Sony hate thread

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Oliver Onions said:
I want to discuss what Sony's long-term plan could possibly be when they allow 6 year dev cycles and $200-400-million budgets for games that instantly flop on release (if they release at all).
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I'm not sure how they plan to survive. Corporations this big can't pivot particularly fast, it took them years to set up the current pipeline, and it will take them years more to course correct, even if there is the political will on top to do so.

They're currently fucked in three big ways:

1. Their hardware is expensive, and is going to only get more expensive since the AI gold rush shows no signs of stopping. What this means in practice is that their previous strategy of selling consoles at a loss, and making their money via game sales, is not going to be sustainable. PS6 is going to cost $1500 at a minimum, how do you even justify selling something like that at a loss and justify it financially?

2. Their two big bets in terms of game development - live service and cinematic slop - didn't pan out. Their live service drive failed to create the kind of moneyprinter the investment needed, and people are increasingly tired of cinematic slop. Doesn't help that all their studious take a whole console generation to release anything, and that the games they do release lack mass market appeal due to the collective political views and mental instability of the developers, yet have the budget of a mass market product.

3. The corporate/developer culture rampant at all levels - the Sony double-whammy or releasing a relatively tolerable first game, and then rugpulling customers with a hyperwoke sequel is by now standard practice, to the point more and more people are catching onto the pattern, and it's not sustainable in any shape or form. They killed Ghost of Tsushima with the sequel, and pride won't allow them to course correct and make a game about Jin, or if they do it will be a passive aggressive product meant to punish the audience for not buying the game with the lesbian goblin. And this applies to all their other franchises - TLOU, Uncharted, Marvelslop, God of War etc.

There's no reason why any of these franchises couldn't have been massive, other than Sony sabotaging their enduring profitability at every step of the way.
 
regalterry said:
the AI gold rush shows no signs of stopping
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eh, it kinda is (in terms of the absurd hardware demands it makes), but the immense pressure it's put on the RAM and storage manufacturers won't quite let up in time (and prices won't fall enough) for it to make a meaningful difference for Sony to salvage their abysmal pricing, which is really fucking funny to me. Prices won't level out or come back down to sane levels until well into the PS6's launch and we'll all get to laugh our asses off as the AI boys make their next breakthrough (hint: it involves reducing the memory requirements of their fancy high-end models so 1) more will fit on current hardware, 2) they won't have to buy as much new hardware to make more models) right when Sony starts to feel the pinch from their pricing model killing the PS6's launch.
 
Jaimas said:
Sony's never posted actual sales numbers for it, which is usually code for it doing poorly as @moocow explained.
Other sales figures were a little more optimistic, but if there was one metric that was absolutely vicious, it was how poorly the game was selling via retailers.

You had the game being bundled with consoles to promote it, and just shelves full of it going unsold. This is another reason Sony wants to exit physical media: It makes fuck-ups like this harder to fudge.

View attachment 9564602

By my estimates, at best, TLOU2 did okay, and okay is not a win for Sony considering how much money went into it. They needed a smash hit. The fact that Neil Druckmann hasn't worked on a goddamn thing since says a lot.
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Sony reports shipments rather than sales (this is an industry standard thing, not something unique to sony, it's very hard to track how much stock is left at every single retailer, and even when you can, you're gonna be months behind). What is at least somewhat unique is how drastically sony will tend to overship things, as seen in that very pic. They looked at their shipment numbers, the ones they absolutely FLUFFED to hell and back with overshipments, bundles, etc, and said that THOSE numbers were too shitty to brag about.
 
Incecticyder said:
Then they should read more. What the customers liked or disliked. Head in sand management is not management at all. How about they started doing their job?
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The CFO's job is to watch how dollars flow, not judge works on their creative merits or post on video game forums. Measuring consumer sentiment is marketing job (and they usually suck at it).

At some point, when you've asked for too many budget increases, the guy who writes the checks might say "no."
 
regalterry said:
PS6 is going to cost $1500 at a minimum, how do you even justify selling something like that at a loss and justify it financially?
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Or let's say it doesn't, and somehow Sony finds a way to make it cost the same as a PS5 Pro: who is going to buy a console with no games and no meaningful hardware improvements?

Maybe a handful of Sony Sisters, but not enough to make it profitable, especially when you have no software to make back the hardware loss on.
regalterry said:
the Sony double-whammy or releasing a relatively tolerable first game, and then rugpulling customers with a hyperwoke sequel is by now standard practice
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I'm still upset about God of War. I actually enjoyed the first Dad of War --although on attempting to replay it this year got bored and gave up by the end of the elf world-- and was excited to see what they were gonna do with the Norse gods, then Ragnarok was 20 hours of melodrama and Kratos being emasculated. I can't even get mad about Laufey because I was already done with the series.

At least for Uncharted I got a satisfying conclusion with 4, and I never liked Spider-Man or The Last Of Us to begin with so it was fun to watch them fumble the sequels.
 
regalterry said:
3. The corporate/developer culture rampant at all levels - the Sony double-whammy or releasing a relatively tolerable first game, and then rugpulling customers with a hyperwoke sequel is by now standard practice, to the point more and more people are catching onto the pattern, and it's not sustainable in any shape or form.
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This is the one they can't seem to stop. The woke sequel often does well enough that they can convince themselves it's not a problem. All of their Western studios have fallen to the woke mind virus.
 
The Ugly One said:
The woke sequel often does well enough that they can convince themselves it's not a problem.
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The problem for Sony and their DEI hires is this trick only works once. I hope we're going to see it fail with Wolverine, but Spider-Man 3, (when it releases in 2037,) and Laufey will be when we really find out if people want this slop or if most of them were conned into buying thinking they'd get more of what they'd previously enjoyed.
 
moocow said:
They've never even simply stated "X copies of the game have been sold.
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it sold like 4 million copies within like 4 days of its launch. thats about 240 million dollars on a 220 million dollar budget. so it made back its production budget for sure. over time it likely paid off any marketing budget issues once it reached about 10 million
 
What is sad is that most of you can't understand that we aren't even defending Kojima. What we say is that Sony firing him was a bad idea as they have lost almost every competent dev and the things they fired him for are things that they allow other devs to get away with.

Firing Kojima makes sense. But Sony seems to give money to projects that have less of a chance to break even. Death Stranding 2 was a sales disappointment but nowhere near Concord or Marathon.

All in all, Kojima was like moldy bread. If you have better things to it, you throw it out. If you don't and can't afford better things, you eat moldy bread.

The Ugly One said:
The CFO's job is to watch how dollars flow, not judge works on their creative merits or post on video game forums. Measuring consumer sentiment is marketing job (and they usually suck at it).
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If the Marketing guys don't do their job, then Sony is still at fault for hiring incompetent people. The execs should talk to each other. If the Marketing didn't tell the CEO, COO and the CFO that woke shit is costing them good will and long term sales, then the have a communication issue.

The Ugly One said:
At some point, when you've asked for too many budget increases, the guy who writes the checks might say "no."
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As they should but when that same guy still pays for games that are guaranteed flops, then we have a level of hypocrisy here.
 
VideoCardz: The Last of Us Part II PC multiplayer mod will not be released after Sony letter (archive)

https://x.com/Speclizer_/status/2099250091206873093 (archive)
Hey everyone, as you all know, the TLOU 2 Multiplayer mod that has been in development since January was supposed to release this month. Unfortunately I recently received a letter on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment requesting for the mod not to be released. Extremely sad that this never got to see the light of day but I hope you'll continue to follow me onto the next project, this time something of my own. Thank you all for the incredible amount of support over the last year. I hope to bring you something bigger and better soon!
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Markorian said:
Sony reports shipments rather than sales (this is an industry standard thing, not something unique to sony, it's very hard to track how much stock is left at every single retailer, and even when you can, you're gonna be months behind)
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Comic book companies do the same thing, and it's probably because the agreement Sony (in this instance) has with retailers means no backsies. They can't return unsold stock for any reason other than it being damaged or defective. This means that in their minds, if Sony shipped 50 million units, they sold 50 million units. It doesn't matter to them if retailers can't move 50 million units or those 50 million units end up in a landfill somewhere and not in the hands of consumers.
 
DeadwastePrime said:
it sold like 4 million copies within like 4 days of its launch. thats about 240 million dollars on a 220 million dollar budget. so it made back its production budget for sure. over time it likely paid off any marketing budget issues once it reached about 10 million
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Those numbers include bundles, and you're making the classic mistake of just inputting price x number of copies "sold", when most of those copies were still physical retail, and faced at minimum a 30% cut from the retailer.

Last of us 2 also almost assuredly went over its budget, likely significantly. Concord's budget was $200 million, but the amount they actually spent on development alone was well in excess of $400 million, and that was from an 18 month delay.
 
The Ugly One said:
At some point, when you've asked for too many budget increases, the guy who writes the checks might say "no."
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And there is other factors on top. I would have kicked Cuckman to the curve way before Kojimbo. But Cuckman seems like the type to grovel while Kojima is likely a lot more prideful and stack on top that Cuckman is first party while Hideo is second party. Those parts lileky added up to why a useless arrogant kike that singlehandedly killed one of sony's best first party studios is still getting a paycheck while the uppity nip that thinks highly of himself and isn't even exclusive got shown the door.

As for long term plans, lol, they got none, they are scrambling to reduce costs as much as possible while keeping something in the pipeline that won't shit the bed (good luck!). Thing is, microsoft is also a perpetual mess and the cost increases in consoles also impact PCs so consoles still have merit for retards that fear computors or that aren't content with playing at 1080p. So I don't see the Playstation losing it's throne in the valley of ashes just yet, while it still gets a stupid ampunt of money from niggerball and fortnite purchases. Though Fortnite was losing steam, right? That could be the start of a real deathblow.
 
GeorgeFloydFentanylStash said:
There are what, 95 million PS5’s sold at this point. And it needs like 6 million to break even. It’ll atleast do that because Soyny consoomers.
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Nature of the business means a game really has to do more than break even. They never tell you what they spend on promoting a game but sometimes that can be substantially more than they spent on the game itself
 
Incecticyder said:
What is sad is that most of you can't understand that we aren't even defending Kojima. What we say is that Sony firing him was a bad idea as they have lost almost every competent dev and the things they fired him for are things that they allow other devs to get away with.
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In the last couple years, they fired the entirety of Firewalk Studio, laid off people at Inomniac and Naughty Dog, and slashed Bungie by 50%. Your claim that Sony has limitless tolerance for failure from its in-house studios doesn't hold up. So you're arguing from false premises to begin with.

And let's look at the major studio you're saying Sony should close down, Naughty Dog. Uncharted 4, TLOU, and TLOUII have moved around 50 million units combined. That's more than every Metal Gear Solid combined. You can bitch all you want about TLOUII losing goodwill, but at 10m units, it outsold every Metal Gear game ever made.

That's why nobody's getting fired at Naughty Dog. Companies don't run on "sentiment." They run on money, and so far, ND brings in money. That might change. No matter how good you are, you don't get an Endless Flop Budget.

Kojima is coming off an expensive flop, Death Stranding 2, then missed multiple deadlines, and refused Playstation exclusivity. At this point, you're engaging in special pleading - Kojima should just keep getting more money and more time because he's Kojima. "Maybe Physint could be the next Metal Gear Solid" - yeah, but it probably won't.

Incecticyder said:
As they should but when that same guy still pays for games that are guaranteed flops,
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None of the games you listed were "flops" except Concord, and everyone associated with it lost their jobs. Not sure what more you want, since killing bad employees is illegal.

Incecticyder said:
we have a level of hypocrisy here.
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You really don't. There are no moral implications to a failed product that other product teams can lean on to get more financing. The opposite tends to happen. A big, expensive flop means everyone is under tighter scrutiny. Execs don't say, "Ah, yeah, haha, we wasted $300m on that, and your idea isn't quite as stupid, so we owe you at least $50m!" They say, "Yeah, we're $300m in the hole, we're canceling your experimental project and reducing your travel budget by 80%. Don't care that you had nothing to do with it; investors are pissed."
 
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