art_of_the_kill

Well, the people who pushed back against me over the past year or so with claims that it would be years before Sony starts porting PS5 games sure do have egg on their face now, don't they? Sony's clearly not even going to wait to give the PS5 a chance to build an exclusive library before they start making it not exclusive. And there's ultimately no reason to believe that there will be such a thing as a "PS5 exclusive" when all is said and done.

No doubt the "Sony's not going to release exclusives on PC day-and-date" folks are going to have egg on their face as well before too much longer.

Oh, and I'd like to get this question out of the way before we even start: are the people who buy Returnal (or hell, even Spider-Man, since that was just announced) on PC going to be required to use a Dualsense to play it, like us on PS5 are? Because remember how Sony's Dualsense is just oh-so-innovative that they wouldn't allow us to use our PS4 controllers with PS5 games, even though that would be super convenient? They wouldn't want us to miss out on playing their games without also experiencing the Dualsense! It's just not something that can be done, right?!

...right?!

I don't approve of Sony's new strategy because it honestly seems like they're not doing anything in the interest of PlayStation or its existing fanbase anymore. It seems that Sony's PC porting narrative has, unsurprisingly, changed since 2021...which itself had changed from what it was back in 2020. It appears that over the course of two years, Sony has gone from "wanting to give PC users a taste of what they're missing out on" to "PS users will get the best versions of games at launch only and PC ports will come later" to "we're going to open our platform up as much as possible so these games can reach a wider audience." Because apparently, it's just that easy for them to shift the narrative and go back on what they said before, but as you notice, with each narrative shift, they become less and less interested in benefiting PS users. I mean, hell, who even knows if "PS users will get it best at launch" still applies anymore, because Lord knows they're going to release some of these live services on PC day and date. Jim Ryan clearly has locked his sights on markets outside of PlayStation so tightly that he evidently doesn't care how little PS users benefit from it. And make no mistake, we don't benefit from it at all. You know how MLB: The Show is evidently going to be releasing on Gamepass day one from here on out while we PS owners are stuck paying full price for it? Yeah, that? That's how Jim Ryan evidently wants the PS community to be feeling ALL THE TIME, if I'm to be understanding his words correctly.

Oh, and OF COURSE we're already looking at the prospect of Returnal (one of the PS5's only exclusives to date) getting ported to PC. Because remember when the PC ports were just going to be focused on Sony's back catalog on the PS4 and it would be years before they started porting over PS5 games? Gee, it's almost as if everything we've been led to assume about Sony's PC venture has turned out to be a load of bunk, hasn't it? It's almost as if they've wanted to go the way of Microsoft this whole time and people were just kidding themselves by thinking it would only be a few games, years down the line.

Oh, and in his latest interview, Ryan naturally said that he doesn't expect all of the live services Sony puts out to be successful. He explicitly states that "only a portion" need to enjoy critical and commercial success and he'll evidently be happy with that. So yes, when it comes to this sudden live service push, it is truly all about throwing as much crap at the wall to see what sticks, and in the meantime, Sony's developers are locked into whatever it is they force them to do, sapping away resources from potential single-player projects, which I fully believe that they're trying to move away from.

In any case, there is absolutely no reason I'm seeing to be optimistic for this new direction, absolutely no reason not to expect that PS owners won't continue to get the shortest end of the stick while Sony chases after other markets.

Effing what? This game was terrible! I mean, if ever there was a game that did not deserve a remaster…

13/15, baby! New high score for me! What's more, I actually knew more answers this time and relied less on guesses.

Damn, though, I got the Croc question wrong, and that's a game I've actually played before. (Albeit about twenty years ago, but still...)

They’re gonna need more PC-porting studios. Nixxes has way too much work on their hands.

“Just a few games, years down the line…”

@BamBamBaklava89

I’ve lost so much faith in the PS brand over the past year that I can’t even measure it; this being a brand I’ve been loyal to for over two decades. With Jim Ryan’s piss poor leadership, the complete and utter aversion Sony has towards communicating freaking anything with us anymore, their sudden and explosive interest in the mobile and PC markets that will inevitably come as a detriment to their existing PS userbase, their outright expressing the desire to go “multiplatform”, suggesting that they fully intend to leave us PS owners out in the cold, and their pathetically grasping live service plans which makes it seem like they just want to throw as much crap at the wall as they can to see what sticks… none of it indicates that the brand is heading in the right direction.

At this rate, I genuinely feel like I can reach a point where I throw up my hands and say “I’m done with PlayStation.”

Every single time Sony drops the ball like this, we all wonder how they could possibly be so inept, out-of-touch, and anti-consumer.

Then I remember who’s running PlayStation, and it suddenly all makes sense.

Honestly, no big shocker here as far as I’m concerned. Sony is clearly way too far down the path to becoming multiplatform, and they’ve efficiently communicated that there’s no reason for us as PlayStation fans to expect any better treatment than what they give their new customers…the PC/Mobile/etc., ones who aren’t buying PS systems. Hell, if anything, there’s only reason to expect worse treatment, like how Sony is perfectly a-okay with putting one of their first-party games on Gamepass while we have to pay $70 for it.

Day-and-date PC releases are coming. Day-and-date Xbox releases are going to apply to far more than just MLB: The Show. This is quite clearly where Sony is headed.

10/15.

Either these are getting harder, or my guesses are getting far less lucky. XD

8/15. Second worst perfomance.

People keep apparently being surprised that PlayStation under Jim Ryan keeps dropping the ball, and wonders what’s going wrong.

The answer’s been staring you in the face this whole time, folks.

Yeah, well I, for one, can’t wait for this “experiment” to fail.

Welp, 2023 it is, then.

11/15, my fourth time getting this score and the still the highest I've received to date. Hope I get a 14 or 15 eventually.

10/15

Anyone who misses the Sweet Tooth or Jak and Daxter questions ought to have their PlayStation license revoked. ;P

This is merely a taste of things to come. GT7 will likely be the roadmap Sony's going to follow for the other live services they want to saturate us with.

Why does Sony's only Japanese developer left also have to be its most out of touch?

10/15. Not going to lie, the Sly Cooper question nearly threw me off. I've only ever played the first game, in which Sly and Carmelita are enemies. Still, I figured it made the most sense. XD

Ah, doesn’t this just get us all super excited about the glorious live service future that Sony wants to bring us?

This on top of $70 games with MTX. What could be more perfect, more representative of the future Jim Ryan wants for us?

And here I was, thinking we play games on consoles in part so that we don’t have to deal with multiple launchers to play them.

Ugh, who wanted or asked for this? Probably only Jim Ryan.

11/15, with three lucky guesses.

Honestly, the main difference here is that unlike with BOTW, PlayStation has access to both games being compared. The console war aspect has been effectively nullified.

So buy both games and be happy already!

7/15. My worst perfomance so far.

"Winglies?! That's so stupid, there's no way it could be that!"

"Oh."

"Has there been a greater redemption arc than No Man’s Sky?"

Final Fantasy XIV.

It’s 2022. 30fps ought to be extinct by now.

This will be controversial for no good reason.

It's probably for the best. Literally no one wanted or asked for this version of BG&E 2.

"The problem here is PlayStation’s utter lack of communication on the subject."

Lack of communication has been a pretty consistent issue with Sony for over two years now.

Another game that would literally cease to exist if not for physical copies. But digital is the future…

11/15.

108 MB for a freaking PS2 memory card?! I wish! I literally own four of them, and it would have been so nice to only need one. But nickeling and diming us for memory cards was definitely Sony's thing back then.

Cogen: Sword of Rewind. I beat the base game, so I think I'll focus on its DLCs now.

Calls them "Last of Us" dev. Uses Jak and Daxter image for the article.

Seriously? ;P

“Many people have tried to build a successful live service, and failed."

I'm almost surprised he's acknowledging that live services are a gamble. Guess that's why they're producing ten of them simultaneously, in the hope that at least one of them will be a hit while the others are left to starve and die.

Nice to see Hunting Grounds and Cauldrons returning.

@themightyant You say that as if there’s no reason anyone would have a problem with him despite how he lied to us about believing in generations, came near the verge of shutting down three previous storefronts simultaneously and expected it to go over well because he thought everyone else hated older games as much as he does , is one of the pushers for $70 next-gen games, etc., etc., etc….

Gee, just imagine if Sony was willing to sacrifice this much money to keep Japan Studio around to keep letting them do their thing, instead of shuttering them and letting go of people who had been with the company for over 25 years...

You can be excited, but it's hard not to see this as Sony trying to edge their way into a market that is continuously hit-or-miss, putting their developers into a position where they'll be forced to support even failed live services for years on end. Fact of the matter is, few live services are truly successful, at least the sort of success Sony is likely looking for. And they already have one dud on their hands with Destruction All-Stars.

And if this slows or even stops Sony's single-player output, I'll have very little, if not no reason to get a PS5. And that is sadly likely, given the aforementioned bit about Sony's developers being forced to support these things for years. If the majority of Sony's first-party teams were as prolific as Insomniac, maybe it wouldn't be a problem. But....they aren't.

It’s another move from Jim Ryan that showcases how little he’s committed to the PS community and how far his priorities have shifted away from encouraging us to feel valued as Sony’s premiere customers who have bought into the PS ecosystem. In the interview that accompanied the buyout, he blatantly states that this acquisition is not about pulling people into the PlayStation ecosystem (which is the exact opposite of what MS buying Bethesda and Activision was about), and he literally uses the words “we’re going multiplatform” to signify his commitment expanding the PS brand elsewhere and essentially making the people who haven’t bought Sony’s systems to feel just as valued as those of us who have.

In other words, Jim Ryan is all but telling us that there is ZERO value in being a PlayStation owner anymore. Or at least there won’t be soon enough, as he seemingly wants to give himself an avenue where putting former PlayStation exclusives on rival consoles feels just as comfortable to him as releasing them on PC.

Well, Jim Ryan’s plans for the brand are sure as hell putting a damper on my plans to ever own a PS5 myself, so…

Because live services are always a guaranteed success, aren’t they? After all, that’s why Destruction All-Stars remains such an incredible….oh wait.

Well, nice to see that Jim Ryan has only learned that the best thing to do is triple down on a model that is hit-or-miss at best, and had thus far been an ABSOLUTE FAILURE for games such as Anthem, Avengers, Destruction All-Stars….oh, and that battle royale that Ubisoft is cutting their losses on.

And Lord knows I’m meant to continue pretending that this man has PlayStation’s best interests at heart. The man who just threw down 3 billion on Bungie just to boast about how it’s NOT going to benefit PlayStation owners.

It doesn’t just mean “little”, it means virtually nothing. At the very least, nothing to those of us within the PlayStation ecosystem. It’s Sony blatantly saying that not only can you expect all their exclusives to come to PC, you can also expect them to come to Xbox and Nintendo, just the same way MLB: The Show is.

I mean, we’ve seen the escalation occur with Sony getting comfortable releasing games on PC to the point where merely one year after HZD’s PC port we had Hermen Hulst saying that he “values” the PC community. Sony is now opening up an avenue where they’re going to get comfortable releasing “exclusives” on their competitors’ platforms, something that even Microsoft isn’t ready to commit to yet. Because it’s more than clear now that Sony no longer sees any value whatsoever in their exclusive games. Or at the very least, they no longer see any reason to provide their existing users with any benefit to own their system.

Sony spent over $3 billion to NOT benefit PlayStation. What does that say about where we’re heading? What does that say about the future of the brand while Ryan and Hulst continue to crush it beneath their thumbs?

So yeah, pretty damn startling precedent set here with Sony outright making an acquisition explicitly to NOT bolster their exclusive lineup. Once again, it’s made abundantly clear that Jim Ryan has pretty much zero desire to benefit the PS community in any way. At best, he merely views us as the ones who are most likely the ones to accept their attempts to nickel and dime us.

It seems we’re barreling towards a future where not only does Sony have no exclusives anymore WHATSOEVER, but they might just be going full-on third party, releasing their games on their competitors platforms as well. And hell, not even Microsoft seemingly wants to go that far…not yet, at least, so Sony is definitely the pioneer this time.

This is the beginning of the end for PlayStation as we know it. Sony might as well just drop out now. I don’t believe there will be a PS6.

So let me get this straight: Sony makes their biggest acquisition in the game industry ever…for a studio they’re not going to be counting among their first-party lineup…will continue to publish games for their competitor’s platform….and which they bought solely for live service development which they have CLEARLY been pivoting towards for a while, likely at the direct cost of single-player games?

Remind me, am I still expected to pretend that Jim Ryan is good for PlayStation? That he’s not actively running the brand into the ground? Worst news I’ve heard all week.

Gee, it’s almost as if Jim Ryan is just an incompetent leader or something.

Hope they can all come out before MS buys EA.

Replaying Horizon Zero Dawn in anticipation for the sequel.

Next weekend, however, it'll be Cogen: Sword of Rewind. Btw, please do a review of that game when it comes out, PushSquare. I have a feeling it's going to fall way under the radar and I want it to get it as much exposure as possible.

I know this may be an unpopular opinion, but I really don't think Sony needs to go out and try to secure some huge acquisitions of its own, for two main reasons:
(1) I really, really hate this consolidation of the game industry that's been going on left and right over the last few years. It just feels toxic.
(2) Sony already acquired five studios last year, including Housemarque and BluePoint, both of which felt like a long time coming.

I really don't want Sony to indulge in acquisitions to happen just because they're desperate for an edge. I want them to happen as a result of partnerships, of Sony forming positive relationships with developers and deciding how good a fit they are for PlayStation. But yeah, sadly, MS isn't going to stop. And what's more, they're probably not interested in just acquiring small studios like Double Fine or Ninja Theory anymore. At this point, they're likely going to want every future acquisition they make to be another major publisher. And this might mean that PlayStation loses out on a whole lot of content, but they simply cannot beat MS at their own game. So it's just going to be better for them to focus the first party devs they do have into a force that can truly be reckoned with.

And Sony will never touch the series again.