In the Insomniac hack we saw that their plan for Spiderman 3 is to split it up or "compartmentalize" it into hefty smaller chunks, with the single-player and then multi-player, and then some other thing. Maybe, in addition to the obvious measures for reducing costs (cutting some project redundancies with too much overlap of demo/genre, less licenses in some areas, more AA games etc.), Sony should consider making their AAA single-player epics "episodic".
I know some people hate the phrase "episodic" but I did always kind of think this would be a potential solution. In fact, with Game Pass I thought Microsoft would do this with a lot of their own games, but it's dawned on me they have very few games that actually lend themselves well to an episodic format. Whereas with Sony, they have tons of cinematic story-driven games, which go perfectly well with an episodic or semi-episodic approach.
So maybe for example, instead of one massive traditional release for say TLOU Part 3, they split it up into three parts, and release them in two-year intervals. They still can tell the same story they'd tell if it were a game with all three parts, but maybe in a semi-episodic format they can add a bit more content to each part vs. what they could do if it were a full game, and this would also let them get the game out there (at least part of it) sooner. You will still have the fans who want to get each part ASAP, meanwhile you can get more casual fans (old and new) to pick the game up down the line with al three parts packaged together, and that's also when they could bring the game to PC.
Why would this work? Because with a lot of these games, it's the content that takes the most time to make, by far. So having say a 2-year buffer between parts (but each part can feel like a full game in itself, sort of like a Miles Morales or Uncharted 4 Lost Legacy expansion) would give enough time to develop content for the next part. Meanwhile, they can price each part at say $30, which is probably the sweet spot, and treat it the same way they would with the game if it were released "normally". But if you do it in parts, people can start actually playing the game years earlier, and if there are small QOL improvements introduced with latter parts, the older parts can get updates to include them.
Of course, progress would have to be continued between them, but we already see how stuff like the Telltale games do it, or even better one of my favorite games ever, Shining Force III. That's actually the game I'm thinking of a lot while typing this, because even though it's split into three Scenarios, each one practically is a whole game unto itself, and decisions you make in the earlier Scenarios will carry over to the succeeding ones. But more importantly, they all feel like a seamless story and narrative, you don't feel like you're missing cut content, and they have all the things in each Scenario you'd get in a full game (full utilization of game mechanics, full normal challenge/difficulty curve, resolution to multiple (not all) plot points, etc.).
If each part takes 2 years to release, then you first do the normal B2P release at $30 (maybe $40 depending on the game but that'd be the upper limit), then when the next part is releasing you put it in PS+ for a limited period of time, then release the second part as B2P. Repeat the process until all the parts have been released and had some time in the service, then release them together as a single game on Steam. That'd be a good 4-6 years after initially releasing the parts (or Scenarios if sticking with SF III lingo) on console, and maybe there are additional QOL or bonus content included in the PC release but make that release priced at $50 or $60, and make the additional QOL and bonus content accessible to console owners for a free or small fee. And then 1-2 years later comes another new 1P AAA release for console using that same model.
Honestly I think if they take that approach, and they can combine it with something like a per-game sub model for the digital version (so maybe instead of paying $30 or $40 upfront, you pay $6/mo or $7/mo over a 6-month period, or even $3/mo - $4/mo over a 12-month period, that is a winning formula. The vast majority of the same people who buy the normal games for $70 Day 1 are going to buy the parts/Scenarios Day 1 for $30/$40, plus with the sub option get a lot of people who'd rather had waited until down the line to buy the game, to pick it up Day 1 as well. And since these would be digital sales, that means more profit each copy.
In fact, I think with the per-game sub option in particular it could free Sony up to change up stuff with PS+, such as getting rid of the online paywall on console, because even if some notable number of people drop PS+ Essentials as a result, they are very likely going to shift that spending towards buying more games Day 1 between both, say, 1P AAA games being broken up into parts/Scenarios and priced cheaper per-part/Scenario, and the sub option that can compound with that. Not all 1P AAA games can probably be broken up this way; I think something like Gran Turismo for example could only be separated in terms of the single-player and multi-player and that's it. But I'm mainly thinking of the story-heavy titles anyway.
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does he work for Sony or Arrow Head?
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