Introduction
All of my posts on PlayStation have been negative, but believe it or not, I used to be massive PlayStation fan. Back when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were duking it out during the 7th generation of consoles, I backed the PS3 despite of its shortcomings. The 360 had a strong library during its first half of its lifecycle, but the PS3 really hit its stride with a very diverse library of games. There were inFamous 1 & 2, Ni No Kuni, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, and others.
Fast forward to now, today's Sony is far from the Sony that I appreciated back in the PS3 days. Back then, the company took risks and tried to diversify PlayStation's portfolio. Now, however, it seems that it is obsessed with blockbusters. And not only is Sony prioritizing their cashcow IPs, but they also don't seem to care about game preservation.
The Power Struggle
Former CEO Jack Tretton did a great job, in my opinion, at righting the ship after the PS3's initial struggles. In 2014, Tretton left his position and is succeeded by former CEO Shawn Layden. While Layden was never the greatest speaker with his awkwardness and occasional stumbles, I did feel that he was genuine from a gaming standpoint. I especially liked this quote of his:
Allegedly, before Layden departed in late 2019, there was a power struggle between him and current CEO Jim Ryan. Supposedly, it began as the company began to restructure back in April 2018. This power struggle struggle, according to one employee of a major 3rd party publisher, interfered with the transition from the PS4 generation to the PS5 generation.
Not only that, but Jim Ryan comes off as more of a suit than a gamer. Some of his defining (and unflattering) moments included his reasons for not allowing crossplay and excuses for not prioritizing backwards compatibility of older generations (more on this later). With the former, when he was asked to explain Sony's obstructionism on crossplay by Eurogamer, he made a very baffling and asinine "Would someone please think of the children" response:
We’ve got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft – the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it’s all ages but it’s also very young. We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully.
Sony's Second Class Studios
In this article from The Bloomberg, it talks about the difficulties the Visual Arts Service Group and Bend Studio went through. The former is sort of an unsung hero that has supported the development of big titles like Spider-Man and Uncharted. The latter is known for its Syphon Filter series and most recently, Days Gone.
To put things succinctly, both studios have been treated like second class citizens among the PlayStation Worldwide Studios umbrella. Rather than acting autonomous studios, they acted more like extensions of Naughty Dog. The Visual Arts Service Group wanted to develop a remake project called T1X and Sony approved it on a probationary basis. Unfortunately, Sony would not expand the studio's budget to hire more people. When T1X's development finally ramped up, Sony sent Naughty Dog developers to help out and moved the game under Naughty Dog's budget. Michael Mumbauer, the head of the Visual Arts Service Group, saw this a complete strip of autonomy.
Bend Studio received similar treatment. Their Days Gone 2 pitch in 2019 got rejected even though the first game was profitable. Then, one team was delegated to help Naughty Dog out on an untitled multiplayer game while another team was assigned to work on a new Uncharted game under Naughty Dog's supervision.
It may not have been the best game, but Days Gone was pretty solid.
In both cases, it led to the departure of many employees, including some of the top leads. At least with Sony Bend, the studio successfully asked Sony to remove its team from the Uncharted project and is supposedly working on a new game. However, this does not change the fact that Sony Bend's developers "feared they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog".
Lastly, of course, I have already chronicled the demise of Japan Studio and its unique IPs along with it. The studio was pretty much screwed over from a variety of reasons: Sony sending out Gravity Rush 2 to die with little market backing, Puppeteer never getting out of PS3 purgatory, and Freedom Wars being stuck in Vita hell. Ultimately, a lot of key figures left Sony, some of which have formed their own independent studio.
Gravity Rush 2
Sony's Poor Game Preservation Record
I get it. Backwards compatibility isn't exactly easy. It is hard to emulate the PS3's CELL architecture to x86. However, there are a bunch of good quality games that never received the remaster treatment and are stuck in their respective platforms. To name a few examples, there are 3D Dot Heroes, Freedom Wars, Puppeteer, inFamous 1 & 2, the Sly Cooper series, the Killzone series, the Jak & Daxter series, and others.
To make things worse, Jim Ryan's stance on backwards compatibility (and by extension, game preservation) is very lukewarm:
When we’ve dabbled with backwards compatibility, I can say it is one of those features that is much requested, but not actually used much. That, and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?
The problem is that without backwards compatibility or remasters, any non-PS4 game (the PS5 is at least backwards compatible with PS4 games) will be unaccessible (unless you sail the 7 seas and jailbreak your console or use emulation, that is). In a few months, the PS3, Vita, and PSP stores will be permanently shut down. Games that are stuck on those platforms can never be purchased ever again. Apparently, you can't download patches for PS3 games anymore, so bye-bye to trophy support and bug fixes. And that's not all. The PS4 has a critical design flaw with the CMOS that can render your games unplayable, even disc-based ones:
Closing Thoughts
This is not the same Sony that I appreciated growing up. Where it once used to be a company that took risks and experimented, it now only cares about the blockbusters as it treats its non-elite studios like second class citizens. In addition, Sony's handling (or rather, lack thereof) of game preservation is a major turn off.
Regarding Sony's blockbuster obsession, I did notice how a lot of its first party games have gravitated towards the "3rd person action adventure with stealth elements" genre. With some of their games, it did feel formulaic like with Horizon: Zero Dawn and Uncharted 4. I did find a lot of enjoyment out of Ghost of Tsushima, though, thanks to its compelling story, beautiful artstyle, and solid gameplay. Point being, much of the first party games have consolidated around a specific structure, making the overall portfolio less diverse.
When it comes to Sony's attitude towards game preservation, I'm glad that I have switched to PC as my main platform and that many games that I love are available on Steam or GOG. The thought of my favorite JRPGs, Trails in the Sky FC & SC, forever stuck on the PSP is a bit terrifying.
