4 out of 10 profitable according to Yoshida

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Sony Computer Entertainment has been known to publish quite a few games that haven’t exactly been financial breakthroughs, yet they don’t seem to be about to give up on that kind of experience, as explained by Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida during his panel at Gamelab in Barcelona a few days ago.

When you look at what we do, managing studios and managing funds, that’s essentially what we do: to look for talent and support talent, because at the end of the day it’s the people that create amazing things, and it’s the creative team that makes breakthroughs.

It’s a hit-driven business. We look at our financial results of the titles, and probably three or four out of ten make money, and maybe one or two make all the money to cover the cost of the others titles. So we have to be able to maintain that hit ratio at a certain level to be able to continue in the business, so we always try to find out and support and help grow the talent. That’s the most important work that I believe myself and some of my management team at worldwide studios are doing.

There are lots of opportunities. There are so many projects that we want to do, and especially there are so many different techs, platforms and or devices that we can release games, but we have finite resources and budget, we have to make selection choices.

One of the things we always come back to when we’re looking at five potential projects is that we choose the team we believe in when we start working with a new team. That’s really really important.

Personally, I’m quite happy to see that Sony is willing keep supporting talented developers whether their games are financial hits or not, especially considering that titles that may not seem like enormous moneymakers at first sight can actually turn out to be runaway hits.

If I was a shareholder, maybe I’d have a different opinion on this. Thank Goodness I’m not.

@getyeryayasout: Same. The PS3 becoming the beast it did made my decision for me.

This was even more true last gen. Cows constantly hyped PS3 exclusives that they didn't even buy....

@remiks00: There's not anything to buy except Forza, Gears and Halo from MS mate

At least PS3 provided solid exclusives...like last year ... Yeah , the failure of last gen !! Where was Wii ... big lol ... Where was X360 that supposed won PS3 last gen ? ...

Sony proved again and again , 1st or dead last , profits or losses , that is the only company console wise that supporting their consoles even in next-gen unline N and MS. Period

@The_Last_Ride: Lol, why bring Microsoft into this? People bought the hell out of Halo/Gears/Forza. My point still stands true about PS3 last gen.

@AzatiS Why so defensive? Lol. You're missing the point of my comment that still stands. Sure, their were several exclusives for the PS3; The fact is, cows constantly hyped exclusives last gen that they didn't buy. Starhawk, MAg, Twisted Metal, etc, etc. The only series that seemed to have made them profit was Uncharted, TLoU, and maybe Killzone....,GoW? One can only assume that this also plays a big part of Yoshida's comment on "4 out of 10 sony games are profitable". Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they support more niche games. But due to last gen, thats probably the reason why there will be less of a focus on AAA games.

http://www.gamejudgment.com/gamer-woes-sony-gamers-buy-exclusives-dont-just-brag-about-them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_3-only_games

@remiks00: well what else can you compare it to? Nintendo has Mario, but at least they have some variety, but not all of them sell as well as Mario Kart

Hopefully it will be more profitable this generation since PS4 is the most popular console.

Props for Sony.

I wonder what games aren't profitable.

That's true, and it shouldn't be expected for every one of their games to sell as well as MKart. My point was the fact that last gen, cows hyped every exclusive to use it as ammo against lems. But yet, they didn't buy them. So most of them flopped in sales expectancy back then.That's all.

As an ADR holder I like the strategy. It makes sense. But it also puts into context something he said about less AAA exclusives. With dev cost rising, and using this strategy of 1 or 2 big winners profits blanketing the ones who didn't turn a profit, you have to cut back on the expenditure. 4 out of ten hits, but 1 or 2 big hits have to cover the ground for all is what he alluded to. With the cost of rising development, that's a lot of number crunching and careful planning.

I think they've probably done well enough with the PS4 so far and are into the positive so far.

• Killzone SF
• inFAMOUS SS
• MLB The Show 14
• Knack

Naughty Dog and Evolution , you're next !

They sold ok, some not at all. That's true, but not all of them were failures. Just because they didn't make a profit, doesn't mean they didn't break even

Cows don't buy games.

Why did Killzone have such a high attach rate then?

By virtue of being the only high end looking exclusive at launch?

SW is a little fishbowl, with a few dozen regular posters. Why are you intimating anyone here made or broke the financial chances of any game?

Fanboys of each platform here hype every game down the pipe. Then the actual market buys the game, or doesn't. The people here aren't influencing the market with their purchases, sheesh.

On topic: It's been obvious over the last two decades Sony is willing to invest in a wide variety of games, including some that look like a rough bet at becoming a commercial smash. A boon to gamers everywhere looking to escape the same old same old.

Yeah but I'm somehow omnipotent enough to know that some strangers on internet forums didn't buy games therefore herp de derp with some added plerp.

TC sure loves making threads... only has 8 thrreads on the front page so far, cant wait for what he posts next

Sure wish they would support the PSvita.

I agree, TC could stand to make less shitty threads.

don't worry sony you've proven this fact with ps1, ps2 and ps3!

bbbbbbut

that vita get rid of it plz!?

I have a funny feeling a lot of the smaller games sony produces will either be downloadable this gen or have a way smaller budget compared to their big budget games(5-15 million) development costs most likely since sony had to deal with multiple sales flops last gen which never made back the money spent on the development of these games. The only types of games sony will spend 30+ million on are games from developers like naughty dog and some of there proven or big new developers like RAD.

The ones I drive by every day are all fenced in and eating grass. But they do provide me with good steaks and milk which are a great compliment to my games.

uh .... yeah. this seems like, par for the course.

seems sensible that the console exclusives would be - on the whole - , running at breakeven or a loss. i mean, they're shooting arrows in the dark aiming for a killer app like 'halo', 'gt', or 'super smash bros'. an app which will shift consoles.

they've got to invest in all kinds of projects to get unique experiences on their system - that's gonna cost money. obviously they don't care too much about making money from the game software development, these are exclusive games! why restrict them if they wanted to shift software? the role of these games is to get the system's library unique and appealing - that costs money. but hit on a killer app, and the pendulum could swing the other way. the role of these games is to shift systems.

this is one of the differences between PC and consoles. you don't have all those studios 'gambling' like this on PC. (some of those gambles pay off)

This as to be a joke. It has to be.

Try GT series, LBP, Heavy Rain, Journey, Demon's Souls (it was its success after all that spawn the beloved Dark Souls everyone seems to love so much nowadays), inFamous, Ratchet and Clank... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some more

say what?

More games for gamers to play in a wide range of genres. I know I took advantage of the variety of choices. At the end of the day, it's not the business that interests me but the games. Of course, if I didn't have the systems, I'd probably talk about business all the time too. I can see why so many non-owners post about this subject over the years/decade.

I'm too busy gaming on various platforms to worry about sales and business as a consumer. Unless I get paid, my opinion will be as a consumer and hobbyist and I love all the effort companies put into making many games for me to dabble in. Less games for me to play would make me a sad panda.

The article ends with this statement:

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Personally, I’m quite happy to see that Sony is willing keep supporting talented developers whether their games are financial hits or not, especially considering that titles that may not seem like enormous moneymakers at first sight can actually turn out to be runaway hits.

If I was a shareholder, maybe I’d have a different opinion on this. Thank Goodness I’m not.

This is where Microsoft fails... Sony have always got it right in supporting their studios. It does not matter if a game does not make any money, even if you just break even that's good enough. Exclusives only purpose is to sell consoles, you can make the rest of the money off of the multi-plats.

Lots more then that. Fable, Killer Instinct, Dead Rising 3, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, Crackdown, Dance Central, Project Spark, Ryse, Fantasia: Music Evolved, Phantom Dust, Scalebound plus a ton of Indie games. A whole lot more then just Forza, Gears and Halo. M$ hasn't even announced everything yet.

That's some vain PR talk, emblematic of Sony. Last gen 360 murdered PS3 in variety when you counted shared PC games not available on PS3. And of course early on it had a plethora of exclusives no longer talked about just because they weren't Sony-related.

And reviews of Knack were flowing in.

As opposed to whom? MS who closed down Ensemble, let Bungie go and turned Rare into a laughing stock? GTFO with all that.

Sony takes a loss for gamers @_@

I guess we can come to the conclusion cows are more useful to society then. I don't think a Lemming has ever improved my overall quality of life. lol.

That's how every entertainment industry works. You put out a lot of stuff, most of it isn't successful but the ones that are hit so hard that they make up for the stuff that didn't find an audience.

Yep nothing like plopping down $400 on a unproven piece of hardware with minimal game line up and no backwards compatibility.

@blackace: I am not saying it doesn't have games, gamers on MS platforms only care for those

Several years ago, it was said that 60% of all games fail. Looks like that's still the case.

i wonder if that's the case for mobile aswell

Not sure where people get this SW = world vision.

Only now the stakes are higher because the costs have gone up and development is generally longer and harder.

It's always a damn shame to see any good game end up a financial flop, some games that cater to ultra niche markets but execute what they meant to do perfectly just to watch it be ignored always gets me a bit down.

Sure there will always be CallofBros games to make the bread and butter but even that being the reality of the market just makes me sad. Some games have to scrape for sales when anyone can release a FPS and turn a profit.

it is a harsh market

I'm sure the percentage is higher for mobile, but the investment is also much lower.

@remiks00:

To be fair, Sony exclusives usually releases around the same time frame of each other. Something like Mario Kart will have no competition on the Wii U. This applies to Xbox too.

true, just look at Flappy Bird

Couldn't of said it better myself.

Was Eroica the lemming from the podcast or was it Animal Mother? Just i curious question?

Yup it is well put

Truth.