Is it really as simple as that though?
It seems being "under Sony's wing" really is beneficial to dev houses. Take Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Evolution Studios until recently, all operating on their own essentially, Sony are hardly knocking down doors to buy any of them, yet the treatment they get from Sony seems to have these devs locked down.
There is more to it than simply throwing money around in my opinion.
This is imo a pretty ridiculous comment.
First of all, Naughty Dog and Evolution studios are both owned by SCE. Insomniac's publisher is Sony, and they own the rights to their most successfull franchises. They are not operating on their own, Naughty Dog and Evolution has to obey whatever direction Sony tells them to, and Insomniac does aswell, unless they want to see their creations like Ratchet and Clank (and resistance) be given to another team (thus loosing money).
I dont see how you can make an argument like that, worded like its significantly better to work under sonys wing. Its the same.
In general, being a first party developer is without a doubt, the best situation to be in for a developer, first party regardless if its nintendo, ms or Sony. First party means job security, and big budgets. Take a team like Ninja Theory, if they wheren't first party, all those people would probably be looking for new jobs right now, based on how sales are going.
There is more to it than simply throwing money around in my opinion.
Why would there be anything else than money involved? The people that own these companies are usually the founders, and in some cases a handful employees that helped starting the whole thing up with stock options, 9 out of 10 cases, all of them leave directly after a sale. The rest of the developers, well, they kinda need a job dont they?
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