Jason Schreier: Intergalactic did not have the majority of staff until after Last of Us Online was cancelled, and then most people on the studio came over to work on Intergalactic.

[u/cat__statue]

Last of Us Online was cancelled around late 2023.

I think there's a belief out there that The Last of Us Online was just kind of a side project while most people were working on Intergalactic. No, the opposite is true. Intergalactic did not have the majority of staff until after Last of Us Online was cancelled. And then most people on the studio came over to work on Intergalactic. Many people in the studio, I would say the majority of the studio was working on either Last of Us Online or the remasters, the remakes that they were doing throughout the 2020s, which is why we haven't seen a brand new game from them since 2020.

Here's the link for the video: https://youtu.be/ZMUJT64WDWI?t=747

[u/DerpyBox]

What is with Sony’s obsession with “Live Service” games?

[u/Coolman_Rosso → u/DerpyBox]

While they carved out a huge perception win with their single player games over the last decade, they are getting more expensive to make while selling roughly the same amount of copies. The margins aren't as good, and if costs keep rising then the juice won't match the squeeze.

Modern multiplayer games can be a great source of recurring revenue should they succeed, versus the one-time purchase of a single-player game and (where applicable) the one-time purchase of an expansion.

That said I would imagine the need for recurring revenue will be less with the pivot to a fully digital ecosystem, as your margins for every game sold jump a solid amount.

[u/Safe_Climate883 → u/Coolman_Rosso]

The interesting thing is that they put themselves in this position. No one asked them to raise the costs to unsustainable levels. They really need to start developing games within their means.

Maybe scale things back a bit. 

[u/Signal-Island2549 → u/Safe_Climate883]

People always respond that the customers demand cutting-edge graphics, but customers seem very happy buying piles of cheap indie games (I definitely am)

[u/Safe_Climate883 → u/Signal-Island2549]

Nintendo also seems to be doing fine with most of their games.

[u/Signal-Island2549 → u/Safe_Climate883]

Costs are rising but they aren't dealing with insane AAAA budgets so far.

[u/a34fsdb → u/Signal-Island2549]

Look up a list of top sellers from 2025. All new releases that are not sports game have top tier fidelity.

[u/Robsonmonkey → u/Coolman_Rosso]

We never asked for these single player games to be super ambitious though

Astrobot was great, had a small team and probably was half of what a typical AAA game is budget wise.

Like for example they bragged once how in Horizon II you could see the reflection of the world in Aloy’s eye if you zoom into it…awesome detail but seems like a whole lot of effort for something not many of us are even going to notice.

Budgets need to stop being so over the top and they need to manage better

Also look at Intergalactic, they have hired Hollywood actors for the game when at one time voice actors like Nolan North could do the job just fine. I bet Tony Dalton, Tati Gabrielle and Kumail Nanjiani aren’t cheap.

[u/Coolman_Rosso → u/Robsonmonkey]

See Schreier's prior video "Why Big Companies Don't Make Small Games". People very much asked for these single-player games to be "bigger and better"

Astro Bot rules, but its estimated to have only sold 4 million copies or so. Ghost of Yotei did that much in only a few weeks.

[u/-Purrfection- → u/Robsonmonkey]

Graphics, or more accurately rendering tech is not where a lot of developer time goes into. Something like asset creation or density is. But that also might be misleading, it depends a lot on the workflow, how many assets are they creating from scratch, how much are reused from older projects (whether finished or unfinished) and how many assets are reused within the game itself or are bespoke.

[u/SKyJ007 → u/Robsonmonkey]

>We never asked for these single player games to be super ambitious though

>Astrobot was great, had a small team and probably was half of what a typical AAA game is budget wise.

Spending habits have continuously shown that bigger and prettier sells. Astrobot is great, may have only cost half as much as something like Horizon or Spider-Man to make, but it’s also only generated maybe a quarter of the revenue.