maintaining a high player base in a month or two but suspect we will see big player spikes when there are big content drops.
Also, the discourse didn't require high quality evidence when they tried to dog PlayStations GAAS strategy. Now we do?
The Finals is averaging 38k concurrent players on Steam over the last 30 days. It's more popular than Sea of Thieves on XBox right now. I suspect it's already viewed as a success by Nexon.
It doesn't need to. The PS5 has gotten a bunch of AA SP exclusives that have underwhelmed commercially over the last 3 years. Helldivers 2 looks to be outcompeting all of them. If that's the case, their Live Service strategy is a success.
I'm saying you can't conclude that it's a success based on one game. They are (or at least were) planning MANY more. Let's see how those do. We know the one that was probably expected to be the biggest one of them all was cancelled.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
You're right. I'm merely responding to the narrative, which was pushed by many, that their strategy had already failed based on far flimsier evidence. All Helldivers 2 success proves is that they're 1 for 1 right now, which is a great start.
Single player gamers may have believed Factions 2 was going to be a big hit, but multiplayer gamers knew that was bogus. Multiplayer isn't dependent on IP like single player is. It's dependent on gameplay. Faction 2 likely lacked a compelling long term gameplay loop, which means they cancelled it because they didn't want to push a boulder up a hill.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
You can when it's a P2P GAAS game. They're growing their studio less than a week after launch because they like the numbers. They wouldn't be committing to a long term financial commitment if the numbers weren't overwhelmingly positive.
I'm with you. It's going to lose a lot of its players over the next few months. It'll be interesting to see how players respond to the big updates going forward.
The goal isn't player count. The goal is $$$. I suspect Sony understands something about GAAS games that you and Jaffe have yet to realize. If a game doesn't have strong legs, it's likely better to charge up front to take advantage of the FOMO hype. They probably have telemetry that shows a significant portion of player only spend money if they're still enjoying the game after ~30 hours.
Plus, let's be real. They couldn't keep their servers up while charging players. Going F2P would have been a technical nightmare.
I don't think they're confident in the MTX at the moment. You can earn everything through in game currency. Their cosmetics and emotes look significantly worse than just about every other big GAAS game out right now.
Again, I don't think they have to get to grips with anything. They certainly have people studying this model for a while now. This is likely basic stuff to them and more of a mystery to us.
yurinka
Member
Dear Diary…
StueyDuck
Member
We've had to endure the following narrative for the last 2 years...
1. Destruction All Stars, Knockout City and Rumbleverse failed because the Live Service segment of the market is saturated.
2. Jim Ryan is retiring. He's retiring because PlayStations Live Service initiative has failed.
3. Gamers didn't like PlayStations May 2023 Showcase which means their Live Service initiative has failed.
4. Bungie laid off 8% of their employees. They did this because PlayStations Live Service initiative has failed.
5. PlayStation has delayed 6 of their Live Service games outside of FY 2025. They did this because their Live Service initiative has failed and delayed means cancelled.
6. Naughty Dog cancelled their pre production Live Service game because the Live Service initiative has failed.
If the grass blows in any direction, games media, game message boards, and Twitter loudly interpreted it as PlayStations Live Service initiative failing.
Fast forward to today. Helldivers 2, the first of PlayStations "12 Live Service games" releases to a resounding success...
How has games media, game message boards, and Twitter reacted?
Not only is Helldivers 2 a smash hit, but the buzz around it is unusually positive for a GAAS game. A buggy, incomplete multiplayer game with MTX is receiving near universal praise. It really makes you wonder doesn't it?
Has anyone else noticed this? What does this say about games media and human nature in general? At what point do we come to a reckoning and admit PlayStation may have read the market better than us?
(And by "us" I mean "you"- wink)
I don't know if we can claim anything like that yet.
The secret is in the name... helldivers 2... that two shows there was already an install base there. Me and many others were already huge fans of the original and weren't buying the second one because of any other reasons.
When we see what Concord, fair games and marathon end up being and how they do would be a more accurate lens to view how their initiative is going
They've been working on helldivers 2 for bloody years. It's just a sequel to the first. Whilst yes, it is a GAAS, t wouldn't even be included under the much more recent remit for pushing GAAS. It was already happening. Still tho, its a great game. Only multiplayer game ive enjoyed in years
Lunarorbit
Member
Destruction All Stars, Knockout City and Rumbleverse failed because they were shitty games.
Bungie laid off ppl cause their output hasn't been well received and their fans are tired of destiny 2 and want something new.
ND canceled factions cause they got horrible advice. Ppl would have ate anything up. Bungie was greedy and doesn't understand the player base of factions is wildly different than other mp games.
Bungie laid off ppl cause their output hasn't been well received and their fans are tired of destiny 2 and want something new.
ND canceled factions cause they got horrible advice. Ppl would have ate anything up. Bungie was greedy and doesn't understand the player base of factions is wildly different than other mp games.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
When the game was revealed no one cared. No one was saying it was going to be a hit.
54th all time on steam and still rising, 3rd on the playstation store only behind Fortnite (f2p) and CoD... that's a big success. And the game will only get more popular when it eventually hits PS+
Probably cost a fraction of what Halo Infinite cost to make.
54th all time on steam and still rising, 3rd on the playstation store only behind Fortnite (f2p) and CoD... that's a big success. And the game will only get more popular when it eventually hits PS+
Probably cost a fraction of what Halo Infinite cost to make.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
Sony cancelled the Deviation Games project and they said pretty early on that they were going to focus on bringing quality to the GaaS space. They even cancelled TLOU Online and delayed Marathon.
All these things mean they're still focusing on quality rather than releasing something just to release it. That and the success that Helldivers 2 has seen so far are pretty strong signs that Sony is making the right decisions around GaaS.
Kerotan
Member
Literally all you do is shoot bugs.
Factions was one of the 12 Live service games they promised, and that got canceled with presumably significant costs unrecovered.
Saying they’re ‘1 for 1’ is stretching the truth. But we’ve had this conversation before
Faction was a major AAA endeavor and was widely expected to be a hit, based on the great reception TLOU’s multiplayer mode had.
When you take into consideration how rare it is to to make a successful GaaS game that sticks, I’d say they’re overall off to a really good start
Unknown?
Member
This is true. How come their lazy "failed" narrative didn't say exactly what you just did as well?
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Men_in_Boxes
, you are so committed to GAAS games, I can only admire your dedication to the cause.That said, Helldivers 2 is a fantastic game. Great games continue to win. As gamers, we should celebrate great games whether GAAS or otherwise.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
That's wrong for a few reasons...
1. In Nov of 2023 Hiroki Titoki reiterated the 12 number. That was well after reliable insider Jason Shreier said the game was on ice. PlayStation has always been working on more than 12 too.
2. Single player games get cancelled all the time. Plus, it never left pre production according to Naughty Dog so how expensive was it?
3. When I say 1 for 1, I mean the first game in their strategy actually released and was a hit. This runs contrary to the "Most will fail. Maybe one or two land" narrative that was adopted by many.
It was widely expected to be a hit by less informed people. PlayStation doesn't cancel hits. PlayStation cancels non hits. Again, multiplayer gamers generally don't care about IP the way single player gamers do.
It will be humorous when 10/12 of their Live Service offerings are successful and the narrative is quietly memory holed.
VideoGameEnjoyer
Member
Time will tell. It would be very exciting if the game was still going strong a year from now. Because it has absolutely insane potential, and is one of the few where the future roadmap could actually be really cool, and something to look forward to. They can do so many things with the concept. And the gameplay is already great.
It's been a very good start, other than the server issues. Now the hard part begins.
It's been a very good start, other than the server issues. Now the hard part begins.
12 games were announced back in Jan 2022. And that included Factions. 12 games reiterated in Nov 2023, with Factions still being worked on, albeit with the workforce scaled down. Final cancelation happened afterwards. It's completely out of reality to insist that Factions - which was part of the 12 in 2022 - was no longer part of the 12 commented on in November. The Press certainly thought Factions was among that list, and Sony definitely knew they couldn't revise that number without questions.
Druckmann said Factions was their most ambitious title yet, and they'd been working on it since before TLOU 2 released in 2020. It also went into full production, according to Naughty Dog. I suggest you give that press release another read.
With presumably a significant portion of highly paid Naughty Dog employees working on the game for nearly 3 years, undoubtedly millions have been sunk on salaries alone.
They've canceled one game. One has been released. Six games delayed.
Most people have used general stats to infer how unlikely it is that most Live Service games released by a publisher would stick. You keep referring to this as a 'narrative' but that certainly doesn't fit. I don't imagine Sony themselves expect every title to be a winner. And that's perfectly fine. There's a Spiderverse and Twisted Metal to every Morbius and Madame Web. Destruction All Stars failed and Foamstars isn't landing with a splash, but Helldivers is soaring. That's the nature of the beast.
ByWatterson
Member
Yes but it's literally their first try.
MiguelItUp
Member
I mean, The Finals is still pretty healthy, it just experienced a drop off, which a lot of these games do. Judging it by the coming months as opposed to weeks I feel is much more accurate.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
I'm still going with Hiroki Titoki + Jason Shreier. Both are relatively reputable figures when it comes to this conversation. I suspect PlayStation knew of Factions fate long before Jason Shreier, let alone the public.
You also have to consider the target audience. Titoki was addressing shareholders, not gamers.
This doesn't sound like full production to me...
"The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed. In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear."
It sounds like they had a review before committing to the next, more costly phase of development, and it didn't pass review.
Again, the cost of doing business.
Here, Shuhei Yoshida says PlayStation "cancels so many games".
Former PlayStation Boss Says They 'Cancel So Many Games'
Shuhei Yoshida, the previous president of PlayStation, explained canceling all these games was done to “save” the devs
kotaku.com
The only difference is the narrative. A cancelled Live Service game means Live Service is in trouble. A cancelled single player game means nothing.
Let me know when you see that. I'd love to see stats rather than narrative in this discussion.
I suspect Sony built a Live Service Center of Excellence with Bungie because they know their hit rate can improve. This is still early days in the Live Service segment of the market. The area is rife with growth potential.
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