The serious business of making games

I sure hope Sony isn’t driven into bankruptcy having to support those storefronts for literally forever.

Pretty sure it doesn’t cost them more than a rounding error in their balance sheet.

On the one hand things are always more complicated than they seem, so I assume the store fronts have some cost to maintain them.

That being said they weren’t really closing the core of the store front. Users would still be able to download their previous purchases. So all the code, network infrastructure, and customer support was still going to be needed, so I don’t know how much they were actually going to save by only turning off the credit card purchase system.

I think turning it off was likely about security and needing to invest in that to keep it running. Maybe now that people purchased a bunch of stuff in a rush they have millions to invest to keep it secure for a long time to come.

Internet/store security is a daily money pit in 2021.

Yeah legacy infrastructure isn’t always easy to keep current and for an internet facing application that processes payment transactions you can’t just wall it off and shrug your shoulders like you’ll see internally with some other legacy apps you got to keep around for reasons. So it’s not a matter of how much bandwidth/storage but having people that understand the systems so they can be patched/updated.

I’m sure the math will be recalculated at some point of how much is sold per year v. how much does it cost to maintain the store.

Yep. That’s likely. At some point this will happen again. I think maybe if Vita wasn’t included this time they might have been more likely to get it done now. That’s still too “new” to be sunsetted in people’s minds.

And realistically as long as they retain downloads/patch servers, closing the store is not that big a deal.

So, yeah. People are a problem.

#KotickCares

That canonical Star Control sequel that they legally can’t call a canonical Star Control sequel without paying a king’s ransom in honey is never happening, is it? (No one ever though it was)

I mean, I’m glad they’re getting paid but sweet Jesus what a waste of talent.

Also, what @ArmandoPenblade said. Bummer.

Yeah I was trying to think of a diplomatic way to say it but - what a waste.

So all AAA dev will be Call of Duty by what, 2034 or so?

Every great one hit wonder band has their Interstate casino phase.

I don’t think that was ever going to be done by Toys for Bob (AKA, Activision), so the real question is how involved Paul and Fred would have to be in Call of Duty? Chances are, not much.

Pretty sure P&F are not with Activision anymore.

I don’t see anything saying they left Toys for Bob, which is part of Activision.

If only they’d announce it was a Skylanders-esque toys-to-life installment :D

Toys for Bobby K.