900 job cuts at Sony

[Lucas Ayde]

.. Looks like they really have messed things up. Despite having a massive sales lead with the PS5, it looks like the cost of AAA games is not resulting in enough sales to turn in the big profits that they need to justify the amount of people they employ.

https://youtu.be/jr0-8ei5q0I
https://youtu.be/X8rPsl96m8Y

Aside from the raw economics of spending ever more to make games, might help on the sales side if they didn't get involved in social politics I guess and just concentrated on making the best stories, which ties in with moving their HQ from Japan to California.


Also, it's pretty clear to me, having recently bought a PS5, that they aren't really offering VFM. Current monthly PS+ games are usually pretty disappointing and they've hiked the price of the basic service up and up as well as adding stupidly expensive product tiers on top that seem to be even less value for money. With new AAA PS5 games going for 70 quid or even more, that's a firm no from me. I'm largely using my PS5 to play my back-library of PS4 games.

I've actually hooked up my PS3 again to enjoy the huge amount of games I have on that and it's actually pretty bloody impressive on a modern 4K OLED set ... the typical 720p res of PS3 games upscales really well into 4K. And I have a ton of quality titles on it from the glory days of PS+ and from what I was buying in sales back then, when games were a lot cheaper. The PS3 titles by and large feel as good as today's games, often better in terms of story and plot and not as lacking in graphics as you might think. Downside is loading times but I think I'll pick up a cheap SSD to sort that out.

[YorkshireStu]

It’s more a Market-wide thing rather than a ‘Sony cocked it up’ thing.

PS5/Xbox X are still top of their game and £70 is cheap for the hrs of quality entertainment we get from games vs the cost to watch a movie in the cinema etc

No biggie. It’ll all bounce back stronger than ever.

[CT05 Nose Cone]

YorkshireStu said:

It’s more a Market-wide thing rather than a ‘Sony cocked it up’ thing.

PS5/Xbox X are still top of their game and £70 is cheap for the hrs of quality entertainment we get from games vs the cost to watch a movie in the cinema etc

No biggie. It’ll all bounce back stronger than ever.

£70 is cheap if it's a game you enjoy, but there's never any guarantee you will, or for that matter if the game will release in a functioning state with all the promised content. A big issue is everyone is chasing live service games they want you to play every day, but by their nature even people with lots of free time can only choose 1 or 2. It's not even March yet and we've already had two massive flops in Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones, and with development costs so high one bad game can kill a studio.

[James-gbg1e]

I've no idea about the PS5, but I'd suggest job cuts are more a barometer of the state of the major west economies than the same of games for a console midway through it's lifetime.

[.:ian:.]

CT05 Nose Cone said:

£70 is cheap if it's a game you enjoy, but there's never any guarantee you will, or for that matter if the game will release in a functioning state with all the promised content. A big issue is everyone is chasing live service games they want you to play every day, but by their nature even people with lots of free time can only choose 1 or 2. It's not even March yet and we've already had two massive flops in Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones, and with development costs so high one bad game can kill a studio.

Skull and Bones looks shocking, 6-7 years and $200m and its like a free mobile game..
ETA 10 years, in fact, f me..

Edited by .:ian:. on Wednesday 28th February 22:33

[YorkshireStu]

CT05 Nose Cone said:

£70 is cheap if it's a game you enjoy, but there's never any guarantee you will, or for that matter if the game will release in a functioning state with all the promised content. A big issue is everyone is chasing live service games they want you to play every day, but by their nature even people with lots of free time can only choose 1 or 2. It's not even March yet and we've already had two massive flops in Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones, and with development costs so high one bad game can kill a studio.

True, but it's always a risk buying something on pre-order but surely buying duds like those can be avoided by simply waiting for the game to arrive and watch the Metacritic reviews for a bit before taking the plunge?

I only bought Cyberpunk 2077 a few months ago. Awesome game, great value for money. I bought Starfield on its release, very happy with that too but wouldn't have done so on pre-order and cancel to wait a bit if there was any negativity in the previews leading up to it.

I avoid live service games/anything that requires online gameplay - not for me.

I only buy a few games a year and always thought of them as good value for the entertainment hours.

[flatlandsman]

Quite frankly anyone who thinks 70 quid is cheap for a GAME is beyond help.

While I agree if you play it a lot you can get value, how many are that price and stay there, without asking more and more and more with expansions and DLC, some are over 200 quid after a couple of years with extras.

Not that long ago a AA game was 40 or 50.

there is only one justification for this, greed, these companies are not going broke are they, people just dont want PS5's int eh same way they did the 4,

Microsoft are quitting the Xbox market, mobiles have removed vast number of people from the gaming market it is that simple.

As gamers most of this is YOUR fault, you keep buying games at stupid prices, you keep buying DLC, you keep paying to play online something that should be free, so is there any wonder they keep trying to fleece you more and more and more, and when it doesnt work they dump 1000 staff. Nice

[soad]

£70 game (not Game store) price is simply ridiculous. And I used to rent (some) PS3 games in the distant past…

I recall buying PSOne Platinum games from HMV for £19.99? Before the likes of CEX made them even cheaper, obviously used.

I had good Game experience, second hand GameCube console (hello, Resident Evil Zero) was only £50 iirc.

Electronics Boutique stores were ace also.

[Griffith4ever]

I think the "AAA" thing is part of the problem. Games really should not need 100's of millions of dollar budgets. Even COD was a basic PC game at $19.99 when it came out - then it slowly grew and grew. Tomb raider was a cult classic, cheap, no mega budget, the list goes on. Games are becoming monsters.

Publishers are losing sight of what makes a good game - and its not graphics and motion capture. Sure, if you can throw those in, great, but , give us a great game 1st.

I've tried a few of the "blockbusters" this year and the common theme is lack of long term engagement.

Starfield - lost interest very quickly.
Skylines II - its dull, lacks polish, or any fun.
Hogwarts - beautiful but repetative once you learn how to win fights.
BG3 - wonderful but again, repetative.

I'm currently playing a real "wolfenstein" in terms of graphics of a game - DayZ and I'm thoroughly captivated. All for £20. Great games don't need to be expensive and polished. Dayz is cheap, and some of the textures are laughable, but, its immersive and a joy to play (before you die). I've had similar longevity out of Rust and before that, PubG. None of them "beautiful" or mega budget.

Got me thinking back to when Far Cry 1 came out. I sat hiding listening to the South African guards chatting, questioning if they were actually the bad guys themselves :-) - such attention to detail. I miss that kind of thing. Hence I await each GTA game with bated breath.

Edited by Griffith4ever on Thursday 29th February 19:22

[Lucas Ayde]

flatlandsman said:

Quite frankly anyone who thinks 70 quid is cheap for a GAME is beyond help.

While I agree if you play it a lot you can get value, how many are that price and stay there, without asking more and more and more with expansions and DLC, some are over 200 quid after a couple of years with extras.

Not that long ago a AA game was 40 or 50.

there is only one justification for this, greed, these companies are not going broke are they, people just dont want PS5's int eh same way they did the 4,

Microsoft are quitting the Xbox market, mobiles have removed vast number of people from the gaming market it is that simple.

As gamers most of this is YOUR fault, you keep buying games at stupid prices, you keep buying DLC, you keep paying to play online something that should be free, so is there any wonder they keep trying to fleece you more and more and more, and when it doesnt work they dump 1000 staff. Nice

This is where the PC reigns supreme - I pick up almost everything for under the 20 quid mark. Often a lot under - especially with bundle deals. You just have to be prepared to wait six months or so before prices start to come down appreciably, if you want 'new' stuff. If you are happy with games older than six months there is a massive range of bargains out there.

And if I do buy something around release time it better be low priced to begin with and I'll shop around the various stores. Eg. I got a pre-release Steam Key for 'Pacific Drive' for 18 quid the other week from Green Man Gaming. (great game)

I was absolutely shocked when I finally picked up a PS5 recently and saw the prices of top games and even a lot of older ones don't drop in price nearly as much as they do on PC. Lucky I had a huge back-catalogue of PS4 stuff that I am working through and have been stacking PS5 games from PS+ over the last few years. The only things I'll be buying are Demon's Souls and Ghost of Tsushima, likely on phsyical disk from eBay as despite being old, they are still stupidly priced on the store (DS was 70 quid last I looked!).

Sony need to get back to offering more to the customer, as in the PS3 days when there was a real fight with the Xbox360.

[Comacchio]

Depends on how you value the entertainment you get from it. These days a ticket for a football game can be £50-100 for say 2 hours. A cinema outing best part of £40 for roughly 3?

Admittedly I've only bought one game & one expansion for it (DayZ and Livonia map) in the last 2 years - £30.53 all in, then 2 years of annual subscription to play online at £49.99, grand total of £130.51. I've spent about 1000 hours playing DayZ now - 13p an hour.

[99flake]

Interesting one this.

Firstly, the last couple of years has seen the likes of Microsoft, Sony, EA hoovering up not just small devs but also huge ones:

Microsoft - ZeniMax (Bethesda, ID, Arkane and others) followed by Activition Blizzard
Sony - Bungie, Insomniac and some smaller ones
EA - Most recently Codemasters but many over the years.

This means considerable overlap in certain areas, not just with the software houses but where the different franchises sit within their portfolio and the tech used to create them. Streamlining as they would call it, would be to move projects to existing game engines, or share tech, no point in lots of expensive different dev houses using all sorts of different tools. Also no want for certain franchises stepping on others toes, result, job loss.

Games are getting bigger, they need more tech to make them, people apparently want more depth, more 'experiences' and now expect things such as proper voice acting, a massive musical score, this all costs vast amounts of money and time.

Sadly the industry however is shrinking to accomodate this, the industry is risk averse and so keeps milking the cash cows (CoD, Battlefield, Forza, the list is endless), new ideas and imagination has really gone from the main studios, leaving this to the indies, who then don't have the same resources, so often presentation is lower (even if the games are great to play). So we only get one or the other it seems, although I suspect there are exceptions that I haven't yet bumped into.

I started gaming in about 1989 when my Dad came home with an Amiga 500, I then got a SNES alongside this a few years later, followed by a Sega Saturn in 1996, from there I have owned pretty much every console released around then or since and the change is stark. Back in the mid 90's, when gaming really started to become popular and dare I say it 'cool' as an adult - praise to WipeOut here for that one! Sega, Sony, Nintendo, were creating new ideas, new franchises on an almost 6 monthly basis and seeing what stuck, imagination was everywhere. Those that sold really well, soon got sequels and as games got more expensive to make, the fresh ideas were left behind for yet more sequels until we get to today, where half backed, bug ridden same old is instantly downloadable and fixed later (not an option on a cartridge or CD with no internet).

As for the cost of a AAA game now, it really isn't actually that expensive, if you adjust for inflation.

1990: Amiga A500 £600 - 2024 £1710
1994: SNES £130 -2024 £325
1996: Sega Saturn £400 - 2024 £941
1993: Starwing (SNES game) £60 - 2024 £154
1997: Any PS1 game £30 - £40 - 2024 £70 - £90

If anything, games have actually got cheaper, as has the hardware, which now does so much more than play a game. The games are bigger, better looking with massive budgets, but crucially with a larger install base, so can be cheaper.

Are they as good these days? To me, probably not on the most part, but I am now 43 and I know that my 13 year step son thinks the opposite, so I am not the target market. The bottom line is the industry has shifted, it isn't as creative, it is more business and it knows what sells at what price points and gives the market what it currently wants.

[horseshoecrab]

During COVID I rediscovered my old PS3 and bought all the best games on the platform for around a fiver each. For fifty quid I got hours and hours and hours of amazing games. Buoyed by this I promised my son a PS5 but after seeing the price I held off at least until the slim was released. £450 for a massive gawky looking console + £70 for a game is crazy money. He's not bothered and is more than happy playing roblox and other nonsense with his mates on phones and laptops.

I would have bitten the bullet if the PS5 slim was a more normal shape rather than just a slightly smaller version of the first generation. I get what they've tried to achieve with it's appearance but to my eyes out just looks stupid.

[ReallyReallyGood]

Same, was waiting for the ps5 slim thinking it would be less embarrassing to have in the lounge than a ps5. Instead just sticking to the ps4 and don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

[hungry_hog]

Considering most people used the Amiga for (not very good) games that looks horribly expensive!

[Matty_]

99flake said:

If anything, games have actually got cheaper, as has the hardware, which now does so much more than play a game. The games are bigger, better looking with massive budgets, but crucially with a larger install base, so can be cheaper.

Yeah everyone forgets inflation is a thing. It's actually no more expensive than it used to be - but games now are a long way from the old sprites we used to have.

Problem isn't budgets, or costs, or team sizes, or dev times - it's just st games are st games, regardless of what was invested. Just make a good game, and people will buy it and play it.

[Matty_]

hungry_hog said:

Considering most people used the Amiga for (not very good) games

Heathen! How dare you - James Pond was the game of a geneartion.

But seriously, the Amiga had Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, Monkey Island, Civilisation, Settlers? Some of the absolute all time greats of the era.

[3GGy]

Comacchio said:

Depends on how you value the entertainment you get from it. These days a ticket for a football game can be £50-100 for say 2 hours. A cinema outing best part of £40 for roughly 3?

Admittedly I've only bought one game & one expansion for it (DayZ and Livonia map) in the last 2 years - £30.53 all in, then 2 years of annual subscription to play online at £49.99, grand total of £130.51. I've spent about 1000 hours playing DayZ now - 13p an hour.

I enjoyed DayZ for a long time, but I wouldn't put it on a pedestal. It's a great game, but it has serious problems.

Glitches that allow looking through walls on demand, re-logging into servers to look through walls, players making multiple accounts, completely undermining the 'one-life' core idea of the game, server stability is often abysmal, they never have made the cars drive properly, and then theres the other little annoying bugs that persist/disappear/appear again between patches.

The beauty of DayZ is, unless you're 'in the know' about some of the bad glitches/what all-too-many players are up to, you can play in complete ignorance, quite happily... for so long.

DayZ is a case of, you get what you pay for IMO.

Edited by 3GGy on Sunday 3rd March 23:21

[99flake]

Matty_ said:

Yeah everyone forgets inflation is a thing. It's actually no more expensive than it used to be - but games now are a long way from the old sprites we used to have.

Problem isn't budgets, or costs, or team sizes, or dev times - it's just st games are st games, regardless of what was invested. Just make a good game, and people will buy it and play it.

Whilst yes, a st games is still a st game, I would still say that this is a by product of large dev teams and budgets.

Games used to be a labour of love, made by people that really care and wanted to see their idea come to life, often from small teams, not being micro managed or pushed to hit targets and deadlines. Games these days are just another commodity, designed to sell and make lots of money. I would call 99% of what we see now, from major publishers, as shovelware, to keep shareholders happy. CoD, FIFA (EA football or whatever), F1, Battlefield, the list is endless, buggy, uninspired games, made to make money, knowing they are a safe bet and will sell.

Nintendo are the outlier, slower release times, games made with care, by people that care and it shows, whether you like the style of games, there is no denying the quality and invention of them.

[CT05 Nose Cone]

99flake said:

Matty_ said:

Yeah everyone forgets inflation is a thing. It's actually no more expensive than it used to be - but games now are a long way from the old sprites we used to have.

Problem isn't budgets, or costs, or team sizes, or dev times - it's just st games are st games, regardless of what was invested. Just make a good game, and people will buy it and play it.

Whilst yes, a st games is still a st game, I would still say that this is a by product of large dev teams and budgets.

Games used to be a labour of love, made by people that really care and wanted to see their idea come to life, often from small teams, not being micro managed or pushed to hit targets and deadlines. Games these days are just another commodity, designed to sell and make lots of money. I would call 99% of what we see now, from major publishers, as shovelware, to keep shareholders happy. CoD, FIFA (EA football or whatever), F1, Battlefield, the list is endless, buggy, uninspired games, made to make money, knowing they are a safe bet and will sell.

Nintendo are the outlier, slower release times, games made with care, by people that care and it shows, whether you like the style of games, there is no denying the quality and invention of them.

That's a bit rose tinted, there have always been lots of terrible games rushed out to cash in on the latest trend. It's not as if they were always released fully finished either, there were games when the companies behind them ran out of time and money so they just made them impossible to get past a certain point to hide that. Faking or using the wrong screenshots on the back of the box used to be common as well. I avoid most AA titles now due to the sheer bloat, repetition, cost and insertion of current day political messaging, but if you look beyond them there are plenty that are made for the love of the craft.

Problem is companies want to make money, and the easiest way to do it is not take risks and fill your game with microtransactions because people will buy it. Just look at the amount people spend on FIFA Ultimate Team, or mobile gacha games, it's absolutely eye watering and very hard for a publisher to not jump on the bandwagon.

Do agree about Nintendo though, I recently bought Super Mario RPG, which to me looks fantastic despite running on vastly inferior hardware, and has so much charm it almost makes you feel like a kid again.