I like Sonys current crop of IPs (GoW and Horizon) but I really hate how they’ve completely abandoned niches and innovation.
It’s like they don’t care about their first part titles having any variety anymore.
Studio Japan and Studio Liverpool hurt me personally. Neither made games played by everyone, but everyone who did play WipEout or Gravity Rush, loved them.
Variety doesn’t sell. Homogonous goop does.
Every game must be over-the-shoulder action slop, or nobody will ever buy them!
~ Game Executives
How I would innovate within this confined space:
“What if it was actually a first person game, but your character is a little guy on the shoulder of a bigger guy and you’re just whispering in their ear to control them?”
I dunno… AAA games are not selling very well right now, and many are diving into the indie scene for better quality. Support for indie games are growing because the secret is starting to become obvious.
The numbers don’t show that. Indies are finding success, yes. But very few of them are putting up the same numbers as AAA slop. Silksong is the only one of note recently that has huge numbers, and it still hasn’t surpassed the latest iterations of Battlefield or Call of Duty. The current best selling game of this year is Resident Evil: Requiem.
And with the massive hype train for Silksong, I feel like the big boys are gonna take the wrong lesson and just spend more money on marketing than ever before to get those massive pre-order numbers while the actual products get worse.
