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In light of Forza's Massive Success, Let's revisit Sony's decision to shut down Evolution Studios

Ozriel

M$FT
The first Motorstorm sold a lot mainly because it was bundled with the PS3 SKU which had backwards compatibility (for $500, after the introduction of the non-BC $400 PS3).

All their subsequent games either seemingly flopped or disappointed though.


the part he left out was that DriveClub was HEAVILY bundled in Europe. Yoked to hard to find PS4 consoles that contributed to a large part of the 2 million unit sales he cites.

Sony was fully aware of that, and that probably played a big role in them greenlighting the closure of Evolution Studios.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
Hindsight is 2020 yes, but seeing as how everyone was up in arms over the studio being shutdown back then, it seems only Sony was clueless about the potential of the studio, and the arcade racing genre in general.

The Case Against Evolution Studios:

- One year Delay missing Launch. As bad as 343's Halo Infinite Fuck up.
- No Open Beta. Online pretty much broken at launch.
- Bad Sales of Motorstorm Pacific Rift and Motorstorm Apocalypse.

The Case For Evolution Studios:
- Despite all the issues, the new IP managed to sell 2 million units on a new platform in just 8 months.
- Best Selling PS3 exclusive in the first year outselling Ratchet, Resistance, Warhawk and even Uncharted.
- Delivered a new IP in 3.5 years with incredible visuals and a full campaign while PD took 4 year dev time and left out the single player campaign altogether.
- Never made a bad game with Sony.

The Case Against Sony:

- Sent Motorstorm Apocalypse to die during the PSN Hack after bizarrely delaying it because of the Tokyo Earthquakes.
- Not allowing Evo to name it Gran Turismo: DriveClub presumably to appease Kaz. Would Horizon be as successful without the Forza name?
- Didnt market any of Evo Studio games. Pacific Rift, DriveClub and even Apocalypse are all cult classics, but didnt sell all that well. Whose fault is that?

Forza Horizon's Fairy tale:
Important to keep in mind that it's been 7 years since DriveClub and Forza Horizon 2 went toe to toe in 2014. For 7 years, Microsoft stuck by the franchise and saw the potential in it. The series was not a big seller immediately. It took years of organic growth and support from Microsoft. The previous entries were one of the first games to show up on gamepass. MS didnt care about sales as much as they cared about reaching a bigger audience. And now it's a bigger franchise than Forza Motorsport. Millions giving MS $100 just to play it a few days early. Meanwhile, Sony treated Evo as their bastard child, and gave them up at the first sight of trouble. Trouble they themselves had contributed to by setting unrealistic expectations of releasing a new IP on a next gen console in 2.5 years then promising a free version of the game which they failed to deliver. Who knows if DriveClub was a full PS+ title on Day one, it would probably be doing Horizon numbers today.

The game still pulls in millions of views 7 years after launch and 6 years after its death.



It's LITERALLY one of Sony's biggest Playstation mistakes within the last 10 years! Their need to appease Kaz, superceded their vision for a two racing game front. And the worse part is......MS had already started to pave the way for why 2 racing games make sense.

Yet they didn't want to piss off big dick Kaz, so it is what it is.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Brace Yourself Episode 2 GIF by RuPaul's Drag Race
 
Well, they just announced that their first party studios are working on 25 games. That's great and jives with what you said about them acquiring more talent than they have closed, but where are these games? Their September showing was pretty bad. They wasted 30 of the 40 minutes showing third party trash then when it came time to blow us away they showed a CG trailer, a last gen game and an inengine teaser. If this is Herman's legacy after 2 years in charge then consider me underwhelmed.

If we are giving Herman and Jimbo credit for Insomniac then we need to blame them for making Wreckfest instead of hiring the ex-Evo studios devs to make a new Motorstorm for launch. Wreckest is one of those C games that you should never ever pay for. I dont care if cost them a just one million. Especially when better talent is available elsewhere. They just wanted to check the boxes and say hey look we have a car game available in the launch window and it ended up being so bad they gave it away for free.

Paying for Deathloop is ridiculous too. Pay your internal studios more so they can get games out faster. They will blame Covid for Horizon, GT7 and GOW slipping to 2022 but where are their 2022 titles? Lets assume they have been pushed to 2023, what are those titles? Spiderman was always going to take 2+ years after shipping Ratchet. It seems only Insomniac seems to know how to develop games efficiently over there, and their success has nothing to do with Jimbo or Herman. Ted Price has always run a well oiled machine.

Herman's gone shopping for these multiplayer studios, and it's just the wrong way to go about doing that. Ex-Bungie devs, Ex-CoD devs, Ex-Star Wars devs. Those investments should be made within first party studios. All you are doing is wasting money on timed exclusives of franchises that will go to PC and Xbox within a year. So why spend any cash on them whatsoever? Especially since Insmoniac, GG, and ND have so much multiplayer talent. If Jimbo took over 3 years ago, and herman took over 2 years ago then by now they should have been able to at least announce and show footage of internal first party next gen multiplayer shooters. Those shouldnt take 5 years to make like their single player games.

I dont know. It feels like they were twiddling their thumbs until the Zenimax acquisition and only then went into buying frenzy. Sony Bend spent 2 years between 2019 and 2021 on pitching Days Gone 2 and Uncharted spinoffs with nothing to show. Even Kojima who makes games ever 3 years has pretty much wasted the last two years because sony didnt greenlight a game for him immediately. If hes not at the VGAs with a trailer for a Sony exclusive then we can safely say Herman fucked up.
I think COVID changed the way Sony hypes their stuff. We will know what games are released in 2022 closer to release honestly.

Those days of releasing trailers for games coming out in 3 years are over.

They are taking a Rockstar approach with RDR2. I honestly think TLOU Remake and factions are coming out next year. That's 2 games. Probably around the time the TV show starts.
We have GoW, Horizon, Gran Turismo. That's 5 already and it's already better than most years. We also have one of those studio deals they have for one of those multiplayer games. Herman said he had already played it and had fun with it. It's probably a 2022 title. Also most of these studios were created recently. haven alone is not coming out before 2024 / 2025. It's going to take years.

I'm not even mentioning 3rd party deals like Final Fantasy XVI or Forspoken.

About acquisitions...they have been looking for people with experience exactly for that even after the 5 recent acquisitions. They won't stop anytime soon.

But don't be expecting E3 sized shows. They don't care about those anymore at least for now.
 

Evil Calvin

Afraid of Boobs
We should also discuss about MS shutting Bizarre Creations down.
Activision owned BC not Microsoft. Activision closed them down after the great Blur racing game in 2010. BUT Activision shopped BC around but no one bought them. MS should have bought them but at that time they had an exclusive deal with Playground Games in 2012 and the Forza Horizon series.
 
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JLB

Banned
I mean, it's not like halo 4 and 5 were those unbeatable fps games..

Since bungie stopped making halo, the brand is not exactly in the best shape of his life, even infinite had a troubled development (to put it mildly).

I think sony is just contempt with cod, bf and the other third party fps more than being scared of challenging modern halo.

I dont think theres a single AAA that is not a chaotic mess.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Well, they just announced that their first party studios are working on 25 games. That's great and jives with what you said about them acquiring more talent than they have closed, but where are these games? Their September showing was pretty bad. They wasted 30 of the 40 minutes showing third party trash then when it came time to blow us away they showed a CG trailer, a last gen game and an inengine teaser. If this is Herman's legacy after 2 years in charge then consider me underwhelmed.

If we are giving Herman and Jimbo credit for Insomniac then we need to blame them for making Wreckfest instead of hiring the ex-Evo studios devs to make a new Motorstorm for launch. Wreckest is one of those C games that you should never ever pay for. I dont care if cost them a just one million. Especially when better talent is available elsewhere. They just wanted to check the boxes and say hey look we have a car game available in the launch window and it ended up being so bad they gave it away for free.

Paying for Deathloop is ridiculous too. Pay your internal studios more so they can get games out faster. They will blame Covid for Horizon, GT7 and GOW slipping to 2022 but where are their 2022 titles? Lets assume they have been pushed to 2023, what are those titles? Spiderman was always going to take 2+ years after shipping Ratchet. It seems only Insomniac seems to know how to develop games efficiently over there, and their success has nothing to do with Jimbo or Herman. Ted Price has always run a well oiled machine.

Herman's gone shopping for these multiplayer studios, and it's just the wrong way to go about doing that. Ex-Bungie devs, Ex-CoD devs, Ex-Star Wars devs. Those investments should be made within first party studios. All you are doing is wasting money on timed exclusives of franchises that will go to PC and Xbox within a year. So why spend any cash on them whatsoever? Especially since Insmoniac, GG, and ND have so much multiplayer talent. If Jimbo took over 3 years ago, and herman took over 2 years ago then by now they should have been able to at least announce and show footage of internal first party next gen multiplayer shooters. Those shouldnt take 5 years to make like their single player games.

I dont know. It feels like they were twiddling their thumbs until the Zenimax acquisition and only then went into buying frenzy. Sony Bend spent 2 years between 2019 and 2021 on pitching Days Gone 2 and Uncharted spinoffs with nothing to show. Even Kojima who makes games ever 3 years has pretty much wasted the last two years because sony didnt greenlight a game for him immediately. If hes not at the VGAs with a trailer for a Sony exclusive then we can safely say Herman fucked up.
This is wreckfest:

capsule_616x353.jpg


S tier game from Bugbear

This is Destruction Allstars:

maxresdefault.jpg


S tier [redacted]

I HAD TO...I had to respond, because 1. Wreckfest is amazing game, successor to legendary Flatout. D A is shit from past Bizarre Creation devs, Lucid games. Which is terrible tragedy.
 

Notabueno

Banned
There's a reason why DriveClub keeps coming back in threads: this is one of the most underrated racing game that Sony completely fucked the launch of.

I'm not into racing games so much and yet DriveClub had me hyped as fuck, it was the answer Sony needed to Forza, Project Cars etc...they fucked it up, discontinued it, close the studio and waited for Gran Turismo which is an aging franchise...
 

sncvsrtoip

Member
different subject but other mistake was also not to buy Ready at Dawn, they showed with not so great but with real potential Order 1886 that they can be at first league in terms on graphic delivery and now they creating some low budget vr games for facebook (and similar microsoft should have bought crytek back in Ryse times as now crytek is shadow of themself)
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
This is wreckfest:

capsule_616x353.jpg


S tier game from Bugbear

This is Destruction Allstars:

maxresdefault.jpg


S tier [redacted]

I HAD TO...I had to respond, because 1. Wreckfest is amazing game, successor to legendary Flatout. D A is shit from past Bizarre Creation devs, Lucid games. Which is terrible tragedy.
lol Sorry. yes I meant Destruction All Stars.
 

GymWolf

Member
I dont think theres a single AAA that is not a chaotic mess.
Probably true, but some show their mess far less than others.

Not to call out sony, but do you remember the last game from them that was publicly a development hell like infinite?

every time they showed some gameplay people was impressed or at least happy, almost no one ever opened a topic to discuss spiderman or tlou or horizon development problems...

the last i remember is the last guardian (pun not intended) and maybe the last gran turismo because polyphony is slow as fuck?!

I guess that horizon, gow and gt7 being crossgen can be called disappointing (and it fucking is) but far from what people consider development hell.
 
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mckmas8808

Banned
different subject but other mistake was also not to buy Ready at Dawn, they showed with not so great but with real potential Order 1886 that they can be at first league in terms on graphic delivery and now they creating some low budget vr games for facebook (and similar microsoft should have bought crytek back in Ryse times as now crytek is shadow of themself)

Yep that's on my top 5 biggest screw ups by Sony over the last 10 years! Imagine what one of their games would look like on the PS5 or PSVR2.
 

Fredrik

Member
I know the knee-jerk thing to do is to compare Microsoft and Sony, but to me the better question would be "In light of Forza's Massive Success, Let's revisit EA's decision to shut down the Burnout franchise"

Burnout, imo, remains the best arcade racer ever made. Hell, EA just abandoned the franchise after Burnout Paradise and Playground Games thankfully brought that open world formula to Forza. Criterion exists now only to do mop-up duty on games like Battlefield. Just a joke that it has been 13 years since we had a new Burnout.

rant over GIF
Burnout’s crash physics and nitros, Motorstorm’s mud physics, Outrun’s music, Forza Horizon’s size, simcade controls, map variation and graphics - The perfect racer 👌
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
different subject but other mistake was also not to buy Ready at Dawn, they showed with not so great but with real potential Order 1886 that they can be at first league in terms on graphic delivery and now they creating some low budget vr games for facebook (and similar microsoft should have bought crytek back in Ryse times as now crytek is shadow of themself)
+1. Sony loves to say they support studios by not being too hands on, but surely they shouldve seen that 2 hour game with 6 hours of cutscenes and walking during its 4 year dev cycle, no?

Alarm bells shouldve rung as soon as the directors went around calling the game filmic and saying that they dont care about gameplay. They were hired because of two absolutely incredible PSP GOW games, and the project shouldve focused on their strengths. Sony execs have sent so many devs to die with this hands off philosophy and then being extremely quick to pull the plug when it blows up in their face. They did this with Amy Henning and Justin Richmond, with Stig and SSM when the new IP didnt work out, with Evo after not forcing them or giving them the budget and time to do an open beta, and just gutting all online teams at their first party studios.

Now they are out buying unproven studios in masses because gaming is bigger than ever and their studios are woefully understaffed taking forever to make games. How Kaz, SSM, and GG took 4.5-5 years to make last gen sequels is beyond me. They are clearly understaffed. I refuse to believe these games were all in development hell.

I am shocked that Kojima hasnt been snatched up by either company. I get that he might want his independence, but at least give him a blank check for his next game. Why was he even shopping his next game around with Google stadia? I love how Andrew House picked him up two days after he got fired from Konami. AAA studios dont come often and it seems both Sony and MS have been behind the ball on staffing first party. MS is going to Crystal Dynamics begging for help. Hellblade 2 was revealed 2 years ago and still no gameplay? Sony is forcing Sony Bend to help make TLOU2, like wtf? Thats the kind of shit EA is doing with Criterion lol. Since when did these prestigoous first party publishers turn into EA and Activision?

P.S They also let Supermassive and Quantic Dream go. Those are the kind of studios that you help nurture and grow into more than just QTE studios. Similar to how they took a chance with Housemarque who fucking nailed their first traditional AAA game.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Sony gave them 3 chances I think that's quite alot to be honest. Motorstorm 1 flops, okay try 2, 2 flops cool try 3, 3 flops cool then just try a new IP, delayed, broken online and flops. Perhaps OP should give his money and fund the studio's 4th to 8th attempt.
Except that Motorstorm 1 didnt flop. 3 million units in 1 year. DriveClub sold 2 million in half a year. Ive posted links for both in this thread. The first post listed this info as well. No idea why you chose to ignore it.

And Sony deserves some criticism for launching Apocalypse in the middle of a fucking PSN outage. The game was built around mp racing with COD like perk systems. Regardless, plenty of Sony games failed to sell well in the PS3 era. LBP sold 200k in its first month in NA. KZ2 250k. Infamous sold 176k. Uncharted sold 111k. Ratchet 76k. Those are extremely poor first month sales. Sony stuck with them because they were quality games just like Pacific Rift and Apocalypse.

DriveClub selling 2 million for a new IP on a new console with a small userbase is really great. It wouldve sold even more had Sony given it the GT name.
 

JLB

Banned
Probably true, but some show their mess far less than others.

Not to call out sony, but do you remember the last game from them that was publicly a development hell like infinite?

every time they showed some gameplay people was impressed or at least happy, almost no one ever opened a topic to discuss spiderman or tlou or horizon development problems...

the last i remember is the last guardian (pun not intended) and maybe the last gran turismo because polyphony is slow as fuck?!

I guess that horizon, gow and gt7 being crossgen can be called disappointing (and it fucking is) but far from what people consider development hell.

TLOU2?
 

KAL2006

Banned
They need to look at asset reuse, I think Sony should hire a external dev, reuse the assets from Gran Turismo 7 and make a open world Gran Turismo similar to Forza Horizon series. In fact they can even have cross progression and use the garage from Gran Turismo 7. So the car physics, engines, models etc will be the exact same but just played in a open world setting.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Probably true, but some show their mess far less than others.

Not to call out sony, but do you remember the last game from them that was publicly a development hell like infinite?

every time they showed some gameplay people was impressed or at least happy, almost no one ever opened a topic to discuss spiderman or tlou or horizon development problems...

the last i remember is the last guardian (pun not intended) and maybe the last gran turismo because polyphony is slow as fuck?!

I guess that horizon, gow and gt7 being crossgen can be called disappointing (and it fucking is) but far from what people consider development hell.
Yes, TLOU2 was in development hell. They lost 14 out of their 20 game design leads who had to be replaced. They had to throw away entire sections of games becuase people hated a lot of Abby's new chapters. The game was set to be launched in 2019 but delayed several times due to those issues.

Uncharted 4 was in development hell because Amy Henning decided to make the first 8 hours all cutscenes and walking and no one realized this until after they shipped TLOU. It's likely because all the A team designers were working on TLOU at the time and she had to make do with what she had, but that game was in development hell for sure or Bruce and Neil wouldnt have been brought in to fix it. I also read that they completely scrapped a Zelda style stamina based climbing system which explains why literally half of the game is mindless climbing.

Horizon was also in development hell. They started dev on it then after six months cancelled the game to work on another new IP instead. They wasted like a year on that game and realized that wanted to go back to Horizon instead. This was in the no-clip documentary of the game.

You could argue that Horizon 2 taking 5 years to release means it was in development hell. Sequels within gens dont take 5 years unless there is something going on in the background. Since releasing Horizon in 2017, they have released a total of 0 games. In the same time span, Insomniac has released Spiderman, Miles and Ratchet. Even ND has released The Lost Legacy and the last of us 2 and they were in development hell.

I wouldnt be surprised if something went wrong with GOW2. it took them 4.5 years to make GOW from the ground up and just 4 years after Stig was fired in March 2014 and his A team went to work on Cory's team. And now that they have the engine, the lore, the character designs, the gameplay loop, the combat design all mapped out, they still need 4.5 years to make a last gen sequel? Clearly something went wrong. Maybe Cory took all the A team devs with him for his new IP. Who knows, but it doesnt add up.
 
They need to look at asset reuse, I think Sony should hire a external dev, reuse the assets from Gran Turismo 7 and make a open world Gran Turismo similar to Forza Horizon series. In fact they can even have cross progression and use the garage from Gran Turismo 7. So the car physics, engines, models etc will be the exact same but just played in a open world setting.
I don't see them ever doing that. Just slapping on an open world is not that simple. Took most devs a whole gen to figure out how to rework their engines for that purpose. PD doesn't seem to work that fast as it is. I think it's just not in the cards. I'd just enjoy GT for what it is, and get FH if you're interested.
 

GymWolf

Member
Yes, TLOU2 was in development hell. They lost 14 out of their 20 game design leads who had to be replaced. They had to throw away entire sections of games becuase people hated a lot of Abby's new chapters. The game was set to be launched in 2019 but delayed several times due to those issues.

Uncharted 4 was in development hell because Amy Henning decided to make the first 8 hours all cutscenes and walking and no one realized this until after they shipped TLOU. It's likely because all the A team designers were working on TLOU at the time and she had to make do with what she had, but that game was in development hell for sure or Bruce and Neil wouldnt have been brought in to fix it. I also read that they completely scrapped a Zelda style stamina based climbing system which explains why literally half of the game is mindless climbing.

Horizon was also in development hell. They started dev on it then after six months cancelled the game to work on another new IP instead. They wasted like a year on that game and realized that wanted to go back to Horizon instead. This was in the no-clip documentary of the game.

You could argue that Horizon 2 taking 5 years to release means it was in development hell. Sequels within gens dont take 5 years unless there is something going on in the background. Since releasing Horizon in 2017, they have released a total of 0 games. In the same time span, Insomniac has released Spiderman, Miles and Ratchet. Even ND has released The Lost Legacy and the last of us 2 and they were in development hell.

I wouldnt be surprised if something went wrong with GOW2. it took them 4.5 years to make GOW from the ground up and just 4 years after Stig was fired in March 2014 and his A team went to work on Cory's team. And now that they have the engine, the lore, the character designs, the gameplay loop, the combat design all mapped out, they still need 4.5 years to make a last gen sequel? Clearly something went wrong. Maybe Cory took all the A team devs with him for his new IP. Who knows, but it doesnt add up.
But like i said, they didn't showed weakness when they showed their gameplay long videos.

Everyone was impressed by tlou2 or unchy4 or horizon, every time they were showed.

And long times of development meaning hell is kinda bullshit, rdr2 is the game that it is because it was in the oven for 9 years.

Horizon lacks many micro-details, city interactions, random events in the open worlds etc. because the time\money\manpower wasn't enough.
 
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FH5's success is because it's not a game that you have to pay for, they probably had a million buyers up front which is fine it's a popular series on xbox and xbox only owners have been starved for first party content. The only thing they've had to show off their new consoles is a boring PC flight sim that's nothing more than a glorified tech demo/google earth the game. There is a reason they are talking about "players" and not buyers, it's gamepass. I played the game for 5 minutes just to see how it looked and then was done with it, I'd like to know how many people are still playing it in a week. Evolutions games weren't selling, FH has been popular for a long time so there really is no comparison here at all other than both made arcadeish style racing games.
 
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Umbasaborne

Banned
I think sony would do well to fund an open world racing game in light of forza’s success. Maybe a gran turismo spin off by a different dev using polyphanies engine and car models?
 

SenkiDala

Member
Activision owned BC not Microsoft. Activision closed them down after the great Blur racing game in 2010. BUT Activision shopped BC around but no one bought them. MS should have bought them but at that time they had an exclusive deal with Playground Games in 2012 and the Forza Horizon series.
Yes now I remember. I was angry at MS for doing nothing about it, PGR was such a great series, I miss it.
 

Godot25

Banned
Not allowing Evo to name it Gran Turismo: DriveClub presumably to appease Kaz. Would Horizon be as successful without the Forza name?
Ehhh? Microsoft didn't slap Forza name onto Forza Horizon just because it was popular. They did it because game is using engine and core game systems from Forza Motorsport. Even today.
It is part of why they were able to release those games in Motorsport-Horizon-Motorsport-Horizon schedule for last few years. Because when you make a car for Motorsport, you can use it in Horizon.

That would not work for Gran Turismo: Driveclub, because Driveclub and GT did not share single piece of code as far as I'm aware
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I don't see them ever doing that. Just slapping on an open world is not that simple. Took most devs a whole gen to figure out how to rework their engines for that purpose. PD doesn't seem to work that fast as it is. I think it's just not in the cards. I'd just enjoy GT for what it is, and get FH if you're interested.
Yeah, they wouldnt give DC the GT name back in 2014 and I dont see them changing course today. Unless they tell Kaz to fuck off, but now that EA has acquired all racing studios worth a damn so Sony is now left with PD who releases one game every five years that sells 10 million. Thats 2 million per year. Guess how much DC sold in half a year?

P.S I love GT Sports. Love how PD made online racing into an art form with people literally letting others go pass them after mistakenly bumping into them. it is arguably the most revolutionary racing game on consoles since the original GT, but they need an arcade racer like Motorstorm, Forza Horizon or DriveClub.
Did Pacific Rift sell poorly?
I can see it reached a million sales in the first month but no data appears beyond that.

Wow. I had no idea. So 1 million in two months before Christmas is not bad at all. I just remembered walking into Gamestop at launch and the guy said he only had one copy. I was like wtf sony. This is a sequel to your most popular PS3 game at the time and you undership it?
 

JaksGhost

Member
Uncharted 4 was in development hell because Amy Henning decided to make the first 8 hours all cutscenes and walking and no one realized this until after they shipped TLOU. It's likely because all the A team designers were working on TLOU at the time and she had to make do with what she had, but that game was in development hell for sure or Bruce and Neil wouldnt have been brought in to fix it. I also read that they completely scrapped a Zelda style stamina based climbing system which explains why literally half of the game is mindless climbing.

Horizon was also in development hell. They started dev on it then after six months cancelled the game to work on another new IP instead. They wasted like a year on that game and realized that wanted to go back to Horizon instead. This was in the no-clip documentary of the game.

You could argue that Horizon 2 taking 5 years to release means it was in development hell. Sequels within gens dont take 5 years unless there is something going on in the background. Since releasing Horizon in 2017, they have released a total of 0 games. In the same time span, Insomniac has released Spiderman, Miles and Ratchet. Even ND has released The Lost Legacy and the last of us 2 and they were in development hell.

I wouldnt be surprised if something went wrong with GOW2. it took them 4.5 years to make GOW from the ground up and just 4 years after Stig was fired in March 2014 and his A team went to work on Cory's team. And now that they have the engine, the lore, the character designs, the gameplay loop, the combat design all mapped out, they still need 4.5 years to make a last gen sequel? Clearly something went wrong. Maybe Cory took all the A team devs with him for his new IP. Who knows, but it doesnt add up.
What does add up is that the games are successes which is what matters in the end. I could understand all this if they ended up like The Last Guardian which was in developmental hell for almost a decade before being released to a very tepid response but these games all had the opposite response.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
You need to understand some points before make the thread.

Sony give all support to Evolution Studios but they failed to delivery a game... it was unplayable at release and the online part was heavy broken to the point they had to reword everything.

The game was basically relaunched several months after and finally after several updates it become playable.

Now you can understand why Sony got rip of Evolution Studios.
Only Evolution Studios can be blamed for that.

The opposite side Sony already have a racing game with over 15 million players called GTS.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
What does add up is that the games are successes which is what matters in the end. I could understand all this if they ended up like The Last Guardian which was in developmental hell for almost a decade before being released to a very tepid response but these games all had the opposite response.
I dont disagree. I was just pointing out that Sony games do go in dev hell.

That said, I dont see Halo flopping either. The beta was received very well and the campaign previews seem to be positive as well. So despite last year's poor showing, it might end up doing very well. I actually think it might do Forza numbers. Yes, Halo 5 sold only 1.4 million but its been 6 years since the last Halo game and the Xbox crowd is clearly itching for new games.
 

NahaNago

Member
Just think about what a Driveclub 2 would have looked like on ps5 :pie_drooling:



edit: I do think they should have kept them and figured out what went wrong in development considering how folks loved the visuals of the game. I think a Driveclub 2 for the ps4 at the end of the gen would have looked even more impressive.
 
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Ogbert

Member
I mean, it's not like halo 4 and 5 were those unbeatable fps games..

Since bungie stopped making halo, the brand is not exactly in the best shape of his life, even infinite had a troubled development (to put it mildly).

I think sony is just contempt with cod, bf and the other third party fps more than being scared of challenging modern halo.
True. But Killzone is hardly pulling up trees either. I just don’t see Sony having any interest whatsoever in shooters. As you say, their own player base will stick to CoD.
 

kyliethicc

Member
Driveclub was not a good arcade racer. Forza Horizon is.
Motorstorm franshise was awesome but they never reached mass success. Leaving a studio open just to keep making games ppl dont buy is not good business.

How many of you bought On Rush? (a motorstorm kind of game) That was the most recent game created by Evolution team that is now part of codemaster.
OnRush was a big flop too.

Evolution people got fired from Codemasters as well, after that game failed.

Driveclub was a shitty attempt at realistic sim-ish racing, and a poor, boring arcade game.
 

kyliethicc

Member
It's LITERALLY one of Sony's biggest Playstation mistakes within the last 10 years! Their need to appease Kaz, superceded their vision for a two racing game front. And the worse part is......MS had already started to pave the way for why 2 racing games make sense.

Yet they didn't want to piss off big dick Kaz, so it is what it is.
Actually think it was just part of a larger move by Andrew House (then CEO.)

He shutdown most of their English developers.
- Evolution
- Bigbig
- Liverpool
- Cambridge

All got shutdown by House in a short period of time. Maybe it was just a coincidence that all those teams got shutdown, but it kinda looks like House wanted to significantly reduce 1st party in the UK. (Which is odd since he's from the UK, IDK.)
 

CamHostage

Member
In the numbers analysis, let's not forget that Evolution also made all the WRC games for Sony, which may or may not have helped the argument to keep them. (WRC was a staple of the PS2 era and had PSP version, all good but I don't know how sales were for that in Europe besides good enough to keep going, and in America the franchise wasn't even worth Sony publishing most of the releases.) If sales were anywhere near flat for 15 years of Evolution Studios products with two spikes in new-IP launches, that would have been an even more damning indicator than the more recent Motorstorm data or the one year they got for DriveClub.

The closure of Evolution was not a surprise even to the staff at Evolution, so whatever numbers they had (more than we can assemble here, being how secretive publishers are with their product sales unless they're blockbusters,) those numbers were part of the writing on the wall.


Evolution had good tech, so it's disappointing that Sony couldn't keep a segment of the company as a engineering support studio. (I'm unfortunately in the camp of not loving MotorStorm due to its handling and AI, but I do respect its fans for keeping it alive; DriveClub, I never played, but it's not really my style.)

(Sony also dropped BigBig Studios, the Evolution sister studio who made PSP and Vita games, most notably MotorStorm Artic Edge, and they suffered in that same downturn period with no game. I miss BigBig, their MotorStorm was the one I liked the most and their PSP series Pursuit Force was silly fun.)

The thing is, the market for driving games stalled badly after the golden era of PS2/Xbox/Cube hits. Now, arcade racers seem almost off the map except for Mario Kart. Established franchises like Burnout, GRID/DIRT, Project Cars, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer, and The Crew lost speed and sometimes conked out out completely in the PS3/360 and especially PS4/One eras. Need for Speed fell so far after owning the podium for so long that EA is closing developer Ghost Games, hoping that Criterion is still strong enough to save the franchise. Even Gran Turismo wasn't moving copies like it used to, although GT Sport has quietly sustained sales over its generation.

If you were to ask last year why nobody is making a triple-A racing game when so much money is being left on the table, most people would question if there really was money there to be had with so much failure and disinterest in the genre...

The lone success story was probably Forza Horizon, which apparently beat GT Sport and was always a big deal to the Xbox fanbase. FH5 having the runaway success it is enjoying is still something of a surprise (timing is perfect for it, with peak desperation for high-end software on next-gen consoles and Halo still a while away from stealing anybody's thunder, but even so, FH5 is a freight train,) and it certainly thumbs its nose at all the doubters who said racing was dead, but then again, DIRT 5 (by much of the MotorStorm team, BTW,) wasn't nearly this phenomenon (albeit enough for the developers to call online engagement "shockingly huge", maybe eventually we'll see some numbers.) Nobody's done anything close to what Forza Horizon 5 is doing as a racing game for decades. Microsoft fostered its Foza line for all this time as a centerpiece of the Xbox brand, and it has paid off. We'll see when Test Drive and when NFS is rebuilt and if/when there is The Crew 3 if it's just the Forza Horizon magic (FM7 will also test that) or if racing gaming really is back on track.

The first Motorstorm sold a lot mainly because it was bundled with the PS3 SKU which had backwards compatibility (for $500, after the introduction of the non-BC $400 PS3).

All their subsequent games either seemingly flopped or disappointed though.
the part he left out was that DriveClub was HEAVILY bundled in Europe. Yoked to hard to find PS4 consoles that contributed to a large part of the 2 million unit sales he cites.

Sony was fully aware of that, and that probably played a big role in them greenlighting the closure of Evolution Studios.

I wonder if DriveClub's numbers also include the VR version? 2M for DriveClub seems surprisingly over expectations.

(Forced-bundling of the hardware launch makes sense, unfortunately. I know that's how I got MotorStorm for my PS3; not sure what the case was with DriveClub out of my area. 2M feels like it was worth recovering from the disastrous launch, but Sony could also have kept track of DLC sales and been able to tell if the franchise was viable.)
 
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kyliethicc

Member

Just saying lol. Motorstorm was way more fun.

Racing games need to pick a lane. GT and Mario Kart get that. Hence they succeed. Same with Forza Motorsport / Horizon. While Project Cars 3 tried to make their niche sim game into a more casual friendly sim-lite racing game (basically like Driveclub) and it flopped. At least Need for Speed had fun police chases.
 
I liked Driveclub a lot at the end of the day. But my secret dream was they using that engine of theirs to make an open-world MotorStorm. Too bad things didn't fare well to Evolutions.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Actually think it was just part of a larger move by Andrew House (then CEO.)

He shutdown most of their English developers.
- Evolution
- Bigbig
- Liverpool
- Cambridge

All got shutdown by House in a short period of time. Maybe it was just a coincidence that all those teams got shutdown, but it kinda looks like House wanted to significantly reduce 1st party in the UK. (Which is odd since he's from the UK, IDK.)
I’m pretty sure Evolution was cut due it own incompetence.
I mean any company will cut the studios that bleed money.

- Developer launched unplayable game.
- Publisher had to throw millions $$$ to task force and fix the game.
- Sales are not good due the bad word of mouth.
- Game is eventually fixed and good.
- Publisher executives seeing how much money they used without any return and choose to cut off the Studio.

Basically is a very loss experience to Sony and in any company a responsible should to take the blame and Evolution studio was the responsible for that.
 
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