I haven't read the whole article so I'm only reacting to the opening two paragraphs for now (1/x) https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1380476925811032065

The article is written in such a way that makes it sound unreasonable that ND would have wanted to bring this "remake" internal. As a creator and studio-head, I would not want other teams to arbitrarily decide to "remake" my work without my involvement. (2/x)

It would be enormously disrespectful to the team at ND that someone internally at Sony tried to spearhead this endeavour, especially when couched as a reaction to being tired they weren't being given the opportunity to direct or influence the games more.

An insourcing team is, by nature, there to support other projects in development. If they are making new things, they are not an insourcing team, they are a development team making a game. So the really the story here, with respect to this particular aspect, should be...

"Internal Sony team gets shut down after trying to remake TLOU without creator's permission", which would have a very different take, I think?

I only bring it up because if you're reading the article, you may not get this POV. For me, it would be enormously disrespectful for someone to try this. (This is no defence of ND in general, as I it seems there plenty of other issues there.)

There are other things in this article that don't seem 100% correct, IMO. Like this paragraph. Microsoft also has large first-party studios that work on owned IP and they spend a ton of money on these projects. The development of Halo Infinite would pay for several TLOU titles.

It's also entirely normal as a business to invest in the things that will make you money. MS can invest in smaller-scale development (in addition to massive blockbusters) because they have a revenue-generating channel that *needs* this content to be viable: Game Pass.

Sony doesn't have that so they need to focus on the big games that will net a huge return, and games like TLOU, Uncharted, God of War, Horizon, etc. have consistently done that so it just makes sense to keep doing that. It doesn't seem particularly controversial to me.

Layoffs are always sad. It's not surprising to see layoffs coming when parts of the business that are less successful, or are contributing less to strategy, or are rendered invalid by new strategy, are closed down. Acclaimed games that are not profitable don't get continued.

I don't know much about the performance of Days Gone. If Sony didn't think the franchise had a lot of growth potential it makes sense they would prefer those staff work on higher potential franchises. (It's best if Bend gets another crack and creating a new high-potential IP.)

(...which is sounds like at least part of the team is getting to do?)

This one is weird. I'm not sure how anyone can compare the evolution and growth profile of Roblox to Dreams. Not every sandbox crafting game will become Minecraft either. It's not really a marketing problem I don't think?

(The rest of the article is more nonsense about how the TLOU "remake" team was unfairly treated and disrespected). Really I'm struggling to understand why this article was even written. Insource team was sad to be insourcing and left because they wanted to make their own game?

I hope they make something great outside of Sony, I guess?