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Dear friends, our PixelOpus adventure has come to an end
- Thread starter Thick Thighs Save Lives
- Start date
Abriael_GN
RSI Employee of the Year
While some (not nearly "many") indies go on PS Plus on Day 1, they stay there only one month, so the effect is limited.
With game pass, the value of smaller games is shifted from generating raw sales to adding variety and volume to the overall offer, which is something smaller games definitely can do, while they need a lot more luck to start generating big raw sales. It really isn't rocket science.
Abriael_GN
RSI Employee of the Year
San Mateo isn't a studio.
solidus12
Member
Yeah easy platinum as well. I was really looking forward to their next game said to be in collaboration with Sony pictures animation. What a shame
nial
Gold Member
Did they?
What a bummer anyway. I was looking forward to their project, one of the few western AA devs I was interested in. But this kinda puts it into perspective, honestly.
KXVXII9X
Member
The game is extremely cinematic though. It just isn't told in the standard way. But it is presented like a kid's film. It looked great.
Baki
Member
They’re trimming their AA studios. They want first party to be AAA and leave the AA to indies that they provide funding and support to. It’s a more efficient way for them to discover gems and produce AA games for PS5.
Closer to $250K including all overhead (office, benefits etc). So likely it was costing Sony $5M a year to fund them.
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envyzeal
Member
It's an interesting strategy but a bit dangerous if you think about new IP's. Investing something around $200M or even more + time to create something new takes a lot.
Smaller games are great to test your audience and try something new. I don't expect much innovation (at least from a gameplay standpoint) with AAA "too big to fail" games.
Pedro Motta
Member
Sad, but oh well.
DrFigs
Member
i played concrete genie for 30 minutes and it was basically all cutscenes.
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kyliethicc
Member
SilentUser
Member
Oh that's sad! Would love to see their next work. Hopefully they will all get another job asap.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
It's longer than that, see: Stray, Tchia
There are a number of indies on GamePass that said it made their situation worse, not better. So it's not a one size fits all solution to the problem like you believe it is
Kokoloko85
Member
Damn loved there games.
I wish Sony would keep making these smaller games and keep these smaller studios. Japan Studios and now this
Damn you Jim
Kokoloko85
Member
We havent seen much of the fruits of labour from Jim or Herman, but getting rid of Pixel Opus is there doing… Sucks
PS needs these smaller games, its what I love.
Didnt they also kill Japan Studios?
Varteras
Gold Member
Unfortunate, but I had a feeling that they weren't ever far away from being closed down. If I had to guess, since they were open for four years after Concrete Genie and collaborating with Sony Animation, whatever they had been working on probably just wasn't coming together. Santa Monica's team under Stig Asmussen was purged when they spent a while making a new IP that they, from what I heard, consistently missed development milestones on.
Since Pixelopus was a team within a company, and not its own separate studio with a strong legacy, it probably lacked the autonomy and champion to avoid total closure. It was also a small team, so anyone being fired for total failure would have probably caused difficulty in getting any further projects on track. If what we were told is true, Hermen Hulst wasted little time ripping control of the remake for The Last of Us away from that new development team forming in Visual Arts. He didn't like their results up to that point so he put Naughty Dog in charge of it.
We have no idea how much money was being put into this project, but 4 years and a collaboration with a team like Sony Animation probably wasn't exactly cheap. Especially if it was intended to be bigger than Concrete Genie. Then you also have to look at indie developers like Blue Twelve, Ember Lab, and Sloclap. Small studios who were clearly doing it better than Pixelopus. Two of them after just their first project.
Sony has kinda made it clear that they want PlayStation to be associated with quality and success. They're not likely to want, nor have a need, to push out a 6/10 game or a 10-year development timeline for a game that won't sell anyways. They likely look to their own failures as things they want to avoid. If they saw them in Pixelopus, then the axe was pulled out. A small team with no hits under its belt probably wasn't a hard call to make. Hopefully they land new jobs soon enough.
Since Pixelopus was a team within a company, and not its own separate studio with a strong legacy, it probably lacked the autonomy and champion to avoid total closure. It was also a small team, so anyone being fired for total failure would have probably caused difficulty in getting any further projects on track. If what we were told is true, Hermen Hulst wasted little time ripping control of the remake for The Last of Us away from that new development team forming in Visual Arts. He didn't like their results up to that point so he put Naughty Dog in charge of it.
We have no idea how much money was being put into this project, but 4 years and a collaboration with a team like Sony Animation probably wasn't exactly cheap. Especially if it was intended to be bigger than Concrete Genie. Then you also have to look at indie developers like Blue Twelve, Ember Lab, and Sloclap. Small studios who were clearly doing it better than Pixelopus. Two of them after just their first project.
Sony has kinda made it clear that they want PlayStation to be associated with quality and success. They're not likely to want, nor have a need, to push out a 6/10 game or a 10-year development timeline for a game that won't sell anyways. They likely look to their own failures as things they want to avoid. If they saw them in Pixelopus, then the axe was pulled out. A small team with no hits under its belt probably wasn't a hard call to make. Hopefully they land new jobs soon enough.
Venom Snake
Member
I should buy Concrete Genie then.
ProtoByte
Member
For one thing, that 200 million figure shouldn't be thrown around so liberally. It's a headline figure and not much else.
For another, I pose this to you: If the concern is time, why not invest it into AAA? Because it's not like these small titles aren't taking long either. PixelOpus was on year 10 of existence with 2 games out.
I wouldn't say these smaller games really are doing anything new though. Concrete Genie certainly wasn't.
Most of the AA/"indie" scene is repackaging gameplay and aesthetic conceits from the early 90s to the early 2000s, or ripping off Stardew Valley/Runefactory. There's not much "new" about it. All you have to do is have an non-realistic and unconventional CGI/animation artstyle, and you've managed to convince people thay your project is some artsy thing that's never been done before.
ProtoByte
Member
No you didn't, dude. You did not feel like PixelOpus with their two games was the soul of PlayStation.Damn.....that sucks. These smaller studios always felt like the soul of PlayStation to me. Jim Ryan leaving his mark.
Varteras
Gold Member
Concrete Genie had a neat art style, but it always came off to me as, "We liked what Sucker Punch did with Infamous: Second Son. Where you had little side activities of spray painting graffiti. So we made an entire game out of that and put it in a setting of a bullied kid having magical friends". I'm sure that's not actually how it happened. But it wasn't some amazingly unique gameplay element or setting. It was artsy. That was about it.
Beastclaw Raider
Banned
DrFigs
Member
if they only had 15-20 or so employees, it's pretty impressive. i wasn't crazy about concrete genie (from the little i played), but i thought they had a lot of potential.
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BrutalTruth_
Banned
Sony is filthy rich why are they closing studios?
Varteras
Gold Member
You don't just allow money to be wasted. The project was going on for several years and in collaboration with Sony Animation. They're also not a studio. They were a small development team within San Mateo. They were probably missing milestones and just not on track for anything good. It's been 4 years since their last game and neither of their projects were hits. Sony probably doesn't want to push a 6/10 game out the door if they can avoid it. As well as not giving a team 10 years to finish something. That money can be better spent elsewhere.
Other small teams were doing it better. Stray from Blue Twelve. Kena from Ember Lab. Sifu from Sloclap. Concrete Genie was neat but it wasn't close to how those games were received overall.
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El Pistolero
Banned
Plus, as you correctly pointed out, proper indie studios have proven better at releasing quality games on their first attempt: Stray, Sifu, Kena...
It seems as if the following is at play: First Party studios handle AAA projects; XDev partners work on a few AAA project, but mostly on AA ones; Shuhei and his team take care of the small titles.
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Varteras
Gold Member
It sucks. You never like to hear about this stuff. But at the end of the day, these companies aren't running charities. Sony wants their teams to have creative freedom, but you also need to produce. Pixelopus doesn't have a legacy like a lot of Sony's teams. They didn't have much room for failure. Like I said, I'm guessing that 4 years and a collab with Sony Animation was a situation where this review came up and Pixelopus' project was a mess versus the money being spent. If it was looking great, they wouldn't have been closed. That they weren't closed years earlier tells me this was a recent problem Sony had with them.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
This is definitely a factor into why Sony have probably moved away from these sorts of games. As much as people are saying they loved them, the market ultimately didn't show that where it really mattered: sales.
Personally I still think there is a place for these smaller, more unique 1P games of Sony's in maybe being drivers for PS+ and having an audience on mobile, but there's no use pretending like if they didn't shift away from these games, they'd suddenly start selling 10+ million copies. They wouldn't. I don't think they would need to, personally; I don't think every game needs to do sales like that to justify their existence and I hope Sony still keep that in mind themselves. But I also understand that budgets are not infinite, AAA game costs are going up, and companies like Sony don't have the level of revenue flow massive companies like Microsoft do.
So if the budgets that would have been allocated to the games from studios like PixelOpus or Japan Studio could serve better use going towards a bigger AAA game from one of the marquee studios, then I can understand those studios getting shuttered and team members moved around, or finding positions elsewhere. I do still very much hope though that what game they were working on is maybe being salvaged by another team, internal or external, and the employees find positions at other SIE studios. Also, I'm still hoping Sony open up to doing more work within the smaller, AA-style space at least with 3P studios like Ember Lab, and let them work with some of the classic IP at that.
Very good and well-reasoned post. If a worst-case plays out and PixelOpus's game is just outright dead, I hope some concept art and gameplay footage leaks come out down the line. I'd like to see what it looked like, what it was trying to do etc.
With all due respect, it seemed PixelOpus's next game was (is?) going to target more something along the lines of a AAA-style production, or at least a larger-scale AA style game, maybe something north of a Stray, Kena or Plague Tale: Requiem.
And FWIW (also with all due respect), most of the Day 1 releases that go into Game Pass are not at the scale of those types of games. They are generally smaller in scope and cheaper in production costs.
As for other aspects of the business model I think
James Sawyer Ford
answered that for you.
Topher
Gold Member
That’s not what I said, now is it?
kyliethicc
Member
trikster40
Member
Concrete Genie was a delight, but you gotta keep making quality games. They’re talented, so I’m sure they’ll find work soon, hopefully they can just slide into some other Sony studios.
Baki
Member
That’s why they take a bet with games like Kena, Sifu, Stray, Fall Guys, FIST and many other AA games that they funded.
ProtoByte
Member
Well that's funny. Because Concrete Genie is chocked full of cinematics.
It's almost as if fanboys, obsessives, and narrative pushers don't actually care about how games are, but how they look.
This "muh cinematic AAA" game shit is beyond tired at this point.
Ar¢tos
Member
Ah, but it has no lesbians or "characters of unknown sexual orientation but likely gay"! That is basically a requirement for the Sony cinematic game experience.
AncientOrigin
Member
People shouldn’t worry to much.I think they all will find jobs at the other Sony studios.Probably as a studio their output or what those games sold were not good enough to keep the studio name around.
People shouldn’t forget a name is very important and how successful the name is.
People shouldn’t forget a name is very important and how successful the name is.
Snake29
RSI Employee of the Year
Wrong.
In Cold Blood
Banned
Bit of a stupid decision.
In an era where both console makers are trying to gain more content and talent, and they shut one down.
It appears that Sony only cares about those big blockbuster third person adventure games, and any other type of smaller, varied games arnt worth their while.
In an era where both console makers are trying to gain more content and talent, and they shut one down.
It appears that Sony only cares about those big blockbuster third person adventure games, and any other type of smaller, varied games arnt worth their while.
And it probably wasn’t coming together well. They don’t close studios if what they are building is looking great.But they were working with Sony Animation on a new game for the last 2 years..
Entwined was not good. Concrete genie I didn’t play but looked interesting, tho very niche and I don’t think sold well.
I can see how this would happen.
Still it’s a shame. No doubt they’ll reinvest what they save on some other projects or studios.
Varteras
Gold Member
The project was years in the making and in collaboration with Sony Animation. Whatever it was, it was greenlit by Sony. It's not like they were taken by surprise if it wasn't some big blockbuster game.
It was reviewed and likely found to be well behind where it should have been. No sense in spending more money to keep the project going for years longer or shove a 6/10 out the door.
Pixelopus was a small team that put out two games over almost 10 years and neither one was a hit. Critically or commercially. Small teams like Blue Twelve and Ember Lab were already doing it much better very recently on their first games.
Sony just picked up Firewalk, a 150-person studio making a multiplayer game for them. Something Sony lacks. I don't think dropping a team of 20 or so people, making worse games than several external indies they partnered with, was a hard decision or particularly damaging to their goals.
MaxwellParrish
Member
The art style and in general the presentation were indeed pretty great and the strongest points in favour of Concrete Genie. On the gameplay side the game was a pleasurable experience but it didn't really make the most of its mechanics. It sort of kept everything a little too simple and basic as if was just the starting levels of the game. Hope I didn't sond too negative, because in reality I really enjoyed the game. It just left me thinking that an eventual, more ambitious , sequel, could have been really great.
Eotheod
Member
According to the logic of many here, that is actually exactly how platform holders, publishers, and developers should all operate. Spend as much money because throwing money produces games or something.
KXVXII9X
Member
Increasing comments like this is why I'm embarrassed to be on this forum. Your comment is not based on reality.
Ar¢tos
Member
Your satire detector needs repairs.
Unknown?
Member
They've bought more talented small studios and honestly if they buy Ember Labs, this wouldn't even matter. Also this isn't a studio, it was a small team within San Mateo.