Lol this takes the cake for the most BS article iv read in recent weeks.Merging all the studios into one big one?? how's that gonna work,instead of juss letting the studios indepedently work on different games.

I think there were two articles about buying studios, hardly an explosion of articles.

I think owning some smaller companies is fine, I actually like the way Microsoft uses it's "Microsoft Games Studio" instead of a bunch of different ones or whatever, but I'd not like to see Sony or Microsoft buy Rockstar, Take Two, Crytek or Epic. I like seeing everyone be able to enjoy those games for the most part. Obviously Gears is a Microsoft exclusive, which just goes to show that you can still get exclusives from companies without owning them, same with games like Splinter Cell Conviction ect...

I like their being competition, I also think Sony has seen this year that having "all those exclusives" is a bit counterproductive. People are torn as to which game/s to buy. Some people cant get 10 or 20 exclusives and all the multiplatform titles as well. Which is why even though Sony has more exclusives this year, by a long shot, Microsoft will probably sell just as many overall copies with theirs, even with fewer out there.

Journalist should have multiple knowledge on a lot of things besides literature and composition. They need to learn business 101 and common sense.

"One studio that makes dozens of games, instead of dozens of studios that only make one game… every two years."

Lol. This guy has no clue as to how much structural prowess it would take takes to pull something like that off, and still have some creativity. Every game super studio would need to have its own internal engine, with dozens, maybe hundreds, of support engineers. In other words, every super studio would need its own internal Epic Megagames, Havok, or Crytek. Games studios also need a thriving, creative culture to produce good products, and that's pretty hard to accomplish on a grand scale.

Games studios operate as they do because games have widely varying needs, due to creative decisions, and shared support is already available, via middleware. Even MS knows this, and separates their own internal games studios from the mass that is MS proper, despite the fact that several of these studios are in Redmond and Bellevue -- the same towns as MS HQ.

The biggest issue with the megadev strategy is this: good luck finding that many people to move there to work. It'd have to be a major tech metropolis, like San Fran, Tokyo, LA, Seattle, or Montreal (Ubisoft basically does this, although on not quite such a scale, btw), and ALL of these places have HUGE cost-of-living issues, which basically throw away any "cost savings" you get from a megastructure. Devs in not-so-major locales are often considerably cheaper, and are often just as creative.

What do you suppose ~80% of the staff of most of the devs that various publishers already own would say, if they were told "you're moving to SF area, to be part of a megastudio, so pack up your family and get moving... oh and also we're paying you at the same payrate, so good luck finding a place to live when you get here"?

Sony has A LOT of studios, and some of them dont do anything worthwhile. I just hope 5 years from now all the studios they buy are still making games.

Look at Studio Liverpool, they used to make TONS of games before they were bought. Now they make Wipeout every 3-4 years and then do nothing else.

I really dont want to see that happen to Sucker Punch, they were in a good position before with exclusive deals with Sony and at the same time being able to do whatever the hell they want. Imagine 5 years from now their just a simple PS Home developer making digital clothes...that would be sad

only time will tell..

One big studio vs multiple studio, doesn't matter they still would split into teams to work on games. Sony don't have to merge to make a game that include all of their studio's. Sony don't need a merge cause their first party already share tech, ideas, opinions, etc. Besides merging will cause confusion since each studio has a certain atmosphere/environment that allows them to make great games.

Strengths and weaknesses is the answer. All consoles have them. The ps3 is unique and requires different techniques to harness it than the 360. Honestly most multiplatform games are held back by the 360. DVD-9 and easier (not necessarily better) programming are the 360's advantages, but when you go to transfer it to ps3 it hurts the ps3 version. The same is true when games go from ps3 to 360. FF and LA Noir come to mind. More storage equals more things, simple numbers game. Also, the PS3 came out a year later which is an eternity in the hardware game. I did not say the 360 can't be impressive, it most certainly can, but when studios only have to focus on one program technique it makes the game better.

@ Dramscus: Thank you! I swear when i hear "everything should multiplat", I shake my head. Don't people realize there's no point in multiple systems if those systems share the same library?

As for this article, it's intriguing, but I disagree. Sony's strength now mainly comes from their in-house studios (couldn't be said of the PlayStation 2 or the original PlayStation, where they mainly depended on studios that weren't theirs). With that talent, stuff like Uncharted 2, God of War III, & LittleBIGPlanet wouldn't exists.

I like their idea of picking up studios that already know and work closely with the PlayStation brand, so it doesn't feel as if a company that mainly worked on all platforms suddenly "sold out".

"One studio that makes dozens of games, instead of dozens of studios that only make one game… every two years"

With everyone in the gaming (creative/entertainment) industry knows, this is the worst what could happen to a creative process. What that means, is, one art direction, cloned over and over again. No creative competition, no creative freedom.

The industry is going quite in the opposite direction multiple studios because one thinks a like - many think diverse. That is exactly what Sony does. And we as the consumer benefit from it. I am glad they there is a company taking the risk in doing so, even though I admit this might be more expensive than one big studio (not really - sooner or later such a "big" studio will be ruled by the bottom line which in fact will produce less games than many).

dont get me wrong its great to have have both games on all platforms but the problems with consoles and pc's these days is that with pc u get new hardware coming out every year so u can upgrade at any time and the reason multiplatform is shit cos ur always bound to have one better then the other thats y its sumtimes shit
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no,no,no and no!This is stupid. Sony is defined by their spectacular 1st party studios. The amazing new ip's created by Sony this gen are largely unrivaled.

I think ms need more developers under the ms studio but they are not short of ips. They just need to bring some of the orignal ips back. But what ms have done this gen is looked at what they did well in and not so well in. The original. Xboz was the fps console and knew that there was a market out there with xboz live and games like halo, cod, moh, bf ect ms pushed this side and it paid off for them. They did have some other ips but dis not sell as well like alan wake splinter cell viva pinata, banjo ect because gamers who were picking up the 360 wanted fps game. Now ms has this market they are keeping it ticking over and pushing forza to take on gt and also giving us kinect has opend the 360 door to all the market as ms have given us ips like kinect sport, dance central your shape. But also games like riese of nightmares that will be a new core game.
I think ms has been very clever this gen on how they have made the 360 a sucess they have forced sonys had and made them lose alot of exclusive games like ff, teken, gta ect and this has made sony see there own mastakes this gen and at the start the ps3 was looking like it was going to finish dead last but sony have put the work in and got new ips like kz, lbp, uc out and pushed them which has brought the ps3 back into the game with ms. This gen has worked out well for both sony and microsoft but in different ways but i do expect the next xbox to come out with alot more of its own ips but for everyone not just fps fans.

To me even though this gen has taken a hit on alot of amazing studies closeing next gen will see a massive rise on new studios opeing under ms and sony.

Sony is building their own personal army instead of hiring paid mercenaries to do the job. Sony doesn't have to deal with third parties griping, turning on them, jumping ship or refusing to make a game for them.Microsoft has to pay big money for exclusivity and DLC while Sony has their own team to give them what ever they want when they want it. They don't have to beg or plead or wait years until the developer decides to hand us a 3 year old franchise as if their doing us a favour or go on about how they MIGHT give it to us or listen to the lame reasons why they are giving it to Microsoft first or not to Sony at all.

You see Microsoft is at the mercy of the third parties and if bad times come they can easily drop them or decide they aren't making games for them anymore but Sony has their own people who will make games for their systems even when no one else is. What will Microsoft do next gen with hardly any first party support from the beginning?

Lol at Epic telling Sony what to do. I'm pretty sure this is directly from Cliff.B's mouth.

lol and logicwins said it best ppl like devs tht work exclusively for one console bcus it harnesses tht consoles abilities and most exclusives just come out better. each consoles architecture,power and capabilities differ and bcus devs doing multiplat thy often water dwn a game and dnt come out wit 100 percent of wat could have been. I for one am glad my ps3 has its exclusives tht in my eyes look better thn any multiplat game if uc2 and kz were multi thy would be diff and not look as good. And please dnt mention Crysis2 to rebuttal bcus imo it didnt look as good as kz2 and3 and it had some clear frame rate drops and popins and lacked in the number of enemies on screen as opposed tokz which was intense action all the way through.

Sony needs to buy EA and Activision :D

How does this guy know it's more cost effective to have less studio's? Seriously where is he getting this info? What is he basing this on? If he cited something like look at how Activision or EA have saved money by consolidating the studios or something I'd be able to see how he came to this conclusion otherwise it's all just based on random asssumptions and not facts.

Guess what happened to the team who made the franchise that help define the 360? Yeah Bungie is the only answer needed to this article

For the first time, I don't understand an article...

If only people with big mouths, large responsibility and more sense actually red news on N4G. Your (absolutely great) article would be noticed and maybe in turn, we'd see more of the colorful (Jack & Dexter), more sublime (Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver) and more majestic (Final Fantasy) titles.

I really don't see the reason why Sony/MS shouldn't buy studios. I mean Sucker Punch was making Playstation exclusives already and with them going under Sony's roof it doesn't change noting at all. Developing team will stay the same and they will still make their own games.

If anything it is even better to be under the wing of a big company, like Sony. Naughty Dog recently said that they got their own mo-cap studio which they could never afford without Sony. And that is upside. Sony will invest in their studios, as long as they show that they're worthy.

Owning to many studios is a liability lots of overheads and little return especially on ps3.

Multiple studios are better, they'd create more varied creative direction.

I wouldn't want one or two guys coming up/approving with all the ideas for games.

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

Helix will be expensive but it's still a day one for me.

Oh, my days...
So Nadella meets with the US president multiple times to ensure AI regulations are minimal if any at all, donates to the inauguration and ballroom, and his boy not only won't regulate AI as farmers lose land and billionaires/corporations buy up farmland to build data centers...but because he's insane and compromised, he starts a war on behalf of a rogue colonial zionist state and [further] destabilizes the Middle East, restricting component access and helium supply.

Now the head of Xbox is saying the hardware pricing "could impact" next generation hardware pricing? Asha,...your boss at a minimum played a direct role in this. What are we even talking about?

Yea because a $3 trillion company can’t absorb the majority of the cost to keep the product lower for consumers.

Expensive… oh no, here comes another flop.

Could? Strange how prices rise for virtually everything we buy, yet when things settle down, prices don't come down. This has been happening in the UK probably before I was born. With that, how much is a next gen console going to cost? Look at the price of the PlayStation 5 Pro, which has been a flop for Sony. On that note, we don't need the next consoles for another 5 years.

I guarantee if people just stopped buying this kinda stuff all together. This would all be sorted within 2 weeks and everything would be back to normal.

We seen the exact same thing through the COVID period. Companies just jumped on the bandwagon realising that they can get away with charging far more under false pretences and fear mongering.

Consumers now have this fear of "you know what, I only live once. I'm going to spend all this money I earned through my hard work" Or "I only live once I'm going to take a loan out and enjoy my time here".

Silicone Valley spends literally billions of dollars researching how much they can push society to the limits to increase spending. You can research it yourself. There's published written documentation about it. Have a look for yourself into their group research into subscription programs to see how evil they are and why it's such a giant focus of current civilization. Its the very essence of corporate capitalism.

Just delay all new consoles. I could easily go another 5 years with my base PS5.

could? it's already affecting current gen pricing.

It is greed. Apple are selling at the same price, while Microsoft Surface increases 500$ per unit. Karma will tell.