What should Sony's Acquisition Plans Be? *spawn*
- Thread starter RDGoodla
- Start date
Herman Hulst wasn't calling the shots then, no? He was VP of WW Studios in 2011, then Head of WWS in 2019 (why not President from VP??), then joint Head of Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2024 whre he's now in charge of Sony's 1st party content. I'm assuming Ryan was responsible for the change in direction when he came in in 2019 and was booted in 2024. It'll be years before a course correction will manifest, if so. If Hulst was responsible, why'd Ryan let him and why is he still around?
Charlietus
Regular
Hulst isn't the only one responsible, but he and Ryan are probably the most responsible, maybe in equal measure. I'm not necessarily against live service games, but funding 12 live service projects and cancelling 9 of them in three years is worthy of being fired.
Cynicalking
Regular
Whose decision is it to push the Horizon IP so far? I feel its so forced, it's not as good as they're trying to make it.
Charlietus
Regular
Sony thinks that they don't have huge franchises so they push mediocre ones more than they should. And they are right, god of war, uncharted, horizon and Gran Turismo aren't as big as Mario or call of duty.
They can make as many horizons as they want, that will not change the status of the IP.
They can make as many horizons as they want, that will not change the status of the IP.
snc
Veteran
Gow, uncharted and gran turismo are mediocre franchises ?
PS2 GOW is a gameplay-centric action game that could be repeated in interesting different ways for decades. The game could have worked its way through all of the gods and just completely avoided anything having to do with Abrahamic religions. Entire GOW games could be based on Hades/Hell and there's just a ton of room for the franchise to blossom while keeping the core mechanics intact.Gow, uncharted and gran turismo are mediocre franchises ?
They lowered GOW to a mediocre franchise with no legs by killing off the PS2 GOW and turning it into a generic crafting-centric father/son game where you drag a kid around.
Mario's a massive franchise because they generally keep Mario doing the same things that Mario's been doing for decades.
Charlietus
Regular
snc
Veteran
Old gow bored me, ragnarok is one of best game adventure I played
but we are not in good topic for these kind of discussions
snc
Veteran
gran turismo serie sold now around 100m copies being pure exlusive, not small frenchise eitherI didn't mean that lmao (excluding horizon) . Just that they aren't "huge" franchises like the biggest. All of those three are beautiful series.
I want to put the blame at the right feet. Do we have any info on the inner workings that we know exactly what happened? If it's just guesswork, you'd ned a deeper paper-trail to link it back to Hulst and make a case. AFAIK he's kind of an unknown and his appointment as head of WWS a bit of a shock.
Charlietus
Regular
He became the head of WWS in 2019, doing the same job as yoshida, which is going to the studios, see what they are up to, approve or shut down projects. Even if the GAAS initiative was totally envisioned by Ryan, he still had a say on what projects were approved or not. It's his job.
Edit: https://bsky.app/profile/kriswolfheart.bsky.social/post/3lfvgkaiih22u
They have thrown away half a generation of first party games.
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Old style God of War was a pretty, but ultimately fairly 'above par at best' action series in terms of gameplay that people had grown fairly tired of. And in my opinion, Kratos was a dull, one-note lead, whose only real characteristic was 'anger'. The idea that if Sony kept on with these old school style GoW games instead, that they could have built the series into something as big as Mario is fairly laughable, sorry. You're also bizarrely ignoring that Mario games have varied to an extreme over the years, from 2d and 3d platformers, to Tennis and Golf games, to puzzle games, to RPG's to tactical turn-based strategy and so on, so a very bizarre example.
The 2018 reboot, where you say it turned into a 'mediocre franchise', was an incredible critical and sales success, and propelled the franchise into a plainly higher tier status among gamers, and added a depth to Kratos and his story that helped many people feel much more invested in him as the lead character. I get it was a bit jarring for fans of the originals, but in no way does your preference for old school GoW diminish the franchise's current status.
Evidence? Otherwise that's pure speculation. Could be Ryan said, "we are doing this; get these teams producing live-service games", no? At which point Hulst would be given the job of trying to manage studios making stuff they don't want to make. I don't know how much autonomy the head of WWS gets to decide the software direction under SIE; it probably changes based on the whims of their boss.
Charlietus
Regular
The evidence is that, as I said, it's his job. Not to decide that the company is going in the direction of live service (even if he has a say in it) but to decide to fund projects and seeing how things are going at the studios. For example, he saw Concord and he decided that the game was good enough to show it and launch it.
Insufficient. Plenty of head of game development at studios end up releasing crappy games with issues because their superiors demand it, at every level. An employee does a bad job because they were told to, even when they protested. You might have a general not want to take on a battle because it's a dumb battle to take, but do so because they ordered to by their State and then they do the best they can with the crappy hand they've been dealt.
You need to point to something that shows Hulst's autonomy in that role and how much his hands were or weren't tied by the higher-ups. Without that, it's just your feeling.
Charlietus
Regular
I can't give you the proof that you want.
But I find it believable that someone in his high level position would have a lot of responsibility on what has happened in the last 6 years.
That's fine, but it's just conjecture on your part so "in your opinion". Perhaps why Hulst still has a job and Ryan hasn't is Sony's heads knew where the blame lay? if they wanted to clean ship of GaaS thinking and left in charge (actually promoted) a guy who was responsible for GaaS thinking, they'd be mental.
If your higher ups want something you disagree with it is a matter of communicating and convincing otherwise. If you can't convince your bosses, you have to do what you are told to do. Still this is all speculation. We have no idea what was discussed and what Hulst believed in.
Charlietus
Regular
I agree completely. The difference in my argument is that, while he had to accept live service projects, he was responsible of accepting the right ones. Given his position, he had the power to shut down projects who were obviously problematic.
It's not like he saw the pitches and the higher ups told him to accept all of them, no matter what.