230°

Hiroki Totoki becomes interim head of Sony Interactive Entertainment

Hiroki Totoki is taking over today as interim chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment, filling the role of former head Jim Ryan.

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venturebeat.com
Dandalandan11743d ago

Hopefully lesser focus on live service games

KyRo43d ago

Hopefully just more of a focus on games in general. 4 years in I'm still waiting for something to wow me like Ratchet and Clank and Returnal.

Cacabunga43d ago

PlayStation will make or kill itself with gaas games.. we need the PlayStation from previous gens. It’s ok with gaas once in a while, just not change your whole vision and turn back to fans who made this brand what it is today..

bloop43d ago

More games would be great. This gen has been really disappointing so far. Great games have been too few and far between. And time to drop cross gen development for good.

Crows9043d ago

Wow...returnal...what a fantastic game. Demons souls was huge for me as I never got around to beating it the first time around.

-Foxtrot43d ago

Yeah hopefully

They have Helldivers for that, just focus on supporting that game as much as they can. Why oversaturate a market even more when you've just caught lightning in a bottle with a game already.

No point making more than one as it will just divide attention and player bases.

LucasRuinedChildhood43d ago (Edited 43d ago )

In the short term, I suppose we won't see any change.

I think they need to invest heavily in 2nd party games - we're seeing that a bit this year.

They can take more risks on those games (more unique) because they're not $200m+ and they can more quickly get out a variety of exclusives.

Helldivers shows how well that can pay off and probably Stellar Blade will as well. Returnal did too (Sony didn't own them).

Insomniac was in the top 3 best "PlayStation" studios decades before Sony ever owned them.

And if you think back on a year like 2015, none of the big exclusives were from first party studios (Until Dawn, Bloodborne, The Order 1886). Nobody saw that as a problem back then. We were happy.

People (even PS fans themselves) started acting like second party games are not "real" exclusives ever since Microsoft started buying up publishers and studios. People need to get over that. Buying up everything so people can chant "First party" and have list wars is not necessary or good for the industry. It's part of the reason Xbox have been forced to go multiplatform by Microsoft so that approach backfired.

If Sony's huge games are all going to take 5+ years to make, I think they need as many if not more second party games as they used to have.

Einhander197243d ago

Helldivers 2 most successful live service launch of the year....

PlayStation doesn't make bad games, whatever they make live service or single player will be made to the highest standards.

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_Decadent_Descent43d ago

Live service I agree with, but I would hope that doesn't mean less focus on MP games in general.

Lightning7743d ago (Edited 43d ago )

I dunno about about that. I think he's sticking to that regime and seeing it all the way through. The same way Ryan stuck with Shawn Laydens plans and regime. Backtracking now would cause tremendous stress on developers and developmental pipelines.

Skuletor40d ago

With the focus on live service games, I'm surprised The Last of Us II: Grounded or whatever and that Multiplayer Spider-Man got cancelled. I've read what Naughty Dog's excuse was but if Sony were truly focused on live service games, they could have hired more people, so ND could work on more than just the MP game

+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 40d ago
DarXyde43d ago

A bit worried.

As long as it's truly short term... Maybe it's fine...? But a CFO taking the reins is likely how creative passion goes to die.

Chocoburger43d ago

He needs to bring back Japan Studios and re-hire all that incredible talent that they lost. PlayStation needs to focus more on what made them incredible from PS1 to PS3 eras.

Einhander197243d ago

This is misinformation Asobi was a team at Japan Studio, all that really happened is a name change of the studi.

Before the change even happened a few people (I think it was only 3-5 people) said they wanted to leave the studio to form an indie development studio "Bokeh Game Studio" which they did, and Bokeh is still making games for PlayStation just independently.

So at that time Sony changed the name from Japan Studio to Asobi, everyone from the staff except for a few people who left to form Bokeh stayed on under Asobi. Sony themselves called it a reorganization, which is accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

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Chocoburger43d ago

Hmm, I guess its not as bad as it sounded, then? I'll read that wikipedia article to get all the details.

Aphrodia43d ago

I wonder if Playstation will ever be like it was from ps1-ps3 ever again. Explorative. Ps4 is when they became more iterative than innovative. PS5 continues the iterative trend. Unless they have something hiding away then the Ps5 generation will remain iterative. With GTA 6 coming relatively soon the whole world is waiting to see what comes of that than anything else. Unfortunately it seems like we'll have to wait for ps6 just to see if sony will do anything new, innovative, and daring. So far the PS5 remains the only Playstation console I've never owned.

Chocoburger43d ago

As dev time increases, budgets ballooning out of control, and advertising costs trying to get the general public to know your game exists in an over crowded market, publishers don't want to take risks anymore.

I understand why companies have changed, but due to their changes in priorities, my focus has been on older generations these days.

Travesty43d ago

Okie dokie Hiroki Totoki. Get someone in there that loves the brand and listens to gamers. I kind of miss that reaction in the past.

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30°

Rockstar Games Founder's New Studio Is Working On AAA Open World Action Adventure Game

Rockstar Games founder Dan Houser's new studio, Absurd Ventures, is currently working on a AAA open world action adventure game.

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twistedvoxel.com
porkChop10h ago

I'm really curious to see what he's going to do. It seems like a GTA-style game, but I wonder how it'll differentiate itself.

60°

XCOM's Jake Solomon Q&A - Building a Narrative-Driven Life Sim Game at Midsummer Studios

XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns director Jake Solomon has founded a new studio to make a life sim game. Here's a new interview with him.

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wccftech.com
120°

Hypercharge Unboxed Dev Saddened By Claims It'll Be 'Dead' Without Xbox Game Pass

One of the big Xbox releases heading our way in May 2024 is the long-awaited Hypercharge Unboxed, which is finally bringing its "first and third-person shooter action figure game" to Xbox consoles on Friday, May 31st.

Sadly, ahead of launch, the game's official Twitter (or "X") account has been highlighting the "trolls" who are claiming that because it's not launching on Game Pass, Hypercharge Unboxed is already set up for failure on Xbox.

helicoptergirl1d 2h ago

It's horrible what people will say, but the truth might be harsh. There is a good chance it might not do well on Xbox if it's not on GamePass. There is a strong possibility that is the case. We'll see.

When it launches on Playstation in the future you can rest assured it will sell much better. The devs have confirmed it's coming to Playstation in the future.

"It is built in the Unreal Engine 4. The game was released on the Nintendo eShop on January 31, 2020 and on Steam on April 27, 2020. The development of Hypercharge: Unboxed for the Xbox platform was officially announced on July 16, 2022, with the developers also confirming future support for the PlayStation."

ZeekQuattro1d 1h ago

I remember having this on my radar years ago for the Switch but never pulled the trigger on it. Crazy it's still not on PlayStation yet.

northpaws17h ago

And that's the problem of GamePass.

JEECE16h ago

Unfortunately once people are conditioned to expect to get something as part of a subscription they already pay for, they are unlikely to buy it a la carte. Some games, including this one, now look like "Gamepass Games" to a huge chunk of the Xbox audience. Maybe this game will buck that trend, and I wish them luck, but I'd imagine they'll have a rough go trying to sell this game on Xbox.

shinoff218316h ago

Hopefully their game not selling on Xbox doesn't stop them from bringing it to ps. I can't imagine why a developer would go Xbox first if their not on gamepass. Good luck to them though.

JEECE16h ago

Yeah I can't figure that out either. I mean I understand why you go there first if you get a Gamepass payday, but if you are just trying to sell copies it doesn't make sense. Fewer users overall, and a smaller percentage of those users are willing to buy indie games a la carte.

Jingsing14h ago

Yeah, I can't understand it either unless there is some deep routed fan-boyism from the developer, which isn't very clever if you are trying to make a living. Fatshark is a perfect example of a developer sending their games to die on Xbox and they kept doing it.

Jingsing14h ago

British guy saying Xbox is his dream console doesn't really sit right does it. 5 generations of PlayStation in the UK and you haven't figured out what console is going to make you the most money. That is the mistake you've made.

JEECE5h ago

I wonder how old he is and when he got into gaming. For a certain segment of gamers, it can be difficult to overstate how influential the Xbox 360 was.

Jingsing20m ago(Edited 19m ago)

Fair, but by the end part of the 360 it was a pretty much a damp squid and then they've had two terrible generations of consoles after the 360 and still sticking with Microsoft and calling it your dream console at this point is for the birds. His game launched on Switch first now Xbox. It seems he has some preference for all platforms before PlayStation regardless of financial outcome. That isn't to say they won't do a PlayStation release. Also the UK was pretty much instrumental in launching PlayStation from a software perspective.