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[KXVXII9X]

Very interesting seeing some of the data laid out here. I am a big supporter of AA/Midsized games. It is something I felt is kind of missing from PlayStation lately. There is a lot of talk about how these large AAA games aren't obtainable, and these companies continue talking about not taking risk since games are so expensive. It would make more sense to put the riskier ideas in these AA/Smaller scale AAA games. If they work, it would be a great idea to start implementing those kinds of ideas into bigger scale AAA projects.

AA games are usually a big hit or miss, but they are really valuable as they diversify the kinds of games being made and keeps the industry from becoming a factory churning out the same kinds of games all borrowing the same template. It is unfortunate some of the series from Japan Studios and other smaller scale games from Sony's catalog didn't sell as well and/or closed down. I think without any kind of risk involved; people will start to burn out on these blockbuster titles.

 

[mckmas8808]

If by out of touch you mean I don't let sales figures and glorified commercials retroactively dictate my opinion on things I have first-hand experience with, absolutely.

Edit: I have fat fingers today and cannot type on this fuckin phone

Would those hypothetical mid sized games cost $70? Of course.

They are $50. Not $70. We know this already.

It wasn't on a large scale, a systemic thing.

I think it's the success of Miles Morales that really made them think about it as a process. Because according to what we've seen in the leaks, despite selling less units and being cheaper it was on par with Spiderman 2 when it comes to profit (even if Spiderman 2 will distance it eventially).

Lost Legacy didn't generate a lot of money, it wasn't a success especially after Uncharted 4 that made a lot of money.

How do you know? Didn't it sell 8 million copies?

Insomniac are doing it with Marvel spin offs in between their main Marvel games. Not exciting.

ND have done what? Left Behind (DLC) in 2014 and Lost Legacy (great game) in 2017?

Left Behind was just DLC. But yes, Lost Legacy counts to. And people seem to have forgotten about this game by Sucker Punch. It too was a mid-size AAA game too.

 

[Banjo64]

They are $50. Not $70. We know this already.



How do you know? Didn't it sell 8 million copies?



Left Behind was just DLC. But yes, Lost Legacy counts to. And people seem to have forgotten about this game by Sucker Punch. It too was a mid-size AAA game too.

First Lite came out in 2014 brother I don’t think these are appropriate representations to prove that Sony’s other studios have the message.

 

[WitchHunter]

Here's an interesting presentation from Insomniac from back in early 2022:

So what are you toughts on this GAF? Should Insomniac start refocusing on having more mid-sized AA games in their pipeline?

This is some elementary school level shit. Somone made a presentation about the sky is blue.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I think more people should focus on mid sized games.

Give me a solid 15 hours of content all in for like 50 dollars and I bet we would see a lot more sales....if the games were good ofc

And yet warriors and trolls shat on the almost 15m seller in Miles Morales. Calling it DLC, etc..

 

[Games of Today]

You could sell me a game like Uncharted 2 with different plot lines and characters over and over and I would buy it full price every time.

A game that lasts around 10-15 hours and only takes 3 years to make. These devs need to scale these games back.

 

[Crispy Gamer]

This is why they can make another ratchet and clank

 

[DeepEnigma]

You could sell me a game like Uncharted 2 with different plot lines and characters over and over and I would buy it full price every time.

A game that lasts around 10-15 hours and only takes 3 years to make. These devs need to scale these games back.

Agreed. Unfortunately we are our own worst enemies. I remember when Gaf and other forums back when devs frequented, went on crusades about 8-12 hour games and they were not worth full price, down to autism levels of breaking down dollar per hour, which did not help the bloat mindset when making a product.

Games literally were trolled if they weren't 20+ hours. It set a tone.

 

[adamsapple]

And yet warriors and trolls shat on the almost 15m seller in Miles Morales. Calling it DLC, etc..

People also call the $70 Ragnarok and MW3 DLCs and those are big successes too.

AAA games take too long to make, supplementing with smaller scope projects is the golden way.

 

[DeepEnigma]

AAA games take too long to make, supplementing with smaller scope projects is the golden way.

Could not agree more.

 

[skit_data]

Sounds like a positive for me personally, I enjoyed Miles Morales more than the first game because it felt more focused.

 

[mckmas8808]

First Lite came out in 2014 brother I don’t think these are appropriate representations to prove that Sony’s other studios have the message.

My point is that Sony has been dabbling with this idea for almost a decade as one-offs. The only thing Insomniac is trying to do is make it a permanent thing where it's baked into the philosophy going foward and NOT one-offs.

 

[DeepEnigma]

My point is that Sony has been dabbling with this idea for almost a decade as one-offs. The only thing Insomniac is trying to do is make it a permanent thing where it's baked into the philosophy going foward and NOT one-offs.

I would love for Naughty Dog to do more of these like they did with Lost Legacy.

 

[March Climber]

Give me a solid 15 hours of content all in for like 50 dollars and I bet we would see a lot more sales....if the games were good ofc

I agree but unfortunately most people only let Nintendo get away with this.

 

[mckmas8808]

Sounds like a positive for me personally, I enjoyed Miles Morales more than the first game because it felt more focused.

People say the same thing about Uncharted Lost Legacy too. Sony is really on to something. I wish they can have more of their other studios to follow suit. We need more Rift Aparts, Lost Legacys, and Miles Morales style games.

 

[mckmas8808]

I agree but unfortunately most people only let Nintendo get away with this.

This honestly isn't true. It's up to Sony to follow through and do this more also. The times they've done it, it has been successful. I can't blame the people on this.

 

[Shut0wen]

Maybe this spells some hope for AAA winding their projects down to manageable AA pursuits in the future. At least the slides seem to indicate they realize huge budgets and long development cycles are not a favorable endeavor/direction.

Honestly its true, its fucking nuts how much pointless shit that goes into triple games that literally 99% of players dont even notice, the fact that games like metro series prove you can make a double A game and still be atmospheric af, control and nier series prove you can have triple A combat in a double A game, we can even have double A freeroam games if developers stopped giving a fuck about realistic animal animations of an ant that you wont see unless you quick scope it

 

[Banjo64]

My point is that Sony has been dabbling with this idea for almost a decade as one-offs. The only thing Insomniac is trying to do is make it a permanent thing where it's baked into the philosophy going foward and NOT one-offs.

Yeah - good. So they should. I hope the rest of Sony’s studios get the message.

 

[Shut0wen]

I agree but unfortunately most people only let Nintendo get away with this.

Atleast with nintendo the games are literally worth the asking price unless its some of there half assed games like mario party and yoshi wolly world

 

[March Climber]

This honestly isn't true. It's up to Sony to follow through and do this more also. The times they've done it, it has been successful. I can't blame the people on this.

Nearly every time Sony releases a 15-ish hour game for near full price, it is met with nothing but whining and complaints. When it comes to anyone but Nintendo, people equate value to time played.

It's always been odd to me that Nintendo can get away with quirky 2-hour party titles like 1-2-Switch at full price, but the minute Sony does something similar, people aren't feeling it

 

[rofif]

Mid size fun games .

Please .

Enough with horizon ballooning budget ubisift blueprint game

EXACTLY.
I will replay these small/mid sized games but I almost never replay big open world games.

 

[DenchDeckard]

15 hour single player game is NOT a mid-sized game. Mid-sized games are less than 10 hours. Unless you are counting 100% completing the game and getting the Platinum trophy.



Well Insomniac is doing it. And Naughty Dog has already done it too. Are people not paying attention?



It is their call. They did it with Rift Apart and Miles Morales.

Yeah I'm saying like 15 hours to do everything. Maybe 8 to 10 hours of strictly mainline content and then an additional 5 to 10 to 100 percent them.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Atleast with nintendo the games are literally worth the asking price unless its some of there half assed games like mario party and yoshi wolly world

And Pokemon.

 

[KXVXII9X]

Agreed. Unfortunately we are our own worst enemies. I remember when Gaf and other forums back when devs frequented, went on crusades about 8-12 hour games and they were not worth full price, down to autism levels of breaking down dollar per hour, which did not help the bloat mindset when making a product.

Games literally were trolled if they weren't 20+ hours. It set a tone.

I'm still mad and bitter about those kinds of gamers since I had no issue and would be willing to support and pay for those kinds of games. I've been hearing it since the PS3 era. Now everything has to have lots of content at all cost.

 

[Shut0wen]

And Pokemon.

Subjective though, not really nintendos fault that gamefreak dont want to employ no more then 150 people, quality of pokemon will probably get worst since they made a deal to make a game with 2k games

 

[Dolomite]

This leak is gonna fuck over marvel when other publishers come to the table. They can now counter moving solely on what was offered to Sony

 

[DeepEnigma]

Subjective though, not really nintendos fault that gamefreak dont want to employ no more then 150 people, quality of pokemon will probably get worst since they made a deal to make a game with 2k games

Nintendo controls the keys to the kingdom. Nintendo likes that min spend on dev budget and still sells 100's of millions due to the power of the branding.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Well, comes down to quality vs quantity. Fewer higher quality AAA, or vice versa with AA.

You can kind of have both if it works to stretch it out.

Just look at AAA SM1 leading to a cheaper priced Miles Morales game. Whether someone wants to classify MM as AA or AAA is up to them. But a AAA game can lead to a foundation to churn out a related sequel with similar quality. So in this case, it comes down to more of the same, or if a gamer wants totally new IPs that are AA.

Lets face it Wolverine is going to have roots with SM engine. It already looks pretty similar excluding web slinging from building to building. So you can see how Insomniac is stretching it out to AAA Wolverine.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

mid sized resistance sequel please
or a remastered resistance collection

We're not getting anything you actually want unless you want a gay Wolverine or woke up the wazzo Spiderman

Or some other form of bullshit. The 90's Sony is gone.

 

[mckmas8808]

This is why they can make another ratchet and clank

Yep! Love seeing Rift Apart cost them $80 million to make.

Nearly every time Sony releases a 15-ish hour game for near full price, it is met with nothing but whining and complaints. When it comes to anyone but Nintendo, people equate value to time played.

It's always been odd to me that Nintendo can get away with quirky 2-hour party titles like 1-2-Switch at full price, but the minute Sony does something similar, people aren't feeling it

This is when paying attention to Twitter and forums can lead you to think something is being said by gamers, when it's mainly a small minority.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Hey Thick,

Where are some of these new Insomniac slides coming from? More leaks? I didn't read all the Reddit recap links, but are these new slides popping up buried in them and I missed them, or they are new hacker released data? Or it was among the released data but forums are just getting around to seeing them?

 

[ungalo]

How do you know? Didn't it sell 8 million copies?

I know because of the leaks of all PS games sales. According to that it was 5,3 millions and 113 millions generated.

 

[Griffon]

To them 100m is "mid sized". What in the actual fuck...

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Nearly every time Sony releases a 15-ish hour game for near full price, it is met with nothing but whining and complaints. When it comes to anyone but Nintendo, people equate value to time played.

It's always been odd to me that Nintendo can get away with quirky 2-hour party titles like 1-2-Switch at full price, but the minute Sony does something similar, people aren't feeling it

Thats because people's expectations with Nintendo games are low. Similar to low expectations to system power. So in a way, Nintendo has done a great job conditioning people to expect safe family fun games. As long as they play fine, thats good enough to get a high score. If Sony or MS released 1-2 Switch they'd get nailed. People would expect more.

If this was the SNES or N64 days, expectations were higher.

If Nintendo releases a meh game, it'll get meh reviews and quietly disappear. If Sony/MS release a bad game, forums and Twitter gamers bring it up and grill the studio for a decade.

 

[mckmas8808]

I know because of the leaks of all PS games sales. According to that it was 5,3 millions and 113 millions generated.

Thanks for the update. Depending on how much it cost to make, this is good. The game was $40 at launch. And it looks like the average price sold at $21 a game.

If they kept the game under $50 million to make, then that means they would have easily turned a profit and made 50-80% ROI on it.

 

[mckmas8808]

To them 100m is "mid sized". What in the actual fuck...

Welcome to the new reality of gaming budgets.

 

[March Climber]

This is when paying attention to Twitter and forums can lead you to think something is being said by gamers, when it's mainly a small minority.

No, you have me confused with the people here that are in a bubble who keep asking for 'IP that sold nothing to return'.

Speaking of short and quirky games, where is Japan Studio?

 

[mckmas8808]

Speaking of short and quirky games, where is Japan Studio?

Boy...boy.....boy! If only we could go back in time and save Japan Studios.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Here's an interesting presentation from Insomniac from back in early 2022:

Some interesting takeaways like a mid-sized games needing 1/3 the budget and 1/2 the dev time of a AAA one.

Two mid-sized games have similar net sales to one AAA game, and with adding a third one in the picture they could even overtake the AAA title.

So what are you toughts on this GAF? Should Insomniac start refocusing on having more mid-sized AA games in their pipeline?

Is there a link to view all these slides together?

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Is there a link to view all these slides together?

Not that I know of as I don't personally have access to the leaked data.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Not that I know of as I don't personally have access to the leaked data.

Well, this is still more than I've been able to find and what I've been looking for, so thanks!

 

[darthkarki]

I'm 100% on board with this. Creating "expandalone" type games after a big AAA project makes total sense for both the dev/publisher and consumers, and devs have talked about this before too. It's at the end of a project that everything comes together, you've got all your tech set up, and you can actually focus on "making the game". In my experience these tend to be even better than the "big" game that preceded them:

• Infamous First Light
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
• Spider-Man Miles Morales

They're cheaper, not so arduously long so pacing is better and they're easier to replay, and ultimately just a better, more refined version of what came before.

What I'm super curious about from that slide though is the budgets. Did it really go from $130m for Spider-Man 1 to $270m for Spider-Man 2? When they already had the base systems, gameplay, and assets from the first to build from? Why? How? How was it so much cheaper to create all of that from scratch in the first one than to reuse it in the second?!

 

[Deerock71]

Sony boardroom:

 

[LordBlodgett]

I mean this makes perfect sense. Also, if you can make a compelling enough world and characters then you can keep reusing it in smaller titles, which seems to be basically what Miles Morales was, and I'm expecting Venom will be as well. Ryu Ga Gotoku has also been able to churn out Yakuza games with short time frames because they just use the world they've built and iterate on it more and more, all the while making graphical and engine upgrades every few years. I think this is brilliant and I would love to see more game makers do this kind of intelligent world-building so we can get more games from them.

I also think it's wise for the console makers to have a mix of big blockbusters and AA type games. New IPs need to come from somewhere, and giving developers AA budgets to do something new or refreshing can be so worth it. One of my favorite games this year was HiFi Rush, and that seemed like the perfect example of a good AA game.

 

[Chastten]

Looking at Sony's financials, they absolutely should. Their budgets have grown out of control and not every game has the potential to sell GTA numbers, or even 10 million plus.

Most studio's should, at least partially, focus on games that are already decently profitable at 1 million sales, or something like that.

 

[Crayon]

More pubs should probably try to do this. Miles, presumably venom, Lost legacy, etc is more interesting packaging than smaller dlc's that are done in a couple hours. It lets them recoup by using the main game as a template. I don't think they are talking about smaller games from scratch, here.

 

[LordBlodgett]

Nintendo controls the keys to the kingdom. Nintendo likes that min spend on dev budget and still sells 100's of millions due to the power of the branding.

It's not just branding though. Their games are generally well done with few bugs, and are a lot of fun to play. People trust Nintendo first party because of their track record.

 

[Phase]

Smaller projects! It's what I've been saying. If studios don't start doing this they'll sink eventually.

 

[DeepEnigma]

It's not just branding though. Their games are generally well done with few bugs, and are a lot of fun to play. People trust Nintendo first party because of their track record.

As a whole, I agree. I was referring to Pokemon specifically.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

One thing they aren't considering here with these mid-size games is an element of franchise fatigue.

After playing Spider-Man 1, MM, and Spider-Man 2... I'm FAR less likely to buy Venom and Spider-Man 3 on Day 1. Whereas maybe if more effort went into Spider-Man 2 and there was no MM, I'd still be a lock for Spider-Man 3.

I think they run the risk of really diluting these games, which is what happened with the Arkham games and the God of War games after God of War 3.

At this rate, Spider-Man 3 needs to be a significant departure to get me interested and I think that is a risk they won't take.

Your point is fair on the latter part, but where you are most likely wrong is that these developers have internal discussions talking the whole spectrum. But let me critique your personal flaw in the way you've bought your games because I've skipped Spider-Man and made that decision from the first game. Unless you are a bigger superhero fan than me, you could probably have seen going from the first game to the side project and then this third game here, that there would be some degree of feeling that gave you. Maybe a lack of progression or it's a Spider-Man game and I guess you are kind of where I'm at and saying that they need to have a larger departure for me to be interested. And I'm on the record for saying that I am really not that interested in Spider-Man and other than for the kids. I would probably have never even really looked at those titles.

But you have to have more understanding of your own personal taste before giving that critical analysis. Because you took the bait and bought more Spider-Man games than I would have stomached but that doesn't discount a developer like insomniac for future projects. This is where I differ. And I put my money where my mouth is because I don't really care for Spider-Man. But I care a lot more for Wolverine given the context of the universe and type of game that it could be. But Spider-Man, not for me and you wouldn't really see me posting much about it if it's not for the graphics and insomniax great technical record.

It probably took me a brief gameplay stint on the first Spider-Man to realize that I can see the appeal, but it wouldn't be for me. And the same goals for something like the souls series. Never has been for me and I've been pretty open about it. It's probably not what the norm is but I stuck to my guns and voted with my wallet so I don't come out. Surprised in case the subsequent sequels feel the same. After the first or second time. It's definitely my fault. So you got to take that approach or else if you feel burned, you got to reflect on call you assess games a little bit more.