Upset at the news that Demon’s Souls remake developer Bluepoint Games is being shut down, a reader is adamant that Sony has crossed a line.
After a pretty good State of Play the other week Sony must’ve felt uncomfortable with so much praise and positive press, so they immediately decided to go back to form and shut down Bluepoint Games. I couldn’t believe the news when I read it but then I realised it wasn’t surprising at all. People have been trying to convince themselves for month, that Sony has seen sense about live service games, and is throttling back, but they’re not. I don’t think they’ve learned a thing since this generation started.
I do put the blame here squarely on Sony. When they were losing in the Xbox 360 generation, they kept insisting they were still the market leader, and always would be, but when they actually needed to show some leadership they’ve got nothing. They’re running all their developers into the ground and producing almost no new games.
Bluepoint were only 70 people, how were they supposed to produce a hit live service game when Rockstar and Epic Games have thousands of people working on GTA and Fortnite? So Sony gave them an impossible task and then shut them down when they failed, instead of getting them to make a game they were actually set up to do.
Despite what we want to believe Sony isn’t interested in anything but live service games. They’ll keep still doing the very biggest games, because the profit margins on them are good enough – things like Spider-Man and Naughty Dog’s stuff – but everything else is being phased out.
Looking at their list of recent acquisitions, I wouldn’t bet on any of the studios surviving, except for Insomniac Games. Haven will be shut down the minute Fairgame$ is a flop, if it even comes out, and Housemarque are probably dead as soon as Saros doesn’t do well. As for Bungie… they’ve been a dead developer walking for at least a year now, it’s just a question of when Sony pull the plug.
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Sony has no interest whatsoever in going back to the way they used to work before the PlayStation 5, or even in its first year or so. That time is over and even though their games are the thing people used to love them for they don’t care. All they want is the absolute biggest hits and nothing else matters. They don’t care about being experimental, about taking a risk, or doing anything for the simple art of it.
It sounds naïve to say it like that – they’re a business, of course they’re not interested in art – but Sony got where they are today by pushing the art of gaming. The PS1 changed what people thought a video game console and its games could be. They changed the perception, amongst the general public, forever and for years afterwards they pushed the boundaries and produced some of the best games ever made.
But then they let costs get away with them, without doing anything to reduce them, and instead of trying to figure out a new way of doing things just gave up. It was live service games, and the occasionally quadruple-A game, and nothing. It’s a dumb, cowardly way of thinking about things but because Xbox is no longer any competition they’ve been able to get away with it, because what other console are people going to buy?
Well, I can tell you that I’ll be sticking to my Switch 2 and PC from now on and that will do me fine. This might not be the final betrayal but I’m not waiting around for that. I’m selling my PlayStation 5 and I’ll buy Saros on PC, when it comes out on that. Assuming Sony don’t shut them down before they have a chance to make it.
By reader Grackle
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