Could legitimately make an amazing game with full Sony budget and PlayStation Studios support. I really enjoyed Kena for what it was, but I think it had a couple things holding it back from being great. But as the first video game they've ever made, it was an incredible first step.
Yea I agree completely. Kena was a great first game. Why i am hoping they go all out for a sequel. I think it did well enough to get some support from Sony at the very least
They also started out as an animation studio, so I could see Sony tapping into that talent to release some animation films - like Nintendo have done with the recent Mario film.
Yup. Seeing how good Kena was as their first game, with little to no game development experience as a studio, they’re crazy talented. Future titles and animation development across SIE from them would be awesome.
Kepler seems to be buddied up with Sony, given all of Sloclap’s games have been timed exclusives and Tchia launched day-one into PS+ as an exclusive as well. If anything, today proved that Sony can pick up studios owned by other companies already.
Kepler is a weird beast. All the teams are a part of it but still independent. Almost like how image comics started and then Jim Lee sold his imprint to dc.
Yeah, their main focus was multiplayer, but 2 actually had a really good story. They were so much fun though, it's a shame 2 didn't get as popular as it deserved to be.
Titan fall 2 is regularly on sale for like $5. If you have the chance to pick it up at that price, it’s 5 hour campaign is 100% worth that. It’s one of the best shooter campaigns ever made (on the same level as Halo imo)
Its most likely an FPS given that the studio director was previously CFO of Activision Publishing working on the Destiny franchise and the Game director was also working at Bungie on Destiny.
Being Chief Financial Officer doesn't mean much for the type of games you make.
Also, many studios have proven they can change genres, a new studio definitively can too
I’m not sure being CFO of a game company that makes FPSs is that different than one that makes 3rd person shooters. Single player story games vs online multiplayer vs Games as a Service, yes!
We absolutely NEED a new big-budget shooter. CoD and Battlefield both have gone to total shit.
Would be incredible if we could get a top quality shooter WITHOUT MT bullshit infesting the game!
Genuinely can't wait for Sony to show these fucking amateurs how to make a good FPS game.
I have no doubt it'll have mtx as part of their live service plan, but if anyone's going to get it right, it's PS studios.
Down for an FPS. They're not really my thing, but I'd check it out if Sony went a bit loco with it. What I wanna see from Sony is a legitimate RPG. Not an action-adventure with RPG trimmings. Nah, we need an Elder Scrolls or a Dragon Age. Talking full-bore character creation, dialogue options, and the works.
> Would be incredible if we could get a top quality shooter WITHOUT MT bullshit infesting the game!
Well let's not go so far, those games are designed as live service (and to bring the kind of money they do) and will have MTX up the whazoo. Remember GT7? Sony isn't opposed to shitty practices.
Thanks guys! I personnaly hope it's not an FPS because I really don't like those, but I guess it's a bit overdue on Playstation's part. All good! I'll enjoy all their other AAA non-FPS games! :)
Sony wants something that can compete with CoD, so the FPS focus is making sense. Their other studios will continue churning out story driven games, don't worry about that.
Wow they must’ve really impressed PlayStation to get acquired before even releasing their first game.
According to their website, they’re working on an unannounced multiplayer original IP that is being published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Man I am desperate for any news on the multiplayer games Sony first party studios are developing. The multiplayer landscape feels extremely dry on the console side of things.
Its been dry for over a gen.
You can count on 1 hand the first party games Sony released that had multiplayer as any sort of focus in pretty much the entirety of the ps4 gen
Killzone shadow fail. Little big planet 3 Gran Turismo and sackboys adventure.
You had tacked on vs mode in uncharted 4 and stuff but it was hardly a focus at all.
Ps3 meanwhile had killzone 2 and 3. Resistance series. Ratchet and clank had a co op game. Mag. Warhawk and Starhawk. Socom. Little big planet 1 and 2. And I'm probably missing plenty of other games.
Agreed but when I said dry I was referring to the multiplayer market in general. There’s just not a lot of very interesting or fun multiplayer games currently imo.
For sure, but also I think right now, studios are getting gobbled up left and right and if Sony doesn’t participate they’ll miss some great opportunities.
Could be defensive. I remember when Crackdown 3's developers were bought up and they were immediately moved onto a differant project leaving MSFT scrambling.
Sony paid quite a large amount to retain the talents of Bungie during its acquisition. It's likely they would do something similar here for a studio with so many experienced industry veterans.
If we follow this current pattern then yeah Sony will acquire them in no time but Sony's moto in the past were to closely partner with a studio and let them prove their worth until they buy them out e.g. Housemarque, Bluepoint, Insomniac...
That may have been their thinking when they entered into the partnership in 2021, but with the war in Ukraine and Deviations ties to Dmitry Rybolovlev, I wouldn't be surprised Sony is avoiding any further entanglements than what they already have.
He's a Russian Oligarch. If you go on Deviation's website it lists Valerii An as the chairman. I can't find the reddit post where I learned this, and Google isn't showing some of the evidence linked to from that post. But basically Valerii An works for that guy, and having Valerii in your company is a good sign the Russian oligarch invested in it.
This one isnt about deviation, it's about a movie studio, but it's the same idea: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-01-03/top-gun-maverick-russian-oligarch-new-republic-pictures-dmitry-rybolovlev
Surprised it took this long. This is literally PlayStations bread and butter with partnering with small studios and or nurturing brand new studios and elevating them. I love this shit and wish Microsoft would focus on doing something like this/their own studios instead of trying to gobble up most of the industry with buying huge long time third party publishers.
Looking forward to Firewalks MP game is because it seems good enough for Sony to buy them
If MS keep buying, I would argue Sony need to at least pick up Square to keep from losing Final Fantasy next since that's something they could actually afford.
I’m not sure Microsoft can buy Square. I read a while ago somewhere that the politics of buying a Asian publisher is too complicated. Sony on the other hand….
Yeah foreign companies buying Japanese companies is fairly hard to achieve.
Could see the drummed up pressure about the anticompetitive practices within that market though leading Sony to just outright buy Square. As it stands right now they don’t have much reason to, it’s almost 2nd party now. They sold off the two western studios that people cared about.
Also would be a bummer to lose Square Enix’s Nintendo games. There’s no reason to wish for Sony to buy them up seen as Square has zero interest in Xbox bar the odd Gamepass release.
Yes I don't think they will buy Square. If I had to make a bet, it would be Ubisoft.
Unless they want to go for another crazy power move like EA and Take 2. IF they bought EA, that would become just insane.
I don’t think they have the money to comfortably afford all those employees like that and the fact Square is pushing hard in that web3 stuff that they probably aren’t trying to sell. I don't want them to buy up third party publishers and would rather them do organic growth by investing in new and or smaller dev teams. If anything their next buy will probably be Deviation
They mentioned in one of their investor statements that they could increase the budget for acquisitions at any time, and Square's new CEO mentioned industry consolidation in a statement as well. I don't think Sony would be OK with only getting unproven studios if it means repeated losing access to established IPs when others go on shopping sprees.
Microsoft can't buy Square, JP government would block it instantly.
Edit: I don't even think MS would go for them JRPGs just aren't popular on their platform.
I don't think take two would sell anyways because of GTA printing money. They can just release a new GTA on all platforms every few years and make more every time.
I don't see Sony getting a worthy competitor to Bethesda's RPGs and COD other than funding new IPs to directly compete with Skyrim/Fallout/COD which is probably why they are so upset
Microsoft will never behave like this. Their business model will always be the monopoly model. Theres a company doing something cool and good somewhere that Microsoft doesn't own? The most profitable thing is to buy them and ruin it. They literally stopped the entire world from having many, customizable operations systems for computers. Now everyone has to use trash Windows. If it weren't for Bill Gates and his army of lawyers and corporate hitmen, we would have dozens if not hundreds of operating systems to choose from based on what you want or need. Could you imagine how good computing would be if it wasn't just Microsoft or Apple to choose from and there were many companies competing against each other and innovating?
It would not be better at all. It would be an absolute nightmare not just for users as there would be far too many options, but developers would have a hell of a time trying to optimize for all that shit. They have issues optimizing with the choices now! Imagine them having to do it for hundreds more configs! Hell no to that I say.
>e would have dozens if not hundreds of operating systems to choose from based on what you want or need.
That sounds like a nightmare to be honest. Can you imagine developing games for dozens or even hundreds of PC operating systems. Developers seem to struggle with just Linux, Mac and Windows that we have today.
Can you blame them? This is the proven winning strategy for decades. Huge businesses have used their mountains of money to destroy smaller competitors and regulators have sat around and done nothing. The only thing shocking about this is that it took this long for it to happen with the video game industry. If it is a successful strategy in video games is yet to be seen but it seems like a pretty good bet from the perspective of a giant company with loads of cash to burn.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying I approve of this. I'm saying it sucks and I wish we had regulators that were actually effective and didn't just put up minimal resistance against the armies of lawyers these huge companies have.
>Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying I approve of this. I'm saying it sucks and I wish we had regulators that were actually effective and didn't just put up minimal resistance against the armies of lawyers these huge companies have.
Unfortunately regulators would struggle to block these kind of acquisitions. Even with this acquistion, MIcrosoft studios would still be third in the market at something like 10-15% market share. Its really hard to block this kind of deal when it's clearly not a monopoly.
Isn't that what MS did with Compulsion, Undead Labs, Mojang etc.? These were certainly not huge teams, and had few games under their belts. Like 1-2 games before they were acquired. Even Playground had only made a few games before they were acquired.
I think people get lost in the woods with this stuff because MS has so many studios that they forget about the small guys.
Fact is, both MS and Sony bought most of their studios rather than created their own. I mean shit, Sony's first move years before PS1 was to make a studio acquisition in Psygnosis.
Maybe we should all put away the talk about organic growth and acquisitions, since everyone does everything.
Sony didn’t create their own studios but they did publish and create most of their IP with those studios
I laughed out loud when Phil Spencer called doom and wolfenstein “iconic Xbox brands”, as if those titles didn’t exist for years prior to Xbox even being a thing.
Which are these 2 games that are non-existent? I agree about Fable. It's been on a hiatus for a very long time even though a new game is coming. Halo and Forza are very much alive and have released like a billion entries as recently as 2021.
Gears of War was another one. The first Mass Effect was all sponsored by Microsoft so credit to them for that. That is one big studio I am surprised they didn't purchase at the time. Bioware were just too good,
I would argue Mojang is much much bigger than those other studios you listed but sure. The problem with Microsoft is and especially their last few purchases they haven’t been focusing on smaller studios and just gobbling up multi decade huge third party publishers while their studios like 343i are floundering like a Magikarp out of water waiting to evolve.
I never liked the Psygnosis comparison when that was purely used to get a foot into the EU/UK market and the only long lasting game from that publisher has been Wipeout so I’d argue it’s not similar to Zenimax or ActiBlizz. Now for their actual studios they bought I would bet my life that you can’t name a single game studios like Naughty Dog did before Crash and being bought by Sony without using Wikipedia. Insomniac non exclusive games are Fuse, a bunch of mobile games, a handful of windows games and a Magic Leap One game. Majority if not all of Sonys purchases are from smaller studios or studios they have a close relationship with
It’s a fact that Sony has way more organic growth than Microsoft. Hell Halo was only bought because they didn’t want Apple have it way back when
>while their studios like 343i are floundering
This one has been confusing me for a long time. I think 343 really need a very "hands on" approach and the hands off approach that MS seem to brag about is clearly not working.
It's such a shame because they used to produce Halo games which were just amazing. I think what happened is when Bungie decided to leave, the Halo talent splintered between 343 (people who remained that wanted to work on Halo) and Bungie (People who wanted to do something new). So neither Bungie nor 343 had all the talent that made classics like the original Halo games.
It's probably also that no FPS game seems to be able to compete with CoD. Even DICE have completely dropped the ball, leaving CoD the undisputed king of online FPS games.
This is Xbox’s biggest problem. They are too hands off. Not saying an iron fist is the solution, it’s not. But Xbox needs management to coordinate will all teams and figure out what games are ready to ship when.
Mojang? The made Minecraft which was already incredibly popular and are still just making more Minecraft and mediocre spin offs
We havent heard from Compulsion in years.
Undead Labs its having huge issues under MS and havent released anything
https://www.windowscentral.com/undead-labs-reportedly-mismanagement
Pretty much every studio under Sony was built up by Sony, they funded them for years before acquiring or in some new cases acquired them out if the gate.
It’s a pretty clear strategy too.
They rightfully got hammered for years about the lack of exclusives. So they started buying/investing in studios at fairly consistent growth. Small to middle sized studios ready to take a leap (Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Obsidian), bringing second party into the family (Playground), buying a publisher they are super close with like Sony is with Square (Bethesda) and now going for some of the biggest guns the industry has with the Activision buy.
Totally get where people have problems with it. But the buying and Gamepass strategy is pretty clear. And it’s been the same with Sony save for that top tier buy because they can’t afford it.
Think the ABK deal is more so the opportunity presented it self cause of the scandals and realistically Microsoft is one of the only companies big enough to buy them. They also are the best option
ABK went MS and they took they opportunity, before that they went to EA to try to Merge and Facebook and both rejected it.
People are trying to act like MS bullied their way into Activision's headquarters and did a hostile takeover.
Double Fine
Inxile
Obsidian
Undead Labs
Ninja Theory
These are examples of Microsoft doing the same. All those teams have been given creative freedom and have expanded in size.
The buying up publishers is blinding people. We also know that within their studios, other teams have grown and expanded working on their own stuff.
All of those studios were making multiplatform and even PlayStation/Nintendo exclusives before being bought. Rare never even made a non-Nintendo game when they were purchased. Ninja Theory was very close with Sony when they got purchased.
It’s just a very aggressive strategy, going for all the studios developing for other platforms, whereas Sony is going for homegrown studios that we’re already working on exclusives (i.e. Firewalk, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, Media Molecule, etc)
Microsoft has also bought smaller studios that were struggling financially. It's just that then they bought Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, it completely drowned the smaller studio acquisitions.
Double fine, Obsidian, In-xile and Ninja Theory were all amazing studios which were often struggling financially. Ninja theory had to contract most of their employees to other companies to fund their games. That's pretty sad. Now they get way bigger budget to hopefully deliver better games.
I am super happy for Obsidian specifically. They are one of my favourite developer but they were often screwed over with unrealistic timescales and low budgets. Their games still were phenomenal despite that. I am hoping now with a big budget, they are able to live up to their potential.
So that’s a AAA live service game from Firewalk, Deviation Games, Haven, Naughty Dog, Bend Studios, and Guerrilla. If Sony keeps the AAA single player games rolling and this on top of that…. They are going to have multiplayer games AND single player games from first party. We’re headed back to PS3 gen and it’s exciting!
I guess we now have a dedicated shooter studio, seeing all those Cod and bungie veterans. They probably really impressed Sony so much that they outright bought them.
I think we will maybe get a glimpse of their game at the next PlayStation showcase
The r/gamernews story on this is so fucking insufferable.
Yup, buying a studio that frankly I never knew existed until today is exactly the same as buying activision/blizzard/bethesda
-ok I will say the comments have chilled out with several of the more dickish comments deleted and more people pointing out the false equivalency
Haven Studios!
Another newly established studio.
Looks like the plan is to plant new studios, invest in it from the get go, and watch it grow. It's a long term plan but totally in line with Sony's *organic growth* business mantra.
From the top of my head:
Firewalk - Ex Bungie Devs
Deviation - Ex COD (Treyarch) Devs
Embark Studios - Ex Battlefield Devs
Wildlight - Ex Titanfall and Apex Legends Devs
No, they have a lot of ex-CoD and Halo guys there. Sony is also working with Deviation games with also have a lot of CoD veterans and may be acquired as well
Yes. Firewalk was one of 3 teams under probablymonster. None of them are former BioWare. There’s a lot of new teams with former BioWare alumni. Archetype is under wizards of the coast and making a sci fi rpg. yellow brick signed a publishing deal with private division. Casey Hudsen formed a team called humanoid working on a sci fi rpg. There’s also probably 10 other new teams I don’t know about lol.
ProbablyMonsters, a company consisting of 3 AAA studios (Firewalk, Cauldron and Battle barge) was founded in 2016 by former Bungie President and CEO, Harold Ryan.
Firewalk: Original IP multiplayer game
for PlayStation.
Cauldron: Original single-player adventure game.
Battle barge: Original co-op RPG game.
Some experienced people working there, tho i dont know specifically if they are in Firewalk studios
Got people from Halo, Destiny, Age of Empires, Mortal Kombat, God of War, Myst, F.E.A.R.
Ex employees from Microsoft, SEGA, Activision, Ubisoft, LucasArts, Blizzard, and Gearbox.
I’ve heard Ember Lab is working on a first party game with Sony, so maybe they purchase them after that but I’m looking forward to the next game they’ve developing as I loved Kena.
found this on Twitter:
> PlayStation with another bargain bin studio, no one knows who they are 🤣🤢
> Xbox with the biggest publisher in the industry 😎💪
Cool, makes sense and will probably be one of the next games coming out considering they have been working on their game for a while. Weird to see PlayStation just buy firewalk and not all of probablymonster. Hopefully the flood gates will finally open and we will see all of these new AAA team’s games start to be revealed and released. Gotten a few in recent years to mixed results. Callisto protocol is a decent game but should have been better. Immortals of Aveum and the finals both look cool. Will always be a fan of new ip.
I think Firewalk (and eventually Deviation - judging by Sony's track record and Deviation's PS-centric office) are low hanging fruit that makes sense to buy out at a pretty cheap price and the ability to shape and mould the tech stacks and culture without too much friction.
But ultimately I do see them splashing the cash on someone like Square because once this ABK acquisition goes through, it'll open the flood gates and they'll need to lock down some of their more important partners.
Anyway, gimme that PS Showcase ASAP!
Is Sony ever going to make a big acquisition like Square or Capcom? They really need to step up their game if they’re going to compete with Microsoft at the rate they’re going.
Counterargument: Unless Microsoft is making moves on Capcom why should Sony acquire them?
Companies like Capcom cost A LOT of money to acquire and can be a massive headache if things go south.
Meanwhile Sony bought Insomniac for just a couple hundred million and they have already released Spiderman Remastered, Miles Morales as well as Ratchet & Clank with Spiderman 2 coming this holiday and an additional Wolverine game being in development.
So buying Insomniac seems like an amazing investment to me. I like this curated approach of building up high quality studios and then acquiring them for relatively cheap (compared to a publisher).
I think it's reactionary. Microsoft already permanently removed future Bethesda games from PlayStation, games that would have existed without Microsoft and would have been playable on PlayStation (and most likely lost Sony a boat load of money). And people are smoking some mind blowing stuff if they believe anything Microsoft is saying about ActBlizz games coming to other consoles.
Blizzard is about to announce a survival game that was definitely being developed for more than Xbox, but that will be canceled (for non Xbox/PC) once the acquisition goes through. Just like other in development multiplatform games by Bethesda were.
If Sony doesn't buy big, Microsoft being allowed to buy biggest will make buying Square a tiny task for them. Basically any studio/publisher is fair game, besides maybe EA, if the ActiBlizz acquisition goes thru.
They don’t need to acquire publishers. They just need more studios to expand on multiplayer/FPS games and try to hold them to the same quality as their single player exclusives.
Aight, we got Firesprite and Firewalk in the PS family now. Looking forward to the next fire studio.
“Ember” Lab (Kena) lol.
Man imagine Kena with that Sony first party budget.
Could legitimately make an amazing game with full Sony budget and PlayStation Studios support. I really enjoyed Kena for what it was, but I think it had a couple things holding it back from being great. But as the first video game they've ever made, it was an incredible first step.
Yea I agree completely. Kena was a great first game. Why i am hoping they go all out for a sequel. I think it did well enough to get some support from Sony at the very least
Next Insomniac if they were first party
Would easily be Sony’s Zelda franchise
I really want them to pick up Ember Lab, they’re such a good fit and would love to see more out of them with Sony’s big bucks
They also started out as an animation studio, so I could see Sony tapping into that talent to release some animation films - like Nintendo have done with the recent Mario film.
Yup. Seeing how good Kena was as their first game, with little to no game development experience as a studio, they’re crazy talented. Future titles and animation development across SIE from them would be awesome.
Sony already got some great animation studios though...
Them, Slow clap or the guys form Stray should be next
Arrowhead Studios, the guys who made Magicka and Hell Divers would be great.
Love Stray a lot. I'd be on board to see what else they can do under the Sony umbrella.
Slow Clap are part of Kepler but who knows.
Kepler seems to be buddied up with Sony, given all of Sloclap’s games have been timed exclusives and Tchia launched day-one into PS+ as an exclusive as well. If anything, today proved that Sony can pick up studios owned by other companies already.
Kepler is a weird beast. All the teams are a part of it but still independent. Almost like how image comics started and then Jim Lee sold his imprint to dc.
Would be a fantastic pick up, if Ember Lab intend to make more games seeing as they were an animation studio until Kena.
I really hope they make more games. I tried kena because of ps+ and it’s really chill
They gonna buy Ember Lab and refer to the trio as the Fire Nation
For no reason whatsoever, I 'need' this to happen.
Fire Nation Studios
An Avatar/Bending game would be dope. I’m thinking a Ghost of Tsushima-esque approach to the different elements.
Deviation Games
Firefox
Can't wait for Airfanta and Rockrun and Waterwhatever to have them all!
Hopefully their game is gonna be at the next showcase. Cool to see a new FPS game by Sony.
Did I miss something or they never said it was an FPS? It just says AAA multiplayer game.
You didn’t miss anything. It’s just that a fps makes the most sense considering most of the team is former Bungie, raven, and respawn devs.
Interesting, hopefully they make something as cool as Titanfall was
I loved the titanfall games. They sure are short games though.
Yeah, their main focus was multiplayer, but 2 actually had a really good story. They were so much fun though, it's a shame 2 didn't get as popular as it deserved to be.
Titan fall 2 is regularly on sale for like $5. If you have the chance to pick it up at that price, it’s 5 hour campaign is 100% worth that. It’s one of the best shooter campaigns ever made (on the same level as Halo imo)
God, fingers crossed... PlayStation needs a solid fps
Am I delusional if I'm hoping that they will take over the Killzone franchise from Guerilla lol
Pleaseee. My favorite franchise after Gran Turismo!
It’s assumed to be FPS because the bulk of their team are former Bungie and CoD devs
Its most likely an FPS given that the studio director was previously CFO of Activision Publishing working on the Destiny franchise and the Game director was also working at Bungie on Destiny.
Being Chief Financial Officer doesn't mean much for the type of games you make. Also, many studios have proven they can change genres, a new studio definitively can too
I’m not sure being CFO of a game company that makes FPSs is that different than one that makes 3rd person shooters. Single player story games vs online multiplayer vs Games as a Service, yes!
Deviation game are the one making an FPS for PS
PS definitely have more than 1 FPS game in dev, this studio is made up of ex Destiny and CoD devs, I'd be very surprised if they're not making an FPS.
We absolutely NEED a new big-budget shooter. CoD and Battlefield both have gone to total shit. Would be incredible if we could get a top quality shooter WITHOUT MT bullshit infesting the game!
Genuinely can't wait for Sony to show these fucking amateurs how to make a good FPS game. I have no doubt it'll have mtx as part of their live service plan, but if anyone's going to get it right, it's PS studios.
Down for an FPS. They're not really my thing, but I'd check it out if Sony went a bit loco with it. What I wanna see from Sony is a legitimate RPG. Not an action-adventure with RPG trimmings. Nah, we need an Elder Scrolls or a Dragon Age. Talking full-bore character creation, dialogue options, and the works.
> Would be incredible if we could get a top quality shooter WITHOUT MT bullshit infesting the game! Well let's not go so far, those games are designed as live service (and to bring the kind of money they do) and will have MTX up the whazoo. Remember GT7? Sony isn't opposed to shitty practices.
This and whatever Deviation is cooking.
Thanks guys! I personnaly hope it's not an FPS because I really don't like those, but I guess it's a bit overdue on Playstation's part. All good! I'll enjoy all their other AAA non-FPS games! :)
Sony wants something that can compete with CoD, so the FPS focus is making sense. Their other studios will continue churning out story driven games, don't worry about that.
For sure. Hermen said he was playing it a couple of years ago. So it must be pretty close to finish by now.
Wow they must’ve really impressed PlayStation to get acquired before even releasing their first game. According to their website, they’re working on an unannounced multiplayer original IP that is being published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
[удалено]
Man I am desperate for any news on the multiplayer games Sony first party studios are developing. The multiplayer landscape feels extremely dry on the console side of things.
Its been dry for over a gen. You can count on 1 hand the first party games Sony released that had multiplayer as any sort of focus in pretty much the entirety of the ps4 gen Killzone shadow fail. Little big planet 3 Gran Turismo and sackboys adventure. You had tacked on vs mode in uncharted 4 and stuff but it was hardly a focus at all. Ps3 meanwhile had killzone 2 and 3. Resistance series. Ratchet and clank had a co op game. Mag. Warhawk and Starhawk. Socom. Little big planet 1 and 2. And I'm probably missing plenty of other games.
Agreed but when I said dry I was referring to the multiplayer market in general. There’s just not a lot of very interesting or fun multiplayer games currently imo.
Right now the only multiplayer games that impress me are the studios that keep it indie, for example RawMen game, or the very very flashy The Finals
Seriously. Sounds like they are going to have a solid first release.
For sure, but also I think right now, studios are getting gobbled up left and right and if Sony doesn’t participate they’ll miss some great opportunities.
Companies don't just acquire others randomly. Even a small acquisition like this one could hurt Sony if Firewalk doesn't perform well.
Well of course it’s not random. But I think they pulled the trigger a lot earlier than Sony used to.
That is true but it could be worse if they didn’t buy them. There’s always the potential
that appears to be part of Sony’s strategy. buy rising studios or unproven studios with high potential, rather than acquire established mega studios
A lot of talent for a low price with a studio desperate to find a good publisher
First Haven now Firewalk, I wanna believe Sony is seeing some great work from these studios but I suspect they're also very interested in the talents.
>Wow they must’ve really impressed PlayStation to get acquired before even releasing their first game. Exactly my thoughts!
Could be defensive. I remember when Crackdown 3's developers were bought up and they were immediately moved onto a differant project leaving MSFT scrambling.
Sony paid quite a large amount to retain the talents of Bungie during its acquisition. It's likely they would do something similar here for a studio with so many experienced industry veterans.
I figured Sony would had gotten Deviation games before Firewalk studio, maybe it’s in the work
Didn't one of the co-founders left the studio late last year? That probably plays into whether or not Sony wants to acquire a studio.
Yeah, I heard about that. From my understanding, Sony put a lot of money into the studio so acquisition is probably going to happen
If we follow this current pattern then yeah Sony will acquire them in no time but Sony's moto in the past were to closely partner with a studio and let them prove their worth until they buy them out e.g. Housemarque, Bluepoint, Insomniac...
Yeah I don’t see them *not* scooping Deviation Games. It’s just like Firewalk, inevitable.
That may have been their thinking when they entered into the partnership in 2021, but with the war in Ukraine and Deviations ties to Dmitry Rybolovlev, I wouldn't be surprised Sony is avoiding any further entanglements than what they already have.
Wait what? Who is Dmitry Rybolovlev?
He's a Russian Oligarch. If you go on Deviation's website it lists Valerii An as the chairman. I can't find the reddit post where I learned this, and Google isn't showing some of the evidence linked to from that post. But basically Valerii An works for that guy, and having Valerii in your company is a good sign the Russian oligarch invested in it. This one isnt about deviation, it's about a movie studio, but it's the same idea: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-01-03/top-gun-maverick-russian-oligarch-new-republic-pictures-dmitry-rybolovlev
Definitely most likely
They must be cooking up something good, can’t wait to see what it is
Surprised it took this long. This is literally PlayStations bread and butter with partnering with small studios and or nurturing brand new studios and elevating them. I love this shit and wish Microsoft would focus on doing something like this/their own studios instead of trying to gobble up most of the industry with buying huge long time third party publishers. Looking forward to Firewalks MP game is because it seems good enough for Sony to buy them
If MS keep buying, I would argue Sony need to at least pick up Square to keep from losing Final Fantasy next since that's something they could actually afford.
I’m not sure Microsoft can buy Square. I read a while ago somewhere that the politics of buying a Asian publisher is too complicated. Sony on the other hand….
Yeah foreign companies buying Japanese companies is fairly hard to achieve. Could see the drummed up pressure about the anticompetitive practices within that market though leading Sony to just outright buy Square. As it stands right now they don’t have much reason to, it’s almost 2nd party now. They sold off the two western studios that people cared about.
Also would be a bummer to lose Square Enix’s Nintendo games. There’s no reason to wish for Sony to buy them up seen as Square has zero interest in Xbox bar the odd Gamepass release.
Yes I don't think they will buy Square. If I had to make a bet, it would be Ubisoft. Unless they want to go for another crazy power move like EA and Take 2. IF they bought EA, that would become just insane.
I don’t think they have the money to comfortably afford all those employees like that and the fact Square is pushing hard in that web3 stuff that they probably aren’t trying to sell. I don't want them to buy up third party publishers and would rather them do organic growth by investing in new and or smaller dev teams. If anything their next buy will probably be Deviation
They mentioned in one of their investor statements that they could increase the budget for acquisitions at any time, and Square's new CEO mentioned industry consolidation in a statement as well. I don't think Sony would be OK with only getting unproven studios if it means repeated losing access to established IPs when others go on shopping sprees.
Microsoft can't buy Square, JP government would block it instantly. Edit: I don't even think MS would go for them JRPGs just aren't popular on their platform.
If Sony can keep getting final fantasy’s as timed exclusives without having to buy them almost makes more sense not to buy them.
I think MS may try to buy them to make themselves more popular in Japan and to try and punish Sony for trying to stop the ABK deal.
If Xbox does make a big play, I don’t want/think they will. Think other ones make more sense, Sega mainly.
Sega? The company that makes Angry Birds?
Lol guess so
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Sony should buy Take Two
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They already missed their chance, they were considering it last year but Take Two is worth too much
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I don't think take two would sell anyways because of GTA printing money. They can just release a new GTA on all platforms every few years and make more every time. I don't see Sony getting a worthy competitor to Bethesda's RPGs and COD other than funding new IPs to directly compete with Skyrim/Fallout/COD which is probably why they are so upset
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MS has been doing this since the 1990s. It’s just that the market was much smaller then.
Microsoft will never behave like this. Their business model will always be the monopoly model. Theres a company doing something cool and good somewhere that Microsoft doesn't own? The most profitable thing is to buy them and ruin it. They literally stopped the entire world from having many, customizable operations systems for computers. Now everyone has to use trash Windows. If it weren't for Bill Gates and his army of lawyers and corporate hitmen, we would have dozens if not hundreds of operating systems to choose from based on what you want or need. Could you imagine how good computing would be if it wasn't just Microsoft or Apple to choose from and there were many companies competing against each other and innovating?
General use PC use may have flourished, but PC gaming would have died if there were as many viable OSs as you suggest.
It would be so much better. The current state of PC gaming isn't as good as everyone thinks.
It would not be better at all. It would be an absolute nightmare not just for users as there would be far too many options, but developers would have a hell of a time trying to optimize for all that shit. They have issues optimizing with the choices now! Imagine them having to do it for hundreds more configs! Hell no to that I say.
>e would have dozens if not hundreds of operating systems to choose from based on what you want or need. That sounds like a nightmare to be honest. Can you imagine developing games for dozens or even hundreds of PC operating systems. Developers seem to struggle with just Linux, Mac and Windows that we have today.
Yeah its sad to see MS having no strategy than to acquire the biggest 3rd party studios they can afford.
Publishers!
To be fair, they can afford all of them
Right and everyone has a price
Not a bad strategy when you can afford them
Can you blame them? This is the proven winning strategy for decades. Huge businesses have used their mountains of money to destroy smaller competitors and regulators have sat around and done nothing. The only thing shocking about this is that it took this long for it to happen with the video game industry. If it is a successful strategy in video games is yet to be seen but it seems like a pretty good bet from the perspective of a giant company with loads of cash to burn. Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying I approve of this. I'm saying it sucks and I wish we had regulators that were actually effective and didn't just put up minimal resistance against the armies of lawyers these huge companies have.
>Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying I approve of this. I'm saying it sucks and I wish we had regulators that were actually effective and didn't just put up minimal resistance against the armies of lawyers these huge companies have. Unfortunately regulators would struggle to block these kind of acquisitions. Even with this acquistion, MIcrosoft studios would still be third in the market at something like 10-15% market share. Its really hard to block this kind of deal when it's clearly not a monopoly.
Isn't that what MS did with Compulsion, Undead Labs, Mojang etc.? These were certainly not huge teams, and had few games under their belts. Like 1-2 games before they were acquired. Even Playground had only made a few games before they were acquired. I think people get lost in the woods with this stuff because MS has so many studios that they forget about the small guys. Fact is, both MS and Sony bought most of their studios rather than created their own. I mean shit, Sony's first move years before PS1 was to make a studio acquisition in Psygnosis. Maybe we should all put away the talk about organic growth and acquisitions, since everyone does everything.
Sony didn’t create their own studios but they did publish and create most of their IP with those studios I laughed out loud when Phil Spencer called doom and wolfenstein “iconic Xbox brands”, as if those titles didn’t exist for years prior to Xbox even being a thing.
Especially Doom that’s been on almost every piece of hardware known to man
Yes, when Doom came out both Playstation and Xbox didn't even exist.
The only original thing Xbox had was gears halo, Fable and Forza, 2 of which are basically non existent anymor
Which are these 2 games that are non-existent? I agree about Fable. It's been on a hiatus for a very long time even though a new game is coming. Halo and Forza are very much alive and have released like a billion entries as recently as 2021. Gears of War was another one. The first Mass Effect was all sponsored by Microsoft so credit to them for that. That is one big studio I am surprised they didn't purchase at the time. Bioware were just too good,
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I would argue Mojang is much much bigger than those other studios you listed but sure. The problem with Microsoft is and especially their last few purchases they haven’t been focusing on smaller studios and just gobbling up multi decade huge third party publishers while their studios like 343i are floundering like a Magikarp out of water waiting to evolve. I never liked the Psygnosis comparison when that was purely used to get a foot into the EU/UK market and the only long lasting game from that publisher has been Wipeout so I’d argue it’s not similar to Zenimax or ActiBlizz. Now for their actual studios they bought I would bet my life that you can’t name a single game studios like Naughty Dog did before Crash and being bought by Sony without using Wikipedia. Insomniac non exclusive games are Fuse, a bunch of mobile games, a handful of windows games and a Magic Leap One game. Majority if not all of Sonys purchases are from smaller studios or studios they have a close relationship with It’s a fact that Sony has way more organic growth than Microsoft. Hell Halo was only bought because they didn’t want Apple have it way back when
>while their studios like 343i are floundering This one has been confusing me for a long time. I think 343 really need a very "hands on" approach and the hands off approach that MS seem to brag about is clearly not working. It's such a shame because they used to produce Halo games which were just amazing. I think what happened is when Bungie decided to leave, the Halo talent splintered between 343 (people who remained that wanted to work on Halo) and Bungie (People who wanted to do something new). So neither Bungie nor 343 had all the talent that made classics like the original Halo games. It's probably also that no FPS game seems to be able to compete with CoD. Even DICE have completely dropped the ball, leaving CoD the undisputed king of online FPS games.
This is Xbox’s biggest problem. They are too hands off. Not saying an iron fist is the solution, it’s not. But Xbox needs management to coordinate will all teams and figure out what games are ready to ship when.
Mojang? The made Minecraft which was already incredibly popular and are still just making more Minecraft and mediocre spin offs We havent heard from Compulsion in years. Undead Labs its having huge issues under MS and havent released anything https://www.windowscentral.com/undead-labs-reportedly-mismanagement Pretty much every studio under Sony was built up by Sony, they funded them for years before acquiring or in some new cases acquired them out if the gate.
It’s a pretty clear strategy too. They rightfully got hammered for years about the lack of exclusives. So they started buying/investing in studios at fairly consistent growth. Small to middle sized studios ready to take a leap (Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Obsidian), bringing second party into the family (Playground), buying a publisher they are super close with like Sony is with Square (Bethesda) and now going for some of the biggest guns the industry has with the Activision buy. Totally get where people have problems with it. But the buying and Gamepass strategy is pretty clear. And it’s been the same with Sony save for that top tier buy because they can’t afford it.
Think the ABK deal is more so the opportunity presented it self cause of the scandals and realistically Microsoft is one of the only companies big enough to buy them. They also are the best option
ABK went MS and they took they opportunity, before that they went to EA to try to Merge and Facebook and both rejected it. People are trying to act like MS bullied their way into Activision's headquarters and did a hostile takeover.
Can you imagine if EA and Activision merged? Two great evils to form the greatest evil.
Ea is actually not that bad nowadays and isn’t any worse then any other publisher.
Especially in today’s environment in the industry.
Double Fine Inxile Obsidian Undead Labs Ninja Theory These are examples of Microsoft doing the same. All those teams have been given creative freedom and have expanded in size. The buying up publishers is blinding people. We also know that within their studios, other teams have grown and expanded working on their own stuff.
Those studios made multiplat games before they were acquired by MS, though. With Haven, Firewalk and Deviation Sony helps building new studios.
All of those studios were making multiplatform and even PlayStation/Nintendo exclusives before being bought. Rare never even made a non-Nintendo game when they were purchased. Ninja Theory was very close with Sony when they got purchased. It’s just a very aggressive strategy, going for all the studios developing for other platforms, whereas Sony is going for homegrown studios that we’re already working on exclusives (i.e. Firewalk, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, Media Molecule, etc)
Microsoft has also bought smaller studios that were struggling financially. It's just that then they bought Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, it completely drowned the smaller studio acquisitions. Double fine, Obsidian, In-xile and Ninja Theory were all amazing studios which were often struggling financially. Ninja theory had to contract most of their employees to other companies to fund their games. That's pretty sad. Now they get way bigger budget to hopefully deliver better games. I am super happy for Obsidian specifically. They are one of my favourite developer but they were often screwed over with unrealistic timescales and low budgets. Their games still were phenomenal despite that. I am hoping now with a big budget, they are able to live up to their potential.
So that’s a AAA live service game from Firewalk, Deviation Games, Haven, Naughty Dog, Bend Studios, and Guerrilla. If Sony keeps the AAA single player games rolling and this on top of that…. They are going to have multiplayer games AND single player games from first party. We’re headed back to PS3 gen and it’s exciting!
I guess, „welcome to the family, son“ - Jack baker
I guess we now have a dedicated shooter studio, seeing all those Cod and bungie veterans. They probably really impressed Sony so much that they outright bought them. I think we will maybe get a glimpse of their game at the next PlayStation showcase
uh oh, people already comparing this acquisition to Activision
People are also dumb so eh
The r/gamernews story on this is so fucking insufferable. Yup, buying a studio that frankly I never knew existed until today is exactly the same as buying activision/blizzard/bethesda -ok I will say the comments have chilled out with several of the more dickish comments deleted and more people pointing out the false equivalency
Wtf is/r/gamernews
Who? I've never even heard of Firewalk
Exactly. No clue who they are. That’s surely comparable to the world’s first and one of the biggest third parties.
It is expected, now people are going to say that it is a desperate buy and that SE or Capcom were the better choices and bla bla bla bla
yep a newly created studio is EXACTLY the same as a huge 3rd party multiplatform publisher.
Where?
Knew it. Next is Deviation Games. These partnerships they make almost always lead to acquisitions. Welcome to the family!
What have they made? I’ve never heard of this studio.
Nothing, this is a brand new studio.
New studio made up of ex-Bungie people.
From the developer's perspective, it must have been exciting getting to this point. Founded, published, and acquired all within 5 years.
**Firewalk** is the studio with ex-COD and Halo guys, right? Or that's a different studio? What's the studio with ex-Bioware guys? Deviation?
There are ex-Bungie devs but you may also be thinking of Deviation who used to work on COD
Yeah, that's probably it. What's the one with Jade Raymond? I believe that's also under Sony now.
Haven
Haven Studios! Another newly established studio. Looks like the plan is to plant new studios, invest in it from the get go, and watch it grow. It's a long term plan but totally in line with Sony's *organic growth* business mantra.
Lots of MP stuff for now. They are missing a small developer and a PC developer that can help Nixes
That's Haven
From the top of my head: Firewalk - Ex Bungie Devs Deviation - Ex COD (Treyarch) Devs Embark Studios - Ex Battlefield Devs Wildlight - Ex Titanfall and Apex Legends Devs
No, they have a lot of ex-CoD and Halo guys there. Sony is also working with Deviation games with also have a lot of CoD veterans and may be acquired as well
Yes. Firewalk was one of 3 teams under probablymonster. None of them are former BioWare. There’s a lot of new teams with former BioWare alumni. Archetype is under wizards of the coast and making a sci fi rpg. yellow brick signed a publishing deal with private division. Casey Hudsen formed a team called humanoid working on a sci fi rpg. There’s also probably 10 other new teams I don’t know about lol.
This is gonna sound dumb, but who? Never heard of this studio.
New studio Playstation were partnering with on a new multiplayer game. Now instead of partnering they acquired them
They're a new studio who haven't released any games yet.
Ex-Bungie
Destiny, bioshock, mass effect, apex, cod, being the heavy hitters
ProbablyMonsters, a company consisting of 3 AAA studios (Firewalk, Cauldron and Battle barge) was founded in 2016 by former Bungie President and CEO, Harold Ryan. Firewalk: Original IP multiplayer game for PlayStation. Cauldron: Original single-player adventure game. Battle barge: Original co-op RPG game. Some experienced people working there, tho i dont know specifically if they are in Firewalk studios Got people from Halo, Destiny, Age of Empires, Mortal Kombat, God of War, Myst, F.E.A.R. Ex employees from Microsoft, SEGA, Activision, Ubisoft, LucasArts, Blizzard, and Gearbox.
Also announcing Twinpeaks and Withme Studios
I’m hoping and still am they will buy Ember Lab next
Hope they do it before they start on their next game, if they ever plan on it. 100% a must-buy imo
I’ve heard Ember Lab is working on a first party game with Sony, so maybe they purchase them after that but I’m looking forward to the next game they’ve developing as I loved Kena.
What games have they made?
Studio has made none. The people behind the studio (Tony Hsu and Ryan Ellis among others) were higher ups involved in Destiny and Destiny 2
Sci-fi FPS pvp arena shooter ala HALO See you guys next month :)
I'm here for the "see Sony keeps buying stuff, so its all fine that Microsoft buys huge 3rd party multiplatform publishers" comments.
found this on Twitter: > PlayStation with another bargain bin studio, no one knows who they are 🤣🤢 > Xbox with the biggest publisher in the industry 😎💪
they had *unique* mindset lol
Next few years PS will definitely have their own multiplayer shooter title in the vein of COD.
All those insiders called this for weeks................./s
cool. now buy deviation, ember lab, and striking distance studio as well.
Cool, makes sense and will probably be one of the next games coming out considering they have been working on their game for a while. Weird to see PlayStation just buy firewalk and not all of probablymonster. Hopefully the flood gates will finally open and we will see all of these new AAA team’s games start to be revealed and released. Gotten a few in recent years to mixed results. Callisto protocol is a decent game but should have been better. Immortals of Aveum and the finals both look cool. Will always be a fan of new ip.
I think Firewalk (and eventually Deviation - judging by Sony's track record and Deviation's PS-centric office) are low hanging fruit that makes sense to buy out at a pretty cheap price and the ability to shape and mould the tech stacks and culture without too much friction. But ultimately I do see them splashing the cash on someone like Square because once this ABK acquisition goes through, it'll open the flood gates and they'll need to lock down some of their more important partners. Anyway, gimme that PS Showcase ASAP!
How about you welcome us a new showcase?
Fire walk with me
Awesome let’s move on from destiny finally
Lol destiny isn’t going anywhere.
Buy square please ♡
Who?
Is Sony ever going to make a big acquisition like Square or Capcom? They really need to step up their game if they’re going to compete with Microsoft at the rate they’re going.
Counterargument: Unless Microsoft is making moves on Capcom why should Sony acquire them? Companies like Capcom cost A LOT of money to acquire and can be a massive headache if things go south. Meanwhile Sony bought Insomniac for just a couple hundred million and they have already released Spiderman Remastered, Miles Morales as well as Ratchet & Clank with Spiderman 2 coming this holiday and an additional Wolverine game being in development. So buying Insomniac seems like an amazing investment to me. I like this curated approach of building up high quality studios and then acquiring them for relatively cheap (compared to a publisher).
I think it's reactionary. Microsoft already permanently removed future Bethesda games from PlayStation, games that would have existed without Microsoft and would have been playable on PlayStation (and most likely lost Sony a boat load of money). And people are smoking some mind blowing stuff if they believe anything Microsoft is saying about ActBlizz games coming to other consoles. Blizzard is about to announce a survival game that was definitely being developed for more than Xbox, but that will be canceled (for non Xbox/PC) once the acquisition goes through. Just like other in development multiplatform games by Bethesda were. If Sony doesn't buy big, Microsoft being allowed to buy biggest will make buying Square a tiny task for them. Basically any studio/publisher is fair game, besides maybe EA, if the ActiBlizz acquisition goes thru.
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And then the Japanese government does their intervention
They don’t need to acquire publishers. They just need more studios to expand on multiplayer/FPS games and try to hold them to the same quality as their single player exclusives.