Talk Playstation: Yoshida explains lack of third party support

Talk Playstation: "The replacement to Phil Harrision as the president of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida explains the lack of third party development and admits the truth.

"Sometimes we struggle to convince them (third-party publishers) to put more resources into the PS3.",

Metal Gear Solid 4 is the first big AAA exclusive title to hit the Playstation 3, BUT there is a lot more to come this year including Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet."

[Silogon]

I completley disagree with mgs4 being the 1st AAA exclusive for Ps3. Sorry.

Uncharted
R&Cftod
Resistance

are allamazing games and, in my honest opinion, were more fun to play than Mgs4 in some instance. I love mgs4 but I didn't beat it without breaking for days on end. Uncharted had me in my seat until I seen everything it had to offer.

[crimsonfox]

i had to honestly take breaks but for mgs i almost finished half of it in one sitting right after i got it uncharted is good and all AAA indeed.but metal gear solid 4 has to be my favorite game on the ps3 and in my opinion of all time not even mentioning the mgo portion of the game which is a major plus for me but mgs4's style i believe will be very hard to challenge. why would you think they had to slow down on splinter cell???...because they saw mgs and saw they needed to make a few drastic changes.

there's other AAA'S but mgs4 has to be the true pinnacle this year of the ps3's entire lineup honestly...yup

[thereapersson]

If any one of those games were to be released on the 360, they would probably all have a metascore of 95 percent or higher. But since they are on the PS3, games get dinged for stupid, arbitrary or inane reasons. I believe there was even one reviewer (can't remember the site) who faulted Ratchet and Clank for having *too much* variety.

The double standard in gaming is rather ridiculous.

[Nathaniel_Drake]

"I believe there was even one reviewer (can't remember the site) who faulted Ratchet and Clank for having *too much* variety."

Yeah that was the infamous statement from the now lesser reputable site "Gamespot"

[Kami]

yeah. i made that statement in Gamespot and i got banned :(

[Andras84]

Uncharted
R&C:ToD
Resistance

where truly amazing games and only blind fanboys say otherwise but MGS4 is just much much better than any of those games. There is so much in MGS4 it's not even funny! I could have been longer, yes but it truly is an epic game! The best I played to be honest in a long long time. Right now I'm playing the game at the hardest difficulty and it's just so much fun I can't really put the controller down.
Many people don't like MGS4 because it takes time to get trough each level especialy if you want to get unnoticed.
I suggest that you try the game on the hardest difficulty! It'll be fun!
And also the nostalgia part of the game at act 4 alone beats anything I ever played!!!

[Jack Meahoffer]

At first I thought the same thing... MSG4 isn't the first AAA third party game exclusive to hit the PS3 but it appears to actually be true.

All the examples you gave are from Insomniac and they're 2nd party. They don't release games on other platforms but aren't fully owned by Sony to make them first party.

To be considered third party the studio must publish their own games and/or release software for multiple platforms.

For example GeOW was published by Microsoft Game Studios but Epic is a third party developer because they still release games on other platforms.

[ChrisGTR1]

...wow.. sony THEMSELVES say "Metal Gear Solid 4 is the first big AAA exclusive title to hit the Playstation 3" and even the fanboys say hes lieng... i seriously cant believe how blind you guys are. this is the ultimate evidence right here in his own words. they say ignorance is bliss. and with ps3 its completely true,cause you guys actually DO think resistance ,uncharted , and rachet were AAA games. lol. you cant even tell apart a 80 scoring game from a 90 anymore.

[deeznuts]

Resistance sells over 3 milly and it gets no respect. No respect I tell ya!

[socomnick]

Resistance sold 3 million because frankly it was the only ok game at lanch. Look who it was competing against genji. Also reason Resistance gets no respect is because its garbage. Its a dated shooter pretending to be a next gen game. Everything about the game screams generic from the vin disel lookalike protagonist to the run of the mill chimera who look awfully uninspired.

[cyclindk]

Only one thing regarding MGS4 compared to Uncharted is...play MGS4 on all difficulty settings; big boss extreme or whatever it is may be difficult but it plays so much differently from any of the easier difficulty settings. (Uncharted is great though, wish my friend hadn't lost it):(

On a side note, I would take any online reviews with a grain of salt as I can recall one review indicating that the AI in MGS4 has not improved in this newest iteration and that guards wouldn't react to you standing out in the open...he clearly didn't play the game on the harder difficulty settings because they definitely notice you.

[kazuma]

already posted...

[BOSSMK XXIII]

The amount of these viral articles upon the release of MGS4 is incredible.

[Veryangryxbot]

Sony interviews from the last year are very humble and truthful. These guys have really turned around since 2005 and speak the truth.

MS interviews on the other hand are filled with trashtalk and denial.

Thats why Sony will win this gen again. Developers take notice. They dont post on crappy forums like GT or other bot infested sites. But they notice. And they also notice the change in the gaming scene.

[LJWooly]

This is a duplicate story, I believe.

[JoelR]

yes yes it is... read the alt links (I added the N4G other article on it... and the original article.

[LiquifiedArt]

This is retarted. NO one wants to hear 50 different takes on 1 DAMN INTERVIEW!

THIS SUCKS.

MICROSOFT VIRAL FTW!!! XBOX SUCKS!@

[LJWooly]

Not to mention the fact that this is a duplicate story...

http://n4g.com/ps3/News-160...

[Silogon]

I like how he addressed the fact but what I'd like to know more about is what the hell he and Sony are going to do about it. What are they going to do to obtain more exclusives, more content on their disc etc, etc, etc?

[JoelR]

he says they have already dealt with it - it was a launch issue and that they are beyond that now

[kewlkat007]

""Sometimes we struggle to convince them (third-party publishers) to put more resources into the PS3.",
"

Of course you will struggle. You have MS a fomidable competitor with deep pockets, good support, great tools and an easier PC-like infrastructure breathing down developers necks and yours.

Sony, you can't just sit there and expect every developer to work on 4 year projects like your 1st-party studios do. Of course they get great support and PSN backing while other 3rd-party dev have to do all the back-end work, while learning a steep learning curve which requires more man hours.

Not all devs are created equal, so don't expect every game to be Metal Gear Solid 4-like, in terms of production value and review scores. Not gonna happen.

MS is doing what it knows best, using it's deep pocekts to chip away at exclusives or 6 month or timed exclusives that can sway that non loyal gamer that shops, depending on what the/she could afford given the consoles price point at the time and that multi-plat game.

Basically devs are no longer ignoring MS and the 360 with it's install-base. Sony needs to get off thier @ss an start playing MS at thier own game. Because sh^t is not gonna come easy like last gen. As I bought my PS3 for Jrpgs and they need to start on that end.......

seriously

[JoelR]

Q: Something that Microsoft managed to achieve with the Xbox 360 since launch was the regular roll-out of key titles over time. In comparison the PlayStation 3 hasn't necessarily managed that yet, and while there is now a core of key titles in the market, how important is it for you to keep up the software momentum?

Shuhei Yoshida: Talking about the launch year, the biggest disappointment was that because first party is very important and takes a certain share of titles, as well as a variety of third party titles - something that's very important for any platform to succeed, and something that's always been our plan at PlayStation - I'm sure that third party publishers had planned to release their titles day-and-date with the launch of the PlayStation 3, or day-and-date with the launch of the title on the Xbox 360, but because the 360 hardware was out earlier, the games were built based on 360 architecture.

But still, they must have been planning, thinking they have enough time, to port the second game to PS3 and release at the same time with the same quality. So they massively underestimated the effort that was needed to re-architect the game to properly take advantage of the PS3's multi-core architecture.

That was last year, and if you just look at first party products and how they came out, not everything quite came out on time, but we're pretty happy with how the titles supported the launch and during the first year.

But it's impossible to bring the level of support that we feel is important for the PlayStation 3 platform without the third parties' continued support. That was the miscalculation by both us, and from third parties.

But I think after the end of last year, there are more and more titles are coming out on the same day [as Xbox 360] and the same quality, and we can start to see some additional things on PS3 because of the space available on Blu-ray.

That re-architecture only needs to happen once, and once you pass that, you have the foundation ready. Moving forward I'm totally confident that developers will start to use more from the PlayStation 3 platform. This year is the year of parity, next year is the year of differentiation in favour of the PS3 platform.

[kewlkat007]

....

[JoelR]

Out of context again... read the damn interview yourself

*why disagree? the fact is that the info is totally uncontextualized and is directly referenced to only the launch window of the PS3 in the interview and Shuhei said that that is now in the past*

[kewlkat007]

What I wrote, is what I feel like is happening right now..I'm not here to protect sony and it's articles.

I'm sure progamming for the PS3 have gotten easier but for everytime we say the PS3 gets better with time we seem to forget MS has not gone anywhere and is still doin what I posted above.

I hope Sony do not think that everything willbe fine and dandy this gen without fighting much for some games, as we know develpment have sky-rocketed.

That is something that is not going down..Devs wanna make the most money on their games. So sony still got lots of work to do. It's not like its getting harder for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 is getting easier...T

he biggest mistake is many think Xbox 360 is dead and I suppose Sony as well...

[JoelR]

If you quote someone - don't misquote by using them out of context.
He made it plain in his answer that this was a launch issue and is no longer a concern.

Opinions don't change facts. Next time get your facts right before you post your opinion.

[kewlkat007]

With facts that is out there we know where all the manufacturers stand currently.

Everything else is all opinions and hypoothesis and how you shoose to defend or interpret articles.

I have a different view of what this guy meant and obviously, so do you. It's fact 2 people can see diffeent meaning in "QUOTATIONS". Were not presented here with actualy numbers or something.

I'm not here to protect sony, but IMO your doing a good job with DAMAGE CONTROLE on this article.

Keep up the good work.

[JoelR]

If you do not understand English enough to understand what the quote said there is nothing I can do to make you understand.

/shrug
believe whatever.

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

I don't deny that the PS3 can output games with exceptional graphics and some with probably better AI than 360, but as Yoshida puts it himself, it is hard to convince 3rd party developers to create game for their platform. Now why is that?

Because they over-engineered the damn PS3 from a hardware standpoint and forgot the software side of things! Sony also forgot about gaming thinking of it has a media hub and super computer instead. All their success finally went to their head. MS is a master at software and every piece of tool they put out is generally really thought out. Their hardware though is another story, RROD anyone recently?

In a world where games are more expesnive to make rivaling Hollywood blockbuster movies, development time and resources are now more important than ever. Sony failed to realize this and MS very much understood this problem. After all they are a software company themselves.

Another funny thing is, the architecture of the PS3 is soo advanced that it has to be the lead platform. As an engineer and a software programmer, it sounds more like a limitation!

I'm not a MS fanboy, and I do own a PS3 (in fact I'm proudly overpaid for my PS3 MGS4 LE console!!! There are now more Playstation 3's in the house than 360's, 2 to 1).