Hulst is CEO of the newly named Studio Business Group, which includes all of PlayStation’s first-party teams, plus covers the development of PlayStation IP onto other mediums, such as TV and film. Hulst was already head of PlayStation Studios. He was previously the co-founder of Horizon and Killzone developer Guerrilla Games, which was acquired by Sony in 2005.
Hideaki Nishino will lead the Platform Business Group, which includes console hardware, technology, accessories, PlayStation Network and third-party relations (covering major publishers and indie studios). He was already SVP of Platform Experiences. He’s been part of the Sony business since 2006, holding numerous roles at Sony Network Entertainment, Sony Corporation and SIE.
Why are people so confused? Microsoft wanted monopoly by acquiring a bunch of companies, to consolidate their intellectual property and shaft it’s employees, the people who created the software in the first place.
Unfortunately, a lot of people blindly believe in systems and authorities. It doesn’t matter how many times they’re shown that companies give zero fucks and will light everything on fire at a whim, they think they’re rational actors who will do what’s responsible for their product, their customers, and their employees.
Clearly, that assumption isn’t remotely true, but they’d rather roll their eyes at anyone who doesn’t take it on faith than risk having their world view altered.
I hesitate to attribute it to accidental mismanagement. Surely Microsoft has enough experience by now to be pretty good at acquiring firms they think of as competition only to find some excuse to shut them down.
That could work if these firms were somehow competitors, but these aren’t Sony-aligned studios they’re buying, these are studios that were releasing games on Xbox.
This is definitely a case of, “what makes stock line go up? New games, Big names, More stuff!” Then later, “uh oh, did that and stock price not going up. Layoffs mean less cost, now stock line go up again!”
The Ars article is definitely better than the gamesindustry.biz one. Patent trolls for sure.
Also, what the fuck is that patent? They are describing a multi-cast over unicast, which is basically a for loop over the participants. Friggin ridiculous.
Microsoft has so many spinning plates up in the air right now and they have no idea how to handle them all. Eventually they’re all going to come crashing down and smash on the floor and it’s not going to be pretty.
The whole piece is worth a read but to me this paragraph sums it all up:
“Who even knows what would please these people? They say they’re focusing their resources on bigger games, then they say they need smaller games. They say they love your games, then they shut your studio down. They make more money than they’ve ever made before, then they cut costs repeatedly, drastically, and cruelly. They buy more studios than they can manage, so the answer is not to use that aforementioned money to hire more (or perhaps better) managers, but to have fewer studios so management’s job can be easier.”
Interesting article. They also talk about indies and different consoles:
Having heard some indies at GDC talking about skipping Xbox and PlayStation because there just isn’t much of an audience for indies on those platforms if you can’t get included in their subscription services, we ask Lowrie about how healthy the console ecosystems are for indies these days.
He echoes the indies we heard from in acknowledging that Switch stands apart from Xbox and PlayStation on this front.
“They’ve created an ecosystem – and therefore a user base – that is really open to interesting concepts and gameplay ideas,” Lowrie says of Nintendo. "The PlayStation and Xbox user, for as long as I’ve been doing this… there’s a lot of people that still like indie games, don’t get me wrong. Cult of the Lamb has done very well on those platforms. But I think the large majority of those people buy those platforms to show off what they can really do. They’re looking at Destiny. They’re looking at Helldivers. They’re looking at Starfield. They definitely push those.
“I think the platforms themselves all are really strong believers in indie games. They really do push them. I think on the other end, the consumers – as big as they might be – there’s still a smaller portion than we would like on Xbox and PlayStation that are open to looking at a pixel art platformer and going, ‘I’ll give this a shot.’”
I wish we had more small publishers. It’s so rare to go into a store now and see a $20-$40 title from some rando. Cheap enough that I can go “Oh, that’s interesting looking I’ll grab it”. Limited Run is great and all, but there’s no magic when you pre-order something 8 months out.
The return on indie games (if there even is a return) is already vanishingly small for 99% of releases - printing and distributing physical copies would just be pouring even more money down the drain.
Oh no doubt. It’s a shame too. We saw the death of the mid-level developer long ago.
When I go to cons I try to buy any smaller self-published titles I see, but wish the market could support smaller devs while remaining consumer-friendly with a “coop” publisher. An entity that can eat a loss while still finding gems that would be lost to time if stuck on a digital store.
That isn’t to say that smaller titles are dead. Currently I look out for stuff published by Soedesco, GS2 Games, Team17, Microids, EastAsiaSoft, etc etc.
It’s really quite bad imo, but it’s surprising considering how the consoles are basically the same, hardware-wise - the Xbox on paper might even be technically more powerful.
I think that if they’d been able to get out there with a couple of great 1st party games early in the generation it might have helped swing the market in their direction but they didn’t and now it doesn’t matter.
I’ve always had an Xbox, but the One is my last. The game pass is like cable TV, hundreds of meh games to choose from, one or two gems…the game library itself is…a lot less than what I can get elsewhere.
it’s just there isant reason for me to get another one or the next version…so I’ll be getting a steam deck.
Steam deck for sure was one of my best purchases the past few years. Sure you can’t play AAA games for more than like an hour before the battery runs out… but you can still play them. Played through the first 50 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn on that bad boy while I was out of town for a few weeks.
Besides that, it’s my FAVORITE way to play indie games. Easily get 3-5 hours on it, and the controls are WAY more comfortable than on the switch. Couple that with steam sales and it’s just fantastic
They really did nothing to limit scalpers. I like to imagine scalpers with dozens of Xboxes sitting around because they all came back into stock. Not taking a stand against scalpers will probably hurt in the long run, they don’t buy games or subscriptions
There have been rumors and speculation, but that’s not what MS is saying.
“More interestingly, [Xbox President Sarah] Bond teased a roadmap focused on next-generation hardware.
“'And what we’re focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions they’re building,” Bond explained in the recent episode of the Official Xbox Podcast.'”
Yeah I had heard rumors that they were going to focus on multi platform gaming instead, but apparently they will still be doing more consoles. That’s good!
gamesindustry.biz
Aktywne