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Jeff Ross: Days Gone sold over 8 million on PS4,local studio management made us feel like it was a big disappointment [UP: more details in threadmark]
- Thread starter YukiroCTX
- Start date
I literally posted a link where the other Creative Director confirmed that part of it came down to the launch not meeting expectations and got responded with "he's delusional."
There's this wild confirmation bias at play where people only want to accept theories to back up the opinion they've already rallied on.
This is a little misleading. Days Gone sold quite a bit before any price cuts. It's not like it had to go to 30 before anyone snagged it.
Yeah, among other factors that they see the market is ripe for a blockbuster samurai film. GoT was hands down more profitable than DG, even getting a DLC expansion. But Sony is taking the IP and running with it already making the film versus their other existing IPs
i mean, financially it seems not to be one, but sony is chacing the critic darlings.
Days gones may have sold enough, but its probably not a franchise that also sells consoles?
never the less, does not reflect well on them to make the developers feel bad for a successfull game
(not even if it would flop if it was competently done!)
Days gones may have sold enough, but its probably not a franchise that also sells consoles?
never the less, does not reflect well on them to make the developers feel bad for a successfull game
(not even if it would flop if it was competently done!)
I feel like a lot of people forget the shape the game launched in, and it was considerably worse than that in the review phase...
Yeah. Gamers hate Ninjas and Samurai.
You make it sound like Ghost of Tshuima is some experimental arthouse indy game. It's not. Just because it has high artistic meter does not mean it was not a game designed and expecting to sell many millions of units.
Thematically, Samaurai is up there with Ninja's Pirates and zombies as most popular thematic concepts, and gamers love that historical open world stuff, just look at the entire Assassins Creed franchise. Ghost of Tsushima always had the potential to be a big hit.
Such as? Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed II, Mass Effect 2? This argument is always brought up but the problem is the original games of these examples were way more interesting and memorable and highly regarded, it would've been absolutely crazy if these sequels were never greenlit. It's been mentioned multiple times already but not every game that's not a complete flop needs a sequel, now if metacritic scores is really the main reason Sony didn't pursue a sequel here then that would be really stupid, but there's likely other factors in play here.
Some people here are really acting like this is Prey and not an open world Ubisoftlike RPG lite "serious cinematic" post apocalyptic zombie game released near the end of the gen.
I think the fact that it was Kurosawa samurai rather fantasy samurai with demons and oni and stuff (ala Nioh) may have qualified as SOMETHING of an arthouse risk, but I feel the need to backtrack that given that Assassin's Creed is a CoD-esque kind of franchise that takes the same approach.
And also, GoT eventually embraced demons and oni and stuff. Anyway. Like AC did too.
So yeah, I think you're right that GoT was relying on a certain cultural cache to be interested in it, it just wasn't one that was as rung out as zombie apocalypse was.
People buy it because its the latest thing served up by Sony, and they find out they appear to love it afterwards. You'd be an asshat to say you love something new without even trying it first. You can say interested, but love? Come oooon.
Its still got the texture and flavour of a bit of bubblegum that has been chewed for 3 hours.
for me the game was a mess. Cool environment and premise. The character a little bit cringe and the plot was all over the place. I think that the issue with the game is the pacing.
Didn't it ship out to reviewers without the day 1 patch, if I remember correctly ? that certainly didn't do it any favours. But that never stopped massively buggy games like Elder Scrolls or Fallout (for example) getting let off easy in the past
Not sure why but it always felt like Days Gone wasn't given a chance by some people.
It certainly had it's problems, which stopped it being great, although it wasn't enough to stop it from still being a good but flawed game overall. I enjoyed it way more than expected. I picked it up day one and have no regrets about it.
or maybe it sold because people loved it and recommended it to others? you know, outside of it's first party status
threadmark - more details
Jeff Ross and John Garvin are on Jaffe's stream. Jeff clarified his tweet a little. The way he seems to explain it, is that local management in Bend didn't want Days Gone 2. Apparently Bend management didn't even push the pitch to the higher levels of WWS to people like Hulst. Garvin and Ross also confirmed that Naughty Dog North support studio stuff from the Schreier article was over-exaggerated and wasn't that close to the truth. Apparently Bend sent team members to Sucker Punch to help on Ghost, and to Naughty Dog to help on projects. They said that this was standard practice in the industry. When a team is done with a project and doesn't have a lot of work on their hands, they get sent to other parts of the company to help. Ross and Garvin seem positive on Sony overall, especially when it came to creative freedom. Ross's main issue seems to be with management at Bend not pushing Days Gone. Just thought it's been pretty good context to the topic.
Edit* Garvin made the point that Sony doesn't really do the support studio structure, at least while he was there, they are more likely to just shutter the studio, then change their identity into a support team.
Edit* Garvin made the point that Sony doesn't really do the support studio structure, at least while he was there, they are more likely to just shutter the studio, then change their identity into a support team.
What a fucking shitshow then. The tweet was clearly going to be interpreted as aimed at the upper SIE management, not Bend's.
Wait... so all this controversy, all this issue, isn't even a result of Sonys management but Bends? That a pitch wasn't even made? Does this mean this entire thread is a mountain out of a molehill situation?
Sony have dedicated support studios so I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense long term turning another studio into one Vs just shutting them and putting more resources behind the established support studios.
God.... The livestream.... It's a fucking mess
Jeff Ross just looks miserable, Garvin is trying to keep the peace, meanwhile Mr. Gamergate is very clearly up in his feelings about Sony telling him to go fuck himself by not inviting him unto their Twisted Metal efforts.
Jeff Ross just looks miserable, Garvin is trying to keep the peace, meanwhile Mr. Gamergate is very clearly up in his feelings about Sony telling him to go fuck himself by not inviting him unto their Twisted Metal efforts.
Kind of seems like it, the two were really positive on Sony as a company, Garvin basically said his twenty years there Sony treated him super well, even if they hadn't parted on the best of terms. Ross shared the same sentiment, also Ross wanted to clarify the tweet wasn't a shot at Ghost as well, he felt that the upper management of Bend wasn't relaying information from WWS global management very well.
lol. yeah never go on that stream because jaffe has nothing to lose and everything to gain by making it a shit show.
Almost like OP adding "Sony" to the thread title was unnecessary, misleading and inaccurate 🤔
He's gotten some relevant information out of them, I think it's interesting enough to watch the stream,
Yeah, these thing are always a little more nuanced than what the headlines present.
LOCAL STUDIO MANAGEMENT
I think people just skipped right on past the local part, and ran with it
I think people just skipped right on past the local part, and ran with it
So after 20 pages of meltdowns it had less to do with Days Gone not hitting some arbitrary metacritic score and more to do with Bend's higher ups simply wanting to work on something else?
That's hilarious, never change ERA
Thank you for this. The additional context makes a lot of the posts on the past few pages look ridiculous. Always funny when things turn out this way.
That got pointed out though in like the second page of this thread but was glossed over because the hate train was full steam ahead.
i'm not talking about us, i'm talking about being a dev and guesting on there
They made a DG2 pitch to Sony higher-ups and it was rejected (they didn't even review the pitch according to Ross).
I mean, I imagined that by local, I mean the sony representative they had on staff. Like, idk, an ambassador to sony, who reported their word on down. It's only once he got into the more detailed explanation that I realized local meant seperate from sony. And it's not like anyone else caught it until now.
Personally, I think it's another indictment how Twitter just doesn't allow for any kind of extended explanation owing to it's format. Sometimes, just hearing people explain themselves in detail just is so much easier. And I was ready to write Jaffe's podcast off as opportunistic, since I don't like the guy very much, but no, it actually shown some light on the situation. I think this may need to be standard. For every twitter/era controversy, no final statements are made until the offender gets on a podcast and explains themselves.
Yeah that's probably way too early, it was only greenlit last year.
I can dream. But yeah maybe late 2023 reveal and 24-25 release
Bend is part of Sony.. their upper management reports to Playstation home office bosses.
I'm not sure why "as a game director I only talked to local management" really matters much here.
Bend management is Sony management lol If they are killing a Days Gone 2 pitch without further pushing (that the game directors are aware of), it's unlikely that stems from their bosses being happy w/ Days Gone lol
According to Jeff it's more like he worked on a pitch for Days Gone 2 and Bend management didn't pitch it to the higher ups.
I know that Sony has producers like Scott Rhode and Connie Booth (both with high industry credibility) that oversees the majority of the first party games. Probably someone of the same caliber (or even one of the two) was disappointed with the result of Days Gone and said that the studio needed to look for new ideas.
Scott Rhode is the person who canceled that sci-fi project from Santa Monica that was in development for a few years.
Looks like they made it do Bend higher-ups, who didn't want to show it to Sony.
Scott Rhode is the person who canceled that sci-fi project from Santa Monica that was in development for a few years.
Looks like they made it do Bend higher-ups, who didn't want to show it to Sony.
Apparently not according to Ross himself on Jaffes stream, it was blocked by Bend upper management.
Gotta do Horizon 5 one week player numbers to be a success nowadays.
1000% joking. 10 million copies sold over the lifetime of the game sounds pretty good to me. I don't care for the game, but that sounds like a success to me.
Yeah if I was a dev I'd probably stay away for job security lol
I think it was given a chance by people, a lot of them just didn't care much for it, and that's all. I think trying to find some kind of mystery about why it was 'written off' is kind of silly tbh. The reason a lot wrote it off is because it didn't look that interesting to them. The reason a lot of people didn't care for it, is just that they didn't care for it. At some point, you just kind of have to accept that sometimes something you like is not near-universally loved by everyone else. It's fine.
Jaffe's streams seem to be the gathering grounds for ex-Sony employees lol.
- Bend was not forced to anything Uncharted/TLOU related
- As Bend grew from their tiny 30 dev team to a AAA studio needed for the development of Days Gone, quite a bit of tension grew between the old guard, and the new talent coming in
- The creative leads for DG did not see eye to eye with some folks at upper management at Bend
- Bend itself (management), did not push Days Gone 2 to Sony, Ross was not aiming the tweet at SIE itself
- Just about every piece of information to come out about Bend following the fallout of Days Gone has been overblown, straight out incorrect, or twisted out of context
🤡
- As Bend grew from their tiny 30 dev team to a AAA studio needed for the development of Days Gone, quite a bit of tension grew between the old guard, and the new talent coming in
- The creative leads for DG did not see eye to eye with some folks at upper management at Bend
- Bend itself (management), did not push Days Gone 2 to Sony, Ross was not aiming the tweet at SIE itself
- Just about every piece of information to come out about Bend following the fallout of Days Gone has been overblown, straight out incorrect, or twisted out of context
🤡
It's relevant because the controversial tweet in question was about how "sony higher ups never evne saw the pitch" which if Sony were the ones that nixed it, then he's basically framing it as Sony callously throwing them under the bus. Instead, what they're saying here is that Sony is relatively hands off and if studio bend, the management at that team, wanted to pitch Days Gone 2 to Sony, there's a chance Sony would have been receptive to funding it. But whoevers managing Studio Bend itself didn't want to do a Days Gone 2, so the pitch to Sony was never made. Similarly, Jeff Ross is saying that the Studio Bend management framed it as considering Days Gone a failure, but said that Sony themselves never said they were displeased with the sales of DG. Totally different story.
Ultimately, yes, you're right that Sony owning Bend is where the buck stops, but if they are allowed relative autonomy, then it's Bend Studios that made it certain DG2 never saw the light of day, not Sony deciding it for them. Or, atleast, that's the story as far as Jeff Ross is has clarified it to be. Maybe Sony did tell bend management that DG2 is a no-go no matter what and for whatever reason, the Managers of Bend Studio didn't tell Ross, but at this point we're just making up rumors. Point is, the tweet was misconstrued.
Irrespective of what his or anyone's opinion on a game developer or publishers decision making, I just wanted to say that this seems like a terribly rude way to speak to someone. You're post goes out of us way to try to make the person you're responding to feel small and stupid, and that's really unpleasant to read.
I don't see why you need to be so condescending and insultingly sarcastic. It seems entirely uncalled for. Does it really matter to you personally how anyone here feels about the decision? The thing you're reacting to has zero scope to affect your life in any meaningful way.
Perhaps also it's worth remembering that there's a person on the end of every post. Likely someone just as passionate about this hobby as you are.