TrollOfWar

@Jenkinss According to ex-PS Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, this is Sony's definition of 1st, 2nd and 3rd party games:

First-party
A game published and fully funded by Sony. Usually owns the IP.
Second-party
A game published by Sony with partial or full funding coming from an external company. Usually doesn't own the IP.
Partner title
A game published and developed by an external company launching first or earlier on PlayStation platforms.
Third-party
A game published and fully funded by an external company.

Source: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2025/02/sony-clarifies-the-difference-between-first-party-second-party-and-so-on

It seems like everyone has their own definition on online forums, but I think the former President of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment would be the most qualified person to explain what the definition of 1st, 2nd and 3rd party games are.

Helldivers 2 is fully funded and published by Sony PlayStation and they own the IP. According to Yoshida Shuhei'd definition that's a 1st party game.

The Pokemon games are developed by Game Freak, a 3rd party independent development studio. Would you say, for Nintendo "Pokemon" is a 2nd party game?

@Questionable_Duck @Godot25 Helldivers 2 is a 1st party PlayStation game just like Pokemon is a 1st party Nintendo game. Just because the development studio is independent that doesn't make the game or the IP independent.

Of course PlayStation is promoting Helldivers 2 for Xbox. They want it to sell well.

Personally I would rather buy a regular Asus ROG Ally if that Xbox-centric Windows 11 update is made available for all handheld devices (probably only a matter of time) and attach some 3rd party grips, all for half the price of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally.

Funny. I've been actually thinking of playing The Division 1 (as a solo game). New York during winter is such a great & moody setting, The Division 2 just cannot compete with it.

Some free games would be great.

There's a way to cheese through perma-death games/achievements on Xbox: Just close the game app frequently to have your save file synced to the cloud and if you die/mess up, quickly delete the local save file and restart the game/app.

@Kaloudz Yes, they seem to be available for purchase. I think I bought them on sale at half the price:
Max Payne
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Max Payne 3

Good enough reason for me to revisit the game.

I've been looking forward to play the demo of Hell Is Us. Happy to see that it's finally available.

I replayed both Max Payne games a year ago and they are still great games. Solid gunplay, great stories and awesome soundtrack.

@Kaloudz I think the original games are still worth to replay. They run great on Xbox Series consoles thanks to backward compatibly and they are sometimes on a sale in the Xbox store.

Not a big surprise given that the PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware are nearly identical and Unreal Engine 5 is built for multi-platform.

Probably porting games from PS5 to Xbox Series X is just as simple.

@Fiendish-Beaver No problem. So the correct way is to use the [ ] brackets. I had to use < > (which is wrong) to provide sample code, as the tags "pre" and "code" still applied the formating when trying to use [ ].

@cragis0001

As Microsoft tend to have grand ideas then fall at the final hurdle.

That's why I am currently optimistically skeptical about the current situation. The promise of an open Xbox platform, with Steam/Epic/GOG Store integrations and the end of console exclusives sounds very intriguing. But as we often saw with Microsoft, they either mess up the message, or the implementation, or shift their strategy midway. 😄

@Fiendish-Beaver Of course, it's a pleasure. I'm using the so called "BB Code" (Bulletin Board Code). There are special tags placed in square-brackets [ ] which can be used for different things. You can find more details here: https://www.bbcode.org/reference.php

So here the common examples which I use, just replace "< >" with "[ ]":

Quote
<quote>Someone might have said something</quote>
Looks like this:

Someone might have said something

Named Quote
<quote=TrollOfWar>I am being falsely quoted, I never said this.</quote>
Looks like this:

Bold/Strong
The point I am trying to make is <b> important</b>
Looks like this:
The point I am trying to make is important

Link-Text
Do not <url=https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ>click here!</url>
Looks like this:
Do not click here!

Spoiler
Spoiler Alert: <spoiler>big revelation</spoiler>
Looks like this:
Spoiler Alert: All 3 endings in Mass Effect 3 don't matter, you're basically just choosing a color.

Image
<img>https://i.imgur.com/ZT9bqbh.jpeg</img>
Looks like this:

Hope this helps. 😘

@Lup

It was as boring as AC1 or Revelations.

Those 2 are some of my favorite Assassin's Creed games. 😅

Executives say all kinds of things to keep shareholders satisfied.

Also, being a multi-platform publisher doesn't necessarily mean that the platform holder is leaving the console space.

Sooner or later we will see what that quote meant, what we all know though is that Sony is changing their whole strategy and are adapting to market conditions.

@Kaloudz The first game managed to deliver a high quality, cinematic, AAA experience with a very limited budget.

I think many were hoping that with more budget, time and development team, Team Ninja could offer a full game with deeper gameplay. Instead the team focused even more on the audio-visual presentation and somewhat less on the gameplay. I guess many were hoping that Hellblade 2 might become Xbox's "God of War 2018" and felt let down by the end product.

@HonestHick

i have lost a lot of respect for Push Square writers.

The writers need to write in a polarizing way to increase discussion/engagements/clicks, so I guess it's just business. Though I think a few of the writers do believe in what they write and express their brand identity more than rational thinking.

@smoreon Oh, my bad, it wqs actually Phil Fish who discussed The Legend of Zelda, but Jonathan Blow was the one who opened the discussion about over tutorializing games. Here is a bit about what was discussed: https://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/0/666828126986481575/?l=japanese&fp=2&ctp=2

@Fiendish-Beaver

Colour me sceptical. I'm sure this will have been a joint decision. The developer said ages ago that they would like to port the game, and every man and his dog knows that a Live Service game lives or dies based on the size of its community. To my mind, this smacks of a small developer doing its best to stay on side with the publisher that gave it its big break, but then I'm just a cynic...

Yes, this is a big achievement for Arrowhead. But the point is that every developer studio would like to see the games they create on as many platforms as possible. If it were up to Sony Santa Monica or Insomniac Games whether they would want to port their games to Xbox, they would surely say yes. The difference is that Arrowhead Studio is independent and they can publicly talk about it when asked by fans online, where PlayStation owned studios are not allowed.

The big surprise is that Sony, as the owner and publisher of Helldivers 2, is willing to port to Xbox, fund the port costs and publish the port themselves. This would have been unthinkable 1 year ago.

@Millionski

Stellar blade is 2nd party like HD2 so it would be already a move in that direction.

Acccording to Sony PlayStation's own definition (as explained by Shuhei Yoshida) Helldivers 2 is a "first party title" as they (Sony) are the owner of the Helldivers IP: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2025/02/sony-clarifies-the-difference-between-first-party-second-party-and-so-on

Stellar Blade and technically even Marvel's Spider-Man are 2nd party titles as Sony doesn't own the IPs.

@smoreon I think Jonathan Blow had some more constructive criticism, saying that Japanese games (with the exception of Dark Souls) became too hand-holdy overwhelming players with a ton of tutorials and lore exposure, comparing The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword (Wii) with the first The Legend of Zelda (NES) where exploration was driven by intuition and curiosity. The funny thing is that AAA Western game design embraced what Jonathan Blow was criticizing (see all the marker-filled open-world games like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Suicide Squade, etc.) where The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild took that criticism to heart and allowed players to explore freely.

Lots of Japanese games in the Xbox 360 era, and especially JRPGs, were using last-gen rendering tech, small environments, hard-coded frame timings, etc., while the west was pushing into open worlds, full-blown shadowing, and scalable graphics and performance for console and PC.

Personally I think Japanese games have often a better visual design which better hold up with time as they age. I could replay Ninja Gaiden Black, Dead or Alive 3, Lost Odyssey, Vanquished, Bayonetta, Final Fantasy XIII, MGS2 & 3 and I would enjoy them as they still look good.

Also as time went on I learned to appreciate linear games more than big open-world games, as linear games usually aren't too long and their difficultly levels are better balanced.

(A surprisingly well-thought-out post, coming from a troll!)

They'll say I'm a troll, a menace, a fiend,
But my work here on the forums is simply a trend.
To trigger their anger and watch their face burn,
That's the ultimate lesson I want you to learn.

@Elbow

JRPG's have never been "not cool", just JRPG devs who seemed ashamed to make them, like Square Enix.

@smoreon

JRPGs have always had their fans, but I think it's fair to say the Xbox 360 era wasn't exactly the genre's glory days. That title would go to either the SNES or PlayStation era, by most accounts.

My guess is, with Final Fantasy 7 - 9 on PlayStation Square Enix had a cinematic experience to offer that other developers couldn't quite match. As technology evolved and other genres became more popular and cinematic, the JRPG genre felt stale and outdated. The Final Fantasy series, after Hironobu Sakaguchi left, was chasing trends of the time, trying to become as popular as games in other genres.

@Elbow

I still don't know where this claim of "JRPGs became uncool" came from. If you listen to idiots like Phil Fish, sure, but he was a flash in the pan one hit wonder that let it get to his head.

That GDC Q&A session from 2012 where Phil Fish (Fez) and Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) criticized (and ridiculed) Japanese developers was definitely a low point and a big hit to the confidence of many Japanese developers.

@BAMozzy

I never liked Turn-based combat and think it was ONLY necessary because of the limitations of that era of Hardware.

Kind of, but not quite. The reason why many RPGs are turn-based is because the whole RPG genre is based on Dungeons & Dragons which is played in turns. Many of the early RPGs tried to recreate that turn-based tabletop experience and D&D elements can be found in all RPG like for example stats based characters.

There's this long documentary called "The History of RPGs" which shows how the genre was created:
https://youtu.be/8o3i10OuMFQ?si=HIQFg8GFX9aHXlZG

@Fiendish-Beaver

What we do know though, is that for Sony in particular, the money that an individual first-party game makes on the PlayStation or elsewhere, is much less important to Sony than the number of people that game might attract into their ecosystem, who then go on to buy third-party games.

That point could be changing for PlayStation. Maybe it was the case in the past, but with ballooning development and marketing costs for those expensive big-budget games, at some point it won't be financially viable, especially with all the expensive cancelled projects and when many of those attracted people will only play free-to-play games or buy a very small number of games/services/peripherals in the ecosystem.

@Valhura Kind of, yes. The flying and gunplay mechanics are fun combined with the large open world design. But it's let down by the terrible RPG design, with some boring story telling and generic quests. You can set the missions to "private" to experience the game and story at your own pace. You don't need to engage with the endgame content. I think I am halfway through and am doing some optional missions.

It's not terrible, but it's could have been so much better. Compared to Marvel's Avengers, I think Avengers was somewhat better as it had a better story, with memorable cinematic set-pieces, and it ran smoother on modern consoles. Otherwise the games are fairly similar in structure.

@Kaloudz Hope you're doing better. You are a valuable member of this community.

@HonestHick

I think the issue with a lot of gamers is they want this list of games that only can be played on their box of choice so they can go on Twitter and forums and hang that list over other people not on that platform. It’s more of a game they play than actual games , the fear of losing that list is showing me they care more for the list then Sony or PS as a business. Case in point on YouTube i listened to a guy saying well i guess Switch is the only platform i will be supporting. Cause they have a list of games he can dangle in his attempt to bash other gamers.

"Brand identity" and "fanboyism" are irrational and only lead to pointless arguments. "Brand identity" is basically the cause of the "console wars".

"You prefer the things you own because you rationalize your past choices to protect your sense of self.
The Internet changed the way people argue.

Usually, these arguments are between men, because men will defend their ego no matter how slight the insult. These are also usually about geeky things that cost lots of money, because these battles take place on the Internet where tech-savvy people get rowdy, and the more expensive a purchase, the greater the loyalty to it.

Once a person is branded, they will defend their brand by finding flaws in the alternative choice and pointing out benefits in their own.There are a number of cognitive biases which converge to create this behavior."

You can read more about it here: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/05/19/fanboyism-and-brand-loyalty/

@Ricky-Spanish

I think most old first party games that don't sell on the Sony store anymore will be ported so it could be those games you mentioned aswell I mean they are not making much selling them on playstation where they are old news why not port them to Xbox where they are new and will sell well??

Also don't forget that a release of an "old" PlayStation game on Xbox could generate such big hype that it would positively affect the sales on the PlayStation store around that release, as everyone will discuss the game and "how it holds up X years later". 😉

Days Gone is also a curious case, it didn't sell as well as Sony hoped on PlayStation, but it was the 2nd big PlayStation game to release on Steam (after Horizon Zero Dawn) and it sold fairly well on PC. Porting it should also be easier than other PlayStation games, as it's running on the Unreal Engine.

It's awesome how we're in such a situation where people now believe that it's possible for once exclusive PlayStation games to release on Xbox, where once the idea was unbelievable.

Even a small, harmless social media message can spark a huge discussion. 😁

@WildConcept6 @Fiendish-Beaver I personally don't believe that this new strategy is limited to live service games, at least not the ones which we know about.

From all the 12 live service games PlayStation Studios had in development at some point, only 2 were successful until now (Helldivers 2 and Gran Turismo 7). Apart from Fairgames, everything else got cancelled as far as I know. I am not convinced that Sony is hiring a new senior director just for 2 live service games, as the role would seem redundant once those games are released.

As mentioned before Bungie has the capability to self publish their own games. The Xbox store has "Bungie" as the publisher of "Marathon".

@WildConcept6 Good find. I briefly checked the first few paragraphs of the job offer which were also shared on most gaming news websites.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what the result will be.

@Romans12 Surprisingly Halo is still a thing. It got support for all these years, while other games like Concord only lasted 2 weeks or TLOU Factions was outright cancelled. It just shows how tough the current online multiplayer shooter market is.

@Fiendish-Beaver True, that could also be the case. We will see in due time what it all means. But it's fun to speculate. 😉

@Fiendish-Beaver I agree, live-service games need to be on all possible platforms to stay relevant and the same applies to Helldivers 2. That's also the reason why there was no doubt about Call of Duty's continued release on PlayStation after Microsoft's ABK acquisition.

The question is, why Sony has a new job offer for multi-platform publishing (including Xbox) if they only have a limited number of live-service games planned (the other ones could be Fairgames and Marvel's Tokon) and they could already fulfill that with their current publishing department?

EDIT: Maybe we are wrong and this new position is just about publishing games like Death Stranding 2, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, Nioh 3, Marvel's Tokon, which are developed by 3rd party studios and would release on other platforms anyways. Publishing those games would allow PlayStation to earn the revenue instead of other publishers like 505 Games, Bandai-Namco, Epic Games or Tencent, and it helps to strengthen their partnership with those studios.

I would treat Bungie (Marathon, Destiny) separately as they can self publish.

I'm currently playing Anthem since I bought it on a heavy sale last year and the servers will be closed next year. It's not terrible, but it's no Mass Effect.

The world design, thr flying and shooting mechanics are quite good and enjoyable. The "javelins" (mechs) look cool and have fun abilities. The visuals are decent for a 6 year old game.

But the whole RPG part is a mess. There's a loop where you load a mission from the base (Fort Tarsis) and after the mission you automatically return. There is no proper quest mechanic where you could do more at a time. The missions are fairly straightforward without any big cinematic moments. Despite taking place on an ever-changing planet, the open world is fairly static. The world building is mostly done through codex text entries.

It tires to be Diablo, Destiny, Mass Effect, Iron Man, Marvel's Avengers, but fails to match the high standards set by other looter shooters. It's charming in some way. 😁

I tagged you all 3 as I wanted to join the discussion about the following point: @Grumblevolcano @WildConcept6 @Fiendish-Beaver

It is partly for this reason that I don't think that Sony will want to do anything that might prolong Xbox's existence in the console space, and thus why I don't think they will give their first-party solo games to Xbox.

I could see Sony's strategy be that because of the next gen Xbox having Steam, any damage done by putting PS exclusives on Xbox is already done because of the PC strategy so porting games to Series X|S becomes solely a question of whether it can make Sony more money.

So, why did Sony NOW decide to port their games to Xbox? Especially since Xbox players can buy their games on Steam or Epic Games in the future if the next Xbox has a Steam and Epic Games Integrations.

1. I don't think Sony wants to see Xbox as a console fully "dead". They actually profit from each other despite competing with one another. If Xbox as a console is gone, then the whole console space loses on relevance and Sony will see a stronger competition from the PC space. They are partnered with AMD for PlayStation, but on PC Nvidia is more popular (also Nintendo is partnered with Nvidia). The way that Nvidia is innovating in graphics, PlayStation and AMD could be left behind. If Nvidia/PC becomes the standard target development profile for new games it will be a disaster for PlayStation. It's just that Xbox in it's current state is apparently no more a threat to Sony PlayStation's console business.

2. Why port games to the Xbox Store if they can be bought by Xbox players on Steam and Epic Games Store in the future? That is a very good question. A less likely reason is that they can sell their games at full price on Xbox than on Steam, where the discounts are very frequent. Maybe some will double-dip. I think a more likely reason is that Sony needs money ASAP. They lost a tremendous amount of money betting on live-service games (with many cancelled years-long projects) and buying Bungie. Their expensive 1st party games aren't enough to cover the losses. But the Sony executives promised growth to the shareholders and the quickest way is to port their games to other platforms. Might also explain the large number of "remastered games" released by PlayStation in the recent years.

This is of course all just speculation from my end, nevertheless it's an interesting discussion. 😁

@cragis0001

I think Sony is banking on Xbox to be a major player in the cloud gaming sector in the next few years.

But Sony have their own cloud offering via PS Plus Premium (aka PS Now). If cloud will become important in the next years, wouldn't they want to promote their own cloud streaming offering rather than Microsoft's? 🤔

@Mindurbiniss True, it seems like Sony is coasting on the success of the PS4. Hardcore fans seem to measure the worth of a console based on its exclusive games. As if the console is worthless without the exclusives.

I guess we all shared that sentiment many years ago. But since the PS4 and Xbor One era, the 2 devices on an architectural level are the same devices, and discussing console differences became kind of redundant. All PlayStation games run without a problem on Xbox and all Xbox games run fine on PlayStation.

I am happy that Microsoft took the first step to stop this "exclusive" nonsense, even if they are doing this due to becoming too large with the ABK acquisition. I just wonder what will become of the Xbox Game Studios in the next 10 years and if we will continue seeing smaller titles like South of Midnight, Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush and Grounded.

@Fiendish-Beaver

The only other thing I would add is that it is not just about existing players. Every year tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of new gamers enter into console gaming. More often than not, their first console is bought by their parents, and thus the choice of console is determined for them by their parents, particularly so if they are gamers themselves. However it is also determined by where their friends game, and then what games and services are on a particular platform.

Good point, I didn't consider the next generation of gamers. Though thinking about it now, honestly I don't think that console exclusive games will have a strong influence on their decisions. My opinion is shaped by my nephews (12 & 15) and the teenagers I encounter. Nintendo is the default starting point for many kids as Nintendo has the most family friendly, fun games. Additionally to the Switch one of my nephews has a PS4, but cannot afford a PS5, the other has a PS5, but want's a gaming PC since all the "cool streamers" are playing on PC. The games they play? Mostly Fortnite, FIFA/FC, F1, Rocket League. They don't know what Halo, Gears of War, Gran Turismo or Final Fantasy is. Will be interesting to see how it all evolves.

@Fiendish-Beaver

Are you playing Anthem with other people, @TrollOfWar? Or entirely solo?

I played the first 2-3 missions "public" with other players, but I didn't like how many were rushing forward, so I started playing solo/private afterwards where I progress the missions at my own pace, explore the environments and have an easier time following the NPC voice chatter.

@Fiendish-Beaver

But hey, it just goes to show that I am human after all, and not some rampant AI construct out to dominate and subdue the human race... 😂

That's exactly what a rampant AI which is hallucinating facts would say. 😅

Thus porting the games to the Xbox will harm them in the long-run if people choose to game their instead.
...
However, they are acutely aware that people enter their ecosystem in order to play these games, and that those people will then buy other games and in doing so provide Sony with even more revenue.

I guess this point is currently where we have the biggest debates on all forums. Does porting of 1st party PlayStation games truly hurt the PlayStation platform in the long run? There's no certain answer, there are many points which point in both negative and positive impacts for the PS platform if they do that.

The negative views are mostly based on what happened with Xbox as a console. But many of the issues with the Xbox console platform (RROD, horrific Xbox One launch, mismanaged internal studios, bad relationship to 3rd paties) happened way before and are unrelated to their strategic move towards multi-platform publishing. And most console players have chosen their favorite platform during the generation where everyone started building their large backward compatible digital libraries.

The positive point of view is that this move will have no negative impact on the PlayStation platform. Times have changed, most console players are entrenched in their favorite platforms and system exclusive games are becoming too expensive as a means to convert a few people from one platform to another. PlayStation has been releasing their games on PC for 5+ years now and the PS5 is selling almost as well as the PS4. The only way to grow their business is buy expanding to other platforms or media.

Personally I don't think anyone who is currently on PlayStation will leave their console and choose Xbox instead, if PlayStation starts releasing games on Xbox, unless they were unhappy on PlayStation in the first place and were looking for an excuse to leave.

Anthem (need to finish it before the servers close 😅) and maybe Toaplan Arcade Collection 3 on Evercade.

@Fiendish-Beaver

Any smaller licenced game is a genuine possibility for porting, so I can definitely see Lego Horizon coming over, as much as anything because sales have been largely disappointing (as was the game, by all accounts), but with this game there is already a connection to Xbox in that most (if not all) Lego games are available on Xbox. Thus I can see Hasbro pushing for its release on the Xbox.

I think LEGO Horizon makes little sense from a business perspective to port to Xbox at this point. Don't get me wrong, there are probably people who would like to play it on Xbox, but I think it should have released on Xbox at the same time as on the other platforms.

But the reception of LEGO Horizon was lukewarm. So if it didn't do well on PlayStation, Switch and PC, then I doubt it will do well on Xbox, especially since there are numerous better alternative licensed LEGO games available. Investing $ 1 million to port and release doesn't pay off business wise. The only way how LEGO Horizon would make it to Xbox is if LEGO mandates the release as part of a contract.

Investing $ 1-2 million of dollars to port something like Horizon Zero Dawn, Marvel's Spider-Man or God of War (2018) are a much better investment, as those are pretty popular & well received games, and they would sell much better on Xbox, turning a good profit.

In the same sense, I don't think we'll see Redfall ported to PlayStation or Forspoken ported to Xbox, as those games had mixed receptions, so most likel they will also underperform on other platforms.

BTW I just wanted to mention that LEGO is not owned by Hasbro. The LEGO Group is owned by the Kristiansen family. 😉

Nice if more people can play Starfield. There are Bethesda RPG fans also on PlayStation.

@Kaloudz

Like you, I am all for it. It's good for the games, it's good for the fans, and it's good for the studios.

Love your positive comments. Never change. 😉👍

@acmiguens

I think Sony expected higher numbers on PC and that didn't happen.

I think their PC game releases are doing just fine. They don't need to sell a tremendous amount of units, a few 100k are already profitable. For example, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered apparently cost $ 2.3 millions to port to PC. Spider-Man uses Insomniac Games' proprietary in-house engine, but multi-platform Unreal Engine games like Days Gone might be cheaper to port to PC. Spider-Man Remastered only had to sell 60K units at $60 on PC (minus 30% Steam platform fees) to become profitable. I bet it sold more and games sold on Steam usually have a long tail, so initial sales numbers are not indicative of how successful they are.

If PlayStation games like Marvel's Spider-Man, The Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, Horizon, Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, Returnal, etc. sell 1/3 of the numbers on the Xbox console, than what the Xbox games (Foza Horizon, Gears of War) sell on PlayStation consoles, then porting their games from PC to Xbox is most likely profitable.

In the end, the more people can play those awesome PlayStation games the better.

Maybe "PC Games Station", though that might cause legal trouble with PC Games Magazine🤔