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
Dandalandan11742d ago

Hopefully lesser focus on live service games

KyRo42d 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.

Cacabunga42d 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..

bloop42d 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.

Crows9042d 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.

-Foxtrot42d 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.

LucasRuinedChildhood42d ago (Edited 42d 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.

Einhander197242d 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_Descent42d ago

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

Lightning7742d ago (Edited 42d 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.

Skuletor39d 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 39d ago
DarXyde42d 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.

Chocoburger42d 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.

Einhander197242d 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...

42d ago
Chocoburger42d ago

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

Aphrodia42d 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.

Chocoburger41d 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.

Travesty42d 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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100°

The Finals Underperforms for Nexon in Q1 2024

Nexon has released its financial statement for 2024's first quarter, and it looks like FPS The Finals isn't proving the hit the studio was hoping for.

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techraptor.net
BlackDoomAx6h ago

Too bad for the best fps there is atm...

40°

The Big Inworld AI Q&A - 'Everyone in Gaming Sees the Potential of Generative AI'

Wccftech interviewed Nathan Yu from Inworld AI to discuss the dynamic NPC tech's applications to games as well as potential issues like costs.

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wccftech.com
140°

Xbox President Sarah Bond's Bloomberg Interview Is Corporate Fakery At Its Best

Saad from eXputer: "After Arkane Austin & Tango were shutdown, Xbox President Sarah Bond spoke with Bloomberg in what I believe to be utter corporate fakery."

gold_drake10h ago

im not really surprised by that, shes always been more a "let me talk about something else than what u want to know" kinda gal

Cacabunga3h ago

If what they are doing is that good, what’s the point of hiding the true story?

anast7h ago

She's a caricature of the shareholders.

PRIMORDUS5h ago

"Shareholders" I call them cancer, they are already rich to begin with but need more and more. It's like a disease, with no cure.

Leeroyw2h ago

I own shares in game companies. I'm not anything near a major share holder. I just want them to make good games and be successful because of that. I think it's the senior management that's the problem. They are the ones that should be making it clear to the shareholders what creates growth and ensures a future of their business. Not this weasle words garbage that she did on the interview. It was horrific. I don't know a shareholder that would be happy with any of them for this.

Profchaos1h ago(Edited 1h ago)

Same and I'm not rich by any stretch like most people's I'm just trying to keep my head above water these days most company's shareholders are made up of everyday people it's amazing how companies think we want something but the reality is we don't.

Disney are probably the worse at the moment it's shareholders voted on ending a lot of the crap and outing the current execs the execs turned around and said no we disagree with the shareholder vote

CrimsonWing697h ago

Yea, it was and it’s insulting that they think we’re dumb enough to fall for this. Look, the truth was you took a gamble on these studios and while they released some games to critical praise and great reception they just aren’t bringing in a ROI. Be transparent, you’re not a politician.

Just tell everyone you spend money on projects big and small and when money isn’t being made you go over the potential of revenue a studio can bring in vs those that can’t and make the hard decision to chop them.

She says this whole thing about “success” doesn’t fit one meaning for each studio. Well yea, a small budget production isn’t going to expect to sell the same as a large budget production.

One thing I wish they did though was let Tango be an independent studio.

TheGamingHounds6h ago

disheartening to see no regard for the human cost of business anymore
the bad decisions and judgements of these CEOs severely impact the frontliners
these fake responses are just salt on wounds

RoadRacer6h ago

imagine havin the audacity to say "we need more games like hifi rush" right after closing the studio that made it lol
followin up with this show of "deflecting every question" was in poor taste

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