I love some MS ips (Gears, forza, halo)
But i really don’t understand how they manage their portfolios.
How the fuck it is possible to have rare amongst your studio and no real Banjo, conker, kameo since ages?
How the fuck did they not made another killer instinct?
How was it possible to destroy halo like that?
Don’t get me wrong, i love xbox and i love gamepass but damn such a waste of talent.
Sony’s outpout is redondant (TPS, walking stuffs) but still most are good games and technical showcases.
I don’t pretend to know how to change that but something must be done and some managers should be gone and replaced by competent ones.
2023 looks promising though, i hope they’ll deliver.
Sony lets studios take risks.
Sony let Insomniac make Resistance instead of just another Ratchet and Clank game (even if they were 2nd party). They then hooked them up with Marvel to make Spider-Man and now Wolverine. Resistance 1 sold at least 2.5 million copies. They could have doubled down on the franchise even as the sequels sold less copies. Maybe in one universe, it would have been wise to have done so.
Guerrilla went from Killzone to Horizon. Another game completely out of their wheelhouse. Sucker Punch went from Infamous to Ghost of Tsushima... entirely out of their wheelhouse. Naughty Dog went from Jak to Uncharted and from Uncharted to The Last of Us... Literally the opposite of what Microsoft did with Bungie. If Microsoft ran Naughty Dog, they might still be focused on just Jak and Daxter games...
Sony could have spent a ton of money getting the rights to Crash and Spyro back for Naughty Dog and Insomniac, but that would have stifled their growth.
Santa Monica has focused entirely on God of War, but they took a risk in entirely rebooting the franchise. Especially risky after their non God of War game was canceled and the failure of Ascension. They're also now finally working on an original IP.
Media Molecule could have kept making LittleBigPlanet games, but instead made Dreams, which I think on PC could be a huge GaaS game.
Microsoft really doesn't take risks at all. They haven't really evolved since they came into the market from a game design perspective. Their studios just create sequel after sequel for what they THINK caters to their audience, and their talent eventually leaves.
Because they don't take risks, their studios don't mature and their games just become stale. Sony's mature studios act as metal sharpening metal. There is none of that with Microsoft. They seem to entirely lack a cohesive culture, which comes from just buying random studios rather than studios with relationships already. Insomniac was VERY close to Sony and Naughty Dog before Sony bought them.
If Sony were to buy FromSoftware, they already have a deep relationship with the company. They've worked with them on Demon's Souls and Bloodborne. Kojima wants to stay independent, but Sony has worked with his studio as well.