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[StreetsofBeige]

It took awhile but Jim did take PS down a bad path with their games wanting so much GAAS

Get back to doing what your best at

Exactly. Dont rock the boat. They already showed during the PS3 era and KZ Shadownfall their MP focus games dont last and they shut down servers fast. Even the games that get great reviews dont even have longlasting online communities.

But the GAAS treasure chest is too enticing to avoid. Sony's biggest division is gaming, so the need for giant reoccuring GAAS is important to sustain growth. Thats why Ryan (or one of the other execs) said "all they need is one to be successful to cover the rest". When you got that kind of mentality to making games where the game plan is to shotgun a blast, you're going to get a lot of crud that doesn't stick. And LOU Online is one of them. I'm pretty sure when they make GOW, Spiderman, Horizon etc.... they dont have that kind of mentality.

Never the less, I always thought Factions mode got great reviews. So who knows what they were doing to screw it up. Like all MP games, use the first game as a foundation, improve the graphics, tweak the gameplay make new maps and release. That's the core way you make MP games. The maps probably take the most time to do since they are done from scratch. The rest of the game (like sports games too) are incremental tweaks.

 

[YukiOnna]

comments locked lol

Been wondering but how do they get any sort of general feedback on how people feel? Sure there's safe spaces like Reddit or Fanmail and it's social media, but you can't pretend the dissatisfaction doesn't exist

 

[Nonehxc]

Ok guys, here's my best outcome from this fiasco:

1) Dickmann throws temper tantrum over the cancellation and quits to join his new BFFs at HBO.

2) Bruce Straley returns, becomes new head of ND.

3) He patches things up with Amy Hennig, and convinces her to rejoin ND.

4) ND announces a complete remake of their Jak & Dakster series.

AND <drumroll>

5) ND announces that they have just acquired the Legacy Of Kain IP from Embracer Group, and will be remaking/reimagining the entire series!

Oh, and going forward all new ND games will be completely playable from start to finish on PSVR2!!!

Put 5) and 3) on top, make it real and I buy you a yatch.

It's an awesome yatch made of blow

...and hookers.

 

[leo-j]

Just crazy how this team released uncharted 1-3 in the same generation, and we still have yet to receive a full game from them this gen, (the last of us part 1 was a remaster of the original blue print of the game so it wasn’t really a full new game imo).

 

[ProtoByte]

It means they are all on the chopping block.

Which is music to my ears. Stop wasting time and resources on crap that is nothing but a huge gamble. I've said it before and I'll say it again, GAAS is orders of magnitude more risky than any single player project will ever be. The amount of resources needed to keep these projects going is tremendous and they quickly become an endless money pit unless the game isn't successful right off the bat.

We have seen how much Rockstar's single player offerings (and intervals) have suffered since the focus turned to their online offerings. But they have been one of the few who have been successful in this area. For every GAAS project that succeeds there are hundreds of casualties, most of which have catastrophic results for the studio/publisher.

They all need to stop chasing the white rabbit.

They needed to learn this way. With money and time lost.

On a business level, it was inevitable that someone would either come in or be forced in with a live service initiative at PlayStation. You can thank the paypigs for GTA Online, Genshin Impact, Destiny, Fortnite, Warzone, and an assortment of others for that.

 

[MDSLKTR]

You can gather all that from a single in development shot of a menu screen?

Worked for redfall.

 

[Gambit2483]

Was it ever in development?
Seemed like a carrot to wave in front of people while they wait for the next thing.
Which was the TV Show, I mean you can't expect one man to lead development of a TV show & make a new game as well as well a Sequel to keep the show running...
You got a few years before you see anything new and it'll likely be TLOU3 and then we start all over again

It's officially in the Druckmann files...

Best to let it go.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

GaaS games are a huge resource hog after the main game launch, could they do both? Probably, but it would still be a massive amount of people at ND working on that full time which is not something they are prepared to do. The reason behind it's cancellation is more likely due to multiple reasons but the main one is probably just sheer resources required.

Now how much this is down to Bungie with their recommendations as to what it would take to service this game for years we may find out at some point but it won't solely be down to Bungie to make any form of decision on its cancellation/ND no longer working on it.

Anyway, ND are well known for their single player narrative driven action games, so I prefer they continue to do that.

If their SP dev and GAAS dev both take tons of time and resources then there would be a guaranteed collision course at some point of time. So it doesn't really make sense to give a message that makes it sound they just realized it in 2023 needing to cut the cord on GAAS.

 

[Party McHardy]

Damn. Was really hoping for a AAA Day Z experience with those brutal LOU animations.

 

[Rockman33]

Just crazy how this team released uncharted 1-3 in the same generation, and we still have yet to receive a full game from them this gen, (the last of us part 1 was a remaster of the original blue print of the game so it wasn’t really a full new game imo).

Not only have we not gotten one. We don’t even know what it’s going to be.

 

[Clear]

People really ought to stop this "years of lost time" silliness.

The post states that the project was canned before it entered full production. Which is backed up by the fact that it was never formally announced with a trailer, promo shots, etc. If they'd poured years worth of effort into it, then they'd have something to show, even now, just as a parting shot.

That it was started in parallel with TLOU2 and got held up because they needed more manpower to finish the single player should speak volumes about exactly how many resources it had!

Amd then of course, does anyone really believe they didn't start on their next single player project immediately also? Something that'd take time because any new IP would need to be greenlit by Sony internally.

Most on-point of all is if their manpower was so overtaxed by this side-project, how could they decide to pull back the remake projects in-house? Remember they started out at Sony Visual Arts, and got moved back to ND after work had already started.

 

[rkofan87]

AN UPDATE ON THE LAST OF US ONLINE​

We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we've been calling The Last of Us Online. There's no easy way to say this: We've made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.

We know this news will be tough for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We're equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.

The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.

In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online we'd have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog's heritage.
We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio that touched this project. The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. We have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we're working on here at Naughty Dog, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we're ready.

Until then, we're incredibly thankful to our community for your support throughout the years.

An Update on The Last of Us Online || Naughty Dog

www.naughtydog.com

good its just gas shit so good riddance.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Just crazy how this team released uncharted 1-3 in the same generation, and we still have yet to receive a full game from them this gen, (the last of us part 1 was a remaster of the original blue print of the game so it wasn’t really a full new game imo).

Dont forget LOU1 in 2013. LOU2 is what really put the studio in turtle's shoes. Before that game they made tons of great games in a timely fashion.

List of Naughty Dog video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Core games listed. Even excludes LOU Left Behind, LOU Remastered, UC Lost Legacy!

UC 2007
UC 2 2009
UC 3 2011
LOU 2013
UC 4 2016

 

[//DEVIL//]

Good. Focus on single player games. It's what defined PlayStation to be the market leader anyway. Unique single player games.

Have bungie develop the Gaas games you want. Don't make every studio focus on Gaas. That is greedy and will fail and will damage the PlayStation brand

But to block comments on twitter... Only sad fucks and pussies goes that route.

" Oh we can't handle negative comments waaa waa. Just like the retard Jason shittiar "

What a sad pussy ass team

 

[DenchDeckard]

Ultimately, good news but man that's like 5 years wasted for nothing.

 

[nial]

Two brand new single player games confirmed. This is amazing news. Not only are ND back to their roots, but they have essentially killed off any potential GAAS trash games for Sony in the future other than fairpont and Bungie. One of which will flop hard and the other by a studio that can barely stay afloat.

incredible news

The GaaS title is called Fairgame$, lol. Farpoint was actually a great PSVR1 game released in 2017.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Naughty dog really should have followed this with an actual reveal of their next game. I never gave a shit about the multiplayer game from the start. I wanted their next proper game and we still don't even know what it even is.

 

[midnightAI]

If their SP dev and GAAS dev both take tons of time and resources then there would be a guaranteed collision course at some point of time. So it doesn't really make sense to give a message that makes it sound they just realized it in 2023 needing to cut the cord on GAAS.

Well that's exactly how it looks, they hit that collision point and determined it was best to cut their losses and continue to work on their single player games (who knows, maybe their new IP, if true, is an absolute banger and that has simply taken priority).

Purely speculation, but maybe they even knew that they were going to have to drop one of 3 current projects? And the other two are just better, they simply couldn't work on all three.

 

[Hero_Select]

lol

 

[mitch1971]

The Gaased of us.


I'll get my coat.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

What do you mean? The biggest GaaS games have hundreds of people working on them, constantly. Fortnite? Destiny? Massive teams just working on a single game. Apex Legends has just had 200 QA staff let go, QA, not even including the main Devs so that's a massive team also.

ND themselves are saying it.

A narrative gets pushed by certain people that want certain things to be true.

"GAAS is a bad bet, in part, because these games require huge resources just to keep afloat."

That's complete fabrication and is likely only true for certain GAAS games. It's also a sign that the person saying it doesn't see a difference in content creation between games like Destiny 2 and League of Legends.

GAAS games obviously vary wildly in what is required out of their post launch teams.

 

[Fbh]

Shame about the wasted time and resources on this, but it's good they eventually came to the conclusion to focus on the stuff they are good at.
Also I hope with them having multiple SP games in development at least one of them isn't directed by Druckman, though I doubt we'll get more than 1 proper new game from them this gen.

 

[Fake]

Been wondering but how do they get any sort of general feedback on how people feel? Sure there's safe spaces like Reddit or Fanmail and it's social media, but you can't pretend the dissatisfaction doesn't exist

Actually, you can. All thanks to social media that give companies tools for a quantity amount of money, we now have all those companies controlling the flow of the conversation, disable commentaries, disable 'likes' on videos, forcing people into creating accounts on Discord just for send feedback to their private rooms, removing and controlling worldwide hashtag top chart...

BTW reddit do this ALL THE BLOODY TIME. Battlefield 2045 is by far the best example of a company trying to censor critics and conversation around the game.

 

[TransTrender]

100% not surprised

Naughty Dog is laying off contract developers, asking them to keep it quiet. TLOU Online "is basically on ice at this point"

Layoffs were communicated internally at the Santa Monica, California-based studio last week, according to two sources familiar with the situation. Departments ranging from art to production were impacted, but the majority of those laid off worked in quality assurance testing. The sources said at...

www.neogaf.com

Game Dev - Naughty Dog's head technology leaves the company

www.neogaf.com

100% glad they did
Now I wonder what's in the pipeline aside more remakes and remasters.

Worked for redfall.

Thinking of this game again.
It was fucking crazy the trailers were all FMV, but in the actual game all cutscenes were literal slide shows.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

remakes and remasters.

reboots more likely

 

[TransTrender]

reboots more likely

Reebootakesters

 

[YukiOnna]

Actually, you can. All thanks to social media that give companies tools for a quantity amount of money, we now have all those companies controlling the flow of the conversation, disable commentaries, disable 'likes' on videos, forcing people into creating accounts on Discord just for send feedback to their private rooms, removing and controlling worldwide hashtag top chart...

BTW reddit do this ALL THE BLOODY TIME. Battlefield 2045 is by far the best example of a company trying to censor critics and conversation around the game.

Yeah, in hindsight it was more of a rhetorical question. You'll always be in their sphere, and I notice these studios make it difficult to give any or don't bother talking about considering it in general. Even if they do, it's most of the time passive aggressive.

 

[dorkimoe]

Not cool.

 

[Yoboman]

I don't remember Druckman saying any of these things.

Don't engage the Druckmann obsessed
It's a genuine mental illness

 

[Oddvintagechap]

Smelling their own farts?

Stop crying, they are highly rated games. The franchise is a success in every media they release.

 

[Fake]

I don't remember Druckman saying any of these things.

 

[Kilau]

Yeah but you don't have to hear their voice. Listening to Boomstick or Destin for any length of time is just grating.

Can you just not listen to the podcasts then?

 

[gamerEMdoc]

Good, I hope they kill every GAAS game Sony is working on eventually and they learn their lesson that gamers still actually want to play good 1P games and not these excessively monetized pieces of garbage. If they want to make a few of them F2P, fine. But using your best studios to make GAAS games is just a road to destruction for Sony.

 

[akaFullmetal]

Probably for the best, they would be grinding away for just this game alone for 10 or more years. I'd rather see more single player games on that time. Sucks there is so much wasted time.

 

[Revolutionary]

Welp, this cancelation marks the end of my interest in TLOU. Couldn't care less about the third game.

 

[Little Chicken]

Surely this was in a near-complete state? They were working on it for years.

 

[Brigandier]

What a waste of time and resources, Time wasted that could have been used on a new IP.

Shambolic but maybe it's for the best.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

That’s horrible. It’s the reason I got a PS5. Spent 150 hours on the first Factions just in 2023. That’s more time than I’ve put into all of their single player games combined.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Surely this was in a near-complete state? They were working on it for years.

Probably not. The most they showed of it was concept art. Games can be stuck in pre production for an eternity.

 

[CityHunter1981]

I think they really underestimated how many resources it takes to take the game going.
They probably thought they just can do this on the side and then Bungie came and explained them the reality and Naughty Dog realized even they do this multiplayer game and significantly lower their single player output.

I am happy about this, was hoping for some time already they cancel it completely and put their focus in their other projects.

 

[Salz01]

What a shitty Xmas present.

 

[GooseMan69]

This is fine. In business and in life, what do you do when you find yourself staring at a money pit? You cut your losses and bail. Get the hell outta there.

They will avoid the Anthem/Fallout 76 type of disaster and get back to doing what they do best.

 

[SlimySnake]

Never the less, I always thought Factions mode got great reviews. So who knows what they were doing to screw it up. Like all MP games, use the first game as a foundation, improve the graphics, tweak the gameplay make new maps and release. That's the core way you make MP games. The maps probably take the most time to do since they are done from scratch. The rest of the game (like sports games too) are incremental tweaks.

It wasnt just PvP like the first factions. For GaaS, you need extraction shooters, destiny style PvE elements, raids, fucking coop, and all of that stuff is completely different from factions.

Now Uncharted 2 and 3 had coop modes but they were basically 3 maps that you did over and over again. This one from the concept art looked like an open world game or something like Destiny split into larger zones. Basically a completely revamped game. Its no surprise they couldnt get it to work. Bungie had 800 devs when they were with Activision, and Activision gave them two of their own studios to pump out DLC, and they still struggle to meet the high demands of their playerbase. NO one was happy no matter how much they tried. GaaS is what is unsustainable.

Sony should be following the God of War, Zelda, Spiderman, Elden Ring and Hogwarts model. Sell around 12 million copies in the first 3 months at full price. Make a billion dollars. Rinse and repeat every 3-4 years. Some games like Horizon, Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima you target 6 million and still get a half a billion in revenue. Mostly profit since they are first party studios. Worst case scenario, you end up at 3 million in 3 months but at $70 a pop, thats still a cool $210 million.

It works for Nintendo. it should work for Sony and Microsoft. They jsut need to go back to releasing 3-4 of these exclusives a year. Simply cant have a year like 2023 again where their 20 studio strong first party release a total of one game. Spiderman 2 with its 2.5 million copies in one day is not going to save them. They need 3-4 games to sell around 20 million copies at full price every year. That means getting games out faster and more consistently.

hopefully, this means no more gaas games from insomniac, GG, sucker Punch and bend. And we can start getting games every 3-4 years instead of 5-6 years.

 

[ShadowkillXNA]

AN UPDATE ON THE LAST OF US ONLINE​

We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we've been calling The Last of Us Online. There's no easy way to say this: We've made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.

We know this news will be tough for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We're equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.

The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.

In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online we'd have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog's heritage.
We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio that touched this project. The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. We have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we're working on here at Naughty Dog, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we're ready.

Until then, we're incredibly thankful to our community for your support throughout the years.

An Update on The Last of Us Online || Naughty Dog

www.naughtydog.com

-

B b b I was told by a few gaf-wits that was abandoning single player games, nothing but gaas full steam ahead....

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

They will avoid the Anthem/Fallout 76 type of disaster and get back to doing what they do best.

Reminder: They're using repeated E3 Showcase time in June to announce Fallout 76 expansions. Not the disaster many believe.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

'We have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we're working on here at Naughty Dog, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we're ready.'

Start dates for those games 15/12/2023

 

[Saber]

Stop crying

Not crying, I'm laughing. You gonna be alright though, its not like ND cease to exist. That means they can move on, no need to get touchy/moody over a waste of resources lad.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Future not looking hot for Naughty Dog.

Kids these days play mostly GAAS titles.

Both Nintendo and Naughty Dog in this race of who becomes irrelevant faster.

Naughty Dog is sure gonna win this one though, thanks to ballooning dev budgets and collapsing sales.

 

[geary]

Not for nothing but, this team was not where the bulk of their dev efforts were going into, nor was the work that was done here lost by any means. All i'll say on it.

The bulk of devs was not on Factions, the bulk of devs was not on TLOU1 Remake, The bulk of devs was not on TLOU2 Remaster….pretty good copium here.

 

[FeralEcho]

"In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage"

This reads to me like someone, either at ND or SIE, wanted Naughty Dog to become a full time GaaS-studio, but this direction was controversial and opposed by the majority of the staff, and thus they ditched it and went back to SP.

It took them 4 fucking years to realise this???

Wtf is going on at this studio? What a disgrace from the PS3 days of pumping out 4 games in a generation to remasters and cancelled projects.