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Why do you think that Sony has never made their own RPG?

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FMX

Member
With their Japanese origins I have always wondered why they never made their own RPG's. They have the talent and while they do have Final Fantasy on lockdown the more the merrier. Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house? If they did which PlayStation studio would you like to see given the green light to make one?
 

SeraphJan

Member
I think its the direction their going right now are more leaning towards western game, some like it, some don't.

Lets not forget all the games that Japan Studio created, in the past 20 years, there are some decent RPGs.
 
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kingfey

Banned
There are tons of good IPs Sony is ignoring it now.
They found their formula. Only way they can go back to these games, is if they felt threatened by the competition.

As of now,, general audience wants their big hits.
 

Nankatsu

Gold Member
Soon, when they buy Square Enix.

evil smile GIF
 

kingpotato

Ask me about my Stream Deck
As you mentioned, Final Fantasy was basically the "Sony" RPG franchise from 1997 until 2007, they weren't ported until much later and even then, the first ports were on other Sony consoles. And other Square and Enix games were exclusive as well. They did have a few titles of their own as others stated, but having the biggest franchises exclusive was effectively the same as building your own.
 
With their Japanese origins I have always wondered why they never made their own RPG's. They have the talent and while they do have Final Fantasy on lockdown the more the merrier. Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house? If they did which PlayStation studio would you like to see given the green light to make one?
I guess I'm going to pretend like this question exclusively applies to post-2010 since Demon's Souls and White Knight Chronicles came out just before that year. So to provide my own theory answer, I think during the HD-era someone at Sony publishing ran the numbers for RPG dev costs compared to sales and noticed the numbers starting to dwindle, including their own, and saw the numbers for action/adventure and shooters rising due to the dominance of Xbox 360. A lot of JRPG companies took huge hits/losses in sales during that era, including those who gave Microsoft the exclusive deal(a death sentence for your game outside of the US/EU) to the point where most of them are still recovering to this very day.

Also Sony isn't the only one scared to make an RPG. Look at how much Capcom changed post 360-era to appeal to western audiences. They took a chance on one big RPG(Dragon's Dogma) and haven't done much since then. On top of that, take a look at how WRPGs had to dumb down some of their more complex gameplay in sequels/offshoots so that they could sell console editions to barely break even with dev costs. The HD console(PS3/360/Wii) era really turned the industry upside down and shook out tons of money.
 

Azurro

Banned
With their Japanese origins I have always wondered why they never made their own RPG's. They have the talent and while they do have Final Fantasy on lockdown the more the merrier. Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house? If they did which PlayStation studio would you like to see given the green light to make one?

Well, they used to make Legend of Dragoon, Wild Arms and I might be forgetting something else. Final Fantasy was exclusive to Sony consoles since that time, so they didn't really have a need back then. They only started to become a first party powerhouse during the PS3 era when third party exclusives became more and more of a rarity.
 

ckaneo

Member
Fake news.

If you are asking why they stopped its because action games with rpg lite elements are all the rage right now and other companies use to fufill the rpg niche. Hence them money hatting shit like persona, in which they never even said how long the exclusivity was for
 

p_xavier

Authorized Fister
They actually did develop RPGs like Legend of Dragon and Dark Cloud. But didn't sell well. Also specially on the PSX era they distributed lot of rpgs like arc the lad
Sony was pretty much anti-RPG. Arc The Lad was made as a collection and that was one of the reasons that made Working Designs bankrupt.
 

yurinka

Member
Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house?
Because all the main console RPGs are on their console, and many of them are even exclusive. It's a genre their console already dominates, so they don't need to make their own one.

They have the Final Fantasies (including the console exclusive FFXIV, the currently top MMORGP) and rest of Square Enix stuff, the Personas, the Yakuzas, (plus the rest of Sega/Atlus) the Souls, the Tales (and the rest of Bandai Namco stuff), the Horizons, CD Project, Bioware and so on and so on.

They already have a shit ton of RPGs, more than anyone else. Don't need to make their own ones, if something Horizon 2 plus Bloodborne or Demon's Souls (if you consider them RPG) is their more similar things they have. But again, they have this genre more than covered.
 
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UltimaKilo

Gold Member
With their Japanese origins I have always wondered why they never made their own RPG's. They have the talent and while they do have Final Fantasy on lockdown the more the merrier. Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house? If they did which PlayStation studio would you like to see given the green light to make one?
They have made quite a few RPGs. /Thread
 

CamHostage

Member
They have made quite a few RPGs. /Thread

If we're splitting hairs, they've produced quite a few RPGs; actually having an internal developer assigned to the creation of a RPG, that's limited to Japan Studio's Legend of Dragoon I believe?

There's a few others that might qualify in a nitpicky discussion (and that's still only if we're talking about the stat-building, usually turn-based/time-based combat game we most easily label "RPG"; the big open-world games epics with crafting and grindy or looty combat design blurring lines like Horizon and Bloodborne do then you start getting into the "What exactly is an RPG" conversation...) In general though, Sony has turned to partner studios when it has wanted to enter into the RPG market.

In the Japanese development structure, the Producer role still is often a creative role, and the home office may be responsible for the graphic design, character creation, scenario/script writing, actor VO performance, conception of combat or world design, sometimes even the direction of the game, so we shouldn't take away from Sony Japan Studio in particular its many memorable RPGs (for fans at least,) but the credit of an external dev team still would usually label a game such as Dark Cloud as a Level-5 game rather than a Japan Studio game.

The one time Sony has ever said, "Oh man, these RPGs are pop-u-lar, we have got to make one of our own!", and hired staff at Sony specifically for making games in that genre, it is curiously limited. When you think "RPG", many gamers think PlayStation, and yet both Nintendo and Microsoft have each had numerous studios (internally-raised or acquired) making RPGs; even today, Nintendo owns Monolith and Camelot and Intelligent Systems and maybe others I'm forgetting; MS has Obsidian and Inxile and Worlds Edge and Playground Games and Bethesda. Sony on the other hand has never really has done that.
 

WitchHunter

Member
With their Japanese origins I have always wondered why they never made their own RPG's. They have the talent and while they do have Final Fantasy on lockdown the more the merrier. Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house? If they did which PlayStation studio would you like to see given the green light to make one?
That is their secret wepun against unsurmountable odds.
 

SSfox

Member
Modern Sony sucks and both Hermen and Jimbo have shitty gaming tastes, they don't care about Japanese games (unfortunately). If you want Japanese games and JRPG you're gonna look up to companies like Square , Capcom, Bandai Namco, Sega or Nintendo to name just those.
 
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OceanGaming

Member
With their Japanese origins I have always wondered why they never made their own RPG's. They have the talent and while they do have Final Fantasy on lockdown the more the merrier. Why do you think that they have never developed their own in house? If they did which PlayStation studio would you like to see given the green light to make one?
Not only they were doing RPGs back in the day, they were doing WRPGs as well, sad that in an age where Scalebound is being discussed, THIS awesome game has been forgotten.

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CamHostage

Member
I would say the fact that the OP didn't know of this game's existence kind of answered his own question as to why they may have stopped lol.

Sure, that didn't get mentioned, but is it really lol-worthy? That's one title, 22 years ago (4 PlayStation generations have come and gone since.)

It's kind of the OP's point, that Sony could have built up its business in RPGs but for various reasons didn't; they did put out a number of RPG titles over the years, but they were almost all by external developers and they're all IP that Sony has essentially forgotten. Again, "RPG" and "PlayStation" go hand in hand for a lot of gamers, yet Sony owns zero studios making RPGs today and has zero titles announced in the genre; Microsoft and Nintendo own several studios making RPGs and both will be releasing major entries in the genre this year. Not that PlayStation fans are hurting for RPGs to play, but it's just kind of weird to think about.

BTW, Legend of Dragoon is from a team formed by the guy who's now a leader of the company, yet there was never a sequel or anything like it or even a new project released that core team. (Legend of Dragoon was also was something of a hit, particularly in America where the RPG genre was expanding to at the time, and it spawned a Greatest Hits re-release after selling over a million copies, so it doesn't answer the question as to why they may have stopped; they even were in development of a sequel for some time but it never got very far apparently.) Sony had an RPG studio built, let them make one RPG, and that was it. Sony has made a sequel and two remakes of Medievil but for some reason Dragoon fans will never get their wish granted.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Modern Sony sucks and both Hermen and Jimbo have shitty gaming tastes, they doesn't care about Japanese games (unfortunately). If you want Japanese games and JRPG you're gonna look up to companies like Square , Capcom, Bandai Namco, Sega or Nintendo to name just those.
I kind of agree, My most hyped games on PS5 are all 3rd party games and I lost interest most of Sony's 1st party.
 
Videogame production is more risk adverse than ever due to inflated costs to make a AAA game that will sell.

I miss the days when a small developer could come out with some surprise groundbreaking game that could pull a profit without selling millions.

Oh well, the indie scene pretty much covers the gap.
 

Boss Mog

Member
They made plenty: Arc The Lad, Wild Arms, The Legend of Dragoon, Dark Cloud, Alundra. They don't make them anymore because Japan Studios is pretty much non-existent these days except for Team Asobi (who are amazing).
 
I think OP should have said they "used" to make RPG but not anymore.
I mean they could have but they specifically said NEVER.

And the answer is to why they don't make RPGs now is because the JRPG market has largely receded and RPGs are extremely expensive to make and require large teams and are extremely risky propositions.

You basically need a team as large as Naughty Dog to make a AAA JRPG and if the game doesn't sell well enough after being in development for 4-5 years, the studio really can't continue to exist.

Outside of Square Enix, Persona is really the only high-selling JRPG around now. I'm not going to count Monster Hunter and consider that a game like Horizon has outsold all of the Persona games combined. Sony has had extremely limited success with JRPGs.

Arc the Lad
Wild Arms
Legend of Dragoon

There is really no argument to be had for Sony to invest heavily into a AAA JRPG.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
I think it's because they already have partners to make that kind of game. I remember EA boycotting the Dreamcast because SEGA had first party Sport games, maybe if Sony starts to compete with partners like Square they might also start to give preference to the competition.
 

DZ_b_EZ

Member
A simple Google search could have helped you to avoid making this post. They've published RPGs in the past.
 

NahaNago

Member
They kinda made a few of them when the first playstation came around but then they made less of them as each gen came and went until they don't really make them anymore during the ps4(Souls games aren't jrpgs). It is I'm guessing it is just because most jrpgs come to playstation and the jrpgs they made weren't massive success like final fantasy back in the day.

I'd personally like Sony to have a first party studio to make jrpgs these days but that just aint gonna happen these days. They've gone mostly western.
 
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