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[Papacheeks]

I mean I just find it kind of funny because a running narrative last year was there'd be no need for anyone to get a new Xbox since everyone apparently had beast-mode PC rigs. Guess that narrative has finally died off for good.

You might be speaking for your own use-case and that's fair enough but a lot of people are going to be okay with those options. The GTX 1060 is still the most common dGPU option in PCs IIRC, that's a card from 2016, five going on six years. And we know the PC versions of these games will be optimized for an array of technical specifications, so if players there are okay with lowered visual quality then they might not be bothered to play via PC.

You're underestimating how many PC gamers have or will eventually be getting setups to equal the current consoles in capability within the next year or so. The 1060 was roughly on par with PS4 Pro in terms of raw TF, and that is now the most common GPU card at least among Steam users.



Nothing extreme or contorted about it. All I post are facts and informed opinions

If you posted nothing but facts you would be using less space in your posts.

I could write a book about neogafs history with the space you use to try and convince people your so called facts are gospel. But in fact if all you posted was nothing but facts it should be very simple and to the point in your data if said “facts “.

you have some good insight and discussion but if you have to write a book just to make a point I think you need to revaluate what your so called facts are.

 

[MScarpa]

This is such a weird studio, and I never got the hype. I mean, have they ever actually made something? Seems all they have done so far is stand on the shoulders of giants.

I'm interested in seeing what original stuff they can put together, but as far as I'm concerned they're untried and untested until they cook uo something bh themselves.

I agree 100% with this. Outside of the normal people here, nobody knows who BP is or what games they make.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I mean I just find it kind of funny because a running narrative last year was there'd be no need for anyone to get a new Xbox since everyone apparently had beast-mode PC rigs. Guess that narrative has finally died off for good.

You might be speaking for your own use-case and that's fair enough but a lot of people are going to be okay with those options. The GTX 1060 is still the most common dGPU option in PCs IIRC, that's a card from 2016, five going on six years. And we know the PC versions of these games will be optimized for an array of technical specifications, so if players there are okay with lowered visual quality then they might not be bothered to play via PC.

You're underestimating how many PC gamers have or will eventually be getting setups to equal the current consoles in capability within the next year or so. The 1060 was roughly on par with PS4 Pro in terms of raw TF, and that is now the most common GPU card at least among Steam users.

Whose narrative was that? It wasn't mine. Regardless that's a straw man argument.

I'm not speaking for my own use case. I'm speaking for the TYPICAL use case. Very few gamers own anything more than one console. That's just a fact. Very few own a high end gaming rig capable of playing something like Starfield, and it certainly isnt going to run well on a tablet.

This is just a ridiculous false equivalency. The Zenimax acquisition hurts Sony gamers a hell of a lot more than the Bluepoint acquisition hurts Xbox (which is to say, hardly at all, since they already worked almost exclusively with Sony). To even try and deny this fact is comical, and I haven't even mentioned the scale of an acquisition of Zenimax's size is humongous in relation to any of Sony's acquisitions. There are a LOT of games that Sony gamers will be missing out on going in the future as a result of this. Almost no games will Xbox be missing out on as a result of Sony's acquisitions. You cannot deny any of this. And no amount of "options" makes it in any way acceptable if you are used to gaming on one platform and enjoyed the Zenimax titles only to now force your hand into getting another platform.

 

[MScarpa]

Sony always bought studios who previously did work on exclusives for them, in all the generations. They won't scale down 2nd and 3rd party exclusives side, the opposite: they are also pushing harder there too.


It isn't a defensive move, PS always did this of acquiring people who successfully worked for them for a long period.

And MS even with Bethesda is still way behind Sony, Sony's game division continues making way more revenue (and profit) than the MS one. Zenimax game sales were less than 3% (probably 2%) of PS4 game sales, which are growing.

So Sony won't miss Zenimax and is making way more money than MS, so no defensive moves are needed.

Damn right!! Zenimax games are trash. Nobody wants that garbage on their beautiful Sony boxes. Am I doing it right? What did I miss?

 

[MScarpa]

If GamePass continues to be successful, then we ate undoubtedly going to see more acquisitions. The subscription model in today's day and age required new and original content.

MSFT cant rely on 3rd party publishers too much because if they do, they will see themselves with less and less content as other publishers decide they want to start their own service. Like Disney and other studios dropped Netflix to start their own.

The only way to be competitive i a subscription service will be original content. And the publishers with the most studios and quality content will be the leaders. Dont know is Sony plans to ramp ul PS Now like GamePass, but if they can continue to make quality original conent the they should be fine for a while, even w/o a service.

This is spot on. The future is subscription model.

 

[Snake29]

Scroll down here to get the full list including the support studios:

Sony Interactive Entertainment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

They also have 2nd unannounced small studio in the campus of their San Diego studio that isn't listed there. They are the ones who pitched and have been making the TLOU1 remake, with people from the Sony PlayStation Visual Arts Group (an internal support team that helps all their games with the cinematics, animation and art) with support from ND.

And well, their XDEV Japanese team, the one who publishes the 2nd party games like Bloodborne or Death Stranding Director's Cut, before they were included inside Japan Studio. When Japan Studio got restructured, they separated them into two separate offices: all the internal development teams got merged into one of them (Team Asobi) and the 2nd party publisihing XDEV team went to the other one, which now reports to XDEV instead of to Japan Studio/Team Asobi.

Internal development teams:
1 - Team Asobi
2 - Polyphony
3 - Insomniac Games
4 - Naughty Dog
5 - Bend
6 - San Diego
7 - Santa Monica
8 - Sucker Punch
9 - Pixel Opus
10 - Bluepoint
11 - Guerrilla
12 - London Studio
13 - Media Molecule
14 - Housemarque
15 - Firesprite
16 - Fabrik (if we count it as separate one from Firesprite)
17 - San Diego 2nd studio (if we count unannounced one as a separate one)

Gamedev support teams:
1- Nixxes
2 - XDEV
3 - XDEV Japanese team (if we count it as separate from XDEV and Team Asovi)
4 - Malaysia Studio
5 - San Mateo Studio


They said 'original content', which can even mean a new DLC for an existing game/IP. Doesn't need to be a new IP.

I bet it will be a sequel for an existing IP, probably a 'short' one like Miles Morales as a first step. For a very popular IP whose devs are too busy with other projects and probably one we haven't seen for a while or one they already worked with. I'd bet candidates could be Uncharted, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, SotC.



What a troll.

She released over a dozen important games before she left her studio. And there are like a dozen more released after she left but were greenlighted and started with her and also became hits/good games. And this includes some huge new IPs like Assassin's Creed, Watchdogs or The Division to name a few or rebooted other ones with cases like Rainbow Six Siege.

Sony signed her studio a 2nd party deal a month after she left Stadia or so because they know the teams she built delivered (before and after she left) a lot of hits. And well, her and her studios have an insane CV, but she also built a team with a lot of very talented and experienced former coworkers who also worked in many hits.

Middleware and Tool:

- SNSystems
- AudioKinect (Wwise)

I agree 100% with this. Outside of the normal people here, nobody knows who BP is or what games they make.

This is thr problem with MS. They want to acquire names (look at us buying a big name), and at the same time , Taking big franchises away from other platforms.

 

[MScarpa]

This is thr problem with MS. They want to acquire names (look at us buying a big name), and at the same time , Taking big franchises away from other platforms.

I don't understand what you're saying. MS wants to take away names? From other platforms? What's the issue? Exclusives are the name of the game.

 

[MScarpa]

Whose narrative was that? It wasn't mine. Regardless that's a straw man argument.

I'm not speaking for my own use case. I'm speaking for the TYPICAL use case. Very few gamers own anything more than one console. That's just a fact. Very few own a high end gaming rig capable of playing something like Starfield, and it certainly isnt going to run well on a tablet.

This is just a ridiculous false equivalency. The Zenimax acquisition hurts Sony gamers a hell of a lot more than the Bluepoint acquisition hurts Xbox (which is to say, hardly at all, since they already worked almost exclusively with Sony). To even try and deny this fact is comical, and I haven't even mentioned the scale of an acquisition of Zenimax's size is humongous in relation to any of Sony's acquisitions. There are a LOT of games that Sony gamers will be missing out on going in the future as a result of this. Almost no games will Xbox be missing out on as a result of Sony's acquisitions. You cannot deny any of this. And no amount of "options" makes it in any way acceptable if you are used to gaming on one platform and enjoyed the Zenimax titles only to now force your hand into getting another platform.

You could always just BUY an XBOX or PC, Or even use game pass on your phone and use your PS4 or PS5 controller. Many options.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Why does this matter, though?

Is this a serious question?

In one way or another platform holders have always taken content away from other platforms. In Sony's case they've relied on timed exclusivity to do this. I see the argument that, somehow, those are more justified because the games eventually come to other systems, but the point of timed exclusives is to exploit FOMO and capitalize on the period where game sales are the strongest and, by proxy, the impact of a game's release is the strongest.

Timed exclusive deals achieve the same thing. So in that vein, they're just as bad. So no, you'll not see any argument that they're more justified from me or any other rational and logically consistent poster.

On the other hand, timed exclusive deals for particular games are quantifiably a less shittier and anti-consumer practice than buying whole publishers/developers.

You're a smart guy and you clearly don't need me to spell out for you why that is the case.

So while those games may (or may not, via extension of exclusivity windows i.e FF VII Remake) come to other platforms down the line, if a user on that platform wanted to play the game when it initially released, only to see it was exclusive to the other platform for X # of years, then that is a user in Platform Ecosystem A who has now potentially left for Platform Ecosystem B to play that game, shifting platform marketshare. That's the entire point of timed exclusivity deals, and is effectively similar to a platform holder buying a publisher through an acquisition if the point is boiled down to "games are being removed from one ecosystem".

And, IMO, you do have to look at it from some better nuance. On a technical level MS may have essentially removed certain (not all, as we can see from continued support of FO '76, TES Online, DOOM Eternal, Quake, Skyrim etc. on PS and Nintendo systems) key future releases from the PS ecosystem, but at least their strategy provides a means for players to access those games through other devices they more than likely already have, such as their PC, laptop, or streamed via their phone & tablet. Let's just be honest here and say that the vast majority of PlayStation people have at least one of those devices, and as such, they haven't really "lost" access to anything. They just can't play those games on their PlayStation console specifically.

I'm sorry, but this is a really intellectually dishonest argument that doesn't really warrant a reply.

You're doing mental gymnastics to try to justify MS cutting off access to third-party publisher games for PS platform owners.

Any argument that start's with, "at least...", is simply refusing to acknowledge that the purchasing of third party multi-platform publishers simply adds nothing to the gaming medium and only serves to delete content from competing platforms, which I argue is harmful overall to the industry, the devs themselves and gamers.

But on the flip side, if this were Sony who acquired Zenimax, not only would all of those games be locked to PS4 & PS5, but there'd be no guarantee of any for PS Now, thus removing PC & mobile streaming as options (in addition to Xbox and Switch losing out). You'd also likely not see Day 1 PC releases, removing that as a realistic option, so in that scenario more gamers are actually "hurt" by loss of access across various devices, versus what we have with Microsoft having acquired them.

You're framing of the argument as MS this or Sony that speaks to a tendency to lean into platform wars to try to avoid arguing with the primary premise.

That is that it doesn't fucking matter who is buying up third party MP platform publishers, there isn't a reason or justification in the world that you can give that makes it any better for anyone.

Also if we want to be real here, since buying acquisitions and buying timed exclusives are effectively the same

If you actually think that this kind of false logic masquerading as a rational argument has any merit, then I have another bridge to sell you too. A big fluffy pink one with wings... and my Nigerian prince brother and his busty milf concubines need an international bank account to store their oil wealth. You can DM me your deets later.

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

Came in, it's all about Xbox.
FXck off!
Ignore thread.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Came in, it's all about Xbox.
FXck off!
Ignore thread.

Not sure what you'd be expecting?

Of course, any thread on dev acquisitions will lead to MS's recent Zenimax acquisition finding its way into the discussion. Frankly, it's not irrelevant; especially to the broader subject of whether dev/pub acquisitions are a net benefit to the industry and gamers at large.

Also, a thread exclusively filled with cheerleading about this latest PS acquisition would just be one more NeoGaf echo chamber that this forum simply doesn't need. I'm not saying the thread should be allowed to descend into platform wars either, but having actually read the thread, that's clearly not happening (to the chagrin of a small few here that really really insist on trying to make it so).

 

[iHaunter]

Came in, it's all about Xbox.
FXck off!
Ignore thread.

What else did you expect. Good Sony news, Xbots come out of the woodwork. That's why I stopped commenting lol.

 

[Castef]

Now they could have every single Bluepoint game's exclusivity!

...

...

Wait.

 

[Dick Jones]

Bryank75 Welcome back brother

 

[Bryank75]

Bryank75 Welcome back brother

Hey Jones, thanks for welcoming me back. Your a great VP at OCP and a great friend! It's a pity about Bob Morton!

 

[Dick Jones]

Hey Jones, thanks for welcoming me back. Your a great VP at OCP and a great friend! It's a pity about Bob Morton!

Gas leak I heard, a temporary setback.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Blue Point has spent the last ten years working with PlayStation, compare this to Xbox opening up the yellow pages and buying Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, inXile, let alone Bethesda that is an IP grab, making MS once again owner of IPs they didn’t create.

It’s a completely different modus operandi, completely different strategies.

PlayStation is adding devs to a pipeline, Xbox is buying a pipeline. It’s why The Initiative had to go out there and hire Crystal Dynamics to make a game, because they don’t have a pipeline set up, they are just hoping that all this money they have spent will turn out in one.

 

[Papacheeks]

Hey Jones, thanks for welcoming me back. Your a great VP at OCP and a great friend! It's a pity about Bob Morton!

It was time to erase that mistake.

 

[ReBurn]

Blue Point has spent the last ten years working with PlayStation, compare this to Xbox opening up the yellow pages and buying Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, inXile, let alone Bethesda that is an IP grab, making MS once again owner of IPs they didn’t create.

It’s a completely different modus operandi, completely different strategies.

PlayStation is adding devs to a pipeline, Xbox is buying a pipeline. It’s why The Initiative had to go out there and hire Crystal Dynamics to make a game, because they don’t have a pipeline set up, they are just hoping that all this money they have spent will turn out in one.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Stop making sense? No.

 

[Papacheeks]

He's not wrong dude. Sony made deals in the old days with Insomniac and owned a lot of their IP's, mainly Resistance and RATCHET. They made a ton of games together so it made sense. Bluepoint made a lot of games for Sony also so it made sense to acquire them.
Firesprite is made up of Liverpool devs, and have done business with Sony. MS literally bought Ninja theory where their only collaboration was Kung Fu chaos, and when that didnt set the charts on fire they went over to work For Sony on heavenly sword then went independent and made DMC, Enslaved, Hellblade which were all multiplat with my understanding having any support or funding from Microsoft until MS bought them.

MS is buying whatever they think will be a good fit catelog wise on gamepass. Which was COlin Moriarty's take. He specifically talked about culture. What's MS's culture look like as a studio/publisher? Sony's its easy to know, tell the best stories/Experiences. Which is why Sony heavily invests in mo-cap, animators, camera's so they can use the cutting edge for all their games.
Which is why a lot of flack is thrown at them that they all are like movies. Well thats their culture because Sony is a entertainment entity mostly. They made entertainment products which then led to tv/pictures which lead to interactive software.

MS has an issue with still figuring out what their brand culture is about. Only thing you can say culture wise is we are about consumer friendly. Which to me has nothing to do with how you run a studio house.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

What else did you expect. Good Sony news, Xbots come out of the woodwork. That's why I stopped commenting lol.

That's a great idea. Stop posting constructive posts and allow the signal to noise ratio to shift more towards the noise.

If everyone does this in every thread, there'll be no rational discourse on NeoGaf anymore.

Sensible posters like you that can clearly separate the wheat from the chaff, need to continue posting to drown out the noise from the rabid vocal minority.

It was a perfectly reasonable post.

If you're so triggered by this utterly benign post, I'd say it's pretty clear the one with the problem is you.

Maybe you should take your own advice.

 

[yewles1]

Now they could have every single Bluepoint game's exclusivity!

...

...

Wait.

BLAST FACTOR 2 CONFIRMED!!!