During a recent interview granted to Game Informer.com, Hermen Hulst, the leader of PlayStation Studios spoke at 360 ° about the strategy that Sony will continue to pursue in the near future as a major player in the gaming industry.
Among the most disconcerting issues addressed during the meeting, Hulst provided his personal point of view on the culture of crunch which sadly is often accompanied by the gaming world. In his opinion, those who talk about this topic tend to draw hasty and superficial considerations and not always take into account all the factors involved:
“I’ve read quite a few articles on the subject of crunch and I always think it’s a simplification of everything that needs to be done. I could sum it up by saying,” We don’t do crunch “and” I don’t like crunch one bit. “But is not enough”. It can be as stressful for a developer to be under-busy as working too many hours or working on something that isn’t clear, or joining a studio and feeling invisible. There are so many issues that affect the well-being of our teams. I can tell you that not doing crunch is not enough for the well-being of our developers. We need to do much more. And it’s a very important topic. “
Moving on to something else, Hulst, who had already confirmed that PlayStation Studios were working on 25 new games, reiterated that “We still have a lot in the works that we have not yet shown”. The former managing director of Horizon Zero Dawn then confirmed that PC ports will continue to arrive, but Sony’s focus is on continuing to produce exclusive projects for the PlayStation platforms.
Finally, there was a mention of Sony Japan Studio, the historic Japanese software house heavily downsized whose members have essentially merged into Team Asobi, authors of Astro’s Playroom. Despite the obvious westernization that has materialized in recent years, Sony remains anchored to its oriental roots, according to Hulst, who added: “We are building Team Asobi under Nicolas Doucet, so we are actually investing in that team. People sometimes forget that. we have Polyphony Digital, which is a team divided into two locations. We are also investing in our external development group in Tokyo, which has obviously worked with the likes of From Software and Kojima Productions. So we are very committed to Japanese development, which remains something we love “. For all further details, please follow the link that we have reported at the bottom.