Sony PlayStation cross-platform game strategy

[PSman1700]

I would be interested to believe why you think this. There are no reports that Nixxes have in any way expanded and over the past ten years have managed - on average - one significant platform port a year. Why would they be better now Sony own them? There is no information to suggest have more people so how would they be more capable at producing ports?

Only time will tell. I also don't think Nixxes will be on the same PC port cadence as they were prior to the acquisition since Sony may open the floodgates, allowing them to multitask many titles at the same time.

Nixxes wasnt that large of a company before (as far i remember), mostly doing some low profile pc ports. I doubt Sony would aquire them for one port a year or so, instead i believe Nixxes is there to help and aid in the porting process for Sony's studios, as was said by Sony themselfs.
I mean, if Sony says we should expect more PS games coming to pc, and were actually seeing quite many of that in just the last two years, its probable we will see more of it. How much more and at what pace is anyone's guess for now though.

I think its just great news that the PC platform is recieving Sony games from now on aswell, this is a market Sony never would have reached with those games as pc gamers are a different market than console gamers. Those two markets will co-exist for a long time to come.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Nixxes wasnt that large of a company before (as far i remember), mostly doing some low profile pc ports.

Before? So you think Sony have scaled-up Nixxes since acquisitor or will do so? Is there any information to suggest this, because Sony have acquired a lot of teams over the past three decades and never make significant changes following the acquisition. It took over a decade for Naughty Dog to scale up to have a second team.

I doubt Sony would aquire them for one port a year or so, instead i believe Nixxes is there to help and aid in the porting process for Sony's studios, as was said by Sony themselfs.

Equally Sony have never been quick to rush into new ventures. So why buy an organisation not suited to what the need to do, only to radically change it?

II think its just great news that the PC platform is recieving Sony games

I completely agree. The more people that can enjoy games the better,

 

[pharma]

Before? So you think Sony have scaled-up Nixxes since acquisitor or will do so? Is there any information to suggest this, because Sony have acquired a lot of teams over the past three decades and never make significant changes following the acquisition. It took over a decade for Naughty Dog to scale up to have a second team.

On Nixxes website it may indicate scale-up plans. So far since the acquisition the following 6 jobs have been posted. Though, not really sure if this is due to the acquisition.

Spoiler

• 
  Technical Artist
  Nixxes
  Utrecht
  
  • Full Time
  • Posted 1 week ago
• 
  IT Support Engineer
  Nixxes
  Utrecht
  
  • Full Time
  • Posted 1 week ago
• 
  Senior Graphics Programmer
  Nixxes
  Utrecht
  
  • Full Time
  • Posted 2 months ago
• 
  Senior Systems Programmer
  Nixxes
  Utrecht
  
  • Full Time
  • Posted 3 months ago
• 
  UI & Systems Programmer
  Nixxes
  Utrecht
  
  • Full Time
  • Posted 3 months ago
• 
  Systems Programmer
  Nixxes
  Utrecht
  
  • Full Time
  • Posted 3 months ago

 

[Deleted member 11852]

On Nixxes website it may indicate scale-up plans. So far since the acquisition the following 6 jobs have been posted.

True, but if six people is a significant upscaling then Nixxes been delivering absolutely miracles this last decade!

 

[PSman1700]

Before? So you think Sony have scaled-up Nixxes since acquisitor or will do so? Is there any information to suggest this, because Sony have acquired a lot of teams over the past three decades and never make significant changes following the acquisition. It took over a decade for Naughty Dog to scale up to have a second team.

Thing is, they wouldnt even have to scale up nixxes all that much if at all (although a big one like sony is backing them now), as Nixxes is supposed to aid in the porting process of games, not soley doing all the porting themselfs for every game, atleast, thats how i understood it.
HZD was ported without the help of Nixess, and that showed because it was quite rough at launch (but eventually got patched).

I think the general consensus is that Sony is going to bring their exclusives to pc, its a good thing for everyone, and as sony themselfs said wont impact the console releases or its console user-base. Also, i'd rather have them take their time with the ports and deliver improvements and quality over quick 6 dirty ports

 

[BRiT]

True, but if six people is a significant upscaling then Nixxes been delivering absolutely miracles this last decade!

Maybe those positions were filled multiple times ...

 

[pharma]

True, but if six people is a significant upscaling then Nixxes been delivering absolutely miracles this last decade!

Looking at the company photo it might represent a 10% increase in their workforce. It will be very interesting if further listings appear over the next 3-6 months.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Looking at the company photo it might represent a 10% increase in their workforce. It will be very interesting if further listings appear over the next 3-6 months.

This is what I'm getting at. If Sony bought Nixxes to focus on their PC output, and Nixxes have been outputting one game a year on average for the last decade, they need to double or triple their number of increase their game output. Hiring six people is a drop in the ocean. Sony have a lot of first party games that I would say are good candidates for Windows ports. One game a year can't keep pace with Sony studios current output let alone address the back catalogue.

I think Sony have diverted some internal resource for some quite ports for their experiment but I doubt very much they want to keep core resources occupied on this on the long-term. They can, of course, continue to outsource like they have with Iron Galaxy and the Uncharted games.

 

[iroboto]

I suppose if the strategy forward is to bring more games to PC; they could alter their engine from the get go to support PC. I so recall that GG indicated their engine fully supported PC as well and it wasn’t just for PC.

typically this is somewhat expected as well; since the games are built on PC I guess it’s just a matter of how far you bring rendering in the tools for levels etc.

If games are built in such a fashion; like how Xbox games and GDKs are designed to build out to PC and console, the porting requirements would be less. And you wouldn’t need to rely on Nixxes to port everything. In fact they wouldn’t need to port any future titles if the devkits are good enough.

I would assume that would be sort of the big hint that all Sony games are coming to PC, their devkit will deploy to multi platform.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I would think they bought mixed because tj they still consider porting certain games to pc as a sperate affair

 

[iroboto]

I would think they bought mixed because tj they still consider porting certain games to pc as a sperate affair

I was under the assumption that they proved themselves to stop porting and move towards making their own games. At least that’s what I would do. IIRC they expressed some interest in making their own titles instead of being a porting studio

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I was under the assumption that they proved themselves to stop porting and move towards making their own games. At least that’s what I would do. IIRC they expressed some interest in making their own titles instead of being a porting studio

I thought Nixxes had no art teams, only coders.

Then again, Aspyr had the exact same role as Nixxes but for straight ports of older games to Android and iOS (and some of them aren'treally very good, like Civ6 that I own), yet here they are doing the KOTOR Remake which I still can't get my head around.

 

[DavidGraham]

How much did the PC ports of Days Gone and Horizon earn Sony? Just sales numbers would be good.

The fact they are marching forward with more ports shows they made them a good profit.

like the five that Sony

If you are going to pedantic about it, they are actually 7, counting the two small Sony published games that I mentioned earlier.

if you task lots of different people to do it

Apparently, Sony has no problem doing exactly that, they even brought Nixxes as an extra hand. Also work on PC ports can be simultaneous with work on native PS5 work.

Making PC ports is much much cheaper and way less risky than developing a new IP from scratch.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I was only referring the 2010+ output because ports before were quicker but aren't reflective of the work required now, and this is literally the same list of the same games being released in the same years. Seriously SB, WTF man!

Sorry to unfairly mini-rant at you because I've never seen you do this before but there is so much of this type of posting on B3D, it's disheartening when posts from members I always enjoy reading, post some reference without obviously having read it. Somebody literally did this over in one of the other forums yesterday, trying to proved a point they literally shoved some links in, told me to read them and admitted they have not read them ether. Like WTF. I've posted some shite in haste on occasion (and I'm not proud of it) but the overall level of discourse on B3D has easily reached GAF-level at its worst and this is the most common reason being when people ask for their accounts to be deleted - those that say and don't just silently disappear.

Shifty Geezer used to keep the discussion honest and call out the bullshit. The level of discourse has massively declined ever since he left.

/rantover.

Don't let the live of discourse grab your posts down, man. It's a slippery slope. The type of posts you make are pretty much the only reason I even visit this forum but the quality posts are drowned by shit posts and it's just not worth digging through shit to find a bit of gold.

Sorry I missed the past 10 years part. However, you missed the important point that I was making. Neither the Giant Bomb article nor the Wikipedia article show all the releases that Nixxes have done in the past decade. Notably, FFXIV (expansions and updates) is missing from both lists.

The list basically represents the minimum number of titles that they've helped port or collaborated on in the past 10 years and isn't by any means a definitive list. It also doesn't detail how many titles they are working on simultaneously each year. It also shows that ports that they do, can and do appear day and date with the base console versions.

Since these aren't quick and dirty ports, we have no idea how many titles they work on simultaneously in any given year. However, because they are ports, they can't release until the base games are finished. If the base game is delayed, then obviously their port will be delayed as well.

Thanks for the kind words, BTW. I do try to be fair to all sides in all regards and at least attempt to understand where the other party is coming from before joining a discourse. I also enjoy the quality of your posts and when you don't post for a while, it's quite obvious.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

I thought Nixxes had no art teams, only coders.

Then again, Aspyr had the exact same role as Nixxes but for straight ports of older games to Android and iOS (and some of them aren'treally very good, like Civ6 that I own), yet here they are doing the KOTOR Remake which I still can't get my head around.

Most games aren’t made in isolation. But yea, I think I mixed up Nixxes with Bluepoint. I sort of forgot which ones Nixxes worked on

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The fact they are marching forward with more ports shows they made them a good profit.

The fact that they are releasing two more ports only demonstrates that Sony intend to release the ports in development. You're making assumptions that God of War War and Uncharted were started after Horizon Zero Dawn and Day Gone released and made Sony profits. If you're looking for proof that they did, Sony's financial reports would be the place to find actual facts but I can save you the effort, don't bother. The PC sales and any profits have received zero mentions in any of Sony's reporting - the last being 4th August 2021.

If you are going to pedantic about it, they are actually 7, counting the two small Sony published games that I mentioned earlier.

Not including non-Sony games amongst your Sony port list is not being pedantic. As for the other two games, Ready Set Heroes is a game by Robot Entertainment, published on PS4 (but not owned) by Sony and Predator Hunting Grounds is by Illfonic (who made Friday the 13th and Evolve) and SIE did publish on both PS4 and Windows but it doesn't appear to be a Sony game.

To be clear, Sony publishing a game on their platform - exclusive or not - doesn't mean it's a Sony game. Multiplatform games that you may have heard of that Sony have published on PlayStation include Bejewelled, Castle Crashers, DC Universe Online, Dead or Alive 2, a bunch of Final Fantasy games. Sony acts just as a publisher for some games and some of the above games were on competing consoles.

Making PC ports is much much cheaper and way less risky than developing a new IP from scratch.

Sony don't seem to mind taking taking risks developing new IP and their best selling games are generally games using IP they've not used before: Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, Uncharted. You know.. some of the game you seem excited for. Creating new successful IP is kind of Sony's thing.

Neither the Giant Bomb article nor the Wikipedia article show all the releases that Nixxes have done in the past decade. Notably, FFXIV (expansions and updates) is missing from both lists.

Are you sure Nixxes are working on their FF XIV? Nixxes' own 'recent projects' page doesn't show it, their twitter feed doesn't mention it and Google is bamboozled when trying to connect the two search terms. Perhaps this story got mangled in re-reporting, it's about Final Fantasy and mentions Nixxes working on a project but it referring to Marvel's Avengers.

Since these aren't quick and dirty ports, we have no idea how many titles they work on simultaneously in any given year. However, because they are ports, they can't release until the base games are finished. If the base game is delayed, then obviously their port will be delayed as well.

Yes and no, very little digging shows they spent "a few years" on Marvel's Avengers but whether they work on one title in a year, or concurrently on three titles over three years, the cadence of output is the same: on average one game per year. If they had capacity to eek out more with their resources I am sure they would already be doing this.

 

[pharma]

How much did the PC ports of Days Gone and Horizon earn Sony? Just sales numbers would be good.

The fact they are marching forward with more ports shows they made them a good profit.

According to this June report, Days Gone sales seem to have skyrocketed following PC release on Steam.

Days Gone was the 20th best-selling game of May 2021 in the US, according to market research firm the NPD Group. The Bend Studio developed game jumped from No.247 on April’s chart to No.20 following its PC release via Steam on May 18.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Are you sure Nixxes are working on their FF XIV? Nixxes' own 'recent projects' page doesn't show it, their twitter feed doesn't mention it and Google is bamboozled when trying to connect the two search terms. Perhaps this story got mangled in re-reporting, it's about Final Fantasy and mentions Nixxes working on a project but it referring to Marvel's Avengers.

I was going to try to find you something more definitive than my recollection of hearing Yoshi P (Naoki Yoshida: director, designer and executive producer for FFXIV) talk about the PC enhancements that Nixxes made in one of their frequent FFXIV streams. However, since I can't find anything definitive online and I don't want to try viewing all of their streams from that time period again (if they still exist), feel free to be extremely skeptical of my recollection.

I used to watch those streams religiously as FFXIV is such a good game. If anyone hasn't played it and is a Final Fantasy fan, they really owe it to themselve to play it like a single player game as it now has over 300 hours of main story content and another few hundred hours of side story content. And unlike most MMORPGs or in fact most AAA games, it actually has a superbly good main story. Although some expansions were a little uneven with story pacing.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

According to this June report, Days Gone sales seem to have skyrocketed following PC release on Steam.

The problem with sales rankings is they don't mean anything. If the top 19 games all sold 20k and Days Gone sold 21k, it'll make 20th.

You can sell less copies one month and go up the rankings because everything above you sold less ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. That's why I sought sales numbers or profits. When Sony sells a lot of copies of a game, they usually put out a press statement. The number I can see is SteamSpy which reports under 2m. Is that good for a PC game after five months? Keys are readily available for under £20, which is half the Steam RRP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Remij]

The problem with sales rankings is they don't mean anything. If the top 19 games all sold 20k and Days Gone sold 21k, it'll make 20th.

You can sell less copies one month and go up the rankings because everything above you sold less ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. That's why I sought sales numbers or profits. When Sony sells a lot of copies of a game, they usually put out a press statement. The number I can see is SteamSpy which reports under 2m. Is that good for a PC game after five months? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They announced that they were very happy with how well Horizon and Days Gone have done. Horizon Zero Dawn had over a 250% ROI on the port.

Days Gone I would imagine is similar. Perhaps even moreso since it was likely easier to port than Horizon ZD was, and was done by Bend Studio internally, unlike Horizon which was initially ported by Virtuous, and then I believe fixed by Guerrilla themselves after the disappointing state of the game at launch.

So I'd say yes, it's pretty good for a couple of older PS games, which were still priced relatively high at $50, a couple years later.