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Sony supporters and detractors rarely find common ground.

Yet a single issue that has been raised by all parties.

"Where are all the games?"

Expensive, story-driven hits from first-party teams have historically been the foundation to PlayStation's hardware dominance.

In the PS4 era, fans received a regular supply of narrative-driven games, but that has appeared as a trickle since the release of Spider-Man 2.

But, the company's most recent game – Ghost of Yōtei – signals a comeback to its proven triple-A style.

What Took So Long?

Sucker Punch's latest game is a sequel to the 2020 samurai-era release Ghost of Tsushima, among the last big console-exclusive games from Sony.

"Games do take a long time to make, so it's a major portion of your career," notes Nate.

Ghost of Yōtei moves the setting a hundreds of miles northward, to the Honshū region area, and the time period a several centuries later, to the early 17th century.

This time, the story centers on the protagonist Atsu, a woman fighter on a journey to seek revenge against the Yōtei Six – a group of warlords responsible for her family's demise.

Building on a earlier release to build on, it's not quite a totally new start but, Fox clarifies, the project is nonetheless a enormous challenge.

Simply having a fresh hero, for instance, needs contribution from authors, animation artists and character designers, to mention only some of the jobs involved.

Behind the scenes there are numerous additional specialists.

A Massive Workforce Undertaking

Although Sucker Punch has approximately 200 team members at its studio near Seattle, hundreds more work on its games.

The end credits for Ghost of Tsushima, for instance, listed approximately over 1,800 names.

A number of these will be from other countries, or from external studios that excel in certain specialized areas.

"Developing a title calls for a wide range of different abilities, from incredibly technical experts... to individuals who are extremely guided by narrative, like our writers," explains Fox.

"And these teams work in co-ordination. It's comparable to conducting an symphony.

"We need to have all of the elements aligning."

Nate says that a staggering number of elements can go into a one sequence – from music to the code that causes foliage blow over the environment at a pivotal point.

"Each group need to have a understanding of the overall direction," concludes Fox.

A Shift in Strategy

Clear leadership is something players have questioned Sony of not having in the last few years.

With its former head, Jim Ryan, the company launched work on 12 live-service projects, referred to as "ongoing" games in the industry.

Some of the best-known titles, such as Fortnite, the user-generated game and the FPS series, keep players involved for extended durations and earn massive revenues of money.

Sony has had positive results in the space with the previous year's Helldivers II, but an catastrophic flop with another game, which was taken offline just two weeks after its debut.

The company has since cancelled multiplayer titles based on several of its biggest IPs, like God of War and The Last of Us.

Pursuing the online market is a approach the company has admitted is not wholly "progressing well", but it's said some releases with online modes, such as the driving simulator and baseball simulation MLB: The Show, have been successful.

The stars of its recent marketing event were a new title, a successor to 2021's Returnal, and the long-awaited the mutant hero game from web-slinger maker Insomniac – each solo experiences.

Debate and Attention

High-profile titles can often be centers for debate, as the studio just found when a employee's remark about the demise of conservative American figure the individual caused a backlash.

The company eventually fired the employee responsible, and founder Brian Fleming commented that "celebrating or trivializing a person's death is a red line for us", when asked about it.

A number of political entertainment commentators have also targeted Ghost of Yōtei for starring a woman hero.

Fox says it was an "unusual decision", but crucial to the tale the developers aimed to tell of an outsider resisting traditional conventions.

When the story advances, the character's myth as an Onryō – a revenge-seeking apparition featured in Eastern tradition – grows.

"Players believe there's no way a woman would have defeated figures of the six warlords unless she is a supernatural {creature|