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[mckmas8808]

That's right, big smile, you want to be making this GaaS. Everybody's happy.

This just isn't how it happens.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Let's not count eggs before they hatch. A year go we thought there would be ~10 GAAS games, in 2023 we thought there would be 12 GAAS games out by the end of fiscal 2025 and we both know that shit ain't happening.

It all depends on the harvest.

When they do release . Fargame is gonna be next to be axed.

Last I checked Haven was currently hiring for 9 positions. That means it surpassed PlayStations last "gate" and PlayStation is upping investment considerably. I suspect that's a shoe in for 2026.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

So ... 10 or 12 of them just decided on a group call that they'll all start working on GaaS projects in the same window?

Which 10 or 12 First Party Playstation devs are you referring to?

The ones like Bungie who always made GaaS games and were purchased for that very reason? Those ones? Or the 10 to 12 fictitious devs that live in the tale from your ass?

 

[LectureMaster]

Thank God Sony Studios are saved!

 

[adamsapple]

The ones like Bungie who always made GaaS games and were purchased for that very reason?

 

[Hustler]

Colin Moriarty putting in the work with the interview and not getting the call out (it’s buried in the article if people only read the headline).

Shu even cleared up the comment of being forced to move to indies and said it was more of an opportunity and Jim did not force him. I’m not even halfway through the podcast episode, but it’s been great so far.

 

[Felessan]

The reason I didn't mention Apex,COD or Fortnite is because those have been the poster childs for successful GAAS since a decade, it's literally the reason so many live service games fail. Because they try to copy those 3 games and we've seen failure after failure after failure in search of that lightning in a bottle.

Ofc there's gonna be 1 success in 100 tries like Palworld or Helldivers 2 which had a great start but from what I remember seeing it isn't doing so well lately,Its numbers have gone down significantly.

But if you think 1 success in 10 or 50 or 100 tries is good vision of the market as a developer then I don't know what to tell you except go ahead and gamble some big money since that's might as well what they'll be doing if that's the case.

Lets see... last year we had HD2, WuWa, ZZZ, 1st Descendend, GFL2, Marvel rivals, Infinity Nikki and some others amongst successes (not include Palworld as they don't position themselves as live service)... not really looks like 1 in 50
The whole point of "few succeed" and "market oversaturated" is due to ignorance and denial.

SP players just know nothing about live service game world as SP games journo also don't like them and don't cover them except exceptional cases (and game dosn't need to be exceptional to be even very successful) - so the whole SP sphere live in a separate bubble persuading themselves that gaas is a flick and things "go back to normal" eventually.

 

[Effigenius]

They don’t force them, sure, but whenever they pitch something that isn’t live service, Sony says no.

 

[Raven117]

Yeah…. How many pieces of flare are they required to wear?

 

[March Climber]

Shu is flipping Gaf upside down this morning

He is just the latest former Sony exec who did a small run of interviews that somehow spawned 100 articles.

 

[SHA]

he was "forced" to go indie tho

And get vaporized in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Astray]

I believe it, a lot of these terrible decisions come from the heads of the studios. Remember when people thought Bobby Kotick was the reason blizzard was making crappy games. The heads of Sony just want to make lots of money and they give the studios a revenue goal. The heads of the studios go live service because they think it’s the best and most stable way to make those revenue goals consistently.

There's this strange paradigm in the gaming journalism industry where no faults can ever be placed on the poor devs, they are always forced to work with bad decisions that the suits came up with.

I'm guessing it's because the devs are their primary pool of sources?

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Hard to call it a fake narrative when we're seeing the results in front of our eyes. The GaaS projects are getting canceled one after another, just a few weeks ago both Bend and Bluepoint's were canceled. The farmer didn't feed us the narrative, the farmer took the two out back and put a slug in their heads.

People keep making claims like this without knowing any details and then an interview like the one with Yoshida drops, completely dismissing all the fabricated drama.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

People keep making claims like this without knowing any details and then an interview like the one with Yoshida drops, completely dismissing all the fabricated drama.

Sony isn't out there defending themselves in PR which is interesting. Whether it be Jim Ryan or Hermen Hulst. They definitely see what people are saying and they just focus on business.

It took Shuhei leaving the company and speaking out to bring real clarity to a great number of things.

It's a great opportunity for gaming discourse to get a bit of a reset, though I doubt it'll happen.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Sony isn't out there defending themselves in PR which is interesting. Whether it be Jim Ryan or Hermen Hulst. They definitely see what people are saying and they just focus on business.

I think it''s because all the drama is basically within a tiny bubble and they know it too.

But some people are so used to the echo-chamber within that tiny bubble, they forget that the outside world doesn't care in any way, if they're even aware of it.

 

[clintar]

Cause we paid em like $400 million.

 

[Felessan]

Sony isn't out there defending themselves in PR which is interesting. Whether it be Jim Ryan or Hermen Hulst. They definitely see what people are saying and they just focus on business.

It took Shuhei leaving the company and speaking out to bring real clarity to a great number of things.

It's a great opportunity for gaming discourse to get a bit of a reset, though I doubt it'll happen.

A lot of execs are very sceptical about "entitlement to know" customers possess, especially about company inner workings. Better leave people in the dark. Some information are sensitive and some information might be found to be straight repulsive by general crowd who doesn't know ins and outs.
I am sure that Shu keep some things undisclosed, as a part of work ethics.

And it's not like public evaluate and decided promotion for Jim or Hulst, so if they are not too sensitive, and its unlikely given their positions, they just shrug public hate and go back to the business

 

[adamsapple]

People keep making claims like this without knowing any details and then an interview like the one with Yoshida drops, completely dismissing all the fabricated drama.

Claims like what? The projects *are* getting canceled. At least Bend even commented after Schrier's report, somewhat confirming that their project was in-fact canceled.

What claim was made 'without knowing any details' ? We know the projects are getting canceled, hence why that is being said.

It's also true that we just cannot guarantee that all 7 of the current active in development GaaS games that Men_in_Boxes mentioned earlier will come out. We just can't guarantee that.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Claims like what? The projects *are* getting canceled. At least Bend even commented after Schrier's report, somewhat confirming that their project was in-fact canceled.

What claim was made 'without knowing any details' ? We know the projects are getting canceled, hence why that is being said.

I'm not talk referring to the 'what', but the 'why'.
You know that.

It's also true that we just cannot guarantee that all 7 of the current active in development GaaS games that Men_in_Boxes mentioned earlier will come out. We just can't guarantee that.

Ofcourse, even Jim Ryan said that.

 

[CLW]

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

It's also true that we just cannot guarantee that all 7 of the current active in development GaaS games that Men_in_Boxes mentioned earlier will come out. We just can't guarantee that.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

All the previous Halo games were either full Live Service or proto-Live Service games.

 

[adamsapple]

All the previous Halo games were either full Live Service or proto-Live Service games.

Ah yes, the famously "live service" Combat Evolved.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Ah yes, the famously "live service" Combat Evolved.

CE was the exception. But every one after that got frequent regular updates.

 

[CamHostage]

Yeah, "forced" is the wrong word. Incentivized, guided, coaxed, persuaded ... or, just choosing your project based on what the company wants. It's not as overtly controlling as "You will make this game whether you like it or not!" It's a more subtle form of "control," if you want to call it that, based on rewards and punishment.

I mean, if you can offer your boss the potential of billions (with a $b) of sustained long-tail profits on a product, that's a pretty good pitch.

Of course, the vast majority sink rather than catching the wave and hooking whales, but it's still an alluring bet. Whereas only a select few megatitles in the standard space come anywhere near those numbers (in the short time that they last on shelves,) and they don't hold any greater promise of not sinking. So the risk of failure is not as daunting as the reward of potential for the moneymen. And if you're asking for money to fund a project, you have to have done the math of what the market is moving. For a time there, maybe now still, if you weren't pitching GAAS components, you'd better have a good reason why not. Some failures in GAAS and some hits the old fashioned way have given new variables to consider, but a blockbuster GAAS is still a massive treasure trove to seek.

Here's an example of a developer who has been on both sides of the "new variables to consider" equation: ShiftUp had a massive success with Stellar Blade, yet even in that game's breakthrough debut period (possibly to be the best performance point for the product, depending on how the PC version is eventually received,) that game still only managed about 75% of the revenue returned by one quarter of the same company's 2-year-old GAAS. There are still many benefits for the developer to have added Stellar Blade to its portfolio (and you've got to jump into the Top 10 Gacha products to rake in cash at Nikke's sustained rate,) but business is business in this fun-making market.

 

[CamHostage]

CE was the exception. But every one after that got frequent regular updates.

And if they could have, they would have. Launching Halo 1 with only LAN play and no capabilities to patch was the best Bungie could do at the time (apparently online was originally intended but couldn't without XBL,) but if they could have DLCed or XBLAed an online mode, it would have been huge.

(They could have also later done a new disc aka Twisted Metal Black Online on PS2, but they put all efforts onto Halo 2 instead. They never looked back to Halo 1 even though the PC/Mac versions added online and potentially some of that PC work could have been back-ported to the Xbox. Supporting Halo 2 with all Bungie's might and focus was the service most valuable to their gamer customers.)

Bungie comes from the PC crowd (or rather the "Mac crowd" subset) of community involvement with game marketing, where things existed like shareware and map packs and level editors and patches (which they were so lucky to be able to do back in the Myth 2 launch debacle...) This team is rooted in community-driven, long-tail product offerings. It is sad that we have seemingly lost the rich storytelling and memorable setpieces without any single player Bungies on the horizon, but it shouldn't be confusing why they committed themselves to GAAS.

 

[Negotiator]

Yes, I too love money.

And I completely understand the push for GaaS titles. But they missed the window to capitalize on them by a few years. This shit would have done amazing for them in the mid 2010's.

They were doing it in the early 2010s (many years before Fortnite), it's just that the PS3 wasn't that popular to begin with:



During the PS4 era they stopped trying (UC4 MP support stopped relatively quickly, especially after Robert Cogburn's shenanigans):

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/former-naughty-dog-employee-says-he-was-sexually-harassed-by-a-lead-in-late-2015.1447928/

Really bad management if you ask me.