In Sony’s quarterly report, PlayStation co-CEO Hiroki Totoki also revealed what the company has learned from the huge Concord debacle…
PlayStation 5 sales were down compared to the July-September quarter last year (as discussed in today’s news), but Sony has nonetheless improved its expectations for the gaming industry for the fiscal year to the end of March. However, the big negative news of the quarter was the demise of Concord and the closure of its developer Firewalk Studios. But what has Sony learned from all this?
“At this point, we are still learning. Basically, when it comes to new IP, you don’t know the outcome until you actually try it. So for us, for our thinking, we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did. Also, we have a siloed organization, so crossing the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother,” Totoki said, effectively pointing to bureaucracy.
He went on to say that users are not very supportive of Sony’s mandatory inclusion of the PlayStation Network account requirement in its PC ports, even for single-player titles. The reasoning is bizarre, as it is hard to see the connection between the use of an account and the supposed protection, since Totoki says that this is why you have to register for PSN (and connect to Steam, for example):
“We learned a lot. The way to deal with the PC issues, for example. The PlayStation accounts that we have offered – well, actually, by offering them, for example, that sometimes tends to invite backlash. But for the live service games, in order to maintain the order of the games so that everyone can enjoy the games safely, we need to create an environment that is conducive to that and, of course, enjoy the game freely. Having some restrictions may not be called a rule, but asking users and players to follow the manners is very important and we must continue to seek the best way to achieve this,” Totoki added.
God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered are not Live Service titles. Here’s where his argument fails…
Source: WCCFTech, GamesRadar
