So they're probably not even attempting that free-to-play re-release of Concord then. Damn. Sony literally lost hundreds of millions of dollars on this little experiment.

They need to get new people to run PlayStation department.
This whole gen has been ass for them.
From the direction they are going, to questionable calls, to PR, to lack luster State of play and so on.
Like this is not the Sony we grew to love from PS1-PS4. It’s like they don’t like games anymore. They acting like MS right now. All business. Fucking shame

Sony needs to stick to what they've been doing for eons now & that's developing & releasing single player games. Sony also needs to start listening to their fan base without their fans there would be no PlayStation.

I don't play PvP or mobile games so I'm personally glad Sony isn't investing even more into two studios working on those types of games. But it does suck for the employees, and hopefully the good ones can get a job with other PS Studios.

Hope they will find a new job soon! So many talented developer lost jobs today.

Bring back Shaun Layden

This is not a good year for workers.

Who didnt see this coming? And good riddance too. They need ro reevaluate their GaaS plans. Not every game is going to be a Fortnite or Over Watch.

Why are people sad when developers lose their jobs? It's not like millions of people don't get fired everyday for doing crappy work. They developed a crap game and got canned because of it. If they are actually talented they'll get scooped up by other companies. Sure Sony is partly responsible and they lost hundreds of millions because of it.

Good riddance.

I was excited about Herman Hulz and to be fair he’s stepping into a bad situation. This is not good, however, and paired with them pushing Horizon as hard as they are I’m really hoping it isn’t an indicator of what to expect moving forward. Cuz this and the Horizon thing are starting to feel a lot like Ubisoft and AC.

I mean when your first gane is one of the biggest flops in gaming history, added with the fact that your game was part of an initiative that's being undone, it's far from unexpected

I think people are really taking this emotionally and with their heart but the way people are acting now is the exact opposite as the way they treated Concord.
For week ppl did nothing but shit on the game and when someone makes a game that gets literally almost nothing but hate of course something is going to happen to the studio.
Concord being turned around was going to be a huge investment of even more time and money with still no certainty of recovering and still the stink of what it was, not good odds.
The studio is closing but hopefully Sony can retain some of them in other ways.
They did explore options for as long as it's been since concord got pulled down and this course makes sense. It sucks to have happened, there was a lot of talent, people who expected this to be a service game so they expected to have jobs for a while and now it's nebulous.

It's actually insane how hard Sony failed with Concord. Like, off the charts insane.
That said can't say I've ever heard of Neon Koi.

So...that Concord episode on Amazon Primes Secret Level is going to be awkward huh.

A bunch of better PS franchises shoved into a single episode and Concord got a full episode to themselves.

Surprising no one.

Well that’s it. No free-to-play comeback, no nothing. What a disasterpiece.

Corporations are not your friends

I wanna cheer for this but don’t wanna be a complete di*k cause this is real people’s jobs we are talking here but.. f**k em. F**ck live service games and f**k mobile games. Good riddiance. Hope you learn a good lesson here Sony.. you bunch of greedy incompetent idiots.

What a absolute shit show. Sony fully to blame for this. Why push live service games when you are known for releasing award winning single player games that I I'm willing to bet is the reason stick/buy playstation consoles.

Greedy, stupid, short sighted idiots!

I think regardless of if Sony picked up firewalk or not this was always going to happen to them even if they remained a small indie developer they spent years building a product that had no market demand sad reality of game development today is that if you're game doesn't sell well and it burned through all available cash it will kill the studio

Feels bad for all the workers.

Can’t wait to see how the same people who blast Microsoft for studio closures make excuses for Sony…….. and by the way I hate when it happens to studios regardless of who owns them.

Sony is running itself to the ground.

Lmao

That time again. What happun?

Senior management fail.
People lose their jobs.
Senior management keep their jobs.

It's terrible that they are losing their jobs. But at the same time, gamers can blame themselves too for what happened. Acting like it's none of your faults the game tanked. You shit on it before hand then act like you don't have any responsibility for their closer.

I blame Jim. I blame Herman.

But you all have to accept some blame as well. Point blank. A lot of you were asking Sony to make online games at the level of their single player games. You wanted Killzone or Resistance or Mag level of online gaming. If they had just tacked it on a single player game, you'd blame them if the single player game was not that long to play or didn't have enough content or whatever. You would then turn around and blast them for not having a road map of New content pouring into the online portion of the game. Wanting new weapons, new characters, new levels made for you on a consistent basis. Well guess what community? All that extra shit fed to you on a constant basis is what most of these live services are doing. Hell Divers 2 got it mostly right but I seen complaints about that games content.

You can please some of the people some of the time. But not all people all the time. You can't just blame them and leave yourselves out of it. I don't play online so I don't include myself into the picture. But looking from the outside, a lot of you wanted multiplayer games. They have tried to deliver that but in new Ips. And you shit on them. Maybe they'll take an existing franchise out of mothballs to deliver what you've been begging them to do. But don't act like you're not part of what happened to this developer. And it's dumb to think Sony should put all their eggs in one basket and only deliver single player games when there's gamers out there that play online and love it just as much as we love single player. Selfish much?

The tragic and sad part of this is that the developers where a group are nice people that tried to make a good game pays the price for a group of others developers inside the studio that talked crap against their consumers thinking that was a "good idea". And on the other hand, suits that every year want more and more money from games when everyone knows that any company hits a limit that's very hard to get more "blue numbers" after that point.

Greed and imposing politics on something that don't need those two things is what's killing gaming and this is another example of it.

Honestly nothing was lost. However, Sony shouldn't have bought these studios in the first place. A huge waste of money and same with Bungie. Dumb acquisitions

The issue that people often overlook is that Sony is not a charitable organization, and creating a new AAA single-player IP game exclusively for PlayStation is not a guaranteed profitable venture for Sony.

Regrettably, the cost of game development has significantly increased due to longer development cycles, while the PlayStation console user base typically tops out at around 125 million users. PlayStation users are unlikely to pay over $100 for a new IP, nor are they inclined to accept in-game advertising to offset costs or to have the game available on other platforms. Consequently, Sony is attempting to redefine the gaming landscape by promoting AA games like Astrobot as the new AAA (Welcome to the 'FUN era'), securing exclusivity deals, focusing on remasters and live service games, or considering the approach of selling games in parts (as indicated in the Insomniac leaks).

With Microsoft no longer posing as a formidable competitor, one can expect Sony to increasingly resemble Valve in its business strategies.

Firewalk I can understand since Concord crashed hard. Sony had a studio working on a mobile action game that's new to me.

Damn, sure is a bad time to be a developer today.

I hope these guys bounce back and find new careers quickly

I would hope that this could course-correct Sony going forward, but Hulst confirms in the email that he wants to keep the live service initiative going, which is not good.

Fairgame$, Marathon, Horizon multiplayer... How many more bombs will it take to get them to understand?

Redfall 2.0. You buy a studio, give them creative freedom and funds mid way through their on going project... but in all honesty it prob should've been shelved. Pain.

yeaaa we all saw it coming.

it sucks.
like evaluate your games Before u launch and let them die.

It would've been much better for Sony to bring back games like Infamous, Socom, Ape Escape, Jak & Daxter, Siren, Sly Cooper, Killzone, Twisted Metal, Little Big Planet, Gravity Rush, Motorstorm, Wild Arms, Resistance, Wipeout, Alundra, Colony Wars, Cool Boarders, Knack, Syphon Filter, Dark Cloud, Omega Boost, The Legend of Dragoon, G-Police, The Getaway and so on instead of live service crap like Concord.

They could also work with third parties developers to bring these franchises back like Parasite Eve, Dino Crisis, Ridge Racer, SSX, Tenchu, Jade Cocoon, Xenogears, Nightmare Creatures, Vagrant Story, Shadow Hearts, Driver, Breath of Fire, Tomba, Legend of Legaia, Okami..etc

We all see that comming a mile away

Boy, this is getting out of hand.
We are seeing this for almost two years now and it includes every major publisher / manufacturer.

Who wants to start a career in gaming these days?

Hope these guys will land on their feet.

if someone cost me 200 millions, i would fire them too

firewalk studios (was/were)

Let’s see the outrage now… oh wait it’s not Xbox closing something…. Everything is fine then. Still probably Spencer’s fault, though, right?.

Chasing a fad just leaves people out of work, Sony's venture into this area has been a disaster.

A studio that was meant to serve a game that no one wanted.

Series S strikes again

I guess it’s true what they say…

Go Woke, go broke.

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau

yep. they confirmed early that the crude humor the games are famous for is leaving to be more inclusive for the woke. and the rumors about the new online could make or break them.

$100 game incoming, or the most likely scenario is they will just follow Nintendo going for $80 for the base game

Can't believe anyone thinks it'll be over 70. They want as many people on it as they can to sell shark cards. The only way that happens is if they have a $100 deluxe edition with 3 days early access. Which would probably be smart for them because it'd fly off the shelves