Sony Focus On Social Games
SONY is betting big on social gaming, unaware of their gambling problem. Article written by kamiboy in PS3 News, on Friday, December 12, 2008 at 9:21.In a very revealing interview with Sony’s Michael Denny it is hinted at that the reason for the cancellations of the games Eight Days and The Getaway was because SONY London studios is going to focus on just churning out social gaming projects hence forth. SONY has been focusing big on social gaming with titles, that they themselves deem successful, such as Sing Star, Buzz, Little Big Planet and the recently launched Home.
It seems SONY really thinks they can make social gaming, games that contain user generated content and generally games with some sort of community aspect attached to them the raison d’etre of their console. The Wii has your grandparents, that PC in a box system has those obnoxious gun obsessed gits in Yankee land locked down and SONY thinks they can carve themselves out a niche by focusing on the social aspects of gaming.
Much can be discussed about this decision by in depth going articles meticulously analysing how this will work out for SONY, but personally I am going to cut all that short and say that it won’t work. I’ve been right before, even though I’ve secretly wanted not to be. But this time I really hope I am right, this is the exact wrong way for SONY to approach attracting gamers to their console. The last thing SONY needs right now is to spread themselves even thinner chasing after more non existent golden pots at the foot of the rainbows they think they see in the horizon.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
GamerRiley | 12/12/2008 09:35
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If that’s the way Sony are going then I think they are gambling on the fact that we’ll purchase additional content for those types of games. A price tag of ‘£3.99′ seems to be Sonys benchmark price, with the dreadful LBP T-Shirt and now the same price to start a club in Home. I’ve got LBP and we’ve all got Home, but I wouldn’t spend any more cash on either. As for singstar and buzz they’re not my thing so I wouldn’t know. Saying that though, these are big games and the potential revenue from them is massive, if you’re dumb enough and wealthy enough to keep throwing money at the additional content.
seedaripper1973 | 12/12/2008 09:36
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i totally agree with the xenophobic hatred, but alas not the rest of the article (casual games have been rather lucrative for sony, buzz singstar etc) so in time (when the price is down) these will have the added backbone to give them the success they so richly deserve …
kamiboy | 12/12/2008 17:04
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Being a semi lucrative side business so far on the very cheap and therefor casual friendly PS2 is a completely different thing than such games becoming the main focus of a company like SONY on the core gamer friendly PS3. Cancelling titles like Eight Days that from the technical demo youtube videos I’ve seen were coming along fine and would have been good exclusives titles to have in a time where SONY really needs all the reasons they can get their hands on to convince the buying public that the paying twice the price for a PS3 is worth it is something completely other.
Everyone likes LBP, but as I called it about a year ago it sold pretty poorly, or at least did not meet SONY’s expectations. Getting rid of solid projects like Eight Days, and who knows, maybe even the Getaway, in order to set the talented people in their London Studios to just focus on a new and so far unproven direction for SONY is a very risky move.
Meanwhile one of the other arms of SONY is working on two throwaway MMOG’s titles and another rubbish multiplayer shooter — yes we really need more of those don’t we SONY — such as FAG.
Call me crazy, but cancelling promising titles out of London to have them focus on something I am sure will not pay off until the PS3 costs 1/3 of what it does now while at the same time pumping money into some rubbish Yank studios to work on titles that the world would be a better place without seems kind of backwards to me.
SONY has three talented Yankee studios, SONY Santa Monica (God of War series), Sucker Punch (Infamous) and Naughty Dog (Uncharted). By all means pump cash into those studios so they can work on other titles, but stop pumping money down the loo by supporting those other studios over there.
If SOE knew its arse from its head it wouldn’t have been bulldozed over by Blizzard in the MMOG landscape while wasting money on one failed usurper after the other. MMOG’s on consoles might work, but you sure as hell aren’t going to make it happen though SOE SONY, I can guarantee you that much.
Meanwhile SONY has plenty of other good studios in other regions, some in Europe and too few in Japan. The London studios shifting focus away from anything that core gamers like us, who are the only ones going to buy a console that expensive, would find interesting means they are out of the picture. Good luck with Eyetoy games or other titles where you have to make all the content yourself, but I am not interested mate.
If you think you don’t need third parties to sell your console the stop throwing away money on stupid internal projects and start changing the flow of cash. Set up some new studios in Japan and Europe, these have always been your strongest territories in the past, so why the hell not scout some of the most talented people there and have them work on exclusive contents for you.
Of course if anyone knew what they were bloody doing over at SONY then all of this would have happened two years ago instead of maybe two years from now, late as it will be, when SONY has no choice but to accept it because it is knee deep in a sheit pool of their own making.
cc_star | 12/12/2008 20:13
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I usually agree with your view point Kamiboy, but I can’t wait for Eyepet and similar style stuff
I have a five y.o. daughter who wants a Wii, if there was more stuff on the PS3 then I wouldn’t feel the need to buy a Wii and associated games (I’m not buying one, I’m just feeling the pressure)
Stuff like eight days and the getaway are pretty cool, but they are the same as a lot of the stuff already out.
I want a console which has gamers games on like Warhawk, Valkyrie Chronicles, Burnout etc… but my household wants a console where everyone can play on a broadly equal level and have fun, if the PS3 can provide that by canning some games (which are in the main similar to other stuff) and start churning out the odd family game, then I’ll be happy feeding Sony’s wallets for longer, if not then I’ll be a 2 console household, and my money will be split 2 ways
Dance mats, and eyetoys sold 10’s of millions of PS2s. 10’s of millions of units shifted = greater chances of developers being handsomely rewarded for developing for your console
If the PS3 can appeal to hardcore gamers, and families in the same way the PS2 did, then we may get our dream of massive sprawling JRPG’s, instead of churning out cooking games for the DS, and balancing games for the Wii
Severn2j | 12/12/2008 09:45
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I think thats a terrible idea.. While I’ve got Singstar (my wife loves it), and I’ll probably get GH:World Tour, my big love is reserved for the hardcore games, like GTA and MGS.. Killzone2 and Resident Evil 5 are the ones Im waiting for (and GTA5, when it shows it face). LBP is a different matter tho, we all love that, and while there is a social aspect, I wouldnt call it a social game.
Sony should be spending there efforts convincing devs to spend more effort on PS3 and not treat it like an afterthought, with so many games just being ports of the 360.. So many great games have suffered because of this (Fallout 3 being just the latest), but when a game is developed primarily for PS3 (Drakes Fortune, LBP, etc), you can easily see what greatness can be achieved. Thats where Sony should be aiming, not social games.. Gamers are fickle people and social/casual gamers even more so. Sony really shouldnt be pinning hopes on them.
online4ntagonist | 12/12/2008 09:47
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I see ICO2 with co-op mode. How’s that for social?
Paragonknight | 12/12/2008 10:06
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That would be cool but aren’t they more likely to make Shadow of the Colossus 2?
online4ntagonist | 12/12/2008 10:29
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That would be cool too! You can play the protagonist and I’ll play the horse!
But, yes, that would be more probable.
My personal favourite is ICO though, but that’s totally offtopic
jediryan123 | 12/12/2008 11:39
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Singstar volume 4!
BioEye | 12/12/2008 17:42
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I doubt Social gaming will outweigh other gaming types on PS3. I get the feeling that Sony have just seen more activity in social games, and want to make a few more in the future. There’ll still be the 3rd party developer stepping in now and then, and SCE are bound to keep making ‘other’ games.
Look at Killzone 2, God of War 3. They won’t abandon those franchises because they’re popular, and they know it.
theshockwave | 12/12/2008 17:56
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‘LBP is a different matter tho, we all love that, and while there is a social aspect, I wouldnt call it a social game.’
There! Severn nailed it.
It may not be all that bad. If SONY considers LBP to be a social game, while most others wouldn’t, this is ther interpretation of the word ’social’.
This means that any future games, will be similar to this interpretation of ’social’ games.
That is to say not all games will be like HOME, undoubtedly a ’social’ game, but more like LBP. Not necessarily, the same style but in a similar form.
That’s my take anyway.
kamiboy | 12/12/2008 16:37
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The European version of ICO does have pseudo Coop, you see, once you finish the game and start a new game not only is Yorda’s jibberish lines translated but if you plug in a secon joypad into your system then you can control Yorda though it.
Also, ICO, greatest game of all time.
kamiboy | 13/12/2008 06:00
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Look, lets look at this realistically. A console that costs as much as the PS3 has not what it takes to be a family console. The PS2 does, and I think SONY should not make the mistake of trying to focus on casual gamers too early on the PS3 and in the rush forget the PS2 which costs almost 1/4th what the PS3 costs, sadly, pulls in monthly hardware sales comparable to the PS3 and has a install base of over 100 million compared the paltry 18 million of the PS3.
SONY should play at the strength of being the only company out with three consoles each having the potential to snare their own unique set of audiences. The PS3, right now, is a core gamer console, for PS3 games SONY should only focus on those type of games for now. The PS2 is the perfect venue for releasing more causal oriented games and if the PS3 played back PS2 games still then not even you could argue against that strategy. Your kids, I bet, don’t care if the game runs in HD or not, you could just buy PS2 games aimed at them and it would play fine in your family PS3.
But that is not actually the point of what I am trying to get at. I an not slapping a ruler over SONY’s hand for wanting to focus on casual games. I am seeing a dangerous trend of SONY having lost their way and grasping at straws to find themselves an image, a raison d’etre.
That raison d’etre that SONY thinks they’ve found is not focusing on casual gamers, no, that is what Nintendo is doing with an almost unreal level of success. What SONY is betting big on goes way back to the GDC 2007 keynote that Phil Harrison held. The one where he blew the lid on Home and LBP, and the concept of game 3.0.
Well, now that LBP is out and has proven that despite the charm and execution of the game the whole user generated thing is proven to only appeal to a niche audience. Home is also out now and I think this team of IGN editors pretty nicely wrap up what the gaming community as whole thinks about it: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/938/938179p1.html
I know we all love LBP here, but lets step out of our tunnel visions and look at the bigger picture. If the philosophy behind LBP was not “Play, Create and share”, but instead just simply was “Play”, then it would have been a better game. The “create and share” parts of LBP come from that Phil Harrison 3.0 thingy that was stapled onto the project as an anker preventing it from becoming a great platformer with mass appeal.
Home, which has been under constant development for as long as anyone can remember has been a tremendous waste of time and resources for SONY. This Home thing is the perfect embodiment of what SONY wants those lads at their London studios to work on instead of compelling titles aimed at core gamers.
I cant venture to guess what developing Home has cost SONY so far, but I’ll say this, I am 100% sure no matter how little or big a sum it was it could have been put to much better use; much, much better in fact.
Have you noticed how all of SONY’s initiatives on this Game 3.0 front is based out of London? LBP, Home and the London studios all came out of the same city.
This is all Phil Harrison’s doing, he got the ball rolling on of all this when he was running things in London and now he is no longer with the company to take the heat when things hit the fan, and they will as soon as SONY realises, maybe a year or two from now, that whatever they do to Home people will not take a liking to it.
In a time where SONY is hurt for cash they pull the plug on two potentially promising titles that were far along for instead to take a whole studio and use it as a bargaining chip to further their stake at this Game 3.0 table?
Phil Harrison was wrong, there is no other way I can put it. Nintendo did a similar gamble and launched themselves head first into either a new era or their own undoing. Nintendo’s gamble paid off, even as no one else thought it would, and it paid off from day one. The Wii was a success from day one, all of Phil Harrison’s initiatives at SONY were disasters from day one, so SONY is reaping the opposite results on this gamble.
If anyone had any ounce of foresight at SONY they would have known to cut their losses right now, before they are too hurt to heal. I have a feeling that this will not happen. I’ll say it again, the only ones who can save SONY is themselves and they still have the power to do it. All they need is to quickly wash their hands of all the endeavours that are obvious dead ends and stop spreading themselves thin chasing golden geese.
SONY is a big company, they can afford a mistake like Home, after all they do have other studios working on other more worthwhile projects in parallel. What I am saying is with how badly the PS3 is doing right now and the economy heading round the bed SONY cannot afford many more Homes before I start to draw parallels between SONY with PS3 and SEGA with the Dreamcast.
cc_star | 13/12/2008 13:51
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So your saying I should buy a Wii, and divert more money away from Sony?
Surely the easy option is for Sony to make/fund JRPGs, shooters, rpg’s etc… etc… as well as family friendly games.
Just look at next year as an example
White Knight Chronicles, Killzone 2, God of War 3, inFamous, Uncharted 2, would it hurt to have the odd EyePet style game to that already pretty wide mix?
Not only would it not hurt it will benefit all PS3 owners like myself, who don’t play those kind of games, as I won’t have to fork out for a Wii
I wouldn’t give LBP a lot of love, I have have a love/hate relationship with it, but I do think it’s an unmissable game.
My experience of Home isn’t favourable, they badly need their content partners to come on board and quick. But if they don’t keep trying new things like Home then they will die.
Game 3.0 is similar to Web 2.0 (YouTube Facebook, MySpace and other user content related sites)
99% of user content is shit, but just occasionally you come across something which make it all worth while.
The odd youtube clip which is actually really funny, the odd new band on myspace which you then go and see in real life, and even the odd LBP level which is just amazing. I haven’t tried it yet, but perhaps even I could crack a smile at a game of bowling in Home against friends.
kamiboy | 13/12/2008 17:49
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I am not saying you should do anything, I am saying SONY should do something. You are interested in casual titles on the PS3 sure, but looking at the big picture you belong in a very small minority of PS3 owners which makes such pursuits unprofitable for SONY.
I am saying SONY should make casual games a priority on the PS2, make a heavy push to make the PS2 a contender to the Wii. If SONY were smart they would have copied the Wiimote in 2007 instead of just wathcing as the PS2 slowly became irrelevant.
SONY is a hardware company and even if everyone has forgotten about it the SIXAXIS does have motion controls built in. If people at SONY knew what the hell they were doing down there they would have realised the potential of the new market Nintendo has broken into and realised that their knowledge of hardware and the PS2 hardware being dirt cheap to make 7 years after its launch is the perfect mix to steal Nintendo’s thunder.
If you cannot innovate just imitate. Make a superior copy of the wiimote and relaunch the PS2 by packing the controller in it complete with a Wii play style game in the box and a huge marketing campaign similar to Nintendo’s to spread the word that there is an better alternative to the Wii. Then put the cherry on top by selling the whole thing for 150 dollars, a full 100 dollars less than what the Wii costs.
Also sell the Wii sports copy game and new controller separately for just 50$ so all those 140 million PS2 owners can get the Wii experience for even less.
It is a no brainer really, all the third parties making shovel ware for the Wii would suddenly be able to make a port of said game for the PS2 as well for pennies while being able to reach a magnitude greater amount of gamers.
Then instead of setting your London studio to do pointless dead end game 3.0 projects just set them to churn out carbon copies of Wii successes. Make your own balance board, copy everything, why the hell not?
The people buying up a million Wii’s every day don’t care if they flail their arms like mongoloids to a machine that says Nintendo on it or SONY. They will look as see that they both offer the same thing and the PS2 one costs half as much.
Hey presto, SONY is set to sell another 100 million PS2’s and Nintendo can no longer play it smug whenever the NPD’s roll in. It is will be half and half at best.