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). But for Sony, a core part of the value of a PlayStation console is that it's the only place you can get games like God of War, The Last of Us, or Spider-Man. And with those releases getting even fewer and further between, each one better be good.
"I just hope it gets to keep happening, because the real beauty in this is that this even exists," Radford continues. "One day maybe there won't be the ability to spend $600 million or some astronomical figure to make a really cool action game with a good story. Friends of mine talk, and we're often like – insert your Naughty Dog game, Uncharted 4, Last of Us 2, whatever. Is that the best video game that'll ever be made?"
Radford points to the examples of ancient cathedrals and other "architectural marvels" around the world, all of which exist as evidence of a very particular time and place where artists and craftspeople had developed very particular skills and were afforded the opportunity to use them in creating works that have withstood centuries.
You can decide for yourself how The Last of Us compares to the Sistine Chapel, but the point is that the great works of architecture will never be made again "because the talent doesn't even exist," Radford says. "The people have moved on, the process, the expertise. We have better ways of making a building now, and yet none of the buildings look like some of those old architectural marvels."
Radford wonders "if games will be that way as well. Like we'll look back at a game like Intergalactic, at a game like Uncharted 4 or Last of Us 2 and see the amount of acting by people, by humans. The acting and writing, modeling, sculpting, painting, you know, and we'll marvel at it like, 'Wow, can you believe that was all done by hand?' Like a guy painting the top of that church."
