Badlucktroll
Member
I hope Bungie makes a big scifi single player wrpg for sony. sadly i have a hunch that its only for online shit
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Do you believe Sony will try and secure or develop a major WRPG game this generation?
- Thread starter remember_spinal
- Start date
- Opinion
RedC
Member
To be fair it looks as if Larian has upped its production values in Baldur's Gate 3.
begotten
Member
Divinity 2 is vastly superior to Divinity 1 if you ignore the pacing of the acts and is comparable / as good as the games you mentioned above. Just my opinion tho', there's really no reason to not play it.
yurinka
Member
Nobody will miss them. InXile never made a single relevant game for PS, the only relevant game that Obsidian did on console was Fallout: New Vegas 12 years ago and their key devs are no longer there. Regarding Bethesda, they moved their main two WRPG IPs to GaaS and lost their mojo. ESO didn't have the quality and success that Skyrim had, and same happened with Fallout 76, which was a shadow of the success that Fallout 4 was. Assuming that Starfield is great again as Fallout and Elder Scrolls were in the past even if not in the platform where these games sell the most their next is going to be released... when, ESVI may be released in 2027, crossgen with tne next gen?
Sony has Guerrilla, FromSoft, Square Enix, Sega, Capcom, Bandai Namco, CD Projekt, Larian, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Bioware and a long etc. PS will continue being the platform with more relevant console RPGs being released every generation/year.
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kuncol02
Banned
That's good to hear. First one felt like indie game made by people who are clearly fans of genre but with not much of writing talent (which is strange because it's not their first game). On surface everything was where it was expected, but it felt kinda flat.
Shubh_C63
Member
Bungie is already knee deep in making MATTER. Their new cheery looking IP having Online FPS MMO elements but details are slim to none.
They had Netease publishing it but now Sony owns them so...idk.
RedC
Member
That's the wrong way to look at it.
These studios now have the financial backing of a 2 trillion dollar company and a business model of Xbox, PC, Gamepass, and Xcloud that can provide stability, support, and bigger budgets to maximize the potential of their games.
It's amazing to me how some people can't project how the future may look a decade from now when all of Xbox Game Studios are firing on all cylinders with efficient pipelines consistently pumping out a variety of high quality games especially WRPG's.
abacab driver
Banned
Thats some premium, uncut cope right there.
kuncol02
Banned
Wasteland 3 is better game than anything Sony released in last 15 years (maybe except Bloodborne). And I mean that.
Also Bioware is dead for years. No original talent is still in that studio. It's empty husk that EA don't allow to die for marketing reason.
remember_spinal
Banned
Naw, and im a huge wasteland fan
If that game were anymore popular it would have got dragged the same way Cyberpunk did
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yurinka
Member
Seems that sales, reviews and awards highly disagree with you.
I agree
MS had that finantial backing for over 2 decades and PS stil outperforms them for over 2:1.
If I'd have to define MS first party studio management it wouldn't be 'efficient pipeline'. I believe that at the end of this year or early next one MS will start to release around 1 or maybe 2 big AAA games per quarter, or at least several per year. But this is what many people said/thought every year since several years ago and they were wrong.
Is there any console with more RPG releases than Sony, even now after the Bethesda (and all the other ones) acquisition? Look at the announced games, or the ones released in the last year, last gen or last decade.
Bungie got an investment from Netease, which isn't a publilshing deal. It means that Netease bought some stocks. If something, Netease would helpd them enter China or the mobile market, that's all.
Some time later, Sony bought the 100% of the stocks of Bungie (meaning, including the ones that were owned by Netease and the Bungie employees). Now, as a fully owned Sony Interactive Entertainment subsidiary, they'll continue selfpublishing using the Bungie label in all platforms. They plan to release "at east" one new IP by 2025, and pretty likely one of them would be Matter.
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Rhazer Fusion
Member
I actually think that Starfield attempt was an impulse buy from Sony because they might of saw potential in it. I feel they tried with KOTOR because of the IP and they know the original game was popular back in the day on XBOX and it has brand recognition.
Imo, if Sony really cared about the WRPG genre, they would try to create a few or at least secure more WRPG exclusives. Sony made a lot of games in the years and to my knowledge, they haven’t really made too many, if any true WRPG’s which is strange because they are usually popular. If they can make Horizon or God of War, surely they can make an WRPG with an admirable budget.
RedC
Member
Yes, and that's due to the blunder they made with Xbox One and MS seriously considered getting rid of it. That was the worst generation to make that blunder due to consumers investing in digital ecosystems becoming the majority for the first time.
Xbox has never had MS's full financial backing for most of its existence.
It wasn't until Phil Spencer created a business model in 2017 that aligned and synergized with MS's other pillars that they finally elevated Xbox as a pillar and gave their full financial backing:
- They expanded into PC, Cloud, Mobile, and Game Pass;
- Invested in their first party by opening up The Initiative and acquiring Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Double Fine, Obsidian Entertainment, inXile Entertainment, Zenimax (Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane Studios, Alpha Dog Games, id Software, MachineGames, Roundhouse Studios, Tango Gameworks, and ZeniMax Online Studios) and are in the process of acquiring ActivisionBlizzard (Activision Shanghai Studio, Beenox, Demonware, Digital Legends Entertainment, High Moon Studios, Infinity Ward, Radical Entertainment, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Solid State Studios, Toys for Bob, Treyarch., 5 teams in Blizzard,12 studios in King)
- Damn near all of these studios had previous contractual commitments that had to be completed after they were acquired before they could move on and fully concentrate on their next game (console exclusive to Xbox).
- It takes time to make games, in particular, AAA games (The longest time ever in the industry)
- The pandemic had a significant impact on the timeline of game releases that are still being felt to this day.
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Jimmyisback
Banned
If you are a console gamer and like to play wrpgs you get an Xbox period.
yurinka
Member
What wrpgs are available in Xbox but not in PS?
Before Phil Spencer, they made a back then record amount of money spent on an acquisition to get Mojang/Minecraft, and before that had more acquisitions like Bungie. And they did it when their gaming division had cumulative loses of several billions.
Yes, they have been investing more on it now but always had an important and very patient financial backing from MS.
I agree.
Xbox has been battling PS since over 20 years ago and the factual market data says Sony always dominated them, and that as MS recently shown the market share between them, it didn't change recently on Xbox's favor in the recent years.
Now that PS5 are going to be available, due to the monster demand the market share difference will widen. Phil said he aims to have at least a first party release per quarter in the future. Let's assume they manage to get almost an average of half a dozen big exclusives per year, being a couple of them per year GOTY candidate material.
That would put them on Sony's level, maybe a bit above regarding first party output. Would it affect Sony sales? I don't think so, because Sony's exclusives continue being successful (and improving their top selling numbers across years) and because PS's game sales come mostly from third party games and digital addons, and the MS acquired companies only represented a tiny portion of these PS sales. The AGB will be the first relevant one, but still represents a very small portion of Sony's gaming revenue so even if CoD goes exclusive it wouldn't have a meaningful impact on Sony's gaming revenue, which is in a growing trend.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
JRPG as a category made sense back when RPG's from Japanese developers tended to share some quite specific elements, such as visual styling and theme being anime inspired, some form of turn-based command approach to combat, etc. Things that haven't been nearly so prevalent for a decade or more.
Honestly the designations seem kinda redundant at this point. I mean for example Dragon's Dogma at launch got dismissed as a Japanese attempt at the WRPG style, but I think (along with Demon's Souls) was a natural evolution that pretty obviously could never have come from a Western developer.
Also, I have to say that I don't really hold out much hope of evolution from Western studios, particularly those with the resources to create large-scale titles. Right now, there's so much political and cultural baggage strangling the writing and overall creative, combined with the ever present pressure of large budgets meaning that design risks must be mitigated to reach a mass-market....
I'd say at least the next 5 years are going to be full of Marvel-level blandification as devs desperately try not to piss off activist reviewers and internet warriors, while keeping the bean-counters happy.
Honestly the designations seem kinda redundant at this point. I mean for example Dragon's Dogma at launch got dismissed as a Japanese attempt at the WRPG style, but I think (along with Demon's Souls) was a natural evolution that pretty obviously could never have come from a Western developer.
Also, I have to say that I don't really hold out much hope of evolution from Western studios, particularly those with the resources to create large-scale titles. Right now, there's so much political and cultural baggage strangling the writing and overall creative, combined with the ever present pressure of large budgets meaning that design risks must be mitigated to reach a mass-market....
I'd say at least the next 5 years are going to be full of Marvel-level blandification as devs desperately try not to piss off activist reviewers and internet warriors, while keeping the bean-counters happy.
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CamHostage
Member
The failures are interesting to break down and analyze, a reason why I keep asking the question, "What is an RPG anymore?" is that the games we're identifying as "WRPGs" are generally more massive action games with tons of sidequest/activities or interaction/relationships/mechanics to invest in, sometimes with a character editor but often not. So of course nobody else is good at AAA "RPG" design because so few studios have that kind of budget and secure time to make a game like Elder Scrolls or Witcher.
Developers need to have staff skilled at every discipline, from action combat design to statistic balancing and progression over time to complex character modeling/animation to cinematic direction to open world design to story and dialog writing to just production and time management. Make an 80 hour game and have it be as fun in the first hour as the last... that's a gigantic demand.
An old-school "RPG", you would concentrate on your math, you would concentrate on your writing and character designs, and you would concentrate on what makes your game special from all the rest. A big-time RPG today, there is not really one thing you can concentrate on since every piece of the biggest project type in game production needs to be on par with games not even in the genre.
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Dr. Kitty Muffins
Member
I think Larian is the best WRPG studio there is.
Sony need a couple IMO, Microsoft has WRPG on lock currently. Sony should form a new large studio, specifically to make WRPG's, stocked with ex BioWare ex Bethesda & Obsidian & Crystal Dynamics folk. Buy exclusivity on a third party one, and acquire a medium sized studio that already makes them (with a great track record but where they were previously held back by budget limitations). I used to think Za/Um would be a perfect buy for them, but after all the founding members and creative leads were forced out by a hostile takeover from the investor, I would imagine whatever they churn out now will be a shadow of what Disco Elyseum was.
CamHostage
Member
But why should they care that MS owns the concept of "WRPG"?
Do people really pick their games because they are WRPG fans? JRPGs had a niche and an audience, and on PC there is a "real" RPG fanbase who are invested in more of the width of the field from being raised on strategy and pen-and-paper rulesets. But the mainstream console gamer buying Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect isn't going for Greedfall or Divinity or The Bard's Tale or (in its day) Alpha Protocol. They like the games they like, not necessarily this "genre".
The successful WRPGs are successful because they were unique entities captivating for an audience in its day, further expanding their audience through word of mouth for their value of an extended play and their compelling story elements. These games became titans in video games, but you don't really see "Skyrim clones" or "Mass Effect killers" or "Borderlands-beaters" or "Fallout-alikes" or "Witcher spiritual successors". (You do see a shitton of Soulslikes, which are "RPGs", I guess?) Individually, these products did well, but they didn't spawn generations of successors, because the challenge of following in their footsteps is immense if not impossible. (And even the brands I mentioned have had difficulty producing sequels or capturing the zeitgeist again.)
Sony could find a studio make its own large-scale game with a rich story and complex game subsystems some day. (I like your idea of putting together a supergroup from fallen great studios, although that's not always a formula for success.) However, the game would have to succeed on its own merits rather than trying to stand as an answer to Avowed or Fable or Starfield, because those are 3 different propositions that those games are offering, ultimately with a lot of audience crossover but none are being made because the publisher is suffering from a genre gap in the lineup.
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kuncol02
Banned
I can think of only two games that are wrpg and are action games (Witcher and Cyberpunk) and both are on edge of not being ones. AC:Valhalla is basically same game as Witcher 3 with way weaker story and quest design and it absolutely is not RPG game at all (and no one call it that).
Actually there are games that copied Witcher 3 gameplay to some degree like last three Assassins Creed games. No one copy Bethesda games because no one have technology to do that.
And that's not true there aren't new games like Mass Effect (or rather in classic BioWare style). Outer Worlds is almost identical to BioWare games in terms of quest, story flow and design. It's just FPP instead of TPP game.
Soulslikes are not RPG games, at least not wRPG or cRPG games. They are action games with character progression which only exists in them to punish players for failures by taking their experience points. You could probably remove it without changing how they are designed in any essential way.
RPG games still live and die by quality of their writing. That's main reason why Andromeda was so big failure.
Mozzarella
Member
I dont think so, the term itself is outdated but im sure you mean something like not isometric and is in real time combat 3D person, with focus on making your own story, i doubt they are going to invest in a game like that, considering you can sell as much if you make action/adventure games and slap some rpg elements over them.
But hey i dont mind, i just think most of the devs who can make it work are not at their good form.
But hey i dont mind, i just think most of the devs who can make it work are not at their good form.