Making AAA games is only getting more expensive, particularly in North America, where many of the industry's most prestigious studios are based. With so many companies pouring their big budget development resources into live-service games that can generate infinite profits, how are studios like Naughty Dog allowed to continue investing years into one-and-done single-player games? Probably because Sony needs those games to keep selling PS5s.
"My understanding is really that Naughty Dog exists to sell Sony hardware," Matt Radford, a former VFX artist on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4, says in an interview with Kiwi Talkz. "The reason Naughty Dog is so wonderful is that they aren't as profit-driven as other companies, because they exist to be a flagship to sell the hardware. Sony makes their money on the hardware, and I think it's working."
If you've ever wondered why first-party games from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo tend to look better and offer more polish than third-party titles, this is at least part of the reason why.
Exclusive, first-party games help make a console more attractive to prospective buyers. You can't get a platformer as good as Mario on an Xbox. You can't get a shooter as good as Halo on PlayStation. And you can't get a narrative action game as good as Uncharted on Nintendo.
At least, that was always the theory. If developers were most interested in selling copies of their games, they'd sell more copies by default by releasing those titles across multiple platforms – just as Microsoft has now begun to do ( Halo is now on PlayStation ).
Source link
