Why Sony from the PS2 and PSP era felt different?

[Leon]

Yeah Im glad L5 is doing well, I was referencing the fact sony made no effort to keep it touch or at least so it seems

It's probably the other way around, sony has essentially abandoned most of the japanese studios, kinda like how nintendo took for granted it's third party devs with the nes, so level 5 just stopped caring to work with sony, i believe the last sony exclusive from level 5 was white knight chronicles, so it's been a while and sony did start "refocusing" westward in the ps3 era.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

It's probably the other way around, sony has essentially abandoned most of the japanese studios, kinda like how nintendo took for granted it's third party devs with the nes, so level 5 just stopped caring to work with sony, i believe the last sony exclusive from level 5 was white knight chronicles, so it's been a while and sony did start "refocusing" westward in the ps3 era.

True true

Its funny in retrospective how the vita was so focused on their former homeland, so many rpgs and visual novels

 

[Leon]

True true

Its funny in retrospective how the vita was so focused on their former homeland, so many rpgs and visual novels

It was sony's fault the vita failed, they stupidly decided to use a proprietary format for their memory storage tech, which nintendo, their big juggernaught of a competitor, didn't.

The vita failed mainly due to sony themselves, not because of the lineup, the vita actually has a fairly strong lineup for the short time it existed.

 

[dropsmegamega]

The other thing is astroboy was crammed with ps1-2 references, just stop teasing me dude, shit or get off the pot

Are you gonna do anything with level 5 again? (Dark Cloud) anything new with jak and daxter? Anything new with ridge racer?Anything with Jak&Daxter? Wait scratch that if its gonna be like the new ratchet&clank games please let it stay death

Even if they gather the old teams, the soul is not there anymore as people have moved on and believe ps2 style writing and humor is out of touch, just look at all these kickstarters. At best some indie team can take over these series, but its a hit or miss situation

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Even if they gather the old teams, the soul is not there anymore as people have moved on and believe ps2 style writing and humor is out of touch, just look at all these kickstarters. At best some indie team can take over these series, but its a hit or miss situation

Or the director of silent hill 2 thinking the generic ass combat of the remake is better, bleah

All the more reason to keep looking at what kamiya and toyama was doing because their games still have "it"

 

[Leon]

Or the director of silent hill 2 thinking the generic ass combat of the remake is better, bleah

All the more reason to keep looking at what kamiya and toyama was doing because their games still have "it"

Honestly the only older companies i can see that seem to understand what their fans want these days are nihon falcom and from software, all of the others have lost touch.

 

[ThirdEidolon]

It may sound strange but for me a diverse cast is having a variety of character type in term of writing, not just the physical aspect of people. That could sound ridiculous but Star Wars had a diverse one because each characters, even if they're archetypal, are all unique and have different motives and purposes.

People usually criticised poor writing and poor characterisation rather than the look of the characters when it came to mediocre games being released.


I tend to avoid using that term because I cannot be sure if this is a real thing or a conspiracy. Sure there are shareholder who could influence the art and direction of games they put money in (like any existing non independent products) but is there really one big reviewing entity that can change games from the get go?

I felt like this was just a marketing thing by greedy corporations rather than some higher entity ordering them but this is a different debate.


Anyway, people stopped taking journalists seriously when paper video game magazine died for good...

Banishers has a very diverse, believable cast. A lot of them are god fearing or pretend to be.
Injustices, people who accidentally kill themselves, people who are persecuted for magic etc. It's good.

DEI is a real thing. No conspiracy.

Before people caught on to it, it was a requirement for certain companies to get financial grants.

Now they don't use the term but still push it under a different name.

As for journalists, I was making a point that everyone should be cheering this game. Instead, no one has said anything.

Blackrock holdings were an example of this.

They'd cut funding off anyone who disagreed.

 

[Somnia]

They weren't focused on making a "Halo-Killer" like in PS3 era so they made more creative games

We say stuff like this but if you look at their PS3 output it is almost equally as diverse. The main issue is that unlike the PS2, there were more games that are considered duds or just ok on the PS3.

But you have stuff like Flow, Echochrome, Journey, Rain, Twisted Metal 2012 (completely detached from the small car combat fad no less), Pain, Littlebigplanet, Modnation Racers, Lair, Motorstorm (very unique within its space esp for the time), Fat Princess, inFamous and many more unique and fantastic experiences. I have no idea why people still get hung up on them having 2 FPS franchises as if those 5 games trump the bevy of unique titles from indies to AA and even AAA. Especially when Killzone 2 and 3 are extremely unique within the FPS space in terms of art direction and game feel. Even still let's approach that a bit more.

Calling Killzone some attempted Halo-Killer just because it was an FPS always felt absurd to me. In terms of look, feel and structure it is a wholly different beast to Halo. It is a weighty, slower paced slog focused on class loadouts and massive battle in multiplayer and a linear-setpiece driven campaign more akin to what CoD would also become famous for at the time (they were developed side by side so no Killzone was not chasing CoD inherently). This means that when someone erroneously claims that Sony was stifling their creativity to chase Halo in some way, they're talking about Resistance, right? But even that game differs heavily from Halo's influence, maintaining more of a grounded gamefeel and again a focus on massive online battles rather than being a floaty and fast paced arena shooter with more of a linear-sandbox campaign structure.

And again you have to ignore just how many brilliant games came from the PS3 (and PSP cause come on now the PSP was 2005) in order to reduce their output. There are so many games from that era that came from Sony and had few if any contemporaries both before, during and since. Games like Warhawk/Starhawk have yet to have a true parallel as far as multiplayer experiences in my opinion, nothing comes close to scratching that itch.

I'm 29, so I wholeheartedly admit that while my first console was a PS1 that my middle school to young adult years were dominated by wanting a PS3 and then owning a PS3 and loving the hell out of it as both that system and myself matured alongside one another. Undeniable bias aside though I really do think the PS3 doesn't get the respect it deserves. I think the reason that that era of Sony doesn't properly get its flowers is because they started off putting their worst foot forward and the industry on the whole went through some terrible growing pains, leading to their (imo) stellar first party catalogue getting maligned by the industry on the whole homogenizing around Call of Duty and such. There's a lot more to say there of course and as someone who will go so far as to defend Lair as a pretty solid romp I again admit that I'm not unbiased when I speak on it.

For me, the PS4 was the beginning of the end for Sony being a company I could trust to have stellar variety in terms of software. The Vita was the last system they released that I truly loved, even if the PS4 and now PS5 are more than solid in their own right.

And for what it is worth, the game that coined the phrase "Halo killer" wasn't even from Sony, it was an Ubisoft published title by Free Radical (who hated the marketing tbf).

 

[Shameless]

From my understanding working on games (as a hobby) is kind of a mix of things. Firstly is analytics and access to customer data with the rise of the internet, AAA games don't play as many wildcards as they have alot more data to backup decisions for better or worse.

We also gota understand that we are looking back and on the ps2/psp and can easily pick out the good ones now that theirs like 15-20 years worth of people shifting thorough em all

Secondly is the standardization of tech, games back then in pretty much every aspect where made in-house. these days stuff like materials and rendering has come down to a hand full of methods so no more need for specialized code and in turn no more need to have as much of an in-depth understanding of the stuff your using.

Its all just due to a lower bar of entry and higher ceiling of knowledge which all come together to increase the quality potential well lowering the overall median standard. Its so much easier to just make "A Game" but also alot harder to make a real good one.

 

[Patches]

As someone who jumped from ps2 to xbox 360 myself I didn't notice anyone bring up that despite the issues of x360 (rrod, disc scratches, paying for online) it was a very solid console. The arcade store had a whole extra avenue of fun cheaper less involved games, you could set up your network and pc to stream your music library while you played games or even stream video library through your network from your pc to your xbox. I am sure the ps3 did some of those things, but the x360 was certainly much more of a good console than even the xbox one and it was less cost up front to get in.

 

[Yousef]

Glad you liked it, Siren is one of my fav games so Im overjoyed to see it come out

I guess you're right. Some developers and journos genuinely seem to despise videogames or at least a good chunk of em, they often talk like having complex stuff you need to learn is a bad thing and Iike every time a blockbuster game that takes a lot from hollywood comes out theres articles going "FINALLY VIDEOGAMES ARE ART! THEY WERE GARBAGE UNTIL NOW! GAMES CAN BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY NOW! I HAVE A REAL JOB NOW!"
The IGN review of gta 4 is the first one that comes to mind

Grand Theft Auto IV PS3 Review - IGN

Criminals are an ugly, cowardly lot more worthy of pity and disdain than admiration. This is what you'll learn playing through the single-player campaign in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV. The series cheered (and criticized) for glorifying violence has taken an unexpected turn: it's gone legit...

www.ign.com

Spoiler: Excerpt from the review

"Criminals are an ugly, cowardly lot more worthy of pity and disdain than admiration. This is what you'll learn playing through the single-player campaign in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV. The series cheered (and criticized) for glorifying violence has taken an unexpected turn: it's gone legit. Oh sure, you'll still blow up cop cars, run down innocent civilians, bang hookers, assist drug dealers and lowlifes and do many, many other bad deeds, but at a cost to main character Niko Bellic's very soul. GTA IV gives us characters and a world with a level of depth previously unseen in gaming and elevates its story from a mere shoot-em-up to an Oscar-caliber drama. Every facet of Rockstar's new masterpiece is worthy of applause. Without question, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best game since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Like its saying the game's good because its not an action videogame like thats a bad thing
A lot of journo reviews use "its not like a videogame" as a positive like being a videogame is bad

This is isnt off topic bc you've proably seen this (if this is old news forgive me as I dont follow the game news unless it involves Hideki Kamiya)
View attachment 5261

Why did "Fun" become a bad word? You can have a game thats got heavy themes in its story while still being a fun game to play. Silent hill 1-4 deal with all sort of fucked up things but they're also engaging adventure games
with a combat and movement system to learn and master, a ranking system and lots of unlocks that encourage you to replay it, joke endings, sexy costumes..
Same can be said for MGS 1-4, or Wolfenstein the new order, so many rpgs and adventure games..



I disagree, I think there was definetly a mentality of "lets get as many developers as possible to work for us" mentality that was lost from the ps3 onwards. They wanted their costumers to have a lot of variety and pushed hard for 3rd parties, remember all the advertising they gave to capcom and squaresoft games or namco games?
But after they were on top of the world they thought they were too big to fail and like they didnt need to do stuf like ensure all those big ps2 titles would continue on the ps3, and everyone either died or jumped ship

Kinda like how everyone jumped ship from nintendo to sony when during the n64 and gamecube

Also every company's a douchebag when they dont have competition, 80s ninento of america being the wosrst example. If they could any company would patent the concept of making videogames

This is really funny in retrospect because you could argue it started way earlier or got a lot worse. Funny thing, the example I’d jump into in my head is either way before ps3 or way after. I believe the first game that game-journous did this with was…. God of war ps2 of all games? Yeah, gamejournos at the time thought god of war was fantastic for being “cinamatic”. It was like “playing a movie”. Hell, developer interviews you find on the disc even has the devs themselves marketing it like that.

Then things gotten a lot worse with ps4, I actually think Neil’s statement isn’t that bad out of context but the way he said it reeked this pretentious “above it all” vibe that it’s hard to take seriously. What a doofus. Last of us is basically a Ubisoft series now.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

This is really funny in retrospect because you could argue it started way earlier or got a lot worse. Funny thing, the example I’d jump into in my head is either way before ps3 or way after. I believe the first game that game-journous did this with was…. God of war ps2 of all games? Yeah, gamejournos at the time thought god of war was fantastic for being “cinamatic”. It was like “playing a movie”. Hell, developer interviews you find on the disc even has the devs themselves marketing it like that.

Then things gotten a lot worse with ps4, I actually think Neil’s statement isn’t that bad out of context but the way he said it reeked this pretentious “above it all” vibe that it’s hard to take seriously. What a doofus. Last of us is basically a Ubisoft series now.

The adversion to tits and anything manly wasnt there yet but I see your point, I think the most important thing was: the combat and movement being very very dumbed down compared to its contemporaries like Devil May Cry 1&3, Shinobi, 3D Ninja Gaiden..
That wasnt seen as a negative

Totally, I have nothing against games made to be frustrating and unpleasant, I love Silent Hill 4, hard to control and punishing horror games, realistic new vegas mods, war sims, The Stanley Parable I really like, I like undertale genocide..
Its the way he said it, he reminds me of david cage in that it's like he's ashamed he's a game maker and thinks it's up to him to finally make people take games seriously
It doesnt help that he looks like the average pretentious video essayists and probably thinks "gamer" is a bad word

 

[Inkingsama]

Its the way he said it, he reminds me of david cage in that it's like he's ashamed he's a game maker and thinks it's up to him to finally make people take games seriously
It doesnt help that he looks like the average pretentious video essayists and probably thinks "gamer" is a bad word

Kinda reminds me the way people think comics and manga are some kiddie stuff with no merit, although these things have become mainstream in recent years.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Kinda reminds me the way people think comics and manga are some kiddie stuff with no merit, although these things have become mainstream in recent years.

Yeah, and now the game industry is bigger then hollywood so this asinine inferiority complex is even more cretinous

games comics and movies going mainstream taught me why when I was a kid grown ups cared so much about their thing remaining underground...

 

[Leon]

Yeah, and now the game industry is bigger then hollywood so this asinine inferiority complex is even more cretinous

games comics and movies going mainstream taught me why when I was a kid grown ups cared so much about their thing remaining underground...

Keep in mind most of the people with power and money, much less political power, are boomers for lack of a better classification, meaning the smallest group that plays games, so alot of them are remnants of the "satanic panic" of the 80's and 90's when it comes to gaming, comics and anime, (the satanic panic itself was likely a propaganda campaign in itself to damage religion and morality movements in the us but that's a different topic) anyway, alot of those same people are the ceos and heads of these companies in hollywood and game companies.

In david cage's case, i could go on a rant about modern day gaming, companies and directors fundamentally misunderstanding gamers, and how putting either side of politics as a teaching tool in a game will ruin a game for most people, but i don't want to make this a different topic, but anyway in david cage's case, he's basically a movie maker who wants to claim he makes games, but really he just wants to make movies, kinda like how rock stars want to be comedians and vice versa.

 

[yolowo]

I think another reason why the Vita failed was a lack of good Sports sims. The PSP sports sims were comparable to their ps2 counterparts, and didn't feel watered down. The Vita had an atrocity of an unfinished Madden game, and even MLB the show was a bit glitchy and dissapointing.

And truely, most sports sims went down the tubes once they figured out that online gambling ultimate teams were a money printer. Post Madden NFL 12, the franchise and "create a team" features were gutted to focus people on ultimate team. And for baseball, "MLB: The Show" enthusiests still hold The Show 10 as the best game in the series, and 14 years later the graphics look no better than the ps3 era, and franchise mode is stagnant.

I found no reason to move from ps3 to the ps4-5, because I found no compelling, accurate, or fun sports sims on those consoles. So thats the perspective of someone who factors in sports sims to their purchasing habits. I've only recently branched out to japanese games, and I'm loving it so far. I didnt have much exposure to those games as a kid, outside of maybe Sonic 06 (that hurt more than helped, though it was a very fun glitchfest in multiplayer).

 

[IyoTheHelpfulWolf]

That era of Sony sort of bridged the gap between old and new trends in gaming. That generation of games still had plenty of experimental mid-budget games that weren't trying to appeal to everyone on the planet, but had enough considerations and quality of life features that most people with busy lives could beat them without driving themselves mad. The PS2 had the biggest variety of said games to the point that I'm still running across good ass games for it and I grew up with the thing! It had games with that 2000's teenage idiot vibe like Tony Hawk's Underground 2, serious pieces of art like Silent Hill 2 and Shadow of the Colossus, over the top baddassery like Devil May Cry, God of War, and Shinobi, extreme racing with Burnout and ATV Quad Power Racing 2, and everything in between. Then there was just random shit like Mister Mosquito. It was a batshit crazy grab bag of a console and that's why I love it. It also helps that lower budget projects didn't have to worry as much about an uncanny valley look, since even a lot of high budget PS2 games looked kind of blocky. Who remembers who goofy Grand Theft Auto used to look?

But then trends shifted somewhere in the 7th gen, with less focus on mid budget games and more on games trying to compete with Hollywood, with accessibility, high production values, and serious award winning stories as the focus, as if the industry was desperate to distance itself from it's sillier and more juvinile past. Sony became known for cinematic single player games like the Last of Us and modern God of War, a far cry from their 90s-2000's era attutide. Such an approach isn't inherently bad, but when so many big studios were either trying to do that, make open-world checklist number 234523546234, or both, releases can sometimes blur together. Thankfully gaming is starting to get over that "I WANNA BE COOL AND GROWN UP TOO" phase as we're seeing more variety and balance. Fortnite is silly as shit, Palworld is simultaneously cute and fucked up, Nintendo is still making whimsical games that aren't trying to be overly adult or dramatic all the time, FromSoftware isn't afraid to ask a lot of the player both in mastery of mechanics and piecing together a story through investigation, and indie games are picking up some of the slack left by the mid budget developers of old. Sony, however, still seems obssessed with trying to be like Hollywood with it's grandiose AAA releases, and other studios like Ubisoft are still guilty of this as well, and they'll probably continue to make games like that as long as enough people like them.

I think as standard game engines become more advanced, we'll see more and more indie games feel like mid budget releases of the late 2000's, but better. Ray tracing might make lighting easier once hardware catches up, Unreal Engine 5 has features to speed up terrain generation without having to do everything by hand, and if handled well and respectfully, A.I generation could allow for better voice acting and more art assets on a smaller budget. It won't be exactly like the past because every piece of art is ultimately a product of it's time and circumstance, and we have to accept that, but that doesn't mean things aren't looking up.

 

[Xeno]

The transition from PS2 to PS3 hit me hard. I think the backlash to the price of the PS3 was the catalyst that started it all. It caused Sony to pivot and ditch most of their older IPs and Japanese studios. Remember when White Knight Chronicles was shafted by Sony? Handhelds also took over in Japan, a lot of popular series moved to PSP/DS. Squaresoft/Square-Enix was also a big part of the PS1/PS2, yet they had their own problems during the PS3 life cycle and they haven't really recovered since. The highlights of the PS3 for me was MGS4, Ratchet and Clank, God of War III, Siren Blood Curse, Demon Souls, Valkyria Chronicles and Half Life 2.

 

[What's His Face]

I didn't play a ton of Sony games but I loved how groundbreaking the PS2 felt yet I've noticed that in the second half of the PS3's life (followed by the PS4) Sony started to feel different.

It is not about the quality of their game but about the mood they had in their franchises, the UI and just the company by itself.

I know that things are evolving and changing constantly (as the 00's isn't the 2010's which themselves won't be like the 2020's) but this is the kind of shifting that we can still notice with the PS5 currently.

Similarly Nintendo changed with Iwata as the president and the Wii (being radically different from the N64/GC era in many aspects).

Someday I hope they'd remember who they are and bring a bit of that magic back.

My take is that it was the PS2/PSP era of gaming that was the last era where making a game wasn't restrictively expensive to make compared to expected sales/net profit. Companies could still afford to be experimental and make what they wanted to play, rather than today where developers/publishers are making games to appeal to everyone (and thereby no-one) while accepting funding from investment megaporations that have their own demands on content in return for that sweet sweet cash.

 

[YuriSukiSan]

A lot of very detailed posts, I think most of it has been covered but for me I think Ken Kutaragi leaving Sony was the end of that era. It's when Sony started to lose their identity. Sony has gradually become a very different company and the playstation brand like everyone else has already covered in depth with far more detail, has been westernized. Japan itself too has radically changed in a short space of time, it's a very different country - the Playstation brand changing is just a symptom of that.

I'm not saying costs, development time, bad businesses practices, corporate monopoly and a great many other things don't factor in to it. But culturally, even just 10 years ago Japan was essentially a different country. And that affects everything. It's reminds me of Orson Welles talking about how Spain changed so dramatically after it joined the EU. Japan is so radically different to how it used to be it's not even funny.

 

[moonbits]

A lot of very detailed posts, I think most of it has been covered but for me I think Ken Kutaragi leaving Sony was the end of that era. It's when Sony started to lose their identity. Sony has gradually become a very different company and the playstation brand like everyone else has already covered in depth with far more detail, has been westernized. Japan itself too has radically changed in a short space of time, it's a very different country - the Playstation brand changing is just a symptom of that.

I'm not saying costs, development time, bad businesses practices, corporate monopoly and a great many other things don't factor in to it. But culturally, even just 10 years ago Japan was essentially a different country. And that affects everything. It's reminds me of Orson Welles talking about how Spain changed so dramatically after it joined the EU. Japan is so radically different to how it used to be it's not even funny.

The man was getting out of control. 2 CPUs instead of a dedicated GPU.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

it was a time when game developers didn't hate their audience and ruin games on purpose.

I purposely went on many tangents without mentioning diversity quotas and consultant groups and how spiteful and judgemental a good chunk of modern devs are because it was the obvious elephant in the room, but it seems some people somehow dont know; they should check out what these guys say in private they Genuinely hate people different from them


Im paraphrasing, but one guy said the intent of the company was to "make a place safe from whiteness"
I dont think sony used to work with people who got into games to start race wars

Spoiler: Source; Im not watching it again so no timestamps

Plus several devs openly insult their costumers on social media and use "gamer" like its a bad word

 

[ATenderLad]

Im paraphrasing, but one guy said the intent of the company was to "make a place safe from whiteness"
I dont think sony used to work with people who got into games to start race wars

That's an odd takeaway, friend. I watched the video you posted, and while I think the representational politics they posit is reductive (shortest possible version is that it's a very liberal "market" solution, like "only black-owned millionaires will save us" instead of a real change), there's nothing violent being said or implied, "race wars" is being perhaps too defensive about your own political identity. This video can't hurt you, nor can *checks wikipedia* a consulting firm weighing in on the script of a video game bring about an ethnic cleansing.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

That's an odd takeaway, friend. I watched the video you posted, and while I think the representational politics they posit is reductive (shortest possible version is that it's a very liberal "market" solution, like "only black-owned millionaires will save us" instead of a real change), there's nothing violent being said or implied, "race wars" is being perhaps too defensive about your own political identity. This video can't hurt you, nor can *checks wikipedia* a consulting firm weighing in on the script of a video game bring about an ethnic cleansing.

I dont think you should work into videogames for sociopolitical reasons, I dont see how thats weird, and I didnt say the video was a call violence or that Im scared for my life, I meant saying race makes you feel "unsafe" is antagonistic; if I said I want to create a space safe from blackness it would be a very racist thing to say wouldnt it?
I think writers like these make terrible stories and unappealing games, old playstation didnt make games thinking of race that was the last thing on players' mind

 

[ATenderLad]

I dont think you should work into videogames for sociopolitical reasons, I dont see how thats weird, and I didnt say the video was a call violence or that Im scared for my life, I meant saying race makes you feel "unsafe" is antagonistic; if I said I want to create a space safe from blackness it would be a very racist thing to say wouldnt it?
I think writers like these make terrible stories and unappealing games

I mean you can get into any job for any reason, Matsuno fell into a career in video games where he worked through his ideas on the ethnic cleansings in Bosnia, for example. Buronson had some similar things in mind with Hokuto no Ken, but I'd have to go back through some volumes to find his exact quotes.

The meaning of a space "safe from whiteness" is that it doesn't actually apply to white individuals, academically speaking we're talking the social and political ruling hierarchies of America, it's a systemic critique. (Again, not a well-made one, like I said I don't agree, but no one's advocating discrimination at least.)

As for the writers, I dunno man, Ta-Nahesi Coates wrote some solid Black Panther once he transitioned from "novel" brain and got the swing of the medium.