Thread 725262941

Why did Playstation All Stars fail? Actually come to think of it every Smash clone from Nick to Multiversus seems destined to fail.

Repost
There were multiple reasons why Nintendo was able to accomplish in just 12 first party characters, Sony failed to do so with 16 (19 counting DLC)
Two being
>Nintendo's characters stronger popularity both globally and across various age demographics
>Nintendo's characters have stronger legacies spanning multiple systems with the most popular ones having whole development teams dedicated to continuing those franchises unlike Sony's who choose to work on something else when they feel like it's time to move on
Was Smash 64's roster perfectly balanced?
Absolutely not but given the context of when it came out you still had heavy hitters with Mario and Pikachu who cemented themselves as popular enough to break into mainstream pop culture with the former having already cemented himself as a legacy character
Everyone except Samus had a new game for their series in development or a new game recently released
The PS3 era was when Sony was freaked out and tried to create as many first party IPs covering as many bases since the PS1's launch because that was when they couldn't coast by off of third party support like with the PS2
Jack Tretton himself admitted he always envied Microsoft for having a killer app franchise with Halo right out of the gate
But another thing people don't really talk about is how different Nintendo and Sony are structured when it comes to game development
Not only does Nintendo have dedicated teams to keep their IPs active, a lot of those games share similar developers, creators, producers, etc
They're made from teams that work in tandem with one another, share the same building, and that overlap bleeds into their fanbases
Does Nintendo have a perfectly unified fanbase where everyone is on the same page?
Absolutely not but it's easier for someone to be a general Nintendo fan than a general PlayStation fan despite certain people demanding certain dormant IPs to return (regardless of developer interest, producer interest, resource availability, etc)

I don't mean to say Nintendo's the only one that cracked the solution to this because Capcom did the same thing.
Have strong, internetionally popular franchises of critical acclaim and sales made by mostly the same people and you have enough healthy overlap to create a core fanbase for the company('s games as a whole).
I've seen people wonder what a SEGA Smash Bros would look like but honestly given the industry politics at the time between SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan, I don't think a SEGA Smash Bros roster (had it released back when SEGA was still producing consoles) would even work given how the former would cockblock certain Japanese games from releasing and the latter doesn't like to acknowledge the former's first party offerings unless it's for some collection.
Anyways, another worth noting is how PlayStation All-Stars boxart varies from location.
Kratos in the middle of the American release, Drake for Europe, and Japan is an absolute clusterfuck of all the various renders just slapped on together.
Keep this in mind, it's gonna be important.

Then there's the concept art boxarts
The first one has some reused assets from other games (it is just concept art after all) but Kratos, Sackboy, and Parappa are at the very least fully original
The boxart on the right are also 100% original illustrations
I've seen plenty of comments going "Why didn't they go with this? It's so much more soulful." and yeah I agree but considering how the finalized boxart already had clear distinctions made for marketing purposes per region, the concept art boxart would make for a harder sell in other if not every country
I like the right boxart a lot and at first the line-up makes sense
Four characters because that's literally how the game works
Kratos is there because he's Kratos
Radec is there because Killzone was at its peak popularity as an important series for PlayStation
Parappa and Sweet Tooth are there because they're PS1 icons and Twisted Metal has lasted up to every PlayStation generation at that point
However Kratos is popular in the West but not in Japan, Radec may be the fan favorite among Killzone fans but he wasn't even playable and he died in his debut game anyways, Parappa didn't have a game since the PS2, and car combat was never a popular genre outside of America
Boxart matters especially for games like these because at a glance someone could recognize the character and immediately have interest
Nobody in the West knows who Toro is but he's front and center in the clusterfuck that is Japan's boxart for the game
Heihachi is similarly next to him as well as Raiden (granted Metal Gear Rising wasn't out yet) for presumably similar reasons
They're the characters Japanese audiences at the time would likely recognize the most

But anyways, for extra measure lets compare it to a similar boxart
The NA/EU release for Super Smash Bros. Melee
Again, it's 4 characters (says so on the box) but the line-up wasn't chosen randomly
Mario, Pikachu, and Link are hands down the most popular characters and throw in Bowser who's just as iconic AND was a no-brainer newcomer suggestion
They satisfy every region (okay Japan had something different but you get the idea) in one fell swoop while you'd probably struggle with deciding a core four for All-Stars Battle Royale (when I brought this up in 2020 on /v/, someone suggested it should've been Ratchet, Kratos, Sackboy, and Nathan Drake which honesty is honestly the best selection I can agree on aside from the lack of a PS1 rep and even then he suggested Parappa though but I'm not sure who should've been replaced)
In case you're curious, here's what Japan did
The models are literally the in-game models but it's not an unorganized cluster like Japan's boxart for PASBR
All the major characters are still broadly visible

>>725262941 (OP)
People always says Smash clones aren't as popular because of their rosters and Nintendo having more popular characters, but the truth is none of those Smash clones are as fun to play as Smash. They always change something about the gameplay bevause they don't want to be a 1:1 clone but the thing they change is never an improvement. Like Sony All-Stars had that stupid gimmick where you MUST use use a super move to finish off an opponent. This isn't as fun (or deep) as throwing them off the stage. Smash clones also never have as good a "game feel" as Smash, like the hitstop on hits, the physics, collisions, etc.

>>725262941 (OP)
i had a blast with allstars when it released. love sackboy

https://youtu.be/RxTYkuSIjk4
this thread made me rewatch this, man what fucking kino this game was. i miss this

mmmm... fat princess...

>>725262941 (OP)
>Why did Playstation All Stars fail?
Sony rented their IPs. Once 7th gen came around they had next to nothing. Half PSASBR's roster isn't even owned by them. And of those IPs they had, most of them didn't have a long lasting legacy as most of them were either dead, obscure, or blatant marketing fodder (Smash does this too, but they started early so they could get away with it).
First question anyone asked when they saw the roster: Where are Crash and Spyro?
>Actually come to think of it every Smash clone from Nick to Multiversus seems destined to fail.
Because they want to make a game that prints money before they make a fun game. The publishers genuinely believe their shitty games will sell on branding alone. Again, Smash does this too, but they at least have the courtesy to make a fun game on top of it.

>>725262941 (OP)
>>725266830
what's most unfortunate is how sovlful the concept of Playstation All-Stars is, yet Sony refuses to capitalize on it.

>>725262941 (OP)
I can't say since I never played it but it was always strange how Sony with it's million characters the company could have used but opted for third party characters like Big Daddy, Isaac, Heihachi and Raiden.
But I do also think this >>725266830 anon is right.
>most of them didn't have a long lasting legacy as most of them were either dead
Nobody in their teens knew who was pic related when the game came out.
Sony just doesn't capitalizes on their IP's like they should, we haven't gotten a Twisted Metal game since 2012, a good vehicle combat is something that would do good since we don't get very many of them, but I digress.

>>725266451
It was much better than it had any right to be while still being nowhere as good as it should have been. Also licensing that song probably cost them about half the total budget at least.
>>725267440
Dart (and Abe) never actually made it into the game, but both were also some of the most highly requested characters the moment it was announced, next to anyone from Final Fantasy. Also it wasn't that they opted for those third party characters, they were the only ones that actually gave them the time of day (i.e. saw it as free advertising they could boss around), basically everyone else ignored or laughed them off because of aforementioned shoestring budget and tiny random dev team.

>>725267440
>Sony just doesn't capitalizes on their IP's like they should, we haven't gotten a Twisted Metal game since 2012, a good vehicle combat is something that would do good since we don't get very many of them, but I digress.
It's because there's a vacancy in getting someone to make the game to begin with
The team behind Twisted Metal 2012 has disbanded and finding a reliable developer is easier said than done
Nintendo doesn't worry about this (for the most part) because they handle their heavy hitters in-house and their second party heavy hitters are handled by devs who WANT to continue those IPs.
I know some suggest Destruction AllStars should've been Twisted Metal but how confident are you that the team behind that game could've done Twisted Metal justice?

>>725266830
>No cash, no Crash
>No Crash no cash
Basically
Apparently they did try to get Lara but the devs behind her upcoming reboot didn't want her to debut in some other game first

A new Playstation All-Stars could work, too bad Sony would probably just fill the roster with realistic looking humans and nobody would EVER give a shit about a platform fighter with only realistic looking dudes

>>725267898
my only hope for a new Playstation All-Stars with an ACTUAL proper roster is Astro Bot existing. that game covered the majority of Sony icons, both 1st and 3rd party. if they secured those rights just last year, there's potential for a future installment.

>tfw hear that this game was supposed to have a soul sacrifice rep
i think this game would've been alright if you didn't have to use supers just to ko people

bumpin'

>>725262941 (OP)
The gameplay fucking sucked with the 3-tier ultimate attack system (I can't remember what it was called), and it lacked a lot of iconic characters that should've been in the game. I think the only gimmick I enjoyed was the mashup stages.

>>725262941 (OP)
Because they all overestimated the popularity of Smash
With that many roster from so many games you would think Smash itself would ape Nintendo's other titles, but it didn't

>>725262941 (OP)
>smash clone of your favorite Playstation™Heroes!
It was designed for people who were tired of Smash Brothers and not for zoomers who were hype on Playstation.

>>725262941 (OP)
>>725263045
>>725263076
>>725263136
>>725263174
I can't believe a game with such a star-studded cast failed to garner attention! Such famous characters like... Radec from Killzone 2... two fucking versions of the buzzcut guy from Infamous...

>>725262941 (OP)
ps makes nothing but sloppah

>>725262941 (OP)
Gameplay sucked and it didn't have some actual Playstation All-Stars.

Nintendo entered the gaming industry right when it began and their consoles and such was first party consoles, they made consoles so they could make games and have complete control over everything. Sony and Microsoft just entered the gaming industyr because they're parasites. They don't give a shit about games. Nintendo obviously wants to dominate the gaming industry but their creators, their developers, are actually passionate about their IPs and games

>>725262941 (OP)
not enough ongoing support, not enough content, not well-designed enough

they stop making new ones, which means you have to start from scratch in terms of building up a reputation, but you also have to start from scratch in terms of iterating and improving on what you did before.

of course other games are going to be unsuccessful if they release without any content like all the smash clones so far have. I've played all of them and they're insanely barebones. The best in terms of feeling like endless love and sweat and encyclopedic contributions was Jump Super Stars and then Ultimate Stars for the DS.

Both of those sold about 800k copies in Japan alone, and they never made any more or localised any new entries. But if they made another game of that level of quality today the interest would be enormous, even with the severely atrophied interest in Jump properties since most of their new titles don't really have the power their old ones did. But they don't make the games. Games just don't get made anymore.

But playstation allstars, nick, multiversus? These games have NOTHING to offer except a very basic core gameplay loop with very limited complexity and no support. They're incredibly unprofessional prototypes with none of the flood of different stuff to offer that smash games have managed to since melee. Melee was made in 13 months and it had a zillion trophies, it had adventure mode, it has event mode, it had stadium mode, it had a zillion custom fighting modes, it had endless pokemon coming out of pokeballs, it had items galore. Very very few of the smash clones have even a TENTH of what MELEE had, a game rushed out in a year on rigs with 64MB of ram and 8GB HDDs.

>>725277023
>their creators, their developers, are actually passionate about their IPs and games
A decade ago? Maybe.
You're delusional if you genuinely think that's still the case.

>>725278207
NTA but why do you believe otherwise?

>>725278207
Nintendo attracts literal geniuses that wants to work there, it's full of passionate nerds

>>725278246
>No new IPs since Splatoon
>Open world slop is popular? Let's turn Zelda into one and release it as another shitty barebones game for full price
>And then let's release a glorified expansion pack for it for a full price again
>Forza Horizon got popular? Just turn Mario Kart into that
>The absolute state of Pokemon
>The absolute state of Metroid
>No more experimentation with consoles let's just release Switch again but with better hardware
>Constant rereleases of decades old games for full prices
They now just chase trends, do whatever is safe and doubled down on being a patent troll.
They're not some pioneers anymore but just like any other big game company, doing nothing but rehashes, trend chasing and employing greedy practices to squeeze out as much money as possible.

>>725278701
>>No new IPs since Splatoon
Ring Fit?
ARMS?
That upcoming NSO game
>>Open world slop is popular? Let's turn Zelda into one
BotW's developed began way over a decade ago. Also I disagree, as BotW is a legitimately great game. I did not like TotK, however.
>Forza Horizon got popular? Just turn Mario Kart into that
I ain't played MK World but I don't see how it's similar to Forza
>>The absolute state of Pokemon
Agreed, it's more of an issue wtih Gamefreak though as Nintendo does not develop the games internally.
>>The absolute state of Metroid
Huh? It's the best state its been in about 20 years.
>>No more experimentation with consoles let's just release Switch again but with better hardware
What should they have released instead?
>>Constant rereleases of decades old games for full prices
Mostly agree. The price gouging on rereleases has been absurd (LM2 remake, DKC remaster, Galaxy 1+2, etc.), but this has nothing to do with their developers and creative team.

Your rant at the end is great and all but doesn't have much to do with the development teams at the company, which is what anon was talking about if you read the post. Feels like you just wanted to vent about unrelated issues with upper management at the company bro.

Perfect game

>developed by a no-name indie studio
This game was doomed from the start.

>>725262941 (OP)
financially? because the people who care about nathan drake and kratos don't want to play a game that has parappa and ape escape boy, and vice versa. there's no shared community there. it's just a clusterfuck.
as a game it fails because Only Supers Kill is the dumbest fucking mechanic and they had no clue how to even make it work.

Took to long, should came out during the PS2 era or even PS1 when they had way more memorable and colorful characters, PS3 was the brown n bloom era so all they have to work with is soldier guy #1, 2 and 3

>>725282176
Look how lame and uninspired this looks, there's not a single character to go "oh shit!" about besides sly and maybe big daddy

>>725266830
>Sony rented their IPs
Huh, ya know, I never though of this that way. Shame that Sony dug their own grave with it because they either A) Let the teams behind them fall apart or B) Never let them greenlight another game. And while it WOULD have been another rental, I still think them not getting Crash AND Spyro in the game also hurt it. To this day, people associate the two with Sony, to the point where my own pops was surprised when I told him they didn't own them.
>>725267070
This.

>>725272614
Like others have said, it and future Smash-like clones are weirdly scared of being compared to it that they go out of their way to be as different as possible, when really, aside from journalist making bait articles, the average gamer wouldn't care. Give me Smash with Sony, it shouldn't have fumbled like it did.

>>725279179
>Agreed, it's more of an issue wtih Gamefreak though as Nintendo does not develop the games internally.
Nta, but I just hold TPC as a whole accountable for Pokemon's current status. The drive to release merch and shit was always a plague, but at least prior to Gen 7 or so, the games could still come out and run well on their intended systems. Now, Gen 10 is on the horizon (30th anny next year), and despite developing on some of Nintendo's powerful systems, we get ass performance and graphics I'd see on the PS2. Mind you, I love how games like Jak 1 looked, but the fact that I'm paying 70 bones for future Pokemon games (I do not see Gen 10 getting a Switch 1 version, Prime 4 is the last big Nintendo game for it) means the TPC needs to put the games as the priority instead of merch and the TCG.

>>725286437
For me, I was happy to see Parappa again, but for real, I was only playing as him, Spike, Sly, Jak and Ratchet.

This video explains pretty well the development history of this game
https://youtu.be/jEzq9_V2CbQ
TLDW:
>Game had very different original concept
>All third party support was done for advertisement first (MGR Raiden, Donte, Bioshock Infinite stage, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Heihachi Mishima)
>Activision was not interested in letting the team use Crash and/or Spyro, even if they did, the cost would have been prohibitive for the budget
>No Lara Croft because the studio would only allow them to use reboot Lara and they wanted her to debut in her game first
>Sucker Punch insisted for there to be two Coles
>DLC is more advertisement (Starhawk, GOW Ascension, Dead Space 3)
>Sony leaves dev studio to rot and then they die
>>725268181
Development time would be greater than AstroBot cameos since AstroBot cameo characters are just pasting recognizable features into the same basic model.

>>725262941 (OP)
i played it once and it felt like total ass, so maybe that. the roster also sucked and like it or not, smash games are ALL about the roster. and no smash clone has ever had a roster people give a shit about.

All Smash clones think they can coast by on roster and IP alone:
>oh look we own Bugs Bunny and Steven Jewniverse and Samurai Jack now watch them fight in Townsville while King Kong gets suplexed by Dexters giant mech in the background
Then the gameplay is shit. The support is shit and it dies. The only ones yet to try a Smash clone are Disney which is surprising considering how much they like chasing trends.

>>725288834
>>Activision was not interested in letting the team use Crash and/or Spyro
Wild, like, Sony wants to have these IPs seen in the eyes of many as part of Sony's history. Cost aside, what would have been the negative in Activion's eyes?

>>725262941 (OP)
It's because Sony and their fans realized that almost every classic game they had were just third parties. They actually don't own too many recognizable IPs

Smash has higher polish and Nintendo has the best IP variety in the whole of the industry

It's a crossover fighter so it's going to live and die by its crossover potential, the only other crossover property I can think of that hits a lot of the same marks is Marvel vs. Capcom, and that one still went into cryogenic storage because Marvel started sucking really hard and it bled into Infinite's development process

>>725262941 (OP)
Everyone else has explained it pretty well so I'll just add that a Sony crossover game was better achieved with Astro Bot. Sony, by design, isn't like Nintendo. They didn't want to have mascots that could limit their audience. People think of Nintendo and they think younger demographic and Sony didn't want that. So how do you make a crossover game when the company doesn't have that many IP's of their own and the iconic ones that are associated with the brand are all over the map in terms of art style and tone and whatnot. Default everyone to one character with accessories instead while celebrating the different consoles over the years. Pretty genius, to be honest. It's the only way they could pull off having Kratos alongside Crash alongside Tony Hawk and still make it work.

>>725275439
We got two Coles because of Sucker Punch

>>725288834
I'm gonna be 100% real
Nobody would have a problem with two Coles if the roster as a whole was much better
All-Stars' problem was less who got in and more who didn't get in

>>725262941 (OP)
Rosterfagging is the actual game, if your characters don't press the play for 30 minutes argue about for 500 hours on the internet button on nerds there's no point.

>>725278701
>They now just chase trends, do whatever is safe
This is the complete opposite of what they do

>>725288834
>Development time would be greater than AstroBot cameos since AstroBot cameo characters are just pasting recognizable features into the same basic model.
oh, for sure. don't get me wrong, I don't expect a roster to have the colossal size that Astro Bot did, especially considering they're not fully fleshed out characters with unique movesets, gimmicks and such. however, it is interesting to think how much potential Sony has to pull from with the amount of IPs showcased in that game. were it up to Sakurai as example, he would divide that cast between playable characters, assists, items, and trophy/spirit appearances.

>>725294575
as much as I agree, I think I like the idea of both Coles being a 2-in-1 character instead but as a "swapout" with different movesets, similar to Sheik/Zelda and Pyra/Mythra in Smash. that'd be more feasible with today's tech versus an amateur studio's PS3 game.

>>725288834
>>Sucker Punch insisted for there to be two Coles
kek this is really funny both in and out of context.
Does the video say why?

>>725286437
Raiden

>>725296979
SuperBot wanted Cole to have his moveset change over the course of the match to reflect the karma system but Sucker Punch insisted both depictions are distinct enough