60/40, at the beginning it was something like 53/37 in favour of PS5 before going viral.
Yeah, also Sony obviously liked what they saw with them doubling the budget.
I think this was obvious for a while now. Seems to be a 60/40 split. 450K/300K CCU split would support that.
Hard to tell. It probably also played a role that Sony were starting their live service initiative around that time, and HD2 probably profited from that as well.
We heard such stories quite regularly like with Media Molecule for Dreams or Housemarque for Returnal. Sony is I think not shying away with budgets and support.
From the timeline it sounds like Helldivers 2 started dev in early 2017. Hermen Hulst took over in 2019 so it would likely be him if they greenlit the increased budget before the 3 year original dev cycle ended. I don't think Jim Ryan necessarily approved budgets on a game by game basis
I think Jim Ryan probably just boosted the overall live service budget, which then led to Hermen Hulst doubling the already in development budget of Helldivers 2.
It probably happened when Hulst and Ryan where going through their lineup not long after taking over I would guess. Pretty sure that was when stuff like TLoU Remake got moves over to ND from VASG for a bigger budget.
When the hype was at its peak you couldn't play, there was a login queue or the servers straight up didn't work
You didn't miss anything. Game is fantastic but I spent most of my playtime at peak hype levels glancing at the log-in screen and scrolling through TikTok.
Yeah, getting into the game in launch week was extremely hard.
True, but I think in this case Helldivers 2 also had favorable timing, given that Sony's live service push started around when their originally intended dev cycle ended. Shows again how luck also plays a role in game development.
maybe shuhei yoshida? or atleast took part at spotting talent like other few have said.
It's almost never an individual, things like budgets are often worked and analyzed by multiple making different cases, predictions and discussion. Yes, often it gets greenlit by a figure at the higher tier, but assigning these decisions to an individual is a bit reductive and simplification of complex orgs. There may have been an individual at staff level making the case for why a game should get additional budget, but likewise it still takes conviction from an exec to greenlight that decision.
Cross-progression is not yet in the game, but they want to add it in the future.
