Developers didn't really like that stuff. It got better (partially) with PS4 because of system changes and policy change, but all the time I was there developers didn't like the buttons stuff at all.
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Former Sony Employee reveals info on the Vita, store closings, culture war
- Thread starter LebGuns
- Start date
The AA games that were previously exclusive to that platform don't make sense anymore. You will be hard pressed to find AA games that release on PS but not on the Switch. Nintendo is going to see a lot more exclusives in the coming years from 3rd parties which wasn't always the case.
The only games that stay exclusive in that Market are as par course the AAA blockbusters that would be on it anyway just like there will be on Xbox overseas unless Sony pays for timed exclusivity.
I hadn't realized the TV comparison because I don't care about those tv shows but you're right, it's kind of cringe at this point.
It feels like they realized if they can have 3 or 4 franchises that become multimedia monsters, they'll make more money than if they have a healthy ecosystem. It's just so disappointing. The Xbox One dark days weren't that long ago, look at how long it's taking Spencer to rebuild their 360 glory, and these Sony suits couldn't realize it if it slapped them in the face.
That's why Sony made a big deal out of 2013 GTA V being available on PS5, also probably why TLOU on PS4 sold many millions. Or why Minecraft is still selling well these days...
It is not at all clear that this will last. PS5 games are not charting even when the console sells.
Even worse, if they knew for four fucking years, how come they kept selling dev kits until now? It shows a huge lack of preparedness, awful communication between departments as the Reddit Source mentions too, and terrible developer support.
As a developer, who'd continue to support a company that sells you a dev kit and kills the store the month after, and then you find out they could have given 4 years notice?
I don't know, call me crazy, but I think the logical thing to do is to announce no more games will be released after a certain date and then give the store a couple of years so devs can recoup their investment. When thousands of companies depend on your ecosystems, you can't just think of what's best or most convenient for you, Sony has a responsibility here.
I honestly believe it should be illegal to do this without some sort of compensation. At the very least they should reimburse the dev kits.
Yes but nobody spends nearly as much money in their ecosystem as this kind of user, we are the whales, and there are many, many more than us on bigger social media platforms and forums, it is naive to think that the dedicated gamer profile is not much larger than the population of ERA.Being the loudest voice != being the representative of the community.
For example, if THE ENTIRETY of ResetEra (as an example of a very vocal and important community in games) screamed to the heavens about backwards compatibility, if we went rabid here, on social media, everywhere about playing their PS3 games on a PS5, and we were the only ones to use the feature...
.... merely 50.000 users would use it. Out of an estimated 100 million consoles they will sell.
Of course, in reality, more people would use it. But really, we need to understand that the enthuastic people like Era or Reddit or whatever are a very very loud minority. We are not representative of 90% of the people that buy consoles or games.
Normal people want their PS5 to play the newest FIFA, GTA, COD.
Not FIFA 15 and COD World at War.
What Xbox is doing is not adding BC to mainly have more sales, but they're doing it as a reaffirmation of the idea of "Xbox as an unique platform".
Now, don't think I believe Sony is not misguided in this, Xbox has the right idea.
But on a pure business focus, BC is a small small thing, and people should understand that.
But here's the thing: not only do we spend way, way more money on their ecosystem. We are also the ones who constantly post on social media about games, the ones who introduce their friends to the new products in the market, the ones who invest in merchandising. We are walking advertisements for their brand, or the competition. Right now, a lot of that advertisement that last gen said PLAYSTATION in huge neon letters, is shifting to say GAMEPASS.
"My friend who's super into games says Xbox is now better than the Play" is something I heard a lot during the 360 period when Xbox was outselling PS3.
Sony quite literally didn't want Vita users to continue using Vita, or for Vita developers to continue making Vita games. Vita was allowed to live a few extra years than probably warranted because Sony wanted to make sure that they got to keep those third party games on PlayStation by encouraging developers to go Vita->Vita/PS4->PS4. If they killed Vita immediately there's a chance some of that support would have just gone to 3DS.
Vita's life was always conditional on how it could benefit PS4.
We are definitely on the same page here. I hope in a few years we can look back and laugh at how overblown our concerns were. Hell, maybe at that point we will be playing our shiny, new version of MediEvil 2.
Yeah, Speaking solely on just the ports, there were a lot of pretty bad performing ones on the Vita too, barely even tried it's kind of laughable.
Absolutely. When thinking about the systems that released that had BC, we've got The PS3, the PSVita and PS5. That's the point of reference of data they're using to make such a decision. PS3 literally over 15 years old where consumer habits has completely changed, Vita for which it barely was BC having to rebuy games digitally due to a change in formats while being a barely capable system. BC this generation showed that it's a widely used feature if they put effort into it. The fact that people are always wanting remasters etc shows that people want the ability to play old games on their current generational systems. They just never even bothered to try at all. Doing few ports here there thinking that that badly thought out and implemented would be sufficient. Heck thinking about Vita, bought several PS1/PSP games because PSV offerings were shallow in itself. They just really do not want to put the resources in it at all because they'll rather just remaster/remake the games instead. Easier money maker.
What a stupid strategy and that also seems like rubbish because of the high costs of the memory cards, which was pretty much compulsory because some games required it at launch. Didn't really even help because the Vita pretty much got hacked anyway. So it felt like a secret hidden cost more than a hack deterrent.
We will see that more and more with nintendo hardware strong enough to support all japanese AA games and Sony losing most of its relevance over there.
Not really, the "damage" is already done there with a chunk of Vita/PS4 series(but definitely not all) now being Switch/PS4(eventually PS5), no one is dropping PS in that scenario which would have been the case with 3DS. A bunch of others were convinced that Japan is a dying market and they have to reconfigure around western markets(kind of like Sony lol).
Maybe but games will be tailored around the Switch and some might migrate away exclusive to Switch if sales drop to deep.
Sony hasn't give out the total shipment for PSV because they are too ashamed of it.
It should be around 15M, of those about 6M comes from Japan where Vita performed as an alright also run console (think at the likes of PC Engine, Saturn, N64).
In US sales perfomance was much worse, PSV sold less than Dreamcast and of the all the major systems from the big console makers (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Sega) released since 1995 it is the second worst selling one, only ahead of the Saturn.
Hmm yea, nothing that crazy. But interesting sentiment alongside the other PS news. They do paint a (fairly cohesive, unfortunately) picture.
From this perspective, it's dangerous to assume that poorly used, but popular features are not worth supporting. After all, that rationale might one day be used to justify killing well-liked but less successful properties like Gravity Rush and Killzone and Days Gone.... o.O one day.
I think the disconnect is that you think that because enthusiasts are most likely to USE backwards compatibility that enthusiasts are also the only ones REQUESTING backwards compatibility. That's not necessarily true. Backwards compatibility as a concept has proven to be very popular. Period. So, the problem with treating it like a cost-benefit based on sales is that it ignores the BRAND and SENTIMENT benefits of such a move. something that PS used to be pretty keyed in on - Why did they show Shenmue 3? Because they expected to make a lot of money from it? Supposedly no - they just helped them kickstart the game! (Until you know.. they gave them money anyway). But they understood the benefits of the PR win.
From this perspective, it's dangerous to assume that poorly used, but popular features are not worth supporting. After all, that rationale might one day be used to justify killing well-liked but less successful properties like Gravity Rush and Killzone and Days Gone.... o.O one day.
I loved my Vita. Had sell it a few years back for extra cash. I'm gonna miss being able to play Vagrant Story and Suikoden.
YIKES. Here in Japan it looks like the second half of the Vita's run was as a VN machine.
Recently picked up the PSP Perfect Catalog guide, and realized that the latter years of PSP were also populated by visual novels, mind blowing numbers of them.
One indie developer mentioned on Twitter a year or so ago, but no one really echoed the message at the time other than the few Vita fans.
This is nothing new, honestly. You should have seen the final year of Dreamcast's output in Japan. Stacks of VNs on top of VNs. They're just cheap to make and have enough of a market to be worth it.
okay. it stood out to me as confirming that this guy wasn't bullshitting. at least not that part. also he kept mentioning 2016 and 2017. you may remember in 2016 and 2017 how i'd keep doomposting in the official vita threads but this sort of behind-the-scenes stuff was why.
Again though, Sony is a business first and foremost. If a game, or a feature, doesn't result in a profit for them, they would view it as a waste of resources and would rather allocate those resources to something that would turn profit. The fact that Gravity Rush was popular has little meaning, when it's playerbase was small. As far as Backwards Compatibility goes, I don't think OP was wrong with what they said. It's very hard for us, posters on an enthusiast message board, to gauge how popular backwards compatibility truly is. People here like it, so do people on reddit or twitter, but what does the rest of the user base think? They put BC on PS5, so they must have decided it's worth it for them, but it's not like PS4 suffered for it's lack of it, despite people on message boards requesting it. We'll have to see how the PS5 does long term, but I don't see BC as something that would have great effect on PR, be it included, or not, the real PR for them seems to lie in their big games, as evidenced by their (unfortunate) push to develop more "blockbuster" games.
I do remember, yeah. It was bound to happen sooner or later and I was one of the few at the time that was saying that CFW hacking would do more harm than good. Still, it is what it is.
I believe some developers are making their games cross-buy with a PS4 port to make "Vita sales" possible through discounting the PS4 games. I don't know how bigger companies like NIS America or Aksys could do it, but since it's either sell a few more copies by making these games cross-buy or just lose all sales for the Vita version in a few months, I believe it's a good strategy for this last stretch.
We don't know that PS4 didn't suffer from a lack of BC. Indeed, it's likely that it would have suffered quite severely if Xbox One had delivered on BC from Day 1. Instead, they both started from scratch, and there's no comparison point there. For PSV, I do think that there were bigger problems. The narrative that PSV was undersupported wasn't going to be overcome with BC. And the initiative wasn't cheap. So, I'm not saying they shot themselves in the foot or anything. But I don't think we should handwave popular initiatives just because they don't have immediate obvious ramifications on revenue because they very well might at major inflection points - like the PS5 launch. I personally think it would have been a disaster if Sony hadn't delivered PS4 BC.
Clearly, changing a narrative is very, very hard. That can be good when you're in a position of dominance. You get a lot of benefit of the doubt. But it can mean that you sometimes fail to notice problems until it's too late because it doesn't impact the top line metrics. We didn't see the effects of Xbox's chronic underinvestment in its first party in the last 360 era until years later when games starting getting cancelled or flopping on the One and suddenly Xbox had but 5 studios total.
I totally agree that you have to run a successful business. But I think you also have to know how to measure things that may not be apparent immediately but could impact customer perception and sentiment - and thus, your bottom line down the line. And I'd argue that measuring the strong negative perception around "taking something away" from people (whether a game or BC) is overlooked.
Not that the support it had during its life was ever enough to keep the vita from failing, it's just sad that it's failure partly dragged any sony jp effort into the dirt.
I wouldn't want them to try again with a portable with that kinda effort, we have the switch as the vita succesor so there's that.
Playstation is mostly being a western branch of Sony,being the prestige tv and movie liking part of the company, i don't think they'll be hurting for money but you know it's gonna be boring if it's all gonna be sports games and movies with controls down the line. Aniplex is gonna do its own thing like publishing that demon slayer game and other anime efforts and perhaps other games, so those will be their own thing.
I wouldn't want them to try again with a portable with that kinda effort, we have the switch as the vita succesor so there's that.
Playstation is mostly being a western branch of Sony,being the prestige tv and movie liking part of the company, i don't think they'll be hurting for money but you know it's gonna be boring if it's all gonna be sports games and movies with controls down the line. Aniplex is gonna do its own thing like publishing that demon slayer game and other anime efforts and perhaps other games, so those will be their own thing.
Yeah same here. This really makes me salty. Even before this AMA came out it never felt like they really tried to give it a shot, and with the store closures they're also breaking that 10 year support saying. All this while they're willing to stick it out (for how long?) with PSVR. I don't really trust them as much because of all this and I would be very hesitant buying something like that from them.
For all its failures and issues, Nintendo did make an actual attempt with the Wii U (and 3DS), and at least gave you great games from the top first party studios.
Pretty solid points about BC and lack of interest in legacy IPs/Japanese titles.
I would love all of the above but let's be honest they are not worthy investments for a business.
People say this damages Sony as a brand but this is only for a minuscle fraction of the public, the numbers are on Sony's side and are proving their investments are in line with their goals.
Once, if, the needle of some tangible and significant metrics will drop down because of those stances, then maybe Sony will do something about it.
I would love all of the above but let's be honest they are not worthy investments for a business.
People say this damages Sony as a brand but this is only for a minuscle fraction of the public, the numbers are on Sony's side and are proving their investments are in line with their goals.
Once, if, the needle of some tangible and significant metrics will drop down because of those stances, then maybe Sony will do something about it.
The worst any of this does for Sony is looking boring to the enthusiast gamers who play more than the yearly fps and sports games. They can throw enough money around for timed exclusives like FF16 but spider-man alone will make enough money for them to look good for investors. They'll stay like this until they struggle to see gains. The part of Sony that's making the next VR thing seem to have a vision, but today going after VR isn't that surprising anymore with tech having progressed by a bit. Atlus and Sega have been succesful enough to get their PC-ports out and Sony isn't stopping it from happening, when they would have tried to keep at least Persona on Sony platforms in the past.
When they speak about the PSN hack, I remember the "hello world" print in psp mode a few weeks after the launch of Vita in Japan. Even though it's not a native hack I wonder if it would affect their division if let's say PSP emulation was a firmware update in maybe late 2012 instead of available right at launch
sorry about the whataboutism
sorry about the whataboutism
Let's be clear about what those resources actually are: a simple automated reporting mechanism that sends information about your Vita back to home base, and that info likely contains firmware revision.
And the guy specifically says they don't want to waste time going after people. That means they don't really have the resources for it. Unlike Nintendo and their ROM site crusade.
Maybe. But I FINALLY managed to find a CIB copy of MediEvil 2 for a rather cheap price 😬 Picking it up after work today, so finally I can play the sequel for the first time!
For a service like PSN to function properly every connected device is going to have to send some telemetry data about itself. Once you've got that set up scaling the amount of data that gets sent is trivially easy. I'd expect Sony (and Microsoft, Steam, Nintendo) to be collecting more data on us than they know what to do with.
Was part of the reason for this how much the NoA let rare leave with? I remember at some point reading that due to a personal friendship they let rare take most of what they created.
Tearaway came out a few months after Killzone. But your point stands - Sony must have cancelled or not greenlit their entire second wave of games probably before those even released.
The Vita TV came out the same month as Tearaway and the Slim 4 months later. I guess those projects were too far along to get cancelled when the call was made and were sent out to die/make passive profit with only 3rd party support not to save the Vita.
I shouldn't be morbidly curious, but seemingly Vita managed 17 million LTD at least. Is there any support for this? It did manage 9-10 mil in top 10 countries combined, but could RotW really make that big boost? It seems logical for other PS systems, with PS's global popularity, but 17 mil is surprisingly high number.
Hardly anything shocking in this, or anything that couldn't be guessed.
Vita was a failure, BC is a most requested but least used feature, and Japan losing power when their market is shrinking/overseas is growing.
It's mostly obvious stuff, and corporate company operation 101.
Vita was a failure, BC is a most requested but least used feature, and Japan losing power when their market is shrinking/overseas is growing.
It's mostly obvious stuff, and corporate company operation 101.
6m jp/asia, 3m na, 4m eu, 4m rotw?
i believe the final best estimation was about 15m in 2016 or so. not too far off.
People on this board continue to perpetuate this false narrative when the Media Create threads have been here since the beginning and the numbers show that it's not true. The console market in Japan is growing and that's not up for debate.
Sony is losing marketshare in Japan. Nintendo is eating Sony's share AND growing it's audience at the same time.
User Warned: Hostility
Good lord, I meant for Sony...I specifically mentioned in the context of internal power struggling. Sony Japan no longer has what it takes to hold their own against America or Europe.
Man, media create thread posters are obnoxious as hell.
I think everyone would do well to remember that Sony are a business and if it doesn't make money, especially now, it's just not happening.
Nostalgia only goes so far - Medievil got a pretty indepth remake, people begged for it - how did it actually do, sales wise?
Nintendo do the same. Microsoft do the same.
Every so often they'll delve into the vault, but how many franchises are untouched because they just didn't make sense?
Nostalgia only goes so far - Medievil got a pretty indepth remake, people begged for it - how did it actually do, sales wise?
Nintendo do the same. Microsoft do the same.
Every so often they'll delve into the vault, but how many franchises are untouched because they just didn't make sense?
The memory cards being a hack prevention wasn't that hard to see, it was super obvious.
The Vita was designed to prevent the ways the PSP was hacked.
The Vita was designed to prevent the ways the PSP was hacked.
- Non-removable battery to prevent a service mode exploit.
- Proprietary memory cards to prevent access to the save files and add custom applications.
"DualSense's X default confirm (as a final "fuck you")"
As small as this change is, it really does show Sony's shift in priorities. Add into that the overall size of the console and the bulkiness of the controller and it's obvious that this is a western focused system.
As small as this change is, it really does show Sony's shift in priorities. Add into that the overall size of the console and the bulkiness of the controller and it's obvious that this is a western focused system.
Probably a good bit below 16m total worldwide. We have totals through 2019 via IDG for most major markets, and these are likely close to final given western production stopped before then and Asia stopped that year.
JP: 5,731,000
US: 2,440,000
CA: 260,000
UK: 740,000
FR: 480,000
ES: 430,000
DE: 350,000
IT: 290,000
BE+DK+LU: 190,000
NO+SE+IS+FI: 110,000
That's only 11,021,000 for nearly all major markets. I think even if you're extremely bullish on the rest of Eastern Europe/Central and South Americas/Asia/Pacific/Middle East/etc you're probably only pushing 13m territory.
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This all sounds about right.
I don't think Vita's failure was that surprisingly looking at the PSP. You had a few big partners that you could count on one hand and then the whole ecosystem just gets way smaller immediately. Take Two had already seemed to have lost interest in the previous generation, but if they didn't manage to win them back on secure Capcom's support, I don't think it would have saved any other way, even with stronger first party support.
I don't think Vita's failure was that surprisingly looking at the PSP. You had a few big partners that you could count on one hand and then the whole ecosystem just gets way smaller immediately. Take Two had already seemed to have lost interest in the previous generation, but if they didn't manage to win them back on secure Capcom's support, I don't think it would have saved any other way, even with stronger first party support.
Sony's BC metrics are probably outdated as fuck and reflect PS3 owners not really wanting to play standard definition, interlaced PS2 games on their early LCD panels. What other data would they have besides PSP on Vita?
The way Microsoft has most games running at 4K/60 is a completely different ballgame.
The way Microsoft has most games running at 4K/60 is a completely different ballgame.
Another thing to keep in mind was the rise of the smartphone, especially the iPhone.
The PSP predates the iPhone by a couple of years.
Having a portable mass media device that offered the media/gaming capabilities that the PSP did, in 04/05, at $249 USD was insane.
The Vita didn't get that luxury. It launched in a world where smartphones had already established themselves. Phones like the Nexus 4, iPhone 5, Galaxy S III and Note 2 were available. Gone were the days of a portable device like the PSP being needed, as people were starting to carry portable devices with them every day.