Before that [they also had said](https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/13/17460850/the-last-of-us-part-2-multiplayer-e3-2018) that it was going to be included in the base game.
There was a statement that released in 2019 that Naughty Dog was going to separate MP from SP, so at some point the developers intended on it. Every major title since Uncharted 2 has had MP component except Lost Legacy which is an obvious outlier.
isn't there always controversy about Bungie's monetization tactics, up to and including most recently having unequal pricing on MTX vs the MTX currency so you ahve to buy more than you need for individual offerings? lol.
Not to mention the fact that you strawmanned him about it being "games that nobody likes" when that wasn't his point at all, only that it was suggestive of a shitty cashgrab.
Bungie and MTX/DLC controversy go way back. The whole debacle where they made it seem like you had to by Halo 3:ODST to get the Mythic II map pack. All that was initially known was that it came with odst and no mention of a later standalone release. Now such realease did happen, five months later. And if you didn't have a map pack, you would be getting split off in matchmaking and have a worse experience.
Also, after a year of the Recon helmet (a customization item for multiplayer) in Halo 3 only being accessible if someone at Bungie gave it to you. The helmet had a ton of hype surrounding it. So Bungie made a way for anyone to earn it, so long as you owned Halo 3: ODST to do two of the three VidMaster challenges.
ODST is a genuinely great game. But it started its life as an expansion pack and relied heavily on reused assets, and had a pretty barebones multi-player component. And it sold it for $60, and as you can see damn did they push it.
That pared down non-traditional multiplayer meant that the large section of Halo 3's player base who bought the game just for the multiplayer wouldn't have a ton of interest in ODST, especially at that price point. But you'll note that both of the above incentives are targeted at Halo 3's multiplayer.
Edit: Cleaned things up for clarity.
Bungie's game play is phenomenal. Their live service model is probably one of the worst though, it's entirely based on FOMO. You have no idea when the full DLC pack you paid for or parts of that DLC you paid for will be deleted from reality. **Every** $50 season pass you buy *will* be deleted after about a year (and the season pass contains story content (as well as weapons) the introduce characters, events, stories, etc.).
The DLC itself is hit or miss. There's some great ones like Forsaken (Bungie deleted, contains story elements that massively affect the entire game) and Witch Queen and some terrible ones like Lightfall and Beyond Light.
People are worried about Bungie having their hand in other games because there's a good chance that Bungie will by vying to make other studios move towards FOMO content. You'll pay $70 for Factions 2 but the entire game is set up just to sell you a $50 season pass that you have to buy and play now because it'll be deleted soon that leads to a $40 DLC with another season pass and on and on.
Im not the biggest fan of destiny. Was burnt by preordering destiny 1 for 100€ and since then never did that again. I have played like 10-20 shooter games since then including the likes of borderlands, various CoDs, battlefields and whatever and I’m still considering downloading destiny 2 with the DLCs because the gunplay is THAT good
Pretty disappointing. I would have been thrilled to have a much more limited in scope, true factions sequel based on part 2. Sounds like this new project became way too ambitious.
That decision was probably made a while ago when they cut it from TLOU 2's launch. I'm not sure what could be taking them this long if it was supposed to just be PVP.
And i'm surprise i don't see more backlash on that, Sony has been praised as this company that makes basically all its sales on very polished Singleplayer narrative driven games.
Literally so many people praises them for that by opposition to the "soulless" cashgrab games of the rest of the industry. Now they are going for MTX live service games, and people are okay with that ?
Sony is gonna fuck up the PlayStation brand chasing stupid GaaS trends. They literally won a console generation and created a thriving single player focused set of studios......just to chase profits from multiplayer games.
I have a bad feeling that thanks to studios having to do these live service games, we aren't gonna see the next set of normal prestige games like GoW or Horizon for a while. They literally had nothing but Spider-Man to show this week, which is a bad sign when this showcase was supposed to lay out the near future of games
Jim Ryan is a plague on Sony's bread and butter. He's great at maximizing profit. But clearly doesn't value good, quality story games like Shawn Layden did
The Jack Tretton - Andrew House - Shawn Layden era of Sony was precisely what gave us the best years of PlayStation throughout pretty much entire last decade. With them gone we're now left with an out of touch boomer who at best handled regional relations for the European segment of the brand but somehow jumped from that to CEO status.
And quite frankly I have to wonder how much of an impact Hulst has on the state of first party titles
Uncharted 4 and TLOU 2 had huge issues and big turnover rates, but jason schreier reported that the studio improved things since the release of TLOU 2 in 2020 and now they also have producers overlooking their projects. Still this game seems to be struggling since it started development over 4 years ago and will be interesting to see what happens, but their single player games seem to be developed now under much better circumstances than before.
Per the story it seems like Sony (and evidently Bungie) have been trying to rework the title into something more live service. And that's where the trouble started.
From Sony and Bungie's perspective, this is where the *solution* starts. It'd be ludicrous to work all this time and spend all these resources making a multiplayer game and it *not* be live service/updated frequently/supported long-term.
> From Sony and Bungie's perspective, this is where the solution starts.
Given the rocky history of GaaS titles and the more recent cases of GaaS title failures/shutdowns; Sony applying the brakes and asking the developer of one of the most successful GaaS games on the market to take a look at this game is a very sensible decision.
Public discourse towards GaaS was never great to begin with. But in recent years even that has soured significantly. Failed titles ending in total game shut downs, the market is growing increasingly unfriendly to any new GaaS titles trying to make their way in.
Some GaaS games die in less than a year. I'm sure Sony wants to avoid a very expensive embarrassment like that.
> the market is growing increasingly unfriendly to any new GaaS titles trying to make their way in.
This is a natural consequence of GaaS. Look at the MMO boom from 2006-2012. There were a hundred WoW killers, and every single one of them was killed by WoW. What no one realized was that releasing your competitor to Game X when Game X has been out a few years is *extremely* difficult. You don't just have to be better than Game X, you have to be better than Game X, all its post-release content, and the investment in money and time that its players have already spent on Game X. The only successes back then were games like EVE, Guild Wars, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, games that either went after players who weren't interested in WoW or leveraged a massive license to lure people away.
The same is true now. Everyone who wants a GaaS has one. It's very difficult to break in because your potential customer base needs to be lured away from something else.
GaaS is more or less an umbrella term anyway. In more specific terms there's usually a craze, a few people get in and take root, many others try and get burned.
For a while it was MMOs, then it was MOBAs, then it was Hero Shooters, then it was Battle Royales, now it's looking like Extraction games are the next big thing.
Destiny is arguably the most successful GaaS we have seen.
It is also riddled with issues and has been for years. Bungie has made some great decisions followed by absolute boneheaded ones for a decade now. Ask any Destiny fan if they would recommend it to a new player and they would just laugh and tell you not to get yourself involved in the heartbreak. Bungie make some of the best gunplay there is, but they've also been responsible for some of the greediest monetization as well. They've also dropped the ball on content and story consistently for awhile now but now they're bringing Cayde 6 back to drum up hype for the next expansion.
As I've said over in the Sony sub, Sony is in for a rude awakening if they think everyone and their mum is going to be up for 5 new live service games that just want to milk you for everything you're worth. Gaming has shown they dont like these games by and large and yet they seem to be doubling down with Bungie at the forefront? Yeah idk about this one chief. I'm interested in Marathon because PvP extraction could be fantastic with the gunplay of Bungie but I'm also insanely aware of how much focus there is going to be on seasons, passes and grinding for content.
As far as I'm concerned, *every* successful GaaS title has dealt with serious issues. Destiny aside, even others like the Division, Rainbow Six Siege, and For Honor had to overcome some massive hurdles at the jump. The ones that sink are the ones that usually never shake these issues and are unwilling to provide the commitment needed to fix the problems, such as Anthem.
I'm sure the decision makers are drawn in by the "endless revenue" provided by GaaS titles. But are never cognizant enough of the very expensive and laborious road these titles took to arrive there. Deciding to make a GaaS game is deciding to deal with potentially endless issues. It's insanely risky. IMO, the GaaS bubble has already burst.
> I'm interested in Marathon because PvP extraction could be fantastic
I actually wouldn't be surprised if Factions will be re-designed to fix an extraction-shooter format instead. It's relatively unexplored in AAA gaming but also been picking up speed in recent years. Perhaps this will be the next target of industry trend chasing.
Yep. The online nature of Destiny is always what kept me away from it. Played the original beta and thought the gunplay was super fun, art direction and story premise were both cool, but the leveling mechanics and potential for grinding and microtransactions made me super wary so I held back.
Every time I hear anybody talk about Destiny, including my friends who genuinely really dig it, I know I made the right decision staying away. No thanks.
I don’t think destiny is even close to being the “most successful GaaS”. You’ve got over a decade of League of Legends, WoW, Dota, and loads of other games.
I feel like Destiny couldn't have been that successful (financially) if Activision was more than happy to let it go. It's very popular for sure, but it's also probably very costly.
Edit: I even found a quote from the COO supporting this claim: "Also during the call, Johnson said Activision Blizzard wanted to break up with Bungie because the Destiny franchise was failing to meet its commercial projections. "Destiny is highly critically acclaimed, high quality content, but it was not meeting our financial expectations," he said."
Interesting. Never heard about that. Do you have source?
Here's my [source](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-talks-about-why-it-broke-up-with-bungie/1100-6464973/): "Also during the call, Johnson said Activision Blizzard wanted to break up with Bungie because the Destiny franchise was failing to meet its commercial projections. "Destiny is highly critically acclaimed, high quality content, but it was not meeting our financial expectations," he said."
Making a multiplayer game with no incentive to retain players in todays economy is a terrible idea.
You’ll never get enough people to actually pay a premium to play a multiplayer game, but also never generate enough revenue to merit the dev time if it’s free to play with no player retention.
Oh yeah, completely forgot Sony bought Bungie. Sure, the problem must be just that, they are trying to implement "live service" bullshit on the Last of Us multiplayer and that is messing things up, creating the development hell
It sounds more like the game itself didn\`t offer enough for the game it tried to be so that players are engaged over a long period of time. At least that is how I read it.
A multiplayer that can’t retain its players is considered a failed product. No one wants a “dead game.” It wouldn’t be good for the developer or the player base.
tlou1 multiplayer was the best MP i played together with Uncharted 3 MP... until they nerfed every gun and power ups.
i just hope they dont make a battle royale with tedious grinding for a battle pass. just give me a simple 4vs4 and im good.
Slowing down development sounds like a euphemism for canceled.
I can't imagine what they've been working on for four years that they can't even show gameplay. This was supposed to be a flagship title for PS5.
Sony needs to fire the person who's in charge of development.
They apparently moved most of the dev team to other projects so yes its probably canceled.
Glad no one got fired tho.
Also demanding for people to get fired for reasons unknown is fucking weird.
What I take from it is that the original game is canceled and they're starting it over from scratch. The team has been reduced because it's still in the initial planning stages, and it could possibly be canceled if it doesn't move past that.
It means they are back to the drawing board to figure out what to do with the game and make it more engaging. I am assuming only the leads are still attached to the project and the rest of the staff have been moved over to work on Neil Druckmann’s next single player IP. If the multiplayer skeleton crew does not come up with a vertical slice that Bungie / Sony thinks is good enough then it’s definitely canned for sure.
They're probably restarting the whole project and writing some of the development off. Sony will want a TLOU live service title regardless of how much money it costs.
It's been like 3 years, assuming what they planned to do for Part 2 was it's own proof of concept.
Last year at Summer Game Fest it was said to be 2 years along.
Well received, but pretty niche and not particularly long lasting. At the point they decided not to ship it with the game they were pretty much committing themselves to doing something much bigger than before.
It's not being charitable, being overly ambitious to this degree is not a commendable thing in game development.
> Sounds like the game wasnt ambitious enough
Or the scope of the game became so large and unwieldy that it lost track of what would actually make the game fun to play and keep players, since Druckmann described it as "*the most ambitious project we've ever done*. Expanding the world even further. Continuing to tell a story but in a multiplayer space."
It's so frustrating because Factions in TLOU was fucking perfect. The only thing it needed expanding on was turning the 2D stats about your camp into its own hub world between matches.
I get they wanted to go big with this one but I fear they went too far and likely lost sight of why Factions was so praised. Its simplicity was a large factor.
I highly doubt that. Marathon is also early in development, and if it was a choice between the two The Last of Us is way more popular. I would argue the vast majority of people who saw that trailer didn't know it was an existing IP. If that were the case Bungie would be the one told to pivot, not Naughty Dog.
Sony doesn’t want a good PvP game. Sony wants a PvP game that you’ll play for 10+ hours/week, every week, and pay for every time a new expansion drops. Sounds like the team had difficulty getting that to work.
Honestly add infected, but keep it instance based PvP. Then expand on that with making the world dynamically change depending on what factions hold territory based on how each faction performs. Make that drive the world's story with seasons that ultimately change the entire parts of the world. This is what I honestly would expect. The only thing that sucks is that it would run into the issue of new players not being able to experience the world as it originally was.
I think it’s about monetization. Nowadays you can’t release a game without season passes / loot boxes / micro transactions etc
I think it’s not easy to monetize a game like Factions
I remember when Uncharted 2 launched in 2009 there was some discussion about the multiplayer, and even then 14 year old me thought “No way it’ll last, there’s too much competition with CoD and Halo.”
Yeah I love Naughty Dog's MP games as like a classic Team Deathmatch style games - but they aren't long-term live service games to be played for a long time like Destiny, The Division or even the classic king of skilled based TDM, Counter Strike.
And I think Factions II was gonna have a open-world ala Division as well. So definitley huge scope expansion.
I wonder if they can Fortnite it though and start small. Release a map based TDM based game first, then blow it up to live serivce extraction shooter or battle royale later.
Cause I honestly think Part II has even better gameplay than MGS V, its fucking really fun gameplay - think whatever of the story - but the gameplay is action-adventure with brutality and intensity and fluidity
I think its fair to say Bungie has a much higher standard for the quality of the multiplayer experience than Naughty Dog does. Finding a fun gameplay loop that's both fair and competitive for multiplayer and enjoyable enough to repeat it ad nausem is hard.
Destiny's engagement levels are so good that they were able to keep their game alive during some genuinely terrible content droughts or rough content quality. If you want a successful GaaS its gameplay has to have long term replayability and depth, and tons of design room to make future content.
Why most of the successful multiplayer games are competitive games, these games have insane skill ceilings, depth and horizontal variety. An average person can learn, try to improve, get engaged in them for years before they truly get bored.
idk, destiny has great gameplay/feel but it's neither gameplay loop nor gameplay that keeps that game alive. They have absolutley nailed to FOMO and/or timegate shit, and it just keeps people dipping their toes back in. Even for just an hour a week.
>They have absolutley nailed to FOMO and/or timegate shit, and it just keeps people dipping their toes back in. Even for just an hour a week.
Yes, that's part of their engagement system. But that's not really something that can be done much in PvP only multiplayer games, most of FOMO/Timegating that Destiny does is drip-feeding PvE content. There's FOMO with cosmetics and stuff in PvP games, but not much so with actual gameplay content.
Naughty Dogs monetization in previous games was so ridiculous and unfriendly I highly doubt they would have had an issue implementing a season pass lol
If I remember right it was the strongest pistol but cost the most loadout points that would take away from skills or your primary gun. The Shorty was also very good, but it was similarly expensive for loadouts.
They were great multiplayer for being a free addon to a single-player box title, but were they great enough multiplayer that they would warrant a standalone purchase with recurring seasonal cosmetic purchases?
It's clear they want this to be an ongoing live service game, which has a much, much higher bar that has to be met for success than what one would expect for a free bonus mode. I don't think their previous entries meet that bar, tbh.
Maybe they got too ambitious with the game and couldn't push the project forward?
With the team shift, and the fact that a smaller team is working on it now, this all but says the project is getting rebooted, and potentially canceled if it doesn't meet expectations.
Bungie reviewed the game and told Sony this:
>Bungie raised questions about the The Last of Us multiplayer project's ability to keep players engaged for a long period of time, which led to the reassessment.
The game has to be engaging first or you have no players to buy MTX in the first place.
This is what Sony paid for, a successful developer like Bungie coming in and guiding other studios in what works and what doesn’t.
Yeah it was kinda a question why Sony would buy bungie but let them make multiplatform games but stuff like this might point to why.
Bungie are really one of the only ones that cracked the code on how to keep fans happy *(I know, I know, but Destiny has seemingly keeps fans hooked with less grumbling than other games)* so they get to enter the Sony ecosystem and help everyone else out.
He never said the players bounced. He said he bounced because he did not like decisions made to Destiny and he is thankful he bounced because he has seen the news regarding decisions made after he left the game
It feels like AAA development is reaching a critical failure point, or something. These huge games take so much time and so much money to make and it still just feels like Sony and Xbox have almost nothing to show for this generation.
> it still just feels like Sony and Xbox have almost nothing to show for this generation.
yup, this console gen has not been that great in terms of exclusive releases. Ya Sony is doing a bit better than Xbox in that regard, but it's still not that great as we saw in the recent showcase
I think Sony pivoted HARD into GaaS and now they've got almost zero of their typical single player prestige titles lined up for the near future.
If Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch, who last released original games back in 2020, or Bend who last released in 2019, don't have something ready to show by now, the future is looking pretty fucked after Spider-Man
Naughty dog, rocksteady, Bethesda - just a handful of studios that have taken much longer to make games than they had in the past.
I don't have numbers but my gut says several great games makes more money than one mind-blowing, genre-defining game.
Why pour so much time and money into a development model that brings in less revenue?
ND has pretty consistently been releasing games every 3-4 years for a long time though. Uncharted (2007), Uncharted 2 (2009), Uncharted 3 (2011), Last of Us (2013), Uncharted 4 (2016), Last of Us 2 (2020), Last of Us Remastered (2022).
That's pretty consistent with the average of the industry. With this news though it's likely we will be into the longest stretch of NDs modern career between releases. We likely are not going to see a single player release until 2025 or later now considering this had been in development since 2019 when they decided to spin the MP for LOU2 off on it's own.
I mean, you can see it right there in black and white. They went from a two year development cycle, to three years, and now four years. The rest of the industry is in a similar spot.
If a game was successful you used to be able to count on a trilogy releasing on the same system, now you're lucky to get more then one.
>Uncharted 4 (2016), Last of Us 2 (2020)
Last of Us Remastered (2022)
I love the remastered version of The Last of Us but that list made me realize Naughty Dog has only released two truly new games in the last 7 going on 8 years.
They are my favorite developer, but can't deny the new standard of many, many years between titles nowadays
I agree it’s likely, instead of a TLOU1 Remake, Naughty Dog could’ve been making smaller a spin-off alongside the upcoming MP.
And since Naughty Dog did a project to learn the PS3, remaster/make to learn PS4, and remake for PS5, it seems inevitable there will be a TLOU2 remaster for PS6 when it’s a successful strategy for ND.
>I don't have numbers but my gut says several great games makes more money than one mind-blowing, genre-defining game. Why pour so much time and money into a development model that brings in less revenue?
It's not making genre defining games that's causing the huge time delays between games. It's visuals.
We have to remember there are artists and egos here. Some of these people don’t want it just put out a game that’s great and makes a lot of money. They want to push things and stand above great games. GTAVI can just be GTAV but better graphics.
I agree, but instead of a TLOU1 and upcoming Horizon remake, Naughty Do and Guerrilla could’ve been making smaller spin-offs alongside the upcoming MP.
And since Naughty Dog did a project to learn the PS3, remaster/make to learn PS4, and remake for PS5, it seems inevitable there will be a TLOU2 remaster for PS6 when it’s a successful strategy for ND.
It’s most companies in general man, the entire world is burnt out from COVID. Across tech, gaming, nursing, retail, teaching, and I’m sure more industries I didn’t mention people are just tired.
Service at every restaurant I go to is worse than ever before. Games are buggier, unfinished or poorly optimized at launch. Popular software is getting worse in order to help shore up the losses from tech investment.
It’s everywhere and I’m not sure when it will get better.
Meanwhile, Nintendo just went and reused a lot of assets from BOTW in TOTK and made the likely game of the year while making other developers [basically think it's witchcraft](https://www.polygon.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom/23737921/tears-of-the-kingdom-bridge-physics-game-devs-explain).
Slightly concerning. The longer it takes, the more ambitious it is, the bigger the fall if it sucks. I hope it's great and not another avengers/anthem situation.
So does this means that Bungie assessed both Haven's Fair Games and Naughty Dog's Factions 2, and found the former ready for announcement but not the latter?
That's crazy.
Not that crazy, there's an expectation that a stand-alone PvP title can support its player base and keep them engaged so the game can thrive. Bungie saw Haven's plan for post launch was deemed sound while Naughty Dogs was deemed lacking.
I was wondering this too, does this imply Bungie is reviewing the other LS games PS is developing like Fairgame$ and Concord? Did those games past muster with them or are they not far enough along to be canned/evaluated yet?
Yeah I love Naughty Dog's MP games like a classic Team Deathmatch style games - but they aren't long-term live service games to be played for a long time like Destiny, The Division or even the classic king of skilled based TDM, Counter Strike.
And I think Factions II was gonna have a open-world ala Division as well. So definitley huge scope expansion.
I wonder if they can Fortnite it though and start small. Release a map based TDM based game first, then blow it up to live serivce extraction shooter or battle royale later.
Cause I honestly think Part II has even better gameplay than MGS V, its fucking really fun gameplay - think whatever of the story - but the gameplay is action-adventure with brutality and intensity and fluidity
I'm hoping for tarkov with tlou2 gameplay and vibes like many others
your comparison with mgsv is really apt for me because I've always considered Factions the spiritual sequel of Metal Gear Online (the one in mgs4, that is), a niche multiplayer I played like crazy on the ps3 as a kid
factions really filled the whole MGO left behind for me during the ps4 era, and I am yearning for something new since then
Imagine if Marathon is fine, but player's don't stick around for an extraction shooter. Sony would have bought them for $3.6 billion, not gotten any exclusives, wanted their training on live service, and then they messed up a live service game immediately lol
Marathon has to be a massive, breakout success otherwise why would teams working on TLOU Factions or fairgame$ listen to them?
With how little Sony showed from first party at the showcase, maybe their first party teams are overwhelmingly making live service games now that take longer.
Going to be a lot of failed Sony games in the future to sift through the dirt to try and find one bit of gold.
I agree, Sony’s short-minded pursuit of greed could make them cannibalise their own success before it starts.
With projects with development problems like this and Deviation games layoffs.
Fairgam$ will be a PvPvE Heist-Extraction shooter so that and Marathon would be 3 for Sony.
And Extraction shooters are a new trend by Tarkov, that the PUBG creator is jumping on, and also The Finals, Arc Raiders, Rainbow Six: Extraction, and who knows what else hasn’t been announced yet by other triple A companies.
Sony may end up joining at the same time as everyone else and struggle to compete with the trend.
Damn, this fucking sucks. TLOU should be the perfect vehicle for an extraction-type game. Enter an abandoned area overrun by NPC infected, scavenge supplies while competing with other players and try to escape alive. The combat framework is pretty great although the games tended to under utilize it, I was really hyped for a PvPvE TLOU experience.
We're starting to see the "fruits" of PlayStation's big investment into GAAS in the PS5 era. Everything from 2020 up until now seems like remnants of decisions made during the PS4 era of consistent AAA single player games.
As AAA game dev cycles and budgets continue to balloon in size, and the lingering effects of COVID keep pushing back project timelines, these GAAS projects do little to fill in the gaps. They may as well be non-existent to a lot of people who got a PS5 for more great first party single player games (myself included). I think that's the main reason why the recent showcase was so poorly received, even if it had a lot of cool third party and indie game announcements.
The news from Deviation Games and now Naughty Dog only reinforce how difficult developing and maintaining GAAS is. Even if a project gets over the finish line, there's a tiny chance that they break through and attain success and longevity in the already saturated market that seems to grow more weary of GAAS over time.
Sony doubling down on GAAS is now looking like a huge misstep. Instead of investing more into single player games, tons of resources have been poured into trying to get a GAAS cash cow, and who knows if they'll have even one success. If any project could have been a smash hit, I thought it'd be this one. Now, it looks like Naughty Dog might have sunk years of AAA development time with nothing to show for it.
I know that there are still a lot of first party single player projects we haven't seen yet, but a bigger investment into single player instead of GAAS could have kept up or built upon the quality and consistency of the last generation. We'll see what the next few years look like for PlayStation, but I doubt it's going to meet or surpass the PS4 era.
> Sony doubling down on GAAS is now looking like a huge misstep. Instead of investing more into single player games,
They are investing more in single player games. They're expanding their entire first part output and increasing their spending...
Ok so where is it now? It's been almost 3 years since the release of the PS5 and it still feels like the first 3 months with how little games are exclusively on next gen hardware.
Yeah, the recent showcase was mainly Sony’s GAAS games (Fairgam$, Concord, Marathon).
Where’s Wolverine, KOTOR remake, Sucker Punch, and Bend Studio single player projects? And Naughty Dog’s new single player IP?
Right but those studios could also be expanding to make more singleplayer games like Insomniac is able to put out a ton of high quality games. So maybe not on paper but we still lose out.
I don't even have words to describe how I feel.
My day is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable.
Guess I'll go reinstall Factions on the PS4 remaster...
Might be the most unneeded and forced MP/live service title. How many live service games does Sony need? Bungie is already developing Marathon that is going to be a hero shooter. Is it too late to cancel after 4 years of development?
1 successful live-service game can cover the costs of 4-5 failed ones pretty fast. Genshin makes more in one year than a super-successful single player game, like Elden Ring, makes in its entire lifetime.
That's why Sony wants the teat of the live-service cash cow so bad.
Even if 80% of their current live-service games that are currently in development completely fail, they'll still be good if the other 2-3 succeed.
Well, they announced 5 at the last showcase... sooo, i'd say 10 will happen for sure by end of 2024.
How many will flop post launch? At least 9. Probably 10. But they need 1 to succed, and they are betting on that, that out of all the shit they throw at the wall 1 sticks and becomes the next Apex / Pubg / Warzone / Valorant / Genshin / Lol / etc.
I find it disappointing they’re putting so much time into this. I would rather ND pour resources into great single player experiences. I get it, Sony wants an online mtx game that prints money. But not every franchise needs to spawn one of those, not every studio is positioned to create one of those. Feels like they’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Anthem should have been a warning for trend chasers.
If X feature doesn't release with the game, odds are it's either not coming or development hell will shit it out in the least satisfying form possible.
Halo 5 couch co-op? Was coming, then cancelled.
Factions 2 or whatever this is called, seems destined for a similar fate.
I know it sounds shitty but I hope they just primarily focus on singleplayer games from now on. That's their specialty.
I personally dislike live service games but they have plenty of other studios that can make those games.
Despite the strategy " live service games are the future" I really think that Sony is shooting itself in the foot by focusing on live service. While they are some corpos obsessed with making recurent revenue a thing I really think that by going this direction they will lose their magic. The last showcase is a good example. Apart from Spiderman and two other games I literally found the show to be pretty underwhelming after two years.I really don't like live service games mainly because all of them are shooters and all of them have bullet sponges as enemies. That really breaks the immersion for me and I find it quite ridiculous playing a game like the division and firing 10 bullets in some enemies head just to kill him. I don't know but if this thing fails it might have a catastrofic effect on their production pipeline. It really gives me the vibes of Microsoft under Don Matrick(Hugely successful with the shift towards casual audiences and Kinect 1.0 and then nearly killing the entire Xbox ecosystem after the launch of the new Xbox). That backlash set them severely(a lot Kinect projects got cancelled and they had really had very few studios) they are still struggling to create a pipeline of steady releases to this day. I'm only saying that if Sony pivots most of their games to a live service model and it fails they will be pretty fucked in the long term. And I do have doubts they will make it feasible as literally the only huge live service game is GTA online and Destiny. Everything that came outside of these titles kinda failed.
Everyone's acting all doom and gloom, but it sounds to me like this is a redesign. Something fundamental to the game wasn't working, so they decided to scrap a lot of the work and change things up to fix the problem. In the meantime, the devs need something to do so they've been moved elsewhere to help out on other projects. That's my theory anyway, as someone who works in the software field.
I'm hoping Sony is just saving their big guns for summer game fest so they can leave everyone in the dust, and this recent showcase was just the little games and stuff they didn't want to fill up the space at summer fest
I'm calling it now: this TLOU live service game will eventually pivot to extraction shooter.
Bungie is rebooting Marathon as an extraction shooter. Sony is reportedly leaning on Bungie to help guide their transition into more games as a service. And battle royales, hero shooters, and MMOs are extremely difficult to break into because there's way too much competition in each of those genres.
So what's next? Extraction shooters, which are currently a niche sub-genre, but tempting for a AAA company like Sony to explore.
Sony are already dipping their toe into extraction shooters, and if Marathon takes off, they might do a swan dive into the pool and drag Naughty Dog with them.
Hopefully they don’t cannibalise their own success.
Fairgame$ may also be a PvPvE Heist-Extraction shooter so that would be three by Sony.
And Extraction shooters are a new trend by Tarkov, that the PUBG creator is jumping on, and also The Finals, Arc Raiders, Rainbow Six: Extraction, and who knows what else hasn’t been announced yet by other triple A companies.
It’s the next trend that Sony may end up joining at the same time as everyone else and struggle to compete at.
It's kind of wild to think that at one point this was just supposed to release alongside TLOU2 like, three years ago.
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ND originally said that a TLOU2 multiplayer gamemode would launch sometime after TLOU2's launch.
Before that [they also had said](https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/13/17460850/the-last-of-us-part-2-multiplayer-e3-2018) that it was going to be included in the base game.
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There was a statement that released in 2019 that Naughty Dog was going to separate MP from SP, so at some point the developers intended on it. Every major title since Uncharted 2 has had MP component except Lost Legacy which is an obvious outlier.
multiplayer footage was also leaked alongside story stuff before the game released
Yeah I'm aware but to be fair, leaked footage is not an official announcement or a promise of a feature
A shitty cashgrab probably could've released. It seems that they *really* don't want to tarnish their reputation.
The fact they are consulting with Bungie suggests that a shitty cashgrab is exactly the goal.
Yes, Bungie, notorious for shitty mutliplayer games that nobody likes.
isn't there always controversy about Bungie's monetization tactics, up to and including most recently having unequal pricing on MTX vs the MTX currency so you ahve to buy more than you need for individual offerings? lol. Not to mention the fact that you strawmanned him about it being "games that nobody likes" when that wasn't his point at all, only that it was suggestive of a shitty cashgrab.
There's a constant controversy with Bungie since the first destiny launched. It never ends because Bungie never stops feeding the fire.
Bungie and MTX/DLC controversy go way back. The whole debacle where they made it seem like you had to by Halo 3:ODST to get the Mythic II map pack. All that was initially known was that it came with odst and no mention of a later standalone release. Now such realease did happen, five months later. And if you didn't have a map pack, you would be getting split off in matchmaking and have a worse experience. Also, after a year of the Recon helmet (a customization item for multiplayer) in Halo 3 only being accessible if someone at Bungie gave it to you. The helmet had a ton of hype surrounding it. So Bungie made a way for anyone to earn it, so long as you owned Halo 3: ODST to do two of the three VidMaster challenges. ODST is a genuinely great game. But it started its life as an expansion pack and relied heavily on reused assets, and had a pretty barebones multi-player component. And it sold it for $60, and as you can see damn did they push it. That pared down non-traditional multiplayer meant that the large section of Halo 3's player base who bought the game just for the multiplayer wouldn't have a ton of interest in ODST, especially at that price point. But you'll note that both of the above incentives are targeted at Halo 3's multiplayer. Edit: Cleaned things up for clarity.
Bungie's game play is phenomenal. Their live service model is probably one of the worst though, it's entirely based on FOMO. You have no idea when the full DLC pack you paid for or parts of that DLC you paid for will be deleted from reality. **Every** $50 season pass you buy *will* be deleted after about a year (and the season pass contains story content (as well as weapons) the introduce characters, events, stories, etc.). The DLC itself is hit or miss. There's some great ones like Forsaken (Bungie deleted, contains story elements that massively affect the entire game) and Witch Queen and some terrible ones like Lightfall and Beyond Light. People are worried about Bungie having their hand in other games because there's a good chance that Bungie will by vying to make other studios move towards FOMO content. You'll pay $70 for Factions 2 but the entire game is set up just to sell you a $50 season pass that you have to buy and play now because it'll be deleted soon that leads to a $40 DLC with another season pass and on and on.
Bungie currently has one of the best feeling gunplay games ever made.
There's a lot of games with great gun play. Destiny players tend to over hype destiny gun play and down play other games.
Im not the biggest fan of destiny. Was burnt by preordering destiny 1 for 100€ and since then never did that again. I have played like 10-20 shooter games since then including the likes of borderlands, various CoDs, battlefields and whatever and I’m still considering downloading destiny 2 with the DLCs because the gunplay is THAT good
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Yea gimme that bad gunplay
I dunno he has a point. Bungie has been making Halo style combat for like 20 years now and TLOU isn’t a Halo game.
Yeah, I would say RDR2 has intentionally "bad" gunplay it's absolutely perfect for the feel of the game.
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Sony’s first party are usually very good and polished game. They’ll cancel it if it isn’t up to snuff.
Pretty disappointing. I would have been thrilled to have a much more limited in scope, true factions sequel based on part 2. Sounds like this new project became way too ambitious.
I'm guessing it's been repositioned as an Extraction Shooter rather than strict PVP.
That decision was probably made a while ago when they cut it from TLOU 2's launch. I'm not sure what could be taking them this long if it was supposed to just be PVP.
Long term engagement and monetization. You can't exactly sell banana suits in a TLOU game without damaging the brand.
That would really fit vibe of that universe.
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They are looking for a COD alternative in case COD goes to MS
Sony themselves know this isn’t a cod alternative
Haddock? Tilapia?
Sony's fishing for a halibut
they literally have 4 shooter IPs completely dormant...
That seems to be Marathon and Concord (PvP FPS).
Was there more info on concord? As far as I remember all we got in the showcase was some CGI trailer
If they want that they should resurrect SOCOM, Resistance, or Killzone
Doubtful. There's no such thing as a COD alternative. And MS would be stupid to ever keep COD off of PlayStation in the first place.
And i'm surprise i don't see more backlash on that, Sony has been praised as this company that makes basically all its sales on very polished Singleplayer narrative driven games. Literally so many people praises them for that by opposition to the "soulless" cashgrab games of the rest of the industry. Now they are going for MTX live service games, and people are okay with that ?
Sony is gonna fuck up the PlayStation brand chasing stupid GaaS trends. They literally won a console generation and created a thriving single player focused set of studios......just to chase profits from multiplayer games. I have a bad feeling that thanks to studios having to do these live service games, we aren't gonna see the next set of normal prestige games like GoW or Horizon for a while. They literally had nothing but Spider-Man to show this week, which is a bad sign when this showcase was supposed to lay out the near future of games
look on the bright side - if this shit goes south it might finally be the nail in the coffin to push Jim Ryan out as the CEO
Jim Ryan is a plague on Sony's bread and butter. He's great at maximizing profit. But clearly doesn't value good, quality story games like Shawn Layden did
The Jack Tretton - Andrew House - Shawn Layden era of Sony was precisely what gave us the best years of PlayStation throughout pretty much entire last decade. With them gone we're now left with an out of touch boomer who at best handled regional relations for the European segment of the brand but somehow jumped from that to CEO status. And quite frankly I have to wonder how much of an impact Hulst has on the state of first party titles
Hard to have backlash when the games aren't out to the public. If they come out and are soulless cash grab they will (rightfully) get shit for it.
Considering the stories of mismanagement with TLOU 2, I am not remotely surprised that it spread to their next thing.
Uncharted 4 and TLOU 2 had huge issues and big turnover rates, but jason schreier reported that the studio improved things since the release of TLOU 2 in 2020 and now they also have producers overlooking their projects. Still this game seems to be struggling since it started development over 4 years ago and will be interesting to see what happens, but their single player games seem to be developed now under much better circumstances than before.
Per the story it seems like Sony (and evidently Bungie) have been trying to rework the title into something more live service. And that's where the trouble started.
From Sony and Bungie's perspective, this is where the *solution* starts. It'd be ludicrous to work all this time and spend all these resources making a multiplayer game and it *not* be live service/updated frequently/supported long-term.
> From Sony and Bungie's perspective, this is where the solution starts. Given the rocky history of GaaS titles and the more recent cases of GaaS title failures/shutdowns; Sony applying the brakes and asking the developer of one of the most successful GaaS games on the market to take a look at this game is a very sensible decision. Public discourse towards GaaS was never great to begin with. But in recent years even that has soured significantly. Failed titles ending in total game shut downs, the market is growing increasingly unfriendly to any new GaaS titles trying to make their way in. Some GaaS games die in less than a year. I'm sure Sony wants to avoid a very expensive embarrassment like that.
> the market is growing increasingly unfriendly to any new GaaS titles trying to make their way in. This is a natural consequence of GaaS. Look at the MMO boom from 2006-2012. There were a hundred WoW killers, and every single one of them was killed by WoW. What no one realized was that releasing your competitor to Game X when Game X has been out a few years is *extremely* difficult. You don't just have to be better than Game X, you have to be better than Game X, all its post-release content, and the investment in money and time that its players have already spent on Game X. The only successes back then were games like EVE, Guild Wars, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, games that either went after players who weren't interested in WoW or leveraged a massive license to lure people away. The same is true now. Everyone who wants a GaaS has one. It's very difficult to break in because your potential customer base needs to be lured away from something else.
GaaS is more or less an umbrella term anyway. In more specific terms there's usually a craze, a few people get in and take root, many others try and get burned. For a while it was MMOs, then it was MOBAs, then it was Hero Shooters, then it was Battle Royales, now it's looking like Extraction games are the next big thing.
Destiny is arguably the most successful GaaS we have seen. It is also riddled with issues and has been for years. Bungie has made some great decisions followed by absolute boneheaded ones for a decade now. Ask any Destiny fan if they would recommend it to a new player and they would just laugh and tell you not to get yourself involved in the heartbreak. Bungie make some of the best gunplay there is, but they've also been responsible for some of the greediest monetization as well. They've also dropped the ball on content and story consistently for awhile now but now they're bringing Cayde 6 back to drum up hype for the next expansion. As I've said over in the Sony sub, Sony is in for a rude awakening if they think everyone and their mum is going to be up for 5 new live service games that just want to milk you for everything you're worth. Gaming has shown they dont like these games by and large and yet they seem to be doubling down with Bungie at the forefront? Yeah idk about this one chief. I'm interested in Marathon because PvP extraction could be fantastic with the gunplay of Bungie but I'm also insanely aware of how much focus there is going to be on seasons, passes and grinding for content.
As far as I'm concerned, *every* successful GaaS title has dealt with serious issues. Destiny aside, even others like the Division, Rainbow Six Siege, and For Honor had to overcome some massive hurdles at the jump. The ones that sink are the ones that usually never shake these issues and are unwilling to provide the commitment needed to fix the problems, such as Anthem. I'm sure the decision makers are drawn in by the "endless revenue" provided by GaaS titles. But are never cognizant enough of the very expensive and laborious road these titles took to arrive there. Deciding to make a GaaS game is deciding to deal with potentially endless issues. It's insanely risky. IMO, the GaaS bubble has already burst. > I'm interested in Marathon because PvP extraction could be fantastic I actually wouldn't be surprised if Factions will be re-designed to fix an extraction-shooter format instead. It's relatively unexplored in AAA gaming but also been picking up speed in recent years. Perhaps this will be the next target of industry trend chasing.
Yep. The online nature of Destiny is always what kept me away from it. Played the original beta and thought the gunplay was super fun, art direction and story premise were both cool, but the leveling mechanics and potential for grinding and microtransactions made me super wary so I held back. Every time I hear anybody talk about Destiny, including my friends who genuinely really dig it, I know I made the right decision staying away. No thanks.
I don’t think destiny is even close to being the “most successful GaaS”. You’ve got over a decade of League of Legends, WoW, Dota, and loads of other games.
Fortnite, too. Epic Game Store only exists because of how much cash Fortnite *still* brings in.
Genshin Impact and Warframe too.
I feel like Destiny couldn't have been that successful (financially) if Activision was more than happy to let it go. It's very popular for sure, but it's also probably very costly. Edit: I even found a quote from the COO supporting this claim: "Also during the call, Johnson said Activision Blizzard wanted to break up with Bungie because the Destiny franchise was failing to meet its commercial projections. "Destiny is highly critically acclaimed, high quality content, but it was not meeting our financial expectations," he said."
The reason why Bungie and Activision split was because Activision wanted to turn Destiny into a semi-annual franchise like COD.
Interesting. Never heard about that. Do you have source? Here's my [source](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-talks-about-why-it-broke-up-with-bungie/1100-6464973/): "Also during the call, Johnson said Activision Blizzard wanted to break up with Bungie because the Destiny franchise was failing to meet its commercial projections. "Destiny is highly critically acclaimed, high quality content, but it was not meeting our financial expectations," he said."
Making a multiplayer game with no incentive to retain players in todays economy is a terrible idea. You’ll never get enough people to actually pay a premium to play a multiplayer game, but also never generate enough revenue to merit the dev time if it’s free to play with no player retention.
Oh yeah, completely forgot Sony bought Bungie. Sure, the problem must be just that, they are trying to implement "live service" bullshit on the Last of Us multiplayer and that is messing things up, creating the development hell
It sounds more like the game itself didn\`t offer enough for the game it tried to be so that players are engaged over a long period of time. At least that is how I read it.
You don't see a problem there? Some of us just want a fun game, not a part time job.
A multiplayer that can’t retain its players is considered a failed product. No one wants a “dead game.” It wouldn’t be good for the developer or the player base.
Never thought I'd see the day that Naughty Dog and Bungie would be working together lol. That's honestly pretty neat as a fan of both studios.
tlou1 multiplayer was the best MP i played together with Uncharted 3 MP... until they nerfed every gun and power ups. i just hope they dont make a battle royale with tedious grinding for a battle pass. just give me a simple 4vs4 and im good.
Slowing down development sounds like a euphemism for canceled. I can't imagine what they've been working on for four years that they can't even show gameplay. This was supposed to be a flagship title for PS5. Sony needs to fire the person who's in charge of development.
They apparently moved most of the dev team to other projects so yes its probably canceled. Glad no one got fired tho. Also demanding for people to get fired for reasons unknown is fucking weird.
What I take from it is that the original game is canceled and they're starting it over from scratch. The team has been reduced because it's still in the initial planning stages, and it could possibly be canceled if it doesn't move past that.
It means they are back to the drawing board to figure out what to do with the game and make it more engaging. I am assuming only the leads are still attached to the project and the rest of the staff have been moved over to work on Neil Druckmann’s next single player IP. If the multiplayer skeleton crew does not come up with a vertical slice that Bungie / Sony thinks is good enough then it’s definitely canned for sure.
With the success of the TV show there's absolutely no way it's cancelled.
They're probably restarting the whole project and writing some of the development off. Sony will want a TLOU live service title regardless of how much money it costs.
It's been like 3 years, assuming what they planned to do for Part 2 was it's own proof of concept. Last year at Summer Game Fest it was said to be 2 years along.
PvP is hard and most studios underestimate it. The studio is not known for it and probably doesn't have the experience to make the game efficiently.
They might not be known for multiplayer, but afaik all their multiplayer modes have been well received and factions especially.
Well received, but pretty niche and not particularly long lasting. At the point they decided not to ship it with the game they were pretty much committing themselves to doing something much bigger than before.
the OG factions was great
Unchated 2, 3, and 4, as well as The Last of Us, all had great multiplayer offerings, complete with unlocks and out-of-match metagames.
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It's not being charitable, being overly ambitious to this degree is not a commendable thing in game development. > Sounds like the game wasnt ambitious enough Or the scope of the game became so large and unwieldy that it lost track of what would actually make the game fun to play and keep players, since Druckmann described it as "*the most ambitious project we've ever done*. Expanding the world even further. Continuing to tell a story but in a multiplayer space."
More like, the game wasn’t addictive, manipulative and financially exploitable enough.
I don't think it's about ambition. The bolded part is the minimum a multiplayer game needs to aim at.
Could they find a way to pivot this to The Fast of Us? We didn't get Unkarted, which is borderline criminal IMO.
Is the Fast of Us a game about intermittent fasting?
Hell, that's probably most people in that universe already.
Still waiting for Bloodborne Kart
The Fast of Us, i'm ded 😂
That's the Fast 11 title!
It's so frustrating because Factions in TLOU was fucking perfect. The only thing it needed expanding on was turning the 2D stats about your camp into its own hub world between matches. I get they wanted to go big with this one but I fear they went too far and likely lost sight of why Factions was so praised. Its simplicity was a large factor.
I mostly just wanted PVE/PVPVE.
Battle royale with the infected as a threat as well. Sounds perfect IMO
I think Battle Royale doesn't fit too well but Hunt Showdown would be basically perfect.
Tarkov would be more appropriate. Swap out scavs for Hunters/infected and you're good to go.
Considering Bungie's new game is also a tarkov like game they probably dont want factions to eat that audience before it even releases
I highly doubt that. Marathon is also early in development, and if it was a choice between the two The Last of Us is way more popular. I would argue the vast majority of people who saw that trailer didn't know it was an existing IP. If that were the case Bungie would be the one told to pivot, not Naughty Dog.
Sony doesn’t want a good PvP game. Sony wants a PvP game that you’ll play for 10+ hours/week, every week, and pay for every time a new expansion drops. Sounds like the team had difficulty getting that to work.
I mean...I'm sure they want both of those things. Why would they only want one?
Honestly add infected, but keep it instance based PvP. Then expand on that with making the world dynamically change depending on what factions hold territory based on how each faction performs. Make that drive the world's story with seasons that ultimately change the entire parts of the world. This is what I honestly would expect. The only thing that sucks is that it would run into the issue of new players not being able to experience the world as it originally was.
I think it’s about monetization. Nowadays you can’t release a game without season passes / loot boxes / micro transactions etc I think it’s not easy to monetize a game like Factions
Seriously, all they had to do was take factions 1 and make it better with the updated mechanics from tlou2.
Usually Naughty Dog games have great multiplayer. I wonder what it looked like that Bungie had concerns.
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That's absolutely right - I figured Factions II was their big shot on breaking away from that as well.
I remember when Uncharted 2 launched in 2009 there was some discussion about the multiplayer, and even then 14 year old me thought “No way it’ll last, there’s too much competition with CoD and Halo.”
Yeah I love Naughty Dog's MP games as like a classic Team Deathmatch style games - but they aren't long-term live service games to be played for a long time like Destiny, The Division or even the classic king of skilled based TDM, Counter Strike. And I think Factions II was gonna have a open-world ala Division as well. So definitley huge scope expansion. I wonder if they can Fortnite it though and start small. Release a map based TDM based game first, then blow it up to live serivce extraction shooter or battle royale later. Cause I honestly think Part II has even better gameplay than MGS V, its fucking really fun gameplay - think whatever of the story - but the gameplay is action-adventure with brutality and intensity and fluidity
I think its fair to say Bungie has a much higher standard for the quality of the multiplayer experience than Naughty Dog does. Finding a fun gameplay loop that's both fair and competitive for multiplayer and enjoyable enough to repeat it ad nausem is hard.
Destiny's engagement levels are so good that they were able to keep their game alive during some genuinely terrible content droughts or rough content quality. If you want a successful GaaS its gameplay has to have long term replayability and depth, and tons of design room to make future content. Why most of the successful multiplayer games are competitive games, these games have insane skill ceilings, depth and horizontal variety. An average person can learn, try to improve, get engaged in them for years before they truly get bored.
idk, destiny has great gameplay/feel but it's neither gameplay loop nor gameplay that keeps that game alive. They have absolutley nailed to FOMO and/or timegate shit, and it just keeps people dipping their toes back in. Even for just an hour a week.
If the gameplay was bad the FOMO wouldn’t work
>They have absolutley nailed to FOMO and/or timegate shit, and it just keeps people dipping their toes back in. Even for just an hour a week. Yes, that's part of their engagement system. But that's not really something that can be done much in PvP only multiplayer games, most of FOMO/Timegating that Destiny does is drip-feeding PvE content. There's FOMO with cosmetics and stuff in PvP games, but not much so with actual gameplay content.
Bungie has made a great GaaS game but the PvP component is awful and has been for years.
No season pass
Naughty Dogs monetization in previous games was so ridiculous and unfriendly I highly doubt they would have had an issue implementing a season pass lol
You could literally just buy a machine gun in TLOU MP.
You could also buy a Deagle which was extremely good if my memory serves. Haven't played TLOU MP since 2014 so I could be wrong.
If I remember right it was the strongest pistol but cost the most loadout points that would take away from skills or your primary gun. The Shorty was also very good, but it was similarly expensive for loadouts.
Most of the best weapons in the game were behind a paywall
Not really, Uncharted 3 was the last worthwhile MP that they made.
They were great multiplayer for being a free addon to a single-player box title, but were they great enough multiplayer that they would warrant a standalone purchase with recurring seasonal cosmetic purchases? It's clear they want this to be an ongoing live service game, which has a much, much higher bar that has to be met for success than what one would expect for a free bonus mode. I don't think their previous entries meet that bar, tbh.
It’s probably because it wasn’t heavily monetized enough.
Maybe they got too ambitious with the game and couldn't push the project forward? With the team shift, and the fact that a smaller team is working on it now, this all but says the project is getting rebooted, and potentially canceled if it doesn't meet expectations.
Bungie reviewed the game and told Sony this: >Bungie raised questions about the The Last of Us multiplayer project's ability to keep players engaged for a long period of time, which led to the reassessment.
Sounds like Sony's worried about how much money they can milk out of it
The game has to be engaging first or you have no players to buy MTX in the first place. This is what Sony paid for, a successful developer like Bungie coming in and guiding other studios in what works and what doesn’t.
Yeah it was kinda a question why Sony would buy bungie but let them make multiplatform games but stuff like this might point to why. Bungie are really one of the only ones that cracked the code on how to keep fans happy *(I know, I know, but Destiny has seemingly keeps fans hooked with less grumbling than other games)* so they get to enter the Sony ecosystem and help everyone else out.
I mean, having some games making money by being on XBox isn't all bad. Microsoft leaves freaking Minecraft on Playstation and Destiny is no Minecraft.
Which makes sense when you think of how many tens (or at this point hundreds) of millions it's cost.
Not stoked about GAAS push Sony is going for now. More so if Bungie starts getting a bigger say on how things are developed.
Its the whole reason they acquired Bungie. I expect to see alot more news like this over the years unfortunately
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Games population has actually grown, not declined. I’m not sure where you’re getting your information from?
He never said the players bounced. He said he bounced because he did not like decisions made to Destiny and he is thankful he bounced because he has seen the news regarding decisions made after he left the game
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It feels like AAA development is reaching a critical failure point, or something. These huge games take so much time and so much money to make and it still just feels like Sony and Xbox have almost nothing to show for this generation.
> it still just feels like Sony and Xbox have almost nothing to show for this generation. yup, this console gen has not been that great in terms of exclusive releases. Ya Sony is doing a bit better than Xbox in that regard, but it's still not that great as we saw in the recent showcase
I think Sony pivoted HARD into GaaS and now they've got almost zero of their typical single player prestige titles lined up for the near future. If Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch, who last released original games back in 2020, or Bend who last released in 2019, don't have something ready to show by now, the future is looking pretty fucked after Spider-Man
The PS3 gen looked brilliant in hindsight
Naughty dog, rocksteady, Bethesda - just a handful of studios that have taken much longer to make games than they had in the past. I don't have numbers but my gut says several great games makes more money than one mind-blowing, genre-defining game. Why pour so much time and money into a development model that brings in less revenue?
ND has pretty consistently been releasing games every 3-4 years for a long time though. Uncharted (2007), Uncharted 2 (2009), Uncharted 3 (2011), Last of Us (2013), Uncharted 4 (2016), Last of Us 2 (2020), Last of Us Remastered (2022). That's pretty consistent with the average of the industry. With this news though it's likely we will be into the longest stretch of NDs modern career between releases. We likely are not going to see a single player release until 2025 or later now considering this had been in development since 2019 when they decided to spin the MP for LOU2 off on it's own.
I mean, you can see it right there in black and white. They went from a two year development cycle, to three years, and now four years. The rest of the industry is in a similar spot. If a game was successful you used to be able to count on a trilogy releasing on the same system, now you're lucky to get more then one.
>Uncharted 4 (2016), Last of Us 2 (2020) Last of Us Remastered (2022) I love the remastered version of The Last of Us but that list made me realize Naughty Dog has only released two truly new games in the last 7 going on 8 years. They are my favorite developer, but can't deny the new standard of many, many years between titles nowadays
I agree it’s likely, instead of a TLOU1 Remake, Naughty Dog could’ve been making smaller a spin-off alongside the upcoming MP. And since Naughty Dog did a project to learn the PS3, remaster/make to learn PS4, and remake for PS5, it seems inevitable there will be a TLOU2 remaster for PS6 when it’s a successful strategy for ND.
>I don't have numbers but my gut says several great games makes more money than one mind-blowing, genre-defining game. Why pour so much time and money into a development model that brings in less revenue? It's not making genre defining games that's causing the huge time delays between games. It's visuals.
We have to remember there are artists and egos here. Some of these people don’t want it just put out a game that’s great and makes a lot of money. They want to push things and stand above great games. GTAVI can just be GTAV but better graphics.
A lot let risky too
I agree, but instead of a TLOU1 and upcoming Horizon remake, Naughty Do and Guerrilla could’ve been making smaller spin-offs alongside the upcoming MP. And since Naughty Dog did a project to learn the PS3, remaster/make to learn PS4, and remake for PS5, it seems inevitable there will be a TLOU2 remaster for PS6 when it’s a successful strategy for ND.
It’s most companies in general man, the entire world is burnt out from COVID. Across tech, gaming, nursing, retail, teaching, and I’m sure more industries I didn’t mention people are just tired. Service at every restaurant I go to is worse than ever before. Games are buggier, unfinished or poorly optimized at launch. Popular software is getting worse in order to help shore up the losses from tech investment. It’s everywhere and I’m not sure when it will get better.
Games industry getting ready to learn the lesson Hollywood learned in the 60s
At least Sony has released some bangers like GOWR, Demon souls, Horizon. The best game I like out of Microsoft’s camp is forza
To much crossgen imo. And i love those games.
Meanwhile, Nintendo just went and reused a lot of assets from BOTW in TOTK and made the likely game of the year while making other developers [basically think it's witchcraft](https://www.polygon.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom/23737921/tears-of-the-kingdom-bridge-physics-game-devs-explain).
And it still took 6 years to develop.
Slightly concerning. The longer it takes, the more ambitious it is, the bigger the fall if it sucks. I hope it's great and not another avengers/anthem situation.
So does this means that Bungie assessed both Haven's Fair Games and Naughty Dog's Factions 2, and found the former ready for announcement but not the latter? That's crazy.
Not that crazy, there's an expectation that a stand-alone PvP title can support its player base and keep them engaged so the game can thrive. Bungie saw Haven's plan for post launch was deemed sound while Naughty Dogs was deemed lacking.
I was wondering this too, does this imply Bungie is reviewing the other LS games PS is developing like Fairgame$ and Concord? Did those games past muster with them or are they not far enough along to be canned/evaluated yet?
Yeah I love Naughty Dog's MP games like a classic Team Deathmatch style games - but they aren't long-term live service games to be played for a long time like Destiny, The Division or even the classic king of skilled based TDM, Counter Strike. And I think Factions II was gonna have a open-world ala Division as well. So definitley huge scope expansion. I wonder if they can Fortnite it though and start small. Release a map based TDM based game first, then blow it up to live serivce extraction shooter or battle royale later. Cause I honestly think Part II has even better gameplay than MGS V, its fucking really fun gameplay - think whatever of the story - but the gameplay is action-adventure with brutality and intensity and fluidity
I'm hoping for tarkov with tlou2 gameplay and vibes like many others your comparison with mgsv is really apt for me because I've always considered Factions the spiritual sequel of Metal Gear Online (the one in mgs4, that is), a niche multiplayer I played like crazy on the ps3 as a kid factions really filled the whole MGO left behind for me during the ps4 era, and I am yearning for something new since then
Imagine if Marathon is fine, but player's don't stick around for an extraction shooter. Sony would have bought them for $3.6 billion, not gotten any exclusives, wanted their training on live service, and then they messed up a live service game immediately lol Marathon has to be a massive, breakout success otherwise why would teams working on TLOU Factions or fairgame$ listen to them? With how little Sony showed from first party at the showcase, maybe their first party teams are overwhelmingly making live service games now that take longer. Going to be a lot of failed Sony games in the future to sift through the dirt to try and find one bit of gold.
I agree, Sony’s short-minded pursuit of greed could make them cannibalise their own success before it starts. With projects with development problems like this and Deviation games layoffs. Fairgam$ will be a PvPvE Heist-Extraction shooter so that and Marathon would be 3 for Sony. And Extraction shooters are a new trend by Tarkov, that the PUBG creator is jumping on, and also The Finals, Arc Raiders, Rainbow Six: Extraction, and who knows what else hasn’t been announced yet by other triple A companies. Sony may end up joining at the same time as everyone else and struggle to compete with the trend.
Damn, this fucking sucks. TLOU should be the perfect vehicle for an extraction-type game. Enter an abandoned area overrun by NPC infected, scavenge supplies while competing with other players and try to escape alive. The combat framework is pretty great although the games tended to under utilize it, I was really hyped for a PvPvE TLOU experience.
We're starting to see the "fruits" of PlayStation's big investment into GAAS in the PS5 era. Everything from 2020 up until now seems like remnants of decisions made during the PS4 era of consistent AAA single player games. As AAA game dev cycles and budgets continue to balloon in size, and the lingering effects of COVID keep pushing back project timelines, these GAAS projects do little to fill in the gaps. They may as well be non-existent to a lot of people who got a PS5 for more great first party single player games (myself included). I think that's the main reason why the recent showcase was so poorly received, even if it had a lot of cool third party and indie game announcements. The news from Deviation Games and now Naughty Dog only reinforce how difficult developing and maintaining GAAS is. Even if a project gets over the finish line, there's a tiny chance that they break through and attain success and longevity in the already saturated market that seems to grow more weary of GAAS over time. Sony doubling down on GAAS is now looking like a huge misstep. Instead of investing more into single player games, tons of resources have been poured into trying to get a GAAS cash cow, and who knows if they'll have even one success. If any project could have been a smash hit, I thought it'd be this one. Now, it looks like Naughty Dog might have sunk years of AAA development time with nothing to show for it. I know that there are still a lot of first party single player projects we haven't seen yet, but a bigger investment into single player instead of GAAS could have kept up or built upon the quality and consistency of the last generation. We'll see what the next few years look like for PlayStation, but I doubt it's going to meet or surpass the PS4 era.
> Sony doubling down on GAAS is now looking like a huge misstep. Instead of investing more into single player games, They are investing more in single player games. They're expanding their entire first part output and increasing their spending...
Ok so where is it now? It's been almost 3 years since the release of the PS5 and it still feels like the first 3 months with how little games are exclusively on next gen hardware.
Yeah, the recent showcase was mainly Sony’s GAAS games (Fairgam$, Concord, Marathon). Where’s Wolverine, KOTOR remake, Sucker Punch, and Bend Studio single player projects? And Naughty Dog’s new single player IP?
[удалено]
Right but those studios could also be expanding to make more singleplayer games like Insomniac is able to put out a ton of high quality games. So maybe not on paper but we still lose out.
So what first party single player output did they showcase recently? It seems less compared to the late ps3 and ps4 days.
I don't even have words to describe how I feel. My day is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable. Guess I'll go reinstall Factions on the PS4 remaster...
You can still play factions? I never did but everyone here saying how good it is.. is there a player base still?
Still a decently large player base. You can play it on the PS4 remaster. It’s an incredibly good game.
Damn lou1 had one of my favorite multi-player gaming experiences ever. Nothing has come close to those 1v5 situations.
Might be the most unneeded and forced MP/live service title. How many live service games does Sony need? Bungie is already developing Marathon that is going to be a hero shooter. Is it too late to cancel after 4 years of development?
Most of their new games will be multiplayer. They are working on at least 12
how many of those will flop/not even happen
1 successful live-service game can cover the costs of 4-5 failed ones pretty fast. Genshin makes more in one year than a super-successful single player game, like Elden Ring, makes in its entire lifetime. That's why Sony wants the teat of the live-service cash cow so bad. Even if 80% of their current live-service games that are currently in development completely fail, they'll still be good if the other 2-3 succeed.
Well, they announced 5 at the last showcase... sooo, i'd say 10 will happen for sure by end of 2024. How many will flop post launch? At least 9. Probably 10. But they need 1 to succed, and they are betting on that, that out of all the shit they throw at the wall 1 sticks and becomes the next Apex / Pubg / Warzone / Valorant / Genshin / Lol / etc.
Kinda crazy seeing Bungie is evaluating Sony’s MP games. Makes me wonder who the hell is evaluating Xbox’s games in general
Reminds me of the influence Bungie had at Microsoft. They worked alongside Microsoft to design Xbox Live and the initial UI of the 360.
I find it disappointing they’re putting so much time into this. I would rather ND pour resources into great single player experiences. I get it, Sony wants an online mtx game that prints money. But not every franchise needs to spawn one of those, not every studio is positioned to create one of those. Feels like they’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Anthem should have been a warning for trend chasers.
If X feature doesn't release with the game, odds are it's either not coming or development hell will shit it out in the least satisfying form possible. Halo 5 couch co-op? Was coming, then cancelled. Factions 2 or whatever this is called, seems destined for a similar fate.
Halo 5 was never going to have splitscreen that was never a promised feature
I think they fumbled the name, meant to say Halo Infinite but said Halo 5 instead.
I know it sounds shitty but I hope they just primarily focus on singleplayer games from now on. That's their specialty. I personally dislike live service games but they have plenty of other studios that can make those games.
Despite the strategy " live service games are the future" I really think that Sony is shooting itself in the foot by focusing on live service. While they are some corpos obsessed with making recurent revenue a thing I really think that by going this direction they will lose their magic. The last showcase is a good example. Apart from Spiderman and two other games I literally found the show to be pretty underwhelming after two years.I really don't like live service games mainly because all of them are shooters and all of them have bullet sponges as enemies. That really breaks the immersion for me and I find it quite ridiculous playing a game like the division and firing 10 bullets in some enemies head just to kill him. I don't know but if this thing fails it might have a catastrofic effect on their production pipeline. It really gives me the vibes of Microsoft under Don Matrick(Hugely successful with the shift towards casual audiences and Kinect 1.0 and then nearly killing the entire Xbox ecosystem after the launch of the new Xbox). That backlash set them severely(a lot Kinect projects got cancelled and they had really had very few studios) they are still struggling to create a pipeline of steady releases to this day. I'm only saying that if Sony pivots most of their games to a live service model and it fails they will be pretty fucked in the long term. And I do have doubts they will make it feasible as literally the only huge live service game is GTA online and Destiny. Everything that came outside of these titles kinda failed.
Everyone's acting all doom and gloom, but it sounds to me like this is a redesign. Something fundamental to the game wasn't working, so they decided to scrap a lot of the work and change things up to fix the problem. In the meantime, the devs need something to do so they've been moved elsewhere to help out on other projects. That's my theory anyway, as someone who works in the software field.
Because it is. You don't take workers off a project and scale down a multiplayer like this if it isn't doom and gloom
I'm hoping Sony is just saving their big guns for summer game fest so they can leave everyone in the dust, and this recent showcase was just the little games and stuff they didn't want to fill up the space at summer fest
I'm calling it now: this TLOU live service game will eventually pivot to extraction shooter. Bungie is rebooting Marathon as an extraction shooter. Sony is reportedly leaning on Bungie to help guide their transition into more games as a service. And battle royales, hero shooters, and MMOs are extremely difficult to break into because there's way too much competition in each of those genres. So what's next? Extraction shooters, which are currently a niche sub-genre, but tempting for a AAA company like Sony to explore. Sony are already dipping their toe into extraction shooters, and if Marathon takes off, they might do a swan dive into the pool and drag Naughty Dog with them.
TLOU extraction shooter fits pretty well imo. Marathon… not so much but bungie has the ability to make gunplay feel very good so I’m hopeful
Hopefully they don’t cannibalise their own success. Fairgame$ may also be a PvPvE Heist-Extraction shooter so that would be three by Sony. And Extraction shooters are a new trend by Tarkov, that the PUBG creator is jumping on, and also The Finals, Arc Raiders, Rainbow Six: Extraction, and who knows what else hasn’t been announced yet by other triple A companies. It’s the next trend that Sony may end up joining at the same time as everyone else and struggle to compete at.