Sony's Michael Denny
The WWS Europe boss on the cost of development and the uptake of Move
With the launch of Move imminent, and the majority of in-house studios working to incorporate 3D technology into their games, GamesIndustry.biz took the opportunity to catch up with Sony's Michael Denny in what's proving to be a busy year for the Worldwide Studios Europe boss.
Here, in this exclusive interview, he details the uptake of Move and discusses the costs of game development across triple-A, Move, PlayStation Network and PSP, and why Sony will always put ideas and innovation ahead of budgets and bean-counting.
From a first-party perspective, when we introduce something new to the studios it's great to see them get to work and see what they can come up with. What we learnt from the PlayStation 2 days with EyeToy Play and augmented reality is it was a steep learning curve for us. Having a controller now within that technology, the precision and accuracy that gives means we can move on motion control gaming further. From the first-party teams we have the games that we're excited about, the party games, TV SuperStars, Start the Party, etcetera, but we've also augmented some of our existing games like Killzone 3 and Heavy Rain. And with games like The Fight it really does add a new dimension and experience to the PlayStation 3.
We're also starting to see some third-party games come through and it's great to see them in some of the core genres as well, augmenting those games. We think we've got great momentum and with the launch the excitement is starting to get there.
I don't think there's any shortage of software on the PlayStation 3 that's aimed at the core audience, and far from it - this year more than ever we've got some great games coming through. In terms of Move, the whole purpose of our system with position-based gameplay is that it's not just a system where you just stand up and have to move around in a party sense. There are games being developed where you sit down and use the controller in different ways. Games like Heavy Rain are making interesting use of it, Killzone Move is very interesting. It's a different experience for the core gamers as well, and we will have more games coming for the core.
It's a bit 'how long is a piece of string' to be honest. It really depends on what you want to set out to achieve. You can clearly see some of the party games and augmented reality games, where they're not creating massive interactive worlds, aren't going to be at the same costs as creating a game like Killzone 3. But there's nothing to stop us creating triple-A core games and to have Move at the heart of them. It really depends on what the vision of the studio and the developer is for their Move game. And then we look at it and whether it can appeal to the right audience, and then we move on to the budgetary discussion.
It's an interesting question and I think you're right in identifying the big budget, triple-A quality games, of those ones that we have plenty of ourselves, whether it's God of War or Uncharted, Killzone, Gran Turismo, LittleBigPlanet, those are the games that get the consumers excited. Outside of and despite the high budgets of those games, they usually have the high returns as well. But one size doesn't fit all and we've always looked at PSN games as well as a nice way to nurture some new talent within the industry, perhaps with smaller budgets, looking at titles that can have a commercial reality to themselves and a training ground for young developers as well.
With Move, as I said before, depending on the type of game we're looking at, the budgets are lower. But I don't think it's really about that. When we're talking to developers it's really about them installing in us the belief and passion that they have to make something that's creative and innovative. The budgetary exercise comes second to that, we have to look at it and believe it's a sensible proposition. But first and foremost it's about us being sold a vision of a creative, innovative game that can be delivered to a high quality.
It depends on the sort of titles you're looking at. The success of a game like Joe Danger is fantastic as a PSN game. I'd come back to it from a first-party perspective and the way we like to look at things is that if there is the passion and the belief for a strong concept from a developer that we believe has the ware withal to deliver on that, it's something we're always going to want to support on the PlayStation platform. In terms of any third-party or marketing motions that can all add to the mix, fundamentally if a developer has a great idea and can execute it they will get support from Sony.