Ben-DutkaGaming industry veteran Peter Molyneux applauds Sony for their first-party development prowess, but is concerned about costs and hardware direction.
In speaking to GamesIndustry International , the Fable guru was asked if Microsoft is "constantly looking at Sony," to which Molyneux responded:
" Yes, very much so. Obsessively so. "
He then elaborated on what he perceives Sony's position to be in the market, and praised their "talented developers" while questioning the current "pressure on costs."
"Sony has always had a very strong first person line-up, which I think is incredibly smart. They've got good developers. They've got some very talented developers. The way I always feel with Sony is that if they double down on those first party developers, give them the headroom to be inventive and be creative, especially when it comes it any next generation platform, then they could pull lots of rabbits out of the hat.
What I worry about, with their corporate pressure and the pressure on costs, I worry about the ability to do that. More and more – and this is a personal thing – I just don't know where they're going in hardware terms. They had the Move, but it wasn't as early as the Wii and it wasn't as innovational as Kinect. They seem to be third in line in that race. I have expected, every single press conference for the last year, Sony to bring out this magic rabbit out from a huge hat and say, 'Aha, world. You really don't realize what's going on.' And I do worry about them."
Perhaps that rabbit will come at next year's E3 when Sony unveils the PlayStation 4. Well, at least that's what is expected. Analysts have been predicting we'd see either the PS4 or the new Xbox (or both) in 2013, and multiple pieces of evidence prove that major developers are already working on next-gen projects.
So how do you rate Molyneux's appraisal of Sony?
I think he makes good points. I wonder how much of a profit Sony is making off all their exclusive content. I personally hate motion controls and never liked the idea of Move. I think the PS3 is certainly geared towards the hardcore gamer and I don't know of any hardcore gamers that prefer motion controls.
i dont prefer the motion controls and i never got into the lame wiimotes. i do however like messin around with the move. it doesnt replace the ds3 for me but games like tumble that are built around the move from the ground are fun to play.
I only prefer them when they're done right like in Skyward Sword.
I prefer a zapper gun for shooting gallery games like Time Crisis. ANd I prefer racing wheels for racing games. It's my arcade roots 😉
don't know if those qualify as motion controls, though.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 6/12/2012 11:44:01 PM
I've enjoyed the Move, and from what I've seen of the Kinect, I'm not a big fan, except for the new update for Skyrim on the 360. Sony does seem to lag behind this gen for sure, but they don't seem to be making any attempts to correct that. It's almost as if they are happy where they are.
That being said, their quality of games seems to be a little higher, even if they don't seem to attract the sales that MS seems to be getting.
How, exactly, are they lagging behind? Please explain this comment because I think you're utterly wrong. EyeToy brought full body motion detection and tracking long before Kinect. PSEye enhanced that further and added audio input and tracking too. Once again this pre-dates Kinect. You can't possibly be suggesting that the console hardware of the PS3 in some what lags behind the 360, that's factually and demonstrably wrong. So, pray tell, how has Sony lagged behind on this generation?
I think Ch1n00k is referring to sales of games as compared to MS. Not necessarily the hardware that Sony creates.
Highlander here is the ans: Wonderbook
lol
Amazing exclusive games!!!
No.1 reason why i bought a launch 60 gig even though resistance was the only good game out untill heavenly sword.
5 1/2 years later i have 17 exclusive PS3 titles in my collection & all of them are awesome.
Who cares if their motion peripheral is in 3rd? Kinect may have fooled people into buying it but that's as far as it got. Good luck with your Kinect Fable game that is going to score poorly and sell worse.
The KINECT can be useful….
"XBOX, estimated time before RRoD system failure"
…
…
6 days 3 hours 32 min
Pubilsent boy: "Mom! gonna need another Xbox next week"
=p
Kinect is the emperors new clothes, it's just that no one is willing to stand up and say; "Um, this is just a webcam with bells and whistles isn't it? Why are we acting like it's the second coming when the PSEye is essentially the same thing without a motorized pivot?"
Last edited by TheHighlander on 6/13/2012 10:15:18 AM
Wow Highlander datail much!! :-). i agree and i love the detail you put. I kinda feel bad you gotta spell things out for people.
It's good to see someone acknowledge that Sony give their game developers a lot of leeway. However I'm not so concerned about his hardware comments. Sony have always been about games, not gimmicks.
If I'm not mistaken, he is actually saying that he doesn't think Sony gives their devs enough leeway and creative freedom. Which I think is absolutely bollocks.
Reminds me of the time that Sucker Punch was told by Sony that the side-scrolling, linear levels in Sly Cooper were too old-school, and to make the next games more like Jak and Daxter & Ratchet and Clank. (thank developer commentary for that info–another thing that mysteriously vanished) Even though I enjoyed the following games, they did have a distinct scent of copycat-itus.
Sony is obviously much better than Microsoft when it comes to excessive meddling, but that's not to say that they let their developers do anything they want. They run a business the same as anyone else, and tend to bet on proven formulas. Their big releases don't see much experimentation.
Heavy Rain came from Fahrenheit.
Heavenly Sword from God of War.
Uncharted from Tomb Raider / Gears of War.
inFamous is a tame GTA adaptation.
Killzone was chasing Halo.
Warhawk..er, Halo.
MAG…CoD / Halo.
PlayStation All Stars… yeah.
They had a little burst of originality early on in PS3, with things Folklore and Eye of Judgement, but those tanked in sales and haven't been heard from again. Just about the only really *new* thing has been LittleBigPlanet.
Compared to Sony's earlier efforts on PS1 and PS2, the PS3 stuff has been quite timid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_published_by_Sony_Computer_Entertainment#PlayStation_3
really?
so then what are eye toy, eye pet, 3D, move, wonderbook, playstation eye and judgment?
im sorry, but $ony is one of the biggest gimmick makers out there!
Oh Professor, Sorceery wants your attention, and Sackboy is standing here punching the air waiting to 'greet' you, you seem discount the innovation in LBP. I could also point to MotorStorm. The examples of major Sony games that are innovative, that you then swiftly downplay is amusing.
Let's see;
Heavy Rain – major innovations in terms of interactive narrative and augmented reality (especially with move based controls). Does it grow from something like Fahrenheit? Possibly, but it has evolved so much further that it's really not fair to say it's just a derivative of Fahrenheit. By the standard and logic you use, more or less any game could be accused of copying a predecessor in the same genre. I mean, all space fighter games could be said to have copied Star Raiders from Atari. That's a hell of a stretch, but you could make the case. It would be pointless and stupid though. Which brings me to the rest of your comparisons…
Heavenly Sword – didn't really come from God of War, it's considerably differnet, cosmetic similarities aside, you're dismissing the game out of hand?
Uncharted – references to Tomb raider perhaps, but I see no horribly muscular space marines with shiny armor here. Neither of the games you mentioned have anything like the depth of character or story, nor the depth of level and control.
inFamous is NOT a tame GTA adaptation at all. It's nothing like GTA. You're really stretching the fabric of space-time for this one.
Killzone was chasing Halo – except of course it wasn't, it was chasing Killzone and a target render that was stupidly described as in-game footage.
Warhawk..er so not Halo, have you ever heard of the original PS1 Warhawk? So, yeah, not chasing Halo.
MAG…Massively Multi-player online shooter. the multi-player online shooter is a genre. Neither CoD nor Halo ever thought of supporting party sizes as large as those in MAG. You can dismiss the game with your little Halo/CoD digs, but you know the first person shooter existed long before either of those games, and squad based shooters did too. So, who is chasing who?
PlayStation All Stars…is a mash-up fighter which means that everyone will say it's the same as super smash brothers. So be it.
Oh, BTW you forgot to accuse Gran Turismo of chasing Forza. LOL! Laugh all you like, based on your other comparisons, I'm certain that if you could have found the words I think you would have written it.
You can make an argument that every game this generation was inspired by a game from a previous generation. But who gives a sh*t, honestly? Especially if they improve upon the formula and the game is a quality title.
What does the Last of Us rip off? And Beyond? The Last Guardian? Sony's first party games can't be beat in terms of quality, quanitity, and diversity. I have no problem with great games borrowing ideas from games that came before it.
You can make an argument about the motion controls of the 3 systems, and the new Wii-U pad/tablet market/Smartglass crap ripping each other off, but neither of those things really concern me much. I'm more interested in the games, and Sony's first party line up is the best, and I think that's what Mr. Molyneux was saying.
I agree that Sony does make excellent first party games, but I highly doubt that anyone would question that.
As for the move, Sony has always said they are about being the best, not at being first. From all of my experiences the move is far superior in quality to the wii and kinect. Granted not all devs take advantage of it, but that isn't the fault of the tech.
As for Molyneux, I suggest he stop worrying about Sony and start worrying about Fable. He started with a great game that I loved and over the past few years has slowly flushed that series down the toilet. It's horrible to see what he's done with it.
What I find funny is that when I was watching Sony's Playstation history montage on PSN, the Eyetoy was shown briefly. People were describing it, it sounded just like MS's advertising for Kinect. Shame on gaming "journalist" for not calling MS out on their blatant attempt to steal/take credit for one of Sony's last gen ideas. MS should be ashamed of themselves. First they steal and profit off the Eyetoy, now they're trying to steal the ideas for the Wii U with SmartGlass. It's not going to work.
MS= most shameless gaming company evah!
Lol, because the Move and Playstation All Stars are completely original ideas, right?
Let's face it, everyone is guilty of accidental plagiarism and "inspiration", whether it's software or hardware.
Considering that Sony had motion controls in the pipeline before nintendo? Yea ok! Also they haven't denied that all stars isn't a smash bros clone. When they interviewed the director of the game he went on about how much of a fan of smash bros he was. They aren't denying anything.
SmartGlass isn't accidental.
Hear hear! Unfortunately the gaming press this gen has had a very pro-MS view (if Ninty or Sony had abandoned their first-party development the way MS had, they would be copping it far worse than MS is at the moment), so you don't hear them get called out when they're bending the truth (which all three do, but MS does most and best).
Um, if memory serves correctly. Is there not other games before "Smash Bros Brawl" that you could fight against other video Game Characters?
Clamedeus, I believe that your memory does in fact serve you well.
Yay! I guess my memory Is not bad after all. 🙂
"first person line-up, innovational"? I think he's gone a bit bonkers and is seeing a White Rabbit, rather than hoping for Sony to pull one out of a hat. Odd word choices 😛
I like that he's spilt on that first point now that he's split from Microsoft. I mean, of course the Big 3 look to each other for inspiration but it's better to have it out in the open than having them try to spruik that the idea is all theirs. Even the blindest of consumers can see when "inspiration" is sourced from elsewhere. Too bad the same can't generally be said for fanfolk.
Sony obviously spent R&D on the Move and they're obviously trying to create engaging experiences with it, but the developers are falling short. Something is lost in translation, made all the more obvious by the linearity of Killzone 3, the peculiarities of Datura and Pixeljunk 4am and the failure of Sorcery to impress. I think we all expected to see some real core games to come out, exclusive to Move, but Sony does it see it that way. Instead, they see it as something that second-rate developers should work on and perhaps be shoehorned into what of their big titles is capable of utilising it in a straightforward way.
I mean, why haven't we at least the announcement of a major RPG that uses it? What about a strategy game in the vein of Valkyria Chronicles (which would be amazing if done properly)? How about an shooter designed from the ground up for the Move, rather than it being an option? Where is a more adept version of PSMove Heroes or a really strong AAA action game? It could be so much more if only Sony would get a AAA dev onto it on a big budget game.
As for pulling rabbits out of hats, The Last of Us, Beyond, what do you call them? But I can't wait to see the new IPs out of Guerrilla, MM and Sucker Punch. Particularly the latter two as they've done nothing but impress me thus far.
The Last of Us, Beyond and whatever GG, Sucker Punch and other SONY first party studios are working are not White Rabbits. They are more like White Kangaroos! With boxing gloves on!
So… The Six White Boomers now belong to Sony? Santa MUST be in dire straits. 😀
He has basically stated the opposite to how sony treats there developers, microsoft wouldn't have gave the last guardian developers all the time and support they've been given and look how meny flozas have been made to gt5s one. All the articles you ever read, where first party developers comment on sony is always positive,
sonys problem this gen has been lack of advertising, for there veta and ps3, x box advertising for gears 3 had me by my first x box, that is the support that sony lacks for there developers,
Also could someone shoot the guy who does decide how to advertise sony hardware, my god, the veta advert in england showed no functionality and hardly any footage of the actual veta in the advert, its a big reason for sonys failure, pinch microsoft or even nintendos advertising teams.
Sony has seemed to shrunk it's advertising, only times I seem to ever see any PS3 advert is on ESPN
Give them headroom to be inventive and creative? As far as I can tell Sony has more or less been doing that for a while now and is continuing to do that.
hes right.
$ony has allot of companies to support but the worrying thing is all of them really dont rake in much cash.
makes me wonder how much money studios like ND have burned through bringing out the uncharted series compared to how much its raked in.
their first party library is one of their strongest points, but also one of their weakest!
one of the main reasons why the companies stock is the lowest its been in the companies history!
you can only spend more money making a game than it will bring in for so long………….
The company's stock is in the crapper because of too diverse a product range at a premium price when their competitors are on par quality-wise and manage to undercut them in the price department, meaning that thrifty consumers spend money on the cheaper products. It's been stated many times that the games sector of Sony is, in fact, one of their strongest and why it is intended to become one of the core areas of the company in the future.
And just as a hypothetical, let's say that Sony/ND earn $15 from every copy of Uncharted sold. IIRC, there's 13 million out there in the wild leading to almost $200 million dollars. Even if the budgets are on the higher end of the spectrum, let's assume $50 million apiece (which I HIGHLY doubt), that's still a rather hefty profit. Admittedly, most of their other games don't sell as well, but Sony knows what does and it is to those projects that they will allocate the greatest portion of their spending. I really don't think that they would be silly enough to put $40m+ into SOCOM 4, considering that only about $35m went into GoW, and it is one of their most consistent sellers. Despite what most people seem to think, corporations are smart with their money.
My interpretation is that he was commending SONY first party developers but concerned about how Sonys corporate structure my hinder their ability to produce innovation. Which is strange because SONY first party studios produce such great games. If they had complete freedom then what more can they come up with? In the article he makes the argument that not just SONY but all console makers are wondering what the next step will be. Which is why I believe the next gen has not been unveiled as of yet. I think SONY and MS will monitor how the industry responds to the Wii-U to gauge their next moves.
As far as MSs obsession with SONY that boils down to SONY being the giant to knock down from the last generation. MS came to the industry with their sights on SONY and I must say they did an excellent job. They went from the new kid to a formidable competitor. And that is strictly on sales. SONY wins hands down on actual GAMES! It is folly to think otherwise.
I've always found Molyneux to be over-rated and opinionated, and this is just another example. I think some of what he say has merit, and other stuff is him being a little parochial, but then that's just Molyneux – it's not the first (or hundredth!) time, and it won't be the last :).
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Plus I think alot of us PS gamers are aware of Sony's first party its why we support them and some of us also know that Sony is taking huge financial risks with so many 1st party dev's under their bel needing to perform and innovate the whole time but it's why we love them, they really are all for the gamers they stick their necks out to bring us as much quality games as possible.
THink thats why Ninty stick with the other route, they dont create new IP's they stick with the old as they are tried and trusted and known to bring in cash. M$ almost purely pries on 3rd party (exclusives including) while their 1st party hos one or two Giants and some lesser IPs.
He's not wrong but he might be looking in the wrong place. Sony's financials have been awful for four consecutive years…especially the last fiscal year. If you really dig into it you will see that Sony has been hemmoraghing money from their HDTV and computer bussiness for years. A record breaking 6.4 billion dollar loss posted in their last financial report. A ton of pressure on Sony to turn a profit. 14 executives including Kaz are taking pay cuts and they are going to cut 10% of their workforce due to poor perormence. Could that impact the PS4?
This thought about Microsoft's obsession with Sony. MS targeted the console market and managed to overtake Sony this gen. That's almost unbelievable when you look back on Sony's past success. Like it or not MS has managed to take away a significant chunk of Sony's marketshare this generation.
This has been one strange generation. The Wi came out nowhere and had a lot of success. The less said about the PS3 launch the better. It fell flat on its face and Microsoft was able to take advantage of Sony's mistakes. If Sony hadn't totally blown that launch then I don't think MS would have gained so much marketshare this generation. I do have a lot of comtempt for the PS3's launch. I think it was a huge blunder that kind of just handed over marketshare to MS. Now Microsoft is entrenched and dominates the largest market in NA.
Okay, now we get down to exclusives. Are they really as important in today's console market? I would say no because if you break down game sales exclusives are just a tiny fraction of overall game sales. I'm not saying they don't matter because they do but I think there are only a few select exlusives that are true console sellers. I can count them one one hand.
I don't think Sony needs to pull any rabits out of their hats. They just need to do a proper console launch next time and sort out that mess in their HDTV division. Posting a profit would be nice as well. Maybe that it in itself would be
a magic trick.
What is your idea of a proper console launch?
Half the loss posted was because of tax accounting not actual losses. The majority of it is down to the HDTV business, and not the PlayStation busines. Even with the heavy investment in PS3 and BluRay technology, the balance for Sony is that the R&D paid off in terms of liquidity and revenue from all BluRay related products and PS3/Playstation products. Whether PS3 has paid for it's own development yet I don't know, but a lot of the development cost was discounted long before the PS3 launched.
Incidentally. Sony did not blow the launch of the PS3. If you go back and analyze the press coverage of game consoles from about Jan 2005 through Jan 2008 you can see a clear pattern. I've closely followed this industry and the tech industry for nearly two decades now. In early 2005 BluRay and HDDVD were beginning their battle. There were rumblings about next generation consoles.
The largely US based English speaking tech and game media coverage was already slightly tainted with an Anti-Sony feeling thanks to the morons in BMG who decided to to their CD copy protection thing. However, as we got closer to E3 and MS got closer to announcing the PS3, there started to be a stream of extremely negative stories questioning the PS3 and poking fun at Ken Kutaragi.
When we got to E3 2005, and 360 was announced, Sony didn't have a working system to show – more negativity. In the time that followed through to early 2006 there was a steady stream, if not a torrent of positive stories about the 360 and extreme negativity and skepticism about the PS3 and Sony in general.
By the time E3 2006 rode around, you really had to look hard to find neutral or positive coverage of Sony. So when they announced the Ps3 with all that it was capable of, the press didn't look for the positive, instead they went for the jugular over the sticker shock of the price. Worse still they all concentrated on the price of the more expensive system.
Everyone says that PS3 cost $600 at launch, except it did not, it cost $500. The 20GB system only lacked Wi-Fi and had a smaller HDD, other than that it was identical to the 60GB system. Never mind the fact that all the component break downs suggested that Sony was gifting buyers with $300-$400 by discounting the PS3 to $550 and #600. The extreme negativity of the media continued for at least two more years with every multi-platform game being gleefully dissected so that the PS3 would be shown to be inferior, and every superior exclusive discounted as weak or somehow just not as good as <insert 360 game here>.
Having been there through the entire thing, I can tell you that OK, a lot of early multi-platform games sucked, but other than that, the coverage was about as biased and negative as I've ever seen. It was largely in the English speaking US and UK game/tech media. Funnily enough it's in precisely those markets where the 360 leads and there is so much anti-Sony sentiment among gamers. Coincidence? I don't believe so. Regarding Multi-plat games, we all know that is not the hardware's fault, its crappy devs who did not implement a PS3 engine and merely ported a stripped down version of their 360 product.
But at the end of the day, Sony had a good launch. They brought state of the art hardware to the market for $500, which was a steal ($300-$400 below actual cost). they provide free online gaming, and their system came with a wireless controller and BluRay. But all anyone ever talks about is the ridiculous $600 price of the system.
What bothers me now is people like you Excelsior, that still buy into the biased BS that was pushed back in 2005/2006/2007.
Last edited by TheHighlander on 6/13/2012 10:58:51 AM
You realize Highlander you just sent Excelsior off to do a day of research to try and counter your point?
=p
That's a mountain of research to plow through in a day. Not to mention, I'm not sure what would counter anything I said. 🙂
Sonys PS3 launch was a distater that lasted for quite awhile. There were big tine cosequences for crazy Ken Kutargi, That man did so much danage with his crazy go get two jobs remarmks, Sony has kicked Ken out because of poor selling PS3O
A proper console launch has a system priced at reasionable price that is heaavily marketed and not left to twist in the wind for 2 yr. The first two years of thr PS3 were not a lot of fun, Inferior muitiplats did a lot of damage as well, Sony, themselves have acknowledged the PS3 launch was a problem.
If anybody has any doubt about that PS3 launch then just google. You will find articles saying Sony blew it, I forget which magazine it was but time had a small peice on Sony's early problems stating Sony did an awful job of transitioning happy PS2 owners over to the PS3. I agree with that, MS did the better job of not only bring over XBOX but also a lot of those PS2 fans, Apparently a lot of PS fans bailed early on. When you launch a new system and watch 30 40% of your custumers bail on your brand then I can assure somebody screwed up.
Excelsior, if you honestly believe 30-40% of PlayStation fans "bailed" when the PS3 came out, or somehow defected to Microsoft, you're completely out of your mind. Those numbers are asinine.
Furthermore, the 360 launch sucked hardcore. The systems didn't work, the launch software was basically meaningless (at least the PS3 had one AAA title in Resistance), and it only offered crappy emulation as backwards compatibility, where very few Xbox games worked and those that did performed terribly.
You keep associating words like "catastrophe" with Sony when the PS3 has sold just as many if not slightly more 360 units in its lifetime, and has done so in ONE YEAR LESS TIME.
30-40% of PlayStation fans disappeared when the PS3 came out…? Wow. That's just…too stupid to even respond to, really. I knew you loved to bash PlayStation with stats that don't even freakin' exist, but I didn't realize you'd be so blatant about inventing such stats.
Last edited by Ben Dutka PSXE on 6/13/2012 8:16:28 PM
Excelsior,
By your own words in your reply you confirmed everything I said, including the massive disrespect to Ken Kutaragi who is literally the reason we have PlayStations today. Thanks for backing me up. I know that there are lots of articles criticizing Sony, that was kinda my point, you know?
The PS2 had control of over 70% over the console market, After the PS3/360/and wi it looks like Sony lost 30-40% of their marketshare, Those mumbrs are not made up and for longest time Sony was dancing around a 50% loss in custumer base. The most recent number I can find about Sony's marketshare is 36(source games rardar) It's the only console that didn't see an increse from the previuos gen a saw a massive dropp. Sorry, it's just the truth.
Want to look up some surprising facts. The PS3 has never at any point in its lifecycle come colese to touching the success the PS1 and pS2. The first 5 years of both charted up CVG show how much the PS3 has struglled when compared to Sony's previos sysytems.
Sony is not 30-40% off their sales numbers when comparing 5 years into PS3 with 5 years into PS2. 30-40% is accurate when comparing 5 years of PS3 with 10 years of PS2.
Just sayin'… it's a little early to count your chickens.
That 30 doesnt feel so far fetched. We know now MS has control of %50 of the console market, I stand by the ststement Sony has lost a ton of theirmarketshatre this gen. just looking at the sales of the PS1 and PS2 after 5 yrs. 100 millions each. At the rate the PS3 has solt it will need years upon years to break that 100 million barrier. Even if does happen it will have taken much longer than Sony's better systems.
Yes, I have some contempt for Mr Kutargagi, as well. He 's the man who dedevoped this amazing system that everybody learded hate. No eay task unsless you charde through the next for and then show up with no games.