He said the exact opposite. It's less of a priority, but they will keep doing so.According to what Jason said, it seems that its not Sony's priority anymore. They would rather give resources to ND than spend it on growing smaller studios.
He said the exact opposite. It's less of a priority, but they will keep doing so.According to what Jason said, it seems that its not Sony's priority anymore. They would rather give resources to ND than spend it on growing smaller studios.
From the info in op, the remake project only make sense because they have nothing mature enough in the pipeline, which is terrible news.
He said he doesn't know if they'll distribute Factions as DLC not that they're making dlc.I wonder if the dlc thing is gonna be a lost legacy type thing or if it's gonna be in part 3?
tlou has 2 games in 8 years, remastered was not a remake.Remaking a game that was already remade once a year after the sequel came out and less than 10 years after the original did could "make sense" but doesn't make it any less exciting for myself and I assume others. Eventually this type of "milking" of your IP gets stale for consumers.
From the info in op, the remake project only make sense because they have nothing mature enough in the pipeline, which is terrible news.
These two are mutually exclusive. Actually the 'high profit' part is kind of its own question mark - but just the idea that this is simultaneously low-cost and high-production values doesn't make any sense.
- Low cost, high profit.
- The game will feel as good to play as Part II: worth it alone.
We just got word Sony is investing more headcount in Media Molecule and Team Asobi.
Not all small studios are the same, they don't all warrant equal growth or investment. It's not insane to think it's better to spend money to have Naughty Dog remake a Naghty Dog game than another studio if you think the results will be better.
I mean it could be because he excluded all of that context from the article and had a drive-by headline (perhaps from an editor, but still).
Thanks for the summary and that makes total sense.-ND is a 300+ person studio
-tlou2 has shipped.
-multiplayer game is in polish stage, bulk of team not necessary
-whatever their next big project is, it's in preproduction. A very small portion of their staff is concepting that next title.
-you have potentially 100+ employees(engineers, programmers, animators, etc) with not much to do day to day
-remaking an existing title with a highly anticipated HBo adaptation would be a relatively low scope, high profit project that the staff could be directed towards. They also get a chance to refine their tools, processes and become accustomed with the PS5 hardware so that by the time the next title is ready to enter full production, they're far more prepared.
Last of us 2 being delayed internally( from 2019 to 2020) and publicly(from Feb to May to June) + covid stoped that from being a possibilityThanks for the summary and that makes total sense.
I'm just wondering if this could have been prevented if their next project could have entered pre-production earlier so that by the time TLoU2 and / or factions was finished the bulk of the team could have started going all in on the new project instead of having to work on a remake so that they don't sit on their hands for a few months.
Makes sense. It's been so long that I sometimes actually forget that we're in a pandemic...Last of us 2 being delayed internally( from 2019 to 2020) and publicly(from Feb to May to June) + covid stoped that from being a possibility
Sometimes I feel that people have completely forgotten that ND launched TLoU2, an extremely demanding game from a production standpoint, less than a year ago...
Well I'm sure there's loads of people who are interested, myself included.
Funny tidbit the Part 2 hype was so big my friend who only usually buys FIFA, Call of Duty, GTA etc got swept up and asked if he should get it.
I said definitely, but you got to play the first game first.
It was too old for him to invest the time, he passed.
People with PS4s and PS5s who haven't played The Last of Us will jump in if the TV makes it crack pop culture, and it has a decent chance of that.
The directors, writers, leads and lots of artists are usually the ones doing pre-production, can't really pull a team together without that, also having your studio basically in a race to beat pre-production is probably a bad idea, as is making games without any pre-production (even if smaller scale). It's better to just use those people as a support role for the studios own games or someone else, it's a relatively low investment and you can quickly move them off that, so they aren't tied up.Just finished listening. My stance remains the same; the Last of Us remake does not need to exist. If you have a bunch of developers not working on anything, why not have them make their own cool, little game before the next major project? It doesn't have to set the world on fire & it doesn't need to sell at full price. Make it $20 - $40, make it whatever you want, no pressure. It's as if the Naughty Dog isn't allowed to be attached to small projects.
Also, if VASG wanted to make a name for itself, why not make something original? Your first two thoughts are to remake two different games? And two games that are already available to play right now on modern hardware at that?
And finally, with Days Gone 2... like Jason said, capitalism sucks. Days Gone sold well, but internal projections says it'll just always sell like that & not grow, no matter how much better the sequel is. Again, I don't agree, but I'm not a business with investors.
-ND is a 300+ person studio
-tlou2 has shipped.
-multiplayer game is in polish stage, bulk of team not necessary
-whatever their next big project is, it's in preproduction. A very small portion of their staff is concepting that next title.
-you have potentially 100+ employees(engineers, programmers, animators, etc) with not much to do day to day
-remaking an existing title with a highly anticipated HBo adaptation would be a relatively low scope, high profit project that the staff could be directed towards. They also get a chance to refine their tools, processes and become accustomed with the PS5 hardware so that by the time the next title is ready to enter full production, they're far more prepared.
We also heard that a lot of people were forced out of Japan Studio and Bend was not allowed to make a sequel to days gone.
Again, last of us remake is an example that was brought up in the article. to show the direction sony is heading with priotrizing big studios much more than they before. I don't know which strategy is financially better but am not really fan of Sony's big budget game and mostly like their smaller stuff (besides GOW).
On top of this, it's one thing to buy an established studio in an expensive city like they did with Insomniac, it's another to build one from the ground up like the former VASG head wanted to. If the studio hadn't worked out it would've been a very costly mistake.We really don't know much about the skillset and the feasibility of the VASG to scale up and manage something of that scale. They have only ever been a support studio.
Did they have the right management to pull it off?
What kind of investment would they need? They were apparently a 30 person team. For context Bluepoint is 150 people AND outsourced for Demon's souls.
Were there other talent in the company that deserved the opportunity because of skillset, experience, available talent in the area, etc.
As in any place of work, just because you want more responsibility or a certain project doesn't mean you're the right person for it.
We don't know How many people left either. In Bends case, only two leaders left maybe?. Halo Infinite lost more creative directors than that. Context is important.
So much we don't know.
This was their MO for the pretty much the entirety of PS4 as well, regardless of what PR says. So far it seems that PS5 is going to be the exact same strategy as last gen. Which is good or bad depending on if you liked PS4.According to what Jason said, it seems that its not Sony's priority anymore. They would rather give resources to ND than spend it on growing smaller studios.
I don't disagree with there being loads of people who would buy this again. Which is why it makes business sense. I'm not arguing why Sony is doing it, but man it is boring af compared to some of their usual announcements.
Splitting hairs here. I've played through this game 2-3 times and purchased two different versions of it and the sequel in less than a 5 year span. A complete remake of this type of modern game seems like the suits at Sony are becoming a little over reliant on this one franchise
The directors, leads and lots of artists are usually the ones doing pre-production, can't really pull a team together without that, also having your studio basically in a race to beat pre-production is probably a bad idea, as is making games without any pre-production (even if smaller scale). It's better to just use those people as a support role for the studios own games or someone else, it's a relatively low investment and you can quickly move them off that, so they aren't tied up.
Basically, due to the audience the bloomberg article is for, that kind of nitty gritty details wouldn't really make sense.Now my question is....why couldn't Jason mention some of this in his article? This is what I mean...the way some stuff was framed in it was odd.
Never. Jason took a shot a Jaffe in the interview. lol
This was their MO for the pretty much the entirety of PS4 as well, regardless of what PR says. So far it seems that PS5 is going to be the exact same strategy as last gen. Which is good or bad depending on if you liked PS4.
you have potentially 100+ employees(engineers, programmers, animators, etc) with not much to do day to day
Can depend massively really, lots of factors that I just don't know either, a completely new I.P could have years of pre-production, depending on lots of stuff. We don't even know when pre-production even started for whatever they have in pre-production either, so could be well along or just at the start. I believe ND always have games in some form of pre-production though, even if they aren't even planned to be going into full development for years, pre-production will just ramp up when they can.I'm admittedly out of my depth here but how long does pre-production typically take for games these days? Not to mention a next gen, AAAA one. Probably not something we can quantify without inner knowledge of ND's tools, processes, and general production pipelines. It very well could take quite awhile, but I also can't help but think it would be completed prior to TLOU remake being finished, but for all I know they have a streamlined process for using the TLOU2 engine for the remake. Then again those animations aren't going to make themselves, and the old environments need to be remade, it's obviously a not insignificant amount of work compared to what went into the remaster on PS4.
My main concern is this could potentially reduce the amount of new games we get out of ND this gen. Two a gen already feels like it takes forever to get to experience them. Not trying to concern troll, I just want to see new stories from what's undoubtedly my favorite AAA/AAAA studio.
-ND is a 300+ person studio
-tlou2 has shipped.
-multiplayer game is in polish stage, bulk of team not necessary
-whatever their next big project is, it's in preproduction. A very small portion of their staff is concepting that next title.
-you have potentially 100+ employees(engineers, programmers, animators, etc) with not much to do day to day
-remaking an existing title with a highly anticipated HBo adaptation would be a relatively low scope, high profit project that the staff could be directed towards. They also get a chance to refine their tools, processes and become accustomed with the PS5 hardware so that by the time the next title is ready to enter full production, they're far more prepared.
These are relative terms.These two are mutually exclusive. Actually the 'high profit' part is kind of its own question mark - but just the idea that this is simultaneously low-cost and high-production values doesn't make any sense.
If the aim was time&cost-efficiency - something like 'TLOU2 Left Behind' or 'TLOU2 Lost Legacy' might work better. But the remake is going to be more expensive than either if it's on the scale of Demon's Souls (+ more, because people here demand complete retooling of gameplay systems). And if this is indeed picking up someone elses work as per Schreier's story - the cost could go up even more (because of human developer tendency to strictly adhere to NDH syndrome).
...and there's only so much context / additional detail he could provided anyway given Bloomberg's word count constraints. Jason tweeted this about his Cyberpunk article, but I'm sure it applies here as well:Basically, due to the audience the bloomberg article is for, that kind of nitty gritty details wouldn't really make sense.
I totally get this, but given that neil is busy with a lot of last of us projects, it would be insane not to get inspiration for part 3 and that being his next move.And i would love TLOU3 to close out the series, but I was hoping to get something new first and then let them close out the gen with TLOU3.
Bend is getting to make a new IP. That in itself is both riskier and its own investment than a sequel would be lol. VASG were the ones who pitched TLOU1 Remake to Sony.
From what Jason said it sounded like its going to be even worse than PS4 era, where we don't even get games like Bloodborne, Gravity Rush or Days Gone. I guess we will see in few years.This was their MO for the pretty much the entirety of PS4 as well, regardless of what PR says. So far it seems that PS5 is going to be the exact same strategy as last gen. Which is good or bad depending on if you liked PS4.
They only started working on it few weeks ago and before that they were supporting ND after Days Gone 2 was cancelled. There were real fear among developers that they would absorbed into ND and become support studio, which is what the article was referring to.
From what Jason said it sounded like its going to be even worse than PS4 era, where we don't even get games like Bloodborne, Gravity Rush or Days Gone. I guess we will see in few years.
Now my question is....why couldn't Jason mention some of this in his article? This is what I mean...the way some stuff was framed in it was odd.
The argument is exactly the same as the DG2 situation(except reverse). If TLOU:R exists - someone ran the numbers and projected it's worth north of 100M in revenue.Just finished listening. My stance remains the same; the Last of Us remake does not need to exist. If you have a bunch of developers not working on anything, why not have them make their own cool, little game before the next major project?
Would have been a strategic play (attach a known property that's 'safe') that backfired in this case. This isn't anything special or unique to this situation (or Sony) growing business units do these types of things all the time, across all kinds of industries as well (and many of them end up failing the same way too).Also, if VASG wanted to make a name for itself, why not make something original?
Doesn't sound like it. It's probably all hands on the remake and MP game while creatives are cooking up whatever's next. Which could be a new Uncharted tbf but I doubt it.
Unknown, but it doesn't sound like it was ever at ND, was going to be Bend's game with ND oversight, I doubt ND are interest if Sony are looking for a studio though. Bend's Uncharted is super dead and never really got started.
I love how this and the Jeff Grub article are playing off of each other and exposing that the press is pretty much wholesale creating a "Sony negative narrative" for themselves to run with, with the tone and factual and contextual exclusions being made in these articles, and then claiming it's Sony's problem to fix. By what? Giving them more insider knowedge and exclusives?
Pretty embarrassing for the gaming press.
You're saying canceled, but that's not the case. The pitch never was accepted. The project never got off the ground. Instead of having Bend do nothing, they were put on to support ND until they got a pitch off the ground. Not nearly as nefarious as people were making it sound when the article was originally posted. Saying they "weren't allowed" is funny because we don't know what the pitch was like. Maybe it just sucked ass. Days Gone was profitable, no reason to not give them another shot assuming the pitch was quality.
He literally said the opposite in the podcast lol. They're beefing up Media Molecule and Pixelopolus to continue making the type of games you're describing. We're literally getting a game like you're describing NEXT WEEK. Bend is making a new IP which will likely fall into that same column.