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[IGN] How PlayStation Studios Malaysia is Playing a Growing Role in Sony's Most Important Franchises

https://www.ign.com/articles/playstation-malaysia-sony-ps5


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Founded in 2020, PlayStation Studios Malaysia is the newest first-party PlayStation studio to be created from the ground up by Sony. Until recently, very little has been known about the projects this studio is working on – but now we know the answer. They’re working on everything.

The new Malaysia studio was founded in Kuala Lumpur as a support studio, working closely with PlayStation’s Creative Arts team based in San Diego, and more specifically the Visual Arts team within it. The studio has 77 employees working on creating character models and other visual assets as well as motion capture and more.

So far it’s a very small contribution,” said Samsudin when asked what work his studio carried out on MLB The Show and The Last of Us. “When we started, the team was very small. A lot of what we are doing is asset development for the games, especially for MLB. For The Last of Us Part I, there was this thing called Death Hints, which are tips that tell the player what to do in certain situations, and (Sony’s) animation team were supposed to be working on them but there was a lot to be done, so that came to us. But now we have a full-fledged art team, so we can do environment modeling, concept art, and we have a brilliant animation team that is working on some games that we can’t talk about right now.”

Adding the new Malaysia studio to this equation helps Sony to manage what it calls “global production”, whereby each game is made with the help of hands across the globe. As Ingram put it, “It’s one planet making games”.

“You’re selling these amazing experiences to a global market, so you have to make them in a global market,” Ingram continued.

Cliffs-

  • Studio was built from the ground up in 2020 and have been work from home until now
  • They’ve only so far contributed to MLB The Show 22’ and The Last of Us Part I
  • They are now at 77 devs and will begin doing other tasks such as concept art, asset creation, motion capture, and more..
  • Currently assisting on multiple unannounced games from SIE
  • Talks about how big the dev market is for Malaysia with several other big devs starting studios there
To me, this is a good move. having such strong support studios mean less crunch for your primary studios and it means that you can get games out faster and post-launch help. They didn’t take this studio off the market it was built from the ground up in a new game-dev hot spot region during the height of the pandemic and already helped out a lot.

Between this studio, Valkyrie, XDev, Nixxes, it seems like Sony is really focusing on bringing a lot of their development in-house versus solely relying external support studios and contractors.
 
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AmuroChan

Member
I'm surprised it's taken them this long to realize that they don't have to always open studios in the most expensive cities/countries in the world. There are plenty of talents to recruit in places such as Malaysia, and costs are much lower.
 
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FalsettoVibe

Gold Member
Sony is one big oilled machine. Sony Santa Monica's tweet on God of War going gold says it all really:



This is a lot more than just Sony Santa Monica. I'm sure going forward we'll see this a lot more tbh.


Yup. Would not be surprised if Sony keeps picking up these smaller studios. When they make acquisition announcements for these smaller studios, everyone seems to look at them as inconsequential, but they really are important to growing PS Studios into a well oiled and efficient machine that consistently cranks out quality software. People joke about pick ups like Savage Game Studios and others, but I think Sony knows what they are doing.
 
Yup. Would not be surprised if Sony keeps picking up these smaller studios. When they make acquisition announcements for these smaller studios, everyone seems to look at them as inconsequential, but they really are important to growing PS Studios into a well oiled and efficient machine that consistently cranks out quality software. People joke about pick ups like Savage Game Studios and others, but I think Sony knows what they are doing.

Yeah, they certainly aren’t headline grabbing “sexy” acquisitions but they are all pretty much meant to expand their internal studio output this generation. Even the Bungie acquisition was more about their live service intergration into sonys own Multiplayer efforts.

Hermen Hulst mentioned last year that they increased their first party production by 20% through acquisitions last year. Thats what they are really focusing on
 
Considering 1st party output is already good, 20% more is a pretty big deal.

Yeah, i think they want their major studios putting out twice as many games as they did last generation. Thats why they’ve actively been dumping so much money into their studios. Naughty Dog are now able to work on multiple games at once, same as SMS, Insomniac, and Firesprite. They probably have a good system where if one studio isn’t deep in production on their next game they assist another studio like Bluepoint just did.



Naughty Dog always made great games relatively quickly but with how big these games are getting, being able to work on more than one at the same time is vital
 
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Jim Ryan gets whipped on his cross but he really is doing Gods work for PlayStation. Only heathens can deny his greatness after seeing stories like this come to light. Amen.

It will become undeniable how important all these initiatives are by mid generation. When you got Factions 2 releasing a year away from another major Naughty Dog IP, and new studios putting out good multiplayer/shooter games people will see the vision.

He will take it on the chin now during the slow transition to next gen though. At the end of the day its a gaming business, and he knows you have to have a high output of games to make money, quality games. You only get there by doing this type of thing
 
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Support studios are the actual name of the game....you ain't making a AAAA with 70 devs....cof cof cof The Initiative. You need a couple of hundred "in house devs" and then over 1000 devs to make those kind of games.

Yeah, thats how they can bring new studios like Kojima Productions, Housemarque, Shift Up, a smaller division of Team Ninja, Haven, etc. into making these big AAA games in a short amount of time.

Kojima productions only had their small team of ex-Konami staff starting out around 80 devs, and with XDev and all the other external studios added 100’s of extra people to get the game out in just 3 years.

Its why we’re seeing death stranding 2 being teased already, the resources are already there.
 
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Support studios are so vital going forward from ensuring games come out in a timely manner, to preventing crunch and burnout.

Having teams that you work with consistently rather than random contractors ensures consistently quality and expectations.
 
I'm surprised it's taken them this long to realize that they don't have to always open studios in the most expensive cities/countries in the world. There are plenty of talents to recruit in places such as Malaysia, and costs are much lower.

I mean, not sure I agree with the foundation of your statement.

"This long"

Sony only really started to become a force of a developer in 2005 with God of War which was followed up by Uncharted in 2007. There was a natural evolution of these teams needing support as they grew and Sony has been doing a pretty good job of bringing in talent since. Especially with the rise of the pandemic.
 

AmuroChan

Member
I mean, not sure I agree with the foundation of your statement.

"This long"

Sony only really started to become a force of a developer in 2005 with God of War which was followed up by Uncharted in 2007. There was a natural evolution of these teams needing support as they grew and Sony has been doing a pretty good job of bringing in talent since. Especially with the rise of the pandemic.

I wasn't just talking about support studios. My point applies to any of their studios. A majority of their studios are located in the US, UK, and Japan. All places with extremely high cost of living. My point was that they should spread themselves out more, especially to countries that have untapped talent and would cost Sony a lot less. The salary of one programmer in California probably translates to three programmers in Malaysia. Acquiring Haven this year was a good move as it gave them a presence in eastern Canada for the first time. I would like to see more of that geographic expansion.
 
I wasn't just talking about support studios. My point applies to any of their studios. A majority of their studios are located in the US, UK, and Japan. All places with extremely high cost of living. My point was that they should spread themselves out more, especially to countries that have untapped talent and would cost Sony a lot less. The salary of one programmer in California probably translates to three programmers in Malaysia. Acquiring Haven this year was a good move as it gave them a presence in eastern Canada for the first time. I would like to see more of that geographic expansion.

I think thats the plan for that very reason, but there is a reason a lot of big tech hubs are located in certain areas. Its the chicken and Egg, big talent gravitate toward big cities so thats where big companies continue to set up shop. Like Sony want to poach talent rom other big studios like EA, Activision, and Ubisoft who are all located near by and now all the sony studios are located near each other so its easier to share information.

i think its changing now with remote work though. Theres a shortage on high level talent so they need to be able to hire anyone from anywhere.
 

Lasha

Member
Malaysia is a hidden gem for this sort of outsourcing. The country has a system of affirmative action to place strong preference on the majority race. Massive subsidies are available for foreign investors which hit hiring quotas. Additional subsidies are also available for tech companies which want to invest above a certain amount in Malaysia.

Animation and media support is the golden ticket. Good Programmers and other highly specialized workers are difficult to hire in Malaysia because of the low wages. A good salary for skilled work in Malaysia is less than entry level pay at McDonald's right across the causeway. Good Programmers also tend to disproportionately come from the racial minorities in Malaysia which hurts quotas.

Entertainment related work is the exception. Singaporean media outsources to Malaysia for the most part as do many smaller projects. The pay for creative work is dogshit in Singapore. Creative workers also run the racial gamut in Malaysia making quotas easier This allows companies to set up these support studios which capture both sets of subsidies and practically be paid to operate in Malaysia.
 
I wasn't just talking about support studios. My point applies to any of their studios. A majority of their studios are located in the US, UK, and Japan. All places with extremely high cost of living. My point was that they should spread themselves out more, especially to countries that have untapped talent and would cost Sony a lot less. The salary of one programmer in California probably translates to three programmers in Malaysia. Acquiring Haven this year was a good move as it gave them a presence in eastern Canada for the first time. I would like to see more of that geographic expansion.

I mean a programmer in California might cost you more, but the ability to have them collaborate in real-time with other devs and communicate easily is worth quite a bit as well.

There are a lot of good reasons why they would have their studios located in the US, UK, and Japan, though they are expanding, you're still going to see a focus on places where the talent is primarily available.

According to Linkedin Sony Malaysia Studios has about 50 employees. Hardly a huge studio, but definitely a start.

Right now there is this race to buy studios and something Sony has been fairly smart about is growing their studios organically in addition to doing acquisitions. It's much easier to grow organically than to integrate a major studio into your culture. You look at Sony's largest purchases:

Bungie - Not integrating into PlayStation Studios, at least not initially
Insomniac - Had partnered with PlayStation for almost 30 years
Firesprite - Was basically the successor of an internal studio Sony had closed down

All their other acquisitions have been minor studios that they've basically helped stand up in the first place like Haven, but these are good examples of them opening up else where around the world.

We'll see what happens to Bungie in the next 10-20 years.
 
The article does specifically state they are at 77 employees. Linkedin is never a good source for employee count as people don’t update their profiles often enough

And 77 is pretty decent sized for a support studio. They are already bigger than Team Asobi
 
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AmuroChan

Member
The article does specifically state they are at 77 employees. Linkedin is never a good source for employee count as people don’t update their profiles often enough

And 77 is pretty decent sized for a support studio. They are already bigger than Team Asobi

Would love to see Sony open a studio in South Korea. Lots of good talents that are still largely untapped by western devs.
 

Kumomeme

Member
expanding more into acquiring talent resource from other region is good way to increase industry's output variety.

all these time videogames is mostly all about 'bigger' country like westerns and japanese influence. im not suprise if there lot of people already 'tired' over it. so stuff like this should has positive outcome in long term.

Malaysia for example, among other south east asian country definitely has big potential since they been growing in this field in these past decade. their 3D animation industry for example has significant growth lately. other japanese animation studio also started opened their branch there to assist tons of anime production.

Malaysia become a place of attention for various people and race from around the world. there is advantages in term of language barrier and how people there can adapt to foreign culture(as long not exceeded their moral line). it also become consecutive no 1 country for japanese for migrate.
 
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SSfox

Member
Yeah, i think they want their major studios putting out twice as many games as they did last generation. Thats why they’ve actively been dumping so much money into their studios. Naughty Dog are now able to work on multiple games at once, same as SMS, Insomniac, and Firesprite. They probably have a good system where if one studio isn’t deep in production on their next game they assist another studio like Bluepoint just did.



Naughty Dog always made great games relatively quickly but with how big these games are getting, being able to work on more than one at the same time is vital

I don't even think ND are slower than they were, they're just making too bigs games (maybe a bit too much even), TLOU2 was big, too big, it was like 2 games in 1 game, it felt too bloated at some level. I honestly would rather they made games at the length on U4 and TLOU1 instead of TLOU2.

RE Village is 10H, and Calisto will be 15-20H that's more than fine, as long as it's not RE3 Remake level that's good, 30H for this type of game is too much and may break the pacing the game (like it happened in TLOU2), without mentioning significally increasing duration lap time of development cycle. It's a win win.
 
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