SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Right. The last sentence in my post says that rdr2 is the game that cost $200 million.
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Jason Schreier: Sony’s Obsession With Blockbusters Is Stirring Unrest Within PlayStation Empire
- Thread starter saintjules
- Start date
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kikii
Member
So Halo: Infinite is apparently $500 million next gen game.. where did all the money go?
And this is what we get?
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
yeah, halo infinite didnt cost $500 million.
So Halo: Infinite is apparently $500 million next gen game.. where did all the money go?
And this is what we get?www.neogaf.com
their studio is massive, like double the size of ND and its been in dev since 2015 so its possible that its a $150-200 million game. but not $500.
People need to realize that even movies dont cost this much and they have tens of thousands of people making movies.
Flutta
Banned
Lmao that turd is nowhere near 500mil. Prob costs 50mil from the way it looks
So Halo: Infinite is apparently $500 million next gen game.. where did all the money go?
And this is what we get?
MiguelItUp
Member
Take anything and everything with a grain of salt, even from this man.
But also, don't give this man THAT much credit, he just happens to know the right people. If anything, give him the slightest bit of credit him for knowing the right people, but that has nothing to do with his "talent" or "skill" IMO. Anyone can know the right people.
But also, don't give this man THAT much credit, he just happens to know the right people. If anything, give him the slightest bit of credit him for knowing the right people, but that has nothing to do with his "talent" or "skill" IMO. Anyone can know the right people.
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Dolomite
Member
Game development is typically much more expensive than movie production. You can cast, shoot, edit and promote a Blockbuster film for like $55 million.
Great indy films have been made with 200k budgets and X's 40 profits
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Their studio has 750 employees working on one game since 2015. They are an extremely poorly managed studio. There is no doubt about that. Six years of dev time adds up quick when you have that many employees.Lmao that turd is nowhere near 500mil. Prob costs 50mil from the way it looks
But yes, no where near 500 million. probably around $200 million. Maybe a little less since I remember them being around 450 employees this time last year.
yurinka
Member
The people working on the main dev studio aren't the only ones who work in the game. There are also multiple people working in other studios of that company (marketing, localization, executives, testing etc) in addition to multiple external outsourcing studios to help with mostly art, in addition to external PR and marketing agencies.
If you go Moby Games to see how many people has been credited on the staff roll of each game (often they don't credit everyone):
Days Gone: 1533 developers, 146 thanks
Uncharted 4: 1632 developers, 57 thanks
Horizon: 1916 developers, 225 thanks
TLOU2: 2168 developers, 163 thanks
GTAV (360 version of 2013, doesn't include post launch content or current gen ports): 3690 developers, 84 thanks
AC Origins: 4211 developers, 268 thanks
AC Odyssey: 4411 developers, 172 thanks
AC Valhalla: 5716 developers, 195 thanks
RDR2: 4135 developers, 3186 thanks
In addition to the amount of people working on the game, you also have to consider the amount of time they are working on it. As an example, Ubisoft and Rockstar may have a similar amount of people working on a massive open world game. But in the time that it takes Rockstar to release a single game, the Ubisoft team releases several games.
And on top of the budget for the people working on the game, there's the marketing budget spent on ads campaigns and so on. The recent AAA games have total budgets of over $200M, a few of them even went above $500M.
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Salty Popsicle
Banned
Large blockbuster movies with A-List actors usually take $150-$200 million to make. Avengers: Endgame was made with a $350 million dollar overall budget.
JerryinSoCal
Member
If Schreier did talk to one of those whiny millennials it could be that they were "afraid" because they talked each other into thinking it even though there could have been no evidence of that ever being in the cards. I think we all know how some people are in a workplace, they just start stuff up and then it becomes real as people play telephone with it.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
depends on the film. You can make a film for that cheap but its very rare. IIRC, Hacksaw Ridge was made for like $50 million. But you look at the budget of any high budget CGi heavy movie like Marvel movies or Justice League and you will see budgets north of $200 million. Pixar movies are a great indicator of budgets since those are basically made in vfx studios like game studios over the course of 2-3 years. And their budgets arent inflated by having to play actors tens of millions of dollars. Pretty much all the major Pixar and Dreamworks CGi movies cost around $150-200 million.
Games with smaller team sizes dont cost that much. I remember how all three uncharted games cost $20 million each. TLOU was around the same ballpark. Gears 1 famously was made for $10 million with just a team of 40 devs. GoW3 was made for $44 million and most recently Horizon 1 cost around 50 million euros.
There are always going to be exceptions like Rockstar games, Tomb Raider and Halo infinite but your average AAA game doesnt even come close to costing $200 million.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
Average Sony blockbuster was likely 100M last gen, it will double this gen
SSfox
Member
Instead of increasing games price Sony should have simply stopped dropping prices of their games a bit quick (sometimes at least) after release, for example like Nintendo does, people got used to it so much now they just wait for price drop before buying the games. They need to consider that also of course stop releasing games on PC.
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Thirty7ven
Banned
Unless things are actually really bad, which none of the facts behind Jason’s stories about ND and Bend and VAS seem to support, it’s looking increasingly likely that he’s simply becoming the go to guy for disgruntled employees.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
I agree with this too...maybe they are planning on doing both
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Yup, Jumanji 2 cost $132 million USD. Spidy homecoming $175M.
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Dropping prices for 1-2 weeks before going up again is some sort of marketing. Instead of making ads and so you just drop the prices for a limited time then the ones panic bought it out of FOMO will do the rest of the job if they like the game.
SSfox
Member
I don't think it's good idea for Sony to focus only on those 150 millions $ AAAA games, specially when you have games like TLOU2 that are unnecessary long. You can have a game like Plague tale with low budget and still be a very cool and interesting story. The last of us 1 was 15 hours game and it was more than enough for the genre imo.
TheGodfather07
Member
what is there to even be mad about? we get a new ip from bend, which could be way better than days gone and maybe they could come back to days gone later. jason schreier knew what he was doing with that headline. he's putting it in the most negative way possible to get people talking about it and i cant fault him because it worked. i suppose this is how it always is at the beginning of a generation. fanboys from both sides going crazy over any news.
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SSfox
Member
You have a point, but i don't have stats so we can't really know how this affect and it's really not better to not drop prices like Nintendo does? tbh i'm mainly trying to think of a way to not have to increase price of game, i think it wasn't a good idea that price increase and i'm thinking it will hurt new IPs, while the Fifa, COD, BF and cie games are the ones that are gonna benefit the most from it.
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Well they aren't only focusing on that, really. People seem to have fish memory.
- Astro's Playroom has good length, with amazing worlds and ideas, and above all of that it's for free!
- Destruction Allstars, although being mediocre as fuck, it was offered with PS+ day one and now at low price, and definitely not a AAA by any stretch and it was risky and failed.
- Spiderman MM is a spinoff, so it's more like AA like Uncharted: Lost Legacy in terms of budget.
- Returnal even though priced at $70 it's not a massive AAA game as it seems, won't even pass beyond $50M budget if Horizon ZD was only $45 with all its content.
- Sackboy: A Big Adventure, a very wonderful game with so much content and indeed it's not a massive AAA but a low tier one that might cost around $20M and priced at $60 (it's not discounted until now so had to buy it recently, you definitely should try it because it's just wonderful).
- The Nioh Collection (PS5): Yes it's published by SIE, Nioh 1 and 2 remasters. It could be AAA and all but can't see it being an expensive project that would go beyond $100M. More like around $50-80M for both, then the remaster is just a smaller work overall.
- MLB The Show 21: Yes multiplats, and not sure how much that license costs, but can't see the game costing more than $20M if it was only selling around one million only per year.
And we're only too early into this gen!
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Humdinger
Member
That's an astute analysis, and I agree.
I didn't know Jim Ryan didn't come from a game background and lacked the PS-specific credentials of previous CEOs. He's more of a Sony corporate/sales guy. That makes sense. That's how he comes off. Sort of tone-deaf to the hardcore, as you say.
I agree that a lot of this is overblown. He hasn't done anything egregious. I personally am not upset by anything he's done. I was just saying that, if he were a little better at reaching out to the gaming community and explaining his decisions, he wouldn't be getting as much hate. I think half the hate comes from the sense that he has no intention of doing that (reaching out and explaining himself, that is). Then again, he may not see that effort as worthwhile. It could backfire, or it could just draw more attention to issues he'd rather forget about. Or maybe he just has better things to do, I don't know.
Interfectum
Member
He doesn't really need to do or say anything... he just needs a better PR team. When shit starts going south online just toss out something for hardcore gamers to chew on. They are keeping shit really close to the chest right now with near radio silence. I don't think it really matters in the long run but they are basically letting MS have free reign over video game social media and I'm not sure why.
Humdinger
Member
I was talking specifically about the hate directed toward Ryan, so I think in that context, it does matter who does it. General PR isn't really going to affect the Ryan-specific hate. For that, Ryan would need to talk directly with gamers, express understanding and explain some of his decisions or processes. I don't think he's the kind of CEO who's going to do that, though.
Maybe that's for the best. He might not have the skills or ability to really connect with the hardcore gamers, so it could just end up falling flat or even making things worse. "Hey, fellow gamers."
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AdjudicatorHead
Member
The most reasonable post I’ve seen on Reee in a long, long time.. perfectly sums up my opinion of this piece: (this user may get banned if the mods have any consistency, as others have been banned there just for going against Jason)
Of course, in comes the mob of posters hanging by the mouth from Jason’s nuts to defend him from criticism because he reports on crunch. You heard that right - that makes his articles immune to criticism!
But he can never allow his articles to be questioned, no no. In comes the man himself...
You know for a supposed top-class journalist, you’d think he’d be able to defend himself better than just using the “you’re a fanboy” or “you didn’t read it” excuses which he always resorts to.
But he can never allow his articles to be questioned, no no. In comes the man himself...
You know for a supposed top-class journalist, you’d think he’d be able to defend himself better than just using the “you’re a fanboy” or “you didn’t read it” excuses which he always resorts to.
SkylineRKR
Member
That person will absolutely be ousted from Ree. Verified product management person doesn't know how media works? I wonder.
Look, if you have studios with 1000+ employees, both internal and external, chances are a dozen of them are very dissatisfied.
Look, if you have studios with 1000+ employees, both internal and external, chances are a dozen of them are very dissatisfied.
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Bernd Lauert
Banned
Wait, he's not writing for clicks? Does he understand how he's getting paid?The most reasonable post I’ve seen on Reee in a long, long time.. perfectly sums up my opinion of this piece: (this user may get banned if the mods have any consistency, as others have been banned there just for going against Jason)
Of course, in comes the mob of posters hanging by the mouth from Jason’s nuts to defend him from criticism because he reports on crunch. You heard that right - that makes his articles immune to criticism!
But he can never allow his articles to be questioned, no no. In comes the man himself...
You know for a supposed top-class journalist, you’d think he’d be able to defend himself better than just using the “you’re a fanboy” or “you didn’t read it” excuses which he always resorts to.
cormack12
Gold Member
The most reasonable post I’ve seen on Reee in a long, long time.. perfectly sums up my opinion of this piece: (this user may get banned if the mods have any consistency, as others have been banned there just for going against Jason)
Of course, in comes the mob of posters hanging by the mouth from Jason’s nuts to defend him from criticism because he reports on crunch. You heard that right - that makes his articles immune to criticism!
But he can never allow his articles to be questioned, no no. In comes the man himself...
You know for a supposed top-class journalist, you’d think he’d be able to defend himself better than just using the “you’re a fanboy” or “you didn’t read it” excuses which he always resorts to.
I'm sure that name was a mod or something at some time? Maybe not. They are spot on though. Someone made the astute point in this thread earlier about Jason becoming the go to guy for disgruntled employee's - which was fine in real cases of poor working practise. But with each passing article it becomes clear that a lot of these people are getting doses of reality of what it takes to reach the top at an AAA studio. Jason is fast becoming a name synonymous with embellishing/amplifying complaints from small numbers of staff (many already moved on or who were short term contracting) that get called out/corrected on social media by actual employees at these companies now.
He probably is on a salary so ad clicks etc. don't really matter but engagement does in terms of relevance and ego/reach. Jason has always struck me as a person writing for a cause/crusade. And I think the 'crunch' narrative is a crutch for his true aim. Which is some sort of recognition as the first 'real' journalist in games or a humanitarian advocate for working practise in the industry. So it suits him to only tell one side in the way he does - making out that he walked into cubicle offices from the 90s with people alseep on the floor with pot noodles and patch leads round them.
This cause has pretty much alienated him and lost respect from studio heads like Naughty Dog, Bioware and SSM who just won't engage with him any more. Which means none of the pieces are actually contextulalised - they end up just being a series of events that happened to some people who are not best pleased. And then he writes this:
Which is pretty much what he does and drives.
Alright
Banned
Name them, and not FUD, rumours, or maybe what ifs.
People are getting fooled by the vast amount of shilling and PR blitz against Sony. It isn't the first time, and usually happens right before Sony drop a big bomb.
Humdinger
Member
See above. I talked a bit about that already, don't really feel like repeating.
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wowbaggerBR
Member
FrozenFlame
Member
"Also, you thinking that my job is to write for "clicks" shows that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the media works"
AdjudicatorHead
Member
Here's what the 'tolerant', 'liberal' future is about, apparently. I thought everyone was accepted? Well, if you say that a post is better than Jason's article and believe it has less bias... you'll actually get banned!
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saintjules
Member
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Papacheeks
Banned
Hahaha, damage control. Jason is great reporter, but damn when people call him out on the way he framed his information he literally blocked them, and then doubles down. Now he probably took some feedback after Jaffe's interview. That and now Jaffe says GAVIN is going to talk about the article specificly, which to me is what made Jason do this intreview.
FatKingBallman
Banned
LOL Jason. Now trying to atone for stupidity he caused.
Papacheeks
Banned
I'm listening to it and read the article, and the way he recalls the information is totally not 1:1 to the article. He even mentions he left some things out because of the type of audience he writes to, but im like dude," you are writing a video game article about the leader in video games currently" everyone is going to read it. That and he posts it on Resetera which is all hardcore gaming centric. It's going to blow up. So knowing that what your about to write will attrach a ton of people, why not just go and do what you did in this interview. It's way easier actually to digest the information when you format it in the way you did here about San Diago team, and about bend. I think he knows that the way he wrote that article did not correlate to how the information he recieved. He made it sounds like teh SAN DIAGO team was created into a studio for the purpose to work on new IP or a new title within uncharted franchise. But in reality they were a support group, as in contract work for Sony. Thats all he had to say in his article. And note that people within the Support group took on the task trying to become a studio. It almost sounds like the wrote it as in they were promised something by Sony if they worked on contracts for art/animation support for Naughty Dog. But its not how it comes off in the article at all.
Keihart
Member
Dang, you would think he is talking about Playstation.
FatKingBallman
Banned
Which is a pretty normal in the gaming industry, Lol. Turn 10 is supporting 343i for Halo Infinite. And let's make this to blow out of proportion like Jason did.:/
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Mercenary09
Member
What he says about TLOU Remake in this podcast makes perfect sense for how game development works. I've grown annoyed at the people saying Naughty Dog shouldn't be working on the remake they should be doing something else. According to this podcast, the writers like Neil are busy planning the next big project. That takes a long time and in the meantime you have hundreds of people with no work to do. You can't have that so those people are working on the remake for the time being. There is also a smaller group finishing up the MP standalone Factions game. All of this sounds perfectly fine to me. The MP game and remake will be ready to go by the time the writers get the next big thing all planned how. This is normal game development.
Heck in that God of War documentary Cory even talked about how Santa Monica struggled when their one game got canned and he had to inherit a whole ton of new people for the God of War team. It was a problem because they were still in early pre-production and it wasn't far enough along to give those people work to do.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
I said that none of the points he mentioned in the article were really negative in any way. Some people just laughed it off that I was defending Sony. But there really wasn't anything negative. Although Jason presented everything in a negative light, which brought all the attention and created this controversy.
Now he is backing off, saying that Sony is still focusing on indies and a TLOU remake makes sense for ND and Sony. I hope the people who were accusing the ones defending Sony for this article come forward now and accept that they were too quick to jump the gun, without actually giving any thought to everything.
Papacheeks
Banned
I think what angers me a little,a nd it has nothing to do with Jason's reporting. I think we can all agree its very sound if not the best in covering this medium. But because of legality issues which it sounds like he talks about, he left a lot of nuance stuff out, which to me actually brings way more levity to how the situation played out and makes it sound like regular things that happen in the entertainment medium. Like when GArvin left it creating a void, and bringing in people turned off the older guard a little. Which Jeff talked about. The guys at Minnmax literally made assumptions of the leadership at Bend being the issue, and that could be so. Maybe Days gone was more than what they could chew? But ill be damed if the writing isn't pretty good when you get much later in the game,a nd mechanics seem to be great. Especially gun shooting. And to me thats because they are people who did Syphon filter.
I think my only issue with Jason is he comes off as he things 100% his recolaectino of the information is the difinitive version. ANd thats not the case, Jeff added a little context that Jason seems to just scoff at because it doesnt allign with his narrative of change being needed in work/life balance in the industry. And I agree with Jason, and so does Jeff and JAFFE. But they also know that when making a product, that sometimes your going to crunch or have a shitty work/life balance becasue of the nature of projects.
MrSarcastic
Banned
That tweet from Jason has a totally different tone than his article. Weird. Tomorrow Jaffe is going to have an interview with DG director, I will wait and see.
Nikana
Go Go Neo Rangers!
normalguy09x
Member
"Sony’s Obsession With Blockbusters Is Stirring Unrest Within PlayStation Empire"
I just find this topic absolutely laughable. So you are trying to tell me that it's somehow a bad thing that they want to give more attention to triple-A games?? In what way is this somehow bad news?? Do people think that Sony is somehow gonna suddenly stop allowing smaller games for the PS5? Really?
I just find this topic absolutely laughable. So you are trying to tell me that it's somehow a bad thing that they want to give more attention to triple-A games?? In what way is this somehow bad news?? Do people think that Sony is somehow gonna suddenly stop allowing smaller games for the PS5? Really?
Hypereides
Member
Schreier is either feigning ignorance or he's seriously lacking some introspection. That article had a negative angle to it. I dunno what the man expected.
If Schreier is supposed to be one of the "better" gaming journalists in this industry then they seriously need to raise that bar way higher.
I had the same thought. There's a parallel with whats happening with SIE atm. Most of the product people that lead the biz originally are gone, replaced by a former European branch CFO/marketng man in the chief seat plus his business minded sidekick.
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saintjules
Member
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CamHostage
Member
When you shoot for blockbuster-or-nothing, everything that just does "well" or that is good for certain people, all that stuff that isn't a blockbuster get shitcanned.
A million or a hundred million dollars is not worth bothering with when a corporation is trying to make billions of dollars.
When that's the mindset of the business, you end up with the kinds of products made to please every person on the planet, no matter what; you also end up with a whole lot of over-produced "flops" that either never caught on because it was targeted wrong/badly, or you have good games that still don't measure up to expectations and never see sequels (or even more sad, the creative team gets fired.) You do not get much experimentation, you do not get to explore options of variety, you do not get repeats of small successes.
If Sony was still interested in maintaining the balance of AAA and experimental/genre projects, then there would be nothing to worry about. And even if Sony leaves less-than-AAA production, there will be indies and mid-card producers making the games for the platform, so maybe that's no longer a business the platform holder should be in anyway? Maybe this will be the right direction moving forward. But Sony made great mid-tier and small-scale games (sometimes inside their AAA franchises, particularly when portables were a viable PlayStation market,) and they championed these novel titles as being part of the identity of a PlayStation fan. According to Schreier and visual evidence of recent PlayStation moves (though to be fair, there are also counters to that as well; Pixelopus for one probably isn't going to be making the next big thing, and Sony did launch a new console with the LBP brand being revisited on a smaller scale than usual, VR is also big-and-small in production,) the focus of PlayStation going forward is supposedly all blockbusters. And if that's true that it's the new way, there's never been a console manufacturer who has operated so single-mindedly as that...
Thing is, maybe this all-blockbusters approach is the future?
Maybe Sony is making the smart choice? Maybe even the only choice to keep a business active for today's gamers? Other publishers have already gone heavy on AAA, if not exclusively AAA. Meanwhile, the Indie scene has risen up to meet some if not all of the market void. Who says a console maker needs to make all these games? Movies already have transitioned away from the small-market titles in favor of the blockbuster franchises; it's easy to understand why every other movie is a superhero movie when everybody you know has seen every one of these superhero movies. Shouldn't game producers be using that strategy if it pays off so hugely? If everything the console manufacturer makes is big hits, doesn't that say something? Maybe having too many games and having some games be Japanese'y and other games be European'y and some games be dark and massive but other games be fluffy and little, maybe that confuses buyers these days? (Did Microsoft learn the hard way with Bleeding Edge, or is Grounded's under-the-radar success proof in the other direction? Or were both games a bad idea and they should have put every person on the payroll towards getting Halo Infinite to ship on time?) There is an argument to be made that AAA-only is the smart move, and maybe it is the only real way to succeed.
...But for fans of the quieter titles, this is a loss.
And PlayStation had a whole lot of titles that I love which wouldn't have existed if they had to be monsters to exist.
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saintjules
Member
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