I find it funny that certain people seem to think Sony need to pay the likes of Epic to say nice things about the PS5 lol.

If that was the case surely they would of asked epic to say how great fortnite is going to run on the ps5. You know possibly the world's most popular game right now?

Sony don't need to invest 250mil to make epic say nice things in hope for more sales. The playstation brand sells its self. Has done for 25 years and will be the best selling console next generation.

The keyword here is "Serious talks" started after the PS5 demo. Which mean casual talks started before the demo. Basically Sony like the response the demo got and loved the way Epic praised PS5. So they made good on their casual "investment" talks.

Tim praised every Sony console since PS3. No surprise he'd do it again.

It's the old case of 'He said something positive so he must've been payed off' vs 'He said something negative so competition must've payed him off'. People often see only those two options nowadays. For some, it's unbelievable that a head of Epic, maker of amazing engine technology, could be genuinly excited about next frontier, which Sony enables them to explore with PS5.

or maybe the PS5 is a great machine?? Grow up people...

He acts like we don't know how business works. "Serious talks" - so they been talking before the PS5 demo, exactly as people thought. You don't start and close a $250 million deal between 2 large companies in 7 weeks.

So they oversold in order to close the deal.

Please, to say their wasn't some courting going on. I'm sure nobody was influenced before hand. Poof the deal just happened and we had no clues prior.......Yeah.

The general idea that Sony needed to pay for promotion is ridiculous when you think about it. Why would they even need to do that? MS will not outsell Sony.

Didn't Epic help develop the PS5, more specifically the SSD? Why would they not want to talk about it if they helped create it?

The cheque was in the mail. Tim was just doing his part /s
Perhaps it is to get Epic to help with software tools and maybe more Unreal engine games for the console?

According to many on n4g they laid claim that Sony bought those comments. Obviously this is a pack of lies it doesn't change the fact that Sony is number 1 and that the PS4 has been so good the PS4 userbasewill upgrade to ps5 and not Xbox series X.

Does anyone believe this PR garbage by Tim?

It makes sense from a business perspective to talk positive about an investors product. It wasn’t like he was saying anything crazy or even trashing Xbox. He didn’t but I’m sure he is very well aware of the fact the series x is gonna outperform the ps5. There was a little bit of marketing bs from him when he lied about the epic China tweet that showed a 2080 max q outperforming the ps5 but I’m sure that might have had something to do with NDAs

Why are some so bothered by Epic talking positively about the ps5.

So I'm supposed to believe that discussion, purchase, etc for 250 000 000$ all happened in less than a month?
Ok you says so!

he didn't say there were no talks before the demo lol, so when did the non-serious casual $$$ talks start?

Look, reality is Sony and Epic had a relationship prior to the investment...hence their working with Sony specifically around the tech demo. That partnership was a great boost for Sony and they realized investing in Epic would be a smart move...it was and is. I think it is safe to say moving forward Epic will always have some favorable things to say about their investor...doesn't mean it isn't true but I think its pretty clear we are not going to hear them come outright against any decisions from Sony.

“Serious investment discussions followed from the Unreal Engine 5 demo we showed on PlayStation 5. I guess they liked it!”

You don’t close a 250 million USD deal in 4 weeks, though.

What do you guys expect him to say „Yeah, they have paid us big time“ Not gonna happen.

Look, buy the system you want to buy, then shut the fuck up. All this console war dick measuring is pathetic.

I won't care if MS gets WB.

Poop, that is all.

The Unreal 5 PS5 demo totally destroyed Xbox fans confidence.

Then it was the big mega success of TLoU2 despite the biggest hate campaign ever with a video game.

And we haven't even started next gen yet.

This sounds like Sweeney is damage controlling. The praise was suspect from the beginning, come to find out they have a deal in place where money has been exchanged...its not a stretch to put together that one tends to praise another when they want something from them. His words here does nothing to change that.

Well, gamers are the most knee jerk reaction/sensitive bunch of people on the net, so Sweeny (or anyone else) should be surprised by the claims, We're all detectives and tech geniuses, and we know better than even the people who make the games and close the deals.

People on the internet are pathetic, get a life.

This whole thing is a shit show lol. It’s all clearly business - the whole damn industry is - and it’s a controversy because nobody can actually come out and say just that - obviously. Holes are fun to dig, though. Sweeney needs to shut up.

Simple logic, if someone invests millions into your company, you're going to praise them to high heavens. Sony fans trying to spin this is hilarious.

We believe you Tim Sweeney /s

They own 1.4 percent of the company and I don't understand what the big deal is.

Bridges for sale get your bridges here. I have some swamp land in the back too...

Again over a demo on the PS5 and Tim's praises of the PS5 SSD and architecture.

It is amazing how something so simple can cause xbox fans to lose their minds.

Tim didn't even say anything bad about the x1x. His great sin according to xbox fans is him not mentioning the X1X about a demo on the PS5.

Seriously xbox fans. You guys really need to grow up.

I think people worry about this a bit too much. Even though nice things were said about PS5, they didn’t make bad remarks about XSX. People getting a bit butthurt I think.

With the use of Unreal Engine in movies and tv now, for a huge entertainment company like Sony, it makes perfect sense. And if they can get any exclusive advantages for PS5 along the way, why wouldn’t they? They’re a business.

Meanwhile..
MS investments influenced negative Ps5 comments.
Devs can't say anything about the xbox series x because they know that the supposedly "TFLOP advantage" will barely show in their games.

Epic got marketing deal with Sony they not going to say other console will be better than ps5

Oh so the investment came about as a result of the demo. Looks like the fanboys attacking Sony jumped the gun and got it wrong yet again. Really looking forward to seeing the results of this great partnership.

The level of biasness, IQ and delusions in here is astounding. All i can say is yesterday is not tomorrow and nothing beats hardwork. Keep trying even if they say negative things about you, keep trying and one day you'll eventually surpass them.

thanks for the information very helpful

Epic were paid off. That much is obvious.

They should of never of made those exclusive deals with Sony. If SE made FFXVI/FFVIIRemake/Rebirth available on PS/PC/Xbox/Switch Day 1 they would of sold 20/30 million copies of each game and would mostly likely would not of lead to layoffs.

Exclusive games to any platform is not only anti gamer but they are toxic to the gaming industry. All games made by Sony and other companies should be made multi platform.

To put it into perspective, take a studio like Black Box who went through a spell of churning out half decent Need for Speed games annually.

Need for Speed: Underground - 15 million+
Need for Speed: Underground 2 - 11 million+
Need for Speed: Most Wanted - 17.8 million
Need for Speed: Carbon - 15.6 million
Need for Speed: ProStreet - 10.9 million
Need for Speed: Undercover - 8.9 million

This was the norm for the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era.

A Need for Speed game now requires more employees, considerably more time than one year to develop and absolutely a whole load more capital to fund development, let alone the extra costs of developing Frostbite and adapting it to a racing game (if that's still a thing). And at the end of it, it will likely never sell anywhere near even the worst game in that list above.

In that same era, Rockstar Games (albeit, various Rockstar studios) released GTA3, GTA VC, GTA SA, State of Emergency, Manhunt, The Warriors, Red Dead Revolver, three Midnight Club games and Bully. We're lucky if we even see a single game from them this generation.

In summary, committing to making a big AAA game now is barely worth it. Unless you are lucky enough to be sat on a mega IP like CoD or GTA, it's a huge gamble. Games simply take too long, require too many employees and cost too much. Unless AI or Unreal Engine can fix this and QUICK, the industry is going to be reduced to mobile-like experiences.

The gaming industry needs to learn just like Hollywood. You cannot sustain "more, more, more" indefinitely if your sales are not increasing in line with your costs. But no, every sequel needs to be three times the size of its predecessor, have twice as many staff, have monetisation systems and 100 hours of padded content and six year development cycles. But are these sequels ever twice as good?

Godzilla Minus One, on a poultry budget of $15 million, blew anything Disney has done out of the water since 2021 in terms of visual effects and created the best monster movie I've seen in my life.

Asobo made A Plague Tale Requiem for $25 million and its visuals, writing and quality rival games with ten times its budget.

Am I against big production values? No, God of War, The Last of Us, and so on justify their budgets and sell ridiculously well. But I am against unrealistic excess. If a game sells two million copies, tripling its budget isn't going to get you six million copies.

Square Enix is facing the reality that Final Fantasy sales are in decline and have been since FF15, yet they seem to be ramping up their development costs exponentially. It's hard to find facts but word seems to be FF15 had a budget of $50 to $100 million and FF16 had a budget of like $250 million plus. Same goes for FF7 remakes.

Yet other factors affected their market potential, like years of cross-gen releases slowing the PS5 adoption rate.

These lay offs will keep happening until publishers make their costs sustainable and stop trying to make it seem like triple A development is impossible or that we need more monetisation and higher priced games to account for their hubris.

It's the implosion I keep talking about. Expectations and reality in the industry are no longer aligned. This will continue until some sort of market equilibrium is reached.

The facts are the time and money needed to make games has gone through the roof and we as gamers just aren't buying enough. These games are costing 100 of millions to make and even games rated highly are doing good to get 3 or 4 million in sales. Something has to give.

We all can see the days of square enix being 3rd party are coming to an end which is really sad because they have so many valuable IP’s only if they manage them properly.

Layoffs = Bidenomics, folks!

Like I said before, it's not just Microsoft laying people off. It's happening throughout the industry.

Are we sure, and I mean super sure, fanboyism aside and the like that maybe Final Fantasy XVI and especially VII Rebirths sales weren’t at least a tad disappointing for them?

We keep fighting about it but if freaking VII, Square Enix’s Golden boy and it’s hype of us begging for a remake for almost 15-20 years didn’t set the world on fire like Square Enix wanted then what else can they give us product wise at this point high expectations and all.

I’m not saying it would have stopped this and everything would have fixed its self if they launched on more platforms since the industry seems like it’s imploding within itself at the minute but it could have given them a little leg room.

Maybe it’s time to admit, regarding your feelings on the games, and this has NO impact on the quality of the games, that XVI could have felt more FF like being more that a simplistic hack and slash game and VII’s remake should have just been a single, less ambitious game just telling the original story over reimagining it?

Even Kingdom Hearts III felt shallow, look at how convoluted it’s become and they are still doing that with all the Missing Link / Union X shit before Kingdom Hearts IV even comes out.

Looks like after the disaster of 16 they are shaking up.

this is beginning to look like 83 crash :(

Wth is going on!!!!?

What’s new? The whole industry is in an upheaval and this isn’t the end of it. I really think the pandemic poisoned the industry as a whole. Big profits, everyone playing games during the pandemic. Now it’s back to normal and they’re trying to regain those pandemic numbers numbers. Our hobby hijacked by a bunch suits.

Release more copies of FF pixel remaster on physical discs for ps4. Idiots

This is not limited to any one company, the industry is in a major change, for better or worse. Game budget and time for development have skyrocketed, and the industry is trying to find it's balance again, it will level out, it's just a matter of when.

Restructuring come with layoff 90% of the time.