Shawn Layden stepped down as CEO of Worldwide Studios in September of 2019.
That means almost everything we saw from yesterday's PlayStation Experience was a result of Shawn Laydens leadership, not Jim Ryan or Herman Hulst. In fact, the only impact Sonys new leadership had on yesterday's show was (arguably) Insomniac Games becoming a Marvel Studio for the time being. Everything else got the greenlight well before September of 2019.
I'm seeing a few people try to bash Jim Ryan based on the games we're seeing and that makes no sense. The Jim Ryan / Herman Hulst PlayStation won't be visible until 2022/2023 at the earliest.
AAA games published today or next year require 4 to 6 years of development. So pretty much all the games we saw in the event (with maybe Wolverine and some remaster as exceptions) were already greenlighted before 2019.
GoWR started when they released GoW 2018, Spider-Man 2 when they released Spider-Man (or at least it has its leads), Horizon 2 when they released Horizon 1, etc.
Wolverine has the leads of Morales, so pretty likely is the only one that started last year. And I think it's the best decision Marvel, Sony and Insomniac could make.
See, Im not criticizing Jimbos. He is actually doing the right thing, going for big license games and sequels. But be aware that this is a Sony that is willing to take less risk. This is not a Sony that will throw a AAA 200 million dollars budget on a new concept. The times Sony invested on innovative games like Shadow of the Colossus are probably gone. And the most clear proof of that is Insomniac. They are an Spiderman / Marvel factory now. Compare it with Double Fine; I dont know what the heck are they going to do next. And thats a freaking awesome thing.
Bullshit.
Out of the games seen in the event (plus some unannounced ones like TLOU1 remake) only Wolverine and maybe some remake/remaster has been greenlighted by Jimbo and Hermen, all the other ones were in development before they got in charge.
Jimbo and Hermen took decisions like buying Housemarque, the ones who made arcade gems like Returnal, Resogun or Nex Machina. Returnal seems pretty innovative and risky new IP and their next game will be more ambitious AAA new IP.
They also bought Firesprite, a UK studio who made VR stuff and game demos who grew a low hiring talent from Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Rocksteady, Ubisoft and others. They are working on two AAA new IPs. Which I think it's a pretty bold and risky move. Even if less than half of the staff were in SCE Liverpool, it's almost that Jimbo and Hermen reverted the closure of that studio that was closed by the previous leadership.
They are also developing AAA new IPs in at least Guerrilla, Bend, Santa Monica, London Studio, Pixel Opus (in collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation) and also signed 2nd party deals to make AAA new IP as the first games (another risky move) from Haven (ex AC/Ubi), Firewalk (ex Bungie) and Deviation (ex CoD BO) and signed a deal with Kadokawa, From Software's parent company.
Hermen said that around half of the over 25 games they have under development to be published by them are new IPs and that they will continue investing on smaller games and creative new IPs like Astro, Dreams or Death Stranding.
The previous leadership took the decision of making the PC ports. Hermen and Jimbo decided to buy Nixxes to make sure their gamedev teams don't need to waste their talent on pc ports or developing their games as multplatform and can focus on make their games for console instead.
Jimbo and Hermen also decided to invest hard on a niche genre as are the fighting games, buying EVO, creating online tournament and other related features and investing on prizes and streaming them.
There is nothing wrong with Insomniac: since they started with Spider-Man their games had 87, 85/84 and 88 in MetaCritic and their sales skyrocketed since Spider-Man. Double Fine since were acquired their games scored 79/79/83, 74/71/68/76, 89/87/90/89 in MC and we don't know their sales but must be way smaller than the Insomniac ones. The best rated recent game is a PS2 3D platformer sequel and the next Insomniac games to be announced very likely will be PSVR2 games (and all their previous VR/AR games have been new IPs).
so Shaun is responsible for horizon, 2018 god of war, last of us 2, GoT, Astro bot, returnal, ratchet and more?
I don’t get why we are supposed to be angry at the old Sony leadership of Shaun and Andrew house.
Andrew House was the CEO of SIE (the whole company also including hardware or services) from 2011 until the end of 2017. Shawn only was in charge of SIE Worldwide Studios (the game development part) from March 2018 to September 2019 and before that he was CEO of SIE America (the regional division for America, he wasn't in charge of the global strategy).