 Hey there lads and ladies it is Petrifying Pumpkins here and today I am going to go off on a bit of a rant. This is just going to be like I said a rant not going to edit it too much because I just don't have time so let's just hop straight into it. This is going to be all about this article that popped up yesterday from Jason Schreyer who is a gaming journalist over at Bloomberg. He used to be a Kotaku. He got offered some fat stacks to go over to Bloomberg but this fella is famous for being one of the most well networked well connected. I don't know how he does it but he's able to get all these insider scoops. He's nearly always correct but I think people who work in the gaming industry see Jason Schreyer as someone that they can approach and often anonymously like he won't share their identity and they can you know complain whistleblow basically to him and get their plight out into the public and that's what's happened here in this article titled Sony's obsession with blockbusters is stirring unrest within the PlayStation empire. So first things first I mean I'm wearing I'm wearing this PlayStation t-shirt here but as you can see I have inverted the symbolism much like turning a crucifix upside down because I hate PlayStation so much. No I'm joking. I like PlayStation. What I'm going to do here is kind of take somewhat of a defensive stance against what I perceive to be a lot of you know blown out of proportion flak that PlayStation are catching. Not just because of this article for a while now. I feel like anytime Xbox does something good everyone turns their heads to PlayStation and they're like why aren't you doing this? You're trash. You know Game Pass exists. They've got 18 million subscribers. PlayStation Plus exists has over 50 million subscribers or something like that but you're not allowed to mention that. That's not something that gets brought up. It's like no you need to do what they're doing. You need to play games on their terms even though on your terms you're doing very well you're being very successful. As we speak the PS5 is outselling both of the Xbox consoles combined but that doesn't seem to be something that we're not that we're not allowed to talk about it but it's just not something that's coming up in the public discourse. From what I can see on Twitter and gaming websites and whatnot there is a big you know oh Xbox are doing great, Microsoft are doing great, PlayStation are making all the wrong moves essentially. Meanwhile Nintendo's over in the back releasing you know a port of Skyward Sword for full price and it's just got like a upscaled HD resolution or whatever but nobody you know that's fine. We'll let that slide in the radar. Anyway I've waffled a bit too much in the intro. Let me go into this article. I've highlighted some parts just for emphasis but I'm going to go through the whole article. So a lot of this article focuses on this small San Diego team who were met up of Sony Core's Visual Arts Service Group. So they're this small kind of support team that for many years have been helping out Sony's bigger teams, Naughty Dogs, Santa Monica's whatever. They come in at the end of projects usually when they're needed and they help them with I don't know finishing off animations or polish or whatever needs to be done. They have never themselves made a game from scratch from the ground up but that is something that they wanted to change and basically this article is mainly about them and their story but there is other stuff here to talk about as well. So Sony Core's Visual Arts Service Group has long been the unsung hero of many PlayStation hit video games. San Diego based operation helps finish off games designed at other studios with animation art or other content. But about three years ago a handful of influential figures within the group I'm not going to say VA whatever over and over I'm just going to call them the group. They decided they wanted to have more creative control and lead game direction rather than being supporting actors on popular titles such as Spider-Man and Uncharted. So Michael Mumbauer and I've locked him up over here this is the guy. I believe this is him. He's only got a small amount of followers which makes me suspicious that it might be a fake account or something but maybe I guess they're just not well as well known as your Corey Barlogs and your Neil Druckmans. He took over the direction of this group in 2007 so he's been there for quite some time. He recruited a group of about 30 developers internally and from neighboring game studios to form a new development unit within Sony. So they wanted he wanted to make his own group his own studio by pulling in developers from all these kind of surrounding studios including his kind of sister studios from Sony. So their idea was to expand upon some of the company's most successful franchises and the team began working on a remake the 2013 hit The Last of Us for the PlayStation 5. That's one thing first of all I mean we'll get into it I guess but a remake for The Last of Us again came out in 2013 which I guess is like eight years ago now is that correct seven years eight so it has been a while you know but it's not something that anyone was asking for so there's been a lot of push back in the you know the discourse the public discourse the twitters the facebooks everywhere people are like why do we need a remake nobody needs a remake you know that has a remaster already in on PlayStation 4 and that plays perfectly fine blah blah blah but there is like some strategic value because you know HBO are working on The Last of Us TV show which in all likelihood is going to be a hiss I would imagine it's being directed by the guy who did Chernobyl which was like usually Chris Lee claimed and it's going to closely follow the story of the original game and everyone well not everyone but most people including myself love the story of the original game and its characters and all that kind of stuff so you put those two things together you would imagine you've got like a guaranteed hit in your hands so then you're going to expose The Last of Us to all this new audience who have never heard of the video game version of The Last of Us and then they will see oh there's a Last of Us game on PS5 when they buy a PS5 when they buy The Last of Us remake and you know money essentially but Sony never fully acknowledged the team's existence or gave them the funding and support needed to succeed in the highly competitive video game market according to the people involved and I guess that's an important point according to the people involved I mean you're here on one side of the story here not that I'm saying that they're lying or anything like that I do believe them I do believe everything that's being told here are more or less but you know there's other things to consider I'm sure we'll as we'll get into us we'll get into us so the studio never even got its own name instead Sony moved ownership of The Last of Us remake to its original creator Naughty Dog a Sony owned studio behind many of the company's best-selling games and an HBO television series in development I mean just by reading that all you like there's an alarm bell it's like why what are you doing Sony why are you like allowing this team to exist not allowing them to have their own name not funding them greenlighting this remake but then stopping taking the remake off them and giving it to Naughty Dog you know so there's a lot of alarm bells going off there rightly so but like I said we'll read more so deflaced the small group's leadership has largely disbanded according to interviews with eight people familiar with the operation Manny including Mum Bauer have left the company entirely so Mum Mum Bauer declined to comment and others asked not to be named discussing private information a representative for Sony declined to comment or provide interview so the team's failure highlights the complex hierarchy of video game development and in particular Sony's conservative approach to making games for the PlayStation 5 now the reason I've highlighted this is because I think it's kind of a contradiction to say this if this group this unnamed pool of developers were making a brand new IP or something a bit wacky a bit wild and then Sony were like no no no give this to Naughty Dog instead then I would be like okay Sony are being a bit conservative here however this is a last of us remake there is nothing very risky about you know allowing an last of us remake to be made whether it's by Naughty Dog or by this team you know nobody would be like wow Sony are breaking new ground look how much craze of freedom they're given this team you know if they're coming along with a last of us remake I mean there's other evidence as well all around us a few weeks ago I was reading articles about how Sony were increasing investment with media molecule the creator of dreams and there's nothing more risky than dreams I would say under Sony's umbrella and of course PlayStation virtual reality that was a huge risk back in 2016 it's going to be a huge risk when the PSVR 2 comes out and that's under Jim Ryan's leadership and Herman Holtz's leadership and they're going with that risk I mean that's if you want to be talking about conservative look at the look at the consoles who aren't supporting virtual reality that's conservative the Japanese conglomerate owns about a dozen studios across the world so that includes the likes of Sony Santa Monica, Gorilla Games, Japan Studio which has been you know recently chopped up so that's another thing to talk about as well I guess but Team Asobi kind of survives over there who else do they got Sony bend the makers of Blood and Truth but in recent years has prioritized games made by its most successful developers studios such as Santa Monica, Naughty Dog and Gorilla Games spend tens of millions of dollars to make games with the expectation that the that the investments would pay off exponentially and I've highlighted here and they usually do and the reason I've highlighted that is because hey the reason that they're doing these things is because it's working it's making them money they're making not only these games commercially successful but most of the time they are wildly critically successful you compare the exclusives on PlayStation 4 to the exclusives on Xbox one if you compare their Metacritic scores you're going to see a lot of green on the PlayStation side and a lot of yellow on the Xbox side you know and I would say myself that's you know the PlayStation 4's exclusives are probably one of the biggest if not the biggest reason that the PlayStation 4 did so well and Microsoft has taken the opposite approach relying on a wide array of studios to feed its Netflix like subscription service Xbox game pass which allows users to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a variety game Sony's focus on exclusive blockbusters has come at the expense of niche teams and studios within the PlayStation organization leading to high turnover and less choice for players and this is why I've highlighted this part here the less choice for players this is where I feel like it's the author it's the journalist it's Jason Schreyer kind of injecting a little bit of uh don't want to say bias it's not bias because opinion and that's fine because you know you're obviously entitled to put your opinion in whatever you create but this is not something I would agree with whatsoever you know okay there's evidence there's hard evidence out there I have restreamed the last state of play on this channel I've restreamed the second whatever two big events they had before this and in the chess was full of people saying oh no another indie another cutesy looking indie where's the real games you know everyone's saying and when they say real games they're talking about the triple A stuff but we can all agree those games those are those events those showcases whatever they had a lot of experimental looking indie titles just because they were not from the first party studios does not mean Sony don't have that angle covered there's that little devils inside game there's um I mean I could I should have pulled up a list but there's loads just rewatch those things you will see they're full of indies they're full of these kind of experimental looking things what was that one that in the most recent state of play it was like the kung fu fighting one that looked really cool so as long as Sony are making deals with these second party developers and third party developers to make sure those games are on ps5 as well what doesn't matter that their sony's you know own in-house studios are focusing on blockbuster triple A titles and I say that known fully well that you know sony london studios are not working on well that you could call them triple A's but they're definitely experimented they've been doing virtual reality games for you know 10 I don't know well not 10 years five years now a bit more what's more experimental than virtual reality development you know how many microsoft studios are working on virtual reality games how many of nintendo studios are working on virtual reality games how experimental are they being how groundbreaking is it to release another result oh another halos on the way well so yeah I take umbridge not being fully aware of what the word umbridge means but still probably understanding this enough to use it correctly in that sentence I do take umbridge with less choice for players I don't think there's less choice for players I do agree that you know it has come at the expense of niche teams within Sony so so last week Sony reorganized development office in Japan we're talking about it immediately I guess resulting in mass departures of people who worked on less well known but acclaimed games such as gravity rush and everybody's got now gravity rush everybody's got they have their fans they have their audience but those fans and that audience is tiny compared to anything else so why would you pump millions into the development of these games when you can just make a deal with a second party studio or third party studio and get them that way I mean obviously they're not the same games but you know for that type of thing however I still think it's sad to lose so much talent over at Sony Japan I'm not saying Sony are perfect I do think that's a worrying kind of sign that I think they should keep maybe at least Sony Japan making those kind of quirky games because as far as I know they do do well in Japan maybe just not outside of Japan but I would say console gaming in general is on the decline in Japan so you know I'm sure they've got the numbers back in that stuff up so the company informed developers that it no longer wants to produce smaller games that are only successful in Japan so I mean that sounds bad when you listen to it like that but I mean if it's true it's true I mean if gravity rush and everybody's golf or worldwide phenomenons you know they're the sequels they'd be continuing support for those studios but they're not they're probably flops you know I'm not sure they're well maybe they're making profit maybe they're not I don't know but obviously not enough for Sony to be interested and at the end of the day Sony's a business a lot of retweeting going around lately of a speech given by Sean Leiden who was the the head of PlayStation before Jim Ryan and he was giving a speech about how and he was saying how okay it didn't sell millions but that wasn't the point and like everyone's pulling this out of nowhere now but you know I think it's pretty telling that nobody pulls that tweezer or that speech up I should say before all this stuff where was that enthusiasm for Sean Leiden back when he was there wasn't there you know this fixation on teams that churn out hits is crazy unrest across Sony's portfolio of game studios Oregon based Sony Bend best known for days gone tried unsuccessfully to pitch a sequel that year according to people familiar with the proposal although the first game had been profitable its development had been lengthy and critical reception was mixed so a days gone two wasn't seen as a viable option this is one that I do think I will agree with the majority of people who are like dog pylon on Sony I've recently played days gone one for the first time and the reason I didn't play us until recently was because of the critical reception that it got so a lot of people were very mixed on us and I do understand that back when it released there was a lot of technical issues I think that the frame rate was pretty bad so I played it on ps5 at a mostly locked 60 frames per second I mean there was some frame drops now and again so I played it in its best possible you know version of itself but having said that I still thought the game was like surprisingly good I enjoyed it at last the story somehow even though I looked at the trailers and the characters and they all looked like you know they're going to be cringy kind of bad boy biker dudes whatever but it was still very interesting and you know there's a big twist at the end and all that kind of stuff so I set up nicely for a sequel and I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed if that doesn't happen which it looks like it's not going to happen unless there's a big enough you know kickback from this article that you know Sony will be like okay we make days gone two so I do think Sony should have seen that they should have seen that okay critical reception was pretty bad but they fixed some things they improved this we played it ourselves we know it's a good game we know the story is good we know the shooting and all that kind of stuff was fine the world was good the hordes are very cool so there was a lot there that sony ben did do well and I feel like they probably should have given them the benefit of whatever doubts they had and allowed them another chance and if days gone two perform badly critically commercially whatever then say okay you had your chance I feel like they didn't give them enough of a chance here especially when you consider that development for days gone two I know they said the development there was long but with days gone two they'd have they'd already have the engine up and ready to go like you know when you already have a game to build off of make a sequel of I'm sure things would have went a lot quicker and smoother and anyway instead of days gone two one team at the studio was assigned to help Naughty Dog with a multiplayer game which I'm assuming is the factions mode that's going to be coming I would imagine maybe as a standalone title now at this point probably not going to be a free update for the last of us part two but we'll have to wait and see while the second group was assigned to work on a new one chartered game with supervision from Naughty Dog so some staff including top leads were unhappy with this arrangement and left Ben's developers feared they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog and the studio leadership has to be taken off the Uncharted project they got their wish last month and are now working on a new game of their own that will be part of a brand new franchise I highlight this part here some staff were unhappy and they left because I think that is reasonable for the staff members I think that was they were well within their rights to do this I don't think Sony were made the right choice by asking them to do this but I kind of maybe wish they stuck around because it seems they got their wish last month and are now working on a new game of their own that would be part of a brand new franchise so that's not going to be days gone two but I'm still excited because now I've played days gone one I know how good that studio is at making games and I know they've made Uncharted Golden Abyss on Visa which has its fans I've never got a visa nobody did so yeah I'm excited to see what that's going to be so that's some positivity out of that situation it's just a shame that the staff members here these leads had to leave I guess they were really committed today's gone they really wanted the sequel so they were unhappy with us and that's understandable emphasizing big hits can also be counterproductive because sometimes games that start small can turn into massive successes Sony didn't put much marketing muscle behind the quirky video game creation system Dreams by the PlayStation owned media molecule in the UK as a result PlayStation may have missed out on its own version of Roblox Roblox a game I've never seen advertised I don't think it's been around for a few years now I know it's huge it's this PC game a lot of kids are into us I think it's a huge kind of stretch by Jason Schreyer to be like hey if Sony just advertised Dreams a bit more they would have gone on to make you know 45 billion daughters you know that's that's a stretch I mean just the fact that Dreams exists is proof that they're taking risks could they have advertised it more yes they could have was Dreams in development held for like 10 years yes it was so they could have cancelled that game I think I had to restart development twice while it was in development and Sony stuck with it now I know that was different leadership back then and would that happen today under Jim Ryan maybe not Herman Holtz probably would have been like no as I said earlier on Sony have increased investment into media molecule so I don't really buy that part that Jason Schreyer is selling there Montbauer's project codenamed T1X was approved on a probationary basis but Sony kept the team's existence a secret and refused to give them a budget to hire more people leading many to wonder if the company was really committed to letting the team build a new studio still the small team kept working and by the spring of 2019 they had completed a section of the game designed to showcase how the rest would look and feel at the same time Sony was going through a management shuffle and the new boss Herman Holtz was not impressed so whatever they made up here in 2019 a little demo of the last was remake Herman Holtz was not impressed with it he thought the remake project was too expensive according to people familiar with this and asked why the planned budget for T1X was so much higher than remake Sony hadn't made in the past so there's like a reason in here for why they didn't just do it because they're evil this group of people brought a demo to Herman Holtz and he was like this isn't impressive you know and you would imagine that's on them now I know they didn't have all the resources that they should have had to make a project like that but not only was he not impressed he was wondering why it was so expensive and he can ask that question because he's had experience like he can look at the list okay we read we did the remake for Demon's Souls we did the remake for you know whatever else they did remakes for I can't think of the top of my head why is this so much more expensive that's a valid question too the reason of course is that they were putting a brand new graphical engine into us and they wanted to hire more people you know boss host wasn't convinced and that I wouldn't say that's a rare thing to happen I remember watching the documentary for the making of God of War raising Kratos and there's a part where you know Corey Barlog was saying you know Shuhei Yoshida was going to come in and check out God of War back when it was in early development and this was before Herman Holtz so Herman Holtz replaced Yoshida so Yoshida was not happy with God of War when he saw it first in whatever state it was in than ever showed us I don't think but he wasn't impressed but he didn't he did give them the opportunity to go again but that's because Sony Santa Monica or a big established studio if it was this small group maybe Yoshida would have canceled it as well a bit of food for thought there I think so just when it hoped to enter production on the remake of The Last of Us Mumbauer's team got called in to help with another big game so they went to help development on The Last of Us 2 most of Mumbauer's team along with some of the 200 or so other staff at the V the group was assigned to support Naughty Dog slowing down progress on its own game then the roles got reversed Sony sent word that after completion of The Last of Us 2 some people from Naughty Dog would help out with T1X Mumbauer's team saw this as their short-lived autonomy being stripped so this is a sign of conflict you know Mumbauer wasn't happy with these Naughty Dogs guy with their big dicks swinging their big dicks around in his studio and that caused conflict so dozens of Naughty Dog staff were joining the project and some had actually worked on The Last of Us giving them more ways in discussions about T1X's direction which does make sense I mean you would go to the creators hey this is what we were doing this is what we were going for and maybe you guys can realize us on the PS5 when we couldn't whereas they were like well we thought you were trying to do this and that's what we want to show so it makes sense that there would be conflict going on there or whatever you know but those who had wanted independence were disappointed by the end of 2020 most of T1X's teams top staff have left had left including Mumbauer and the games director David Hall today the T1X project remains in development at Naughty Dog with assistance from Sony's group the future of the remainder of Mumbauer's team which has come to be jointly referred to as Naughty Dog South remains unclear so after reading all of this which was quite lengthy and I have to edit down a lot of that I think but it feels like it's designed to get you to feel one way about us you know namely be worried about what Sony's direction is going in now the way this has been received has been you know oh Sony don't take risks anymore Sony don't support small studios within their own groups or whatever however nothing that Sony has done in this article has been you know with unwarranted there's a reason behind everything and all those reasons even if they're all just financial them I mean to make sense at the end of the day they're there to make money doesn't mean we see less games like puppeteer and Tokyo jungle and stuff like that probably you know when they close down the Sony Japan studio and cut down their staff or whatever but how many of you actually play those games well maybe you did because you're a PlayStation enthusiast or whatever but in the grand scheme of things nobody plays those games the only thing in this article that does bother me about Sony is that they kind of show disrespect to Ben Studio which I don't think you know Ben Studio deserve that at all I think they definitely deserve their shot at Daze Gone 2 or whatever they want to do but they wanted to do Daze Gone 2 and they didn't get that shot but yeah for me this is just the laziest and a long line of Sony are doing this wrong Sony are doing that wrong they're doing PSVR we won't talk about that you know they're doing great numbers with the PS5 we won't talk about that they're doing you know 50 million subscribers on PS Plus or maybe it's 40 I don't know exactly what it is but it's a lot it's a lot and that's a subscription service too but we don't talk about that instead we'll talk about you know Xbox are buying up tons of studios you know that's fantastic they're doing Game Pass that's fantastic Sony need to compete with all these things that Xbox are doing we won't take into account that Xbox have like unlimited resources in terms of finances just this whole narrative that's been pushed lately that Sony are not taking creative risks it just doesn't fly to me I mean this is a PlayStation Virtual Reality channel this channel is dedicated to Sony's biggest risk in the last since the visa the biggest risk since the visa you would say and the visa wasn't that much for risk PSP did well so they had a good a good foothold in the handheld mark with the PSP they just blew it with the visa so I would argue that PlayStation Virtual Reality is their biggest risk in the last 10 years and I built a channel around us and you guys all love PSP or if you're watching this probably do anyway and they're continuing that Sony last month two months ago whatever it was PSP or two got confirmed so you know I just can't buy that I'm looking at games like destruction all stairs as well that's not a game Sony would typically make but they pumped money into this and they got that at launch well not launch launch window for PS5 demon souls a remake but a remake of a game that never really sold that well you know it was a very obscure game on ps3 a lot of people think you know the souls games started with dark souls because nobody like not nobody but a lot of people don't know about demon souls so I would say that's kind of a risk as well and then just this month coming out at the end of this month we have Returnal so they're putting you know they're putting money into housemark to make a triple a game and but this is their first time making a triple a game everything they've done before has been you know much smaller scale so that's a risk as well especially selling that thing at 80 euros definitely a risk I don't think Returnal is going to do that well in terms of sales I hope I'm wrong but yeah I'm not worried about Sony's you know direction I think they keep if they stay this course it's going we're going to have a very similar generation to what we just had on ps4 and I had a great generation on ps4 a lot of great games I look back on the ps4 and I remember the big blockbuster triple a games I do not see big triple a blockbuster games is a bad thing which some people seem to be pointing out but when Sony do come along with the smaller indie stuff that they've teamed up with other developers for I'm going to be happy to try that stuff out too especially a lot of that stuff ends up on PlayStation viewer you know most of that stuff is not triple a and you know that's most of the library there I've been enjoying so a lot of what's been thrown at Sony lately just doesn't hold much weight to me however I've waffled on way too long about this let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below we can have a discussion about this if you want if you want to call me a Sony fanboy or whatever but I think I've backed up most of these points well enough anyway let me end the video there let me thank my patreon supporters his names are on the screen as we speak thanks to their generosity they're keeping this channel nice and moist in particular let me thank the following top tier patreon supporters Pete Hawkins tradition chapter 517 crumb Daniel the pumpkin patch kid and columbus thomas the third thank you very much lads for that generosity it really is appreciated if you'd like to help on the patreon the link will be in the description below but if not like comment subscribe all that usual shice will do just fine finally let me thank Decepticon for letting me use his music in all of these videos you can catch him in the description below as well and with that I will end this video thank you for watching lads and ladies stay moist