Marsh Lefler (President) and Patrick Blank (Game Director) take us through one of Hob's newest playable demos, the Forest.
Sammy: "Sony disastrously and disgracefully shuttered Texas-based fan favourite Bluepoint yesterday. The long-time PS Studios partner never got a chance to ship a game under its new parent company.
This news hit me particularly hard because I believe it reflects the erosion of once-great PlayStation management that I think we’ve all been feeling for quite some time."
How was this allowed to happen? A studio know for excellent remakes and remasters were put on a GOW live service game? Something nobody wanted? There are so many other, more interesting projects, for me they were the prime studio who should have remastered or remade Bloodborne, what an absolute waste, I'm really annoyed about this.
Hulst should have followed Jim Ryan out the door, especially after his failed concord brainchild, execs really do only fail upwards.
You say "no body wanted" but we don't actually know if the Devs were the ones to pitch it. For all we know
If that was the case you would have thought Sony would have told Bluepoint no & had them make the God Of War trilogy remake instead while having Santa Monica Studios concentrate on the next God Of War & what ever else they're working on. A Bloodborne remake/remaster would have definitely printed Sony millions. It seems the upper management doesn't care what the fans think including them making awful business decisions. To take Bluepoint under their wing for 5 years & dismantle them is crazy work, Sony should have auctioned Bluepoint off to to a company that could really use them.
If the really did pitch it then they would have wanted their own IP for being a brand new game, not using someone else’s IP when it’s not a remake this time.
I mean I guess, but doubt that a small team of 70 wanted to do a live service game, I don't buy it personally, but we'll never 100% know.
i think you are half right. sony became hyper-focused on live service games and given that, studios would then pitch live service games because those projects were the most likely to be greenlit by the higher ups. now, as for what the hell bluepoint was working on since their god of war game was cancelled is beyond me. it's just increasingly frustrating when sony just announced a god of remake which is still in its infancy when bluepoint could have been working on it for years and likely would have shipped it by now.
We had a god of war mp in the past and it didn’t do well back then with less competition so doubtful people wanted a live service game especially from devs that made some top tier remakes
It does concern me that they think closing amazing studios like Bluepoint and Japan Studios is smart.
I'm honestly surprised Media Molecule is still around. They put out what 1 game in the past 10+ years? I personally wasn't interested in Dreams, so they have been a wash for me since the PS3 era. Are they working on a new game? What are they doing?
I immediately recalled when they shut down Japan Studio. I don’t understand why any studio would agree to be acquired by Sony, EA, or Microsoft with their history of studio closures.
Frustrating news, for sure. Hulst is on a major losing streak. Baffling decisions....
They could of let them do a Remakes of Sly, Jak and Daxter maybe the old Killzone games. Ported Demon Souls to other platforms. Steady revenue for growth becoming a 70 team to 100+ eventually.
As a PS Fan and someone that looks to new exsperiences not rehashing old ones I can feel for the devs but it does not move the needle as far as getting new video games.
The company says these reductions are part of its larger cost-cutting plan that included a major restructuring and the closure of its Halifax studio.
Kotaku writes: "So many teams were told to pivot to live-service, only for that plan to blow up in Sony’s face, and now it’s having to deal with all of that and is doing so in the fashion you’d expect from a large multinational corporation: layoffs, cuts, closures, and shutdowns."
Replies(1)Greed, overconfidence, agendas, western focused, and live service really changed em...6 years and barely any knockouts as great as the previous gens...what a generation ps5 has.
PlayStation needs restructuring. Make Japan their main HQ and focus again. It's what made the previous gens so special and of great quality without all this BS. Bluepoint being closed down among their other great smaller studios has really gotten me disappointed in them.
I completely agree with this and it needs to happen. Japan Studio and Bluepoint should have never been closed in the first place. What stupid decisions.
This entire generation has been a wash so far, when it comes to next gen they're going to have to redeem themselves before I actually buy it.
Replies(5)Fckn Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst, The deadly dumb duo. I dislike those guys for what they've done to Sony. Fire this man, seriously.
I’ve seen a lot of upset over bluepoints closure, and I have to ask. Wasn’t blue points main point to be the studio that converted their games to PC and Remakes. I know the rumor of them having a GAAS GoW is out there but even that being said, they were pretty much just doing that.
If most of the studios are doing their own remakes now (Santa Monica) and most games that are worth a damn are already remade and updated. That would just leave them with an original game. Which I don’t think we’ve heard anything pitched from them since they were acquired.
There are loads of ps1/Ps2 games that could be remade. If they wouldn't have been forced to do a GaaS title I'm sure we would have got another remake of something else.
That still doesn’t really say a lot, again, if the studios behind the games are being remade by the developers who made the game. And the same studio now being familiar with making their PC ports day and date without outsourcing to bluepoint.
The question remains what evidence do we have to support that bluepoint ever had a functional new IP to leverage after they didn’t deliver the GaaS title they were put on?
This is a fair question to ask, because again aside from Demon Souls there’s been nothing else I heard from this studio in the pipeline. And if ports and remakes was all they had that’s unfortunately kind of on them for not having something to standout with and rally interest.
