No Man’s Sky, this year’s most anticipated game has infamously become this year’s most disappointing game, and the situation for them seems bleaker than ever. Presently, the studio is under investigation by UK’s Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), after users filed a formal complaint against the game’s misleading promotions.
In an interview with EuroGamer at the Tokyo Game Show, here’s what Shuhei Yoshida from Sony had to say about the title, “I had the opportunity to play the game right before launch – and I restarted playing the game on launch day with the Day One patch – so I could see the struggle for the developers to get the game out in the state that they wanted.”
He also said that personally he enjoyed the game, but understands the disappointment that the community faced with the game. “I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one.”
“It wasn’t a great PR strategy, because he didn’t have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer. But he says their plan is to continue to develop No Man’s Sky features and such, and I’m looking forward to continuing to play the game.”
When asked whether the entire fiasco had harmed the PlayStation brand name in the process, he said, “”I am super happy with the game actually, and I’m amazed with the sales the game has gotten, so I’m not the right person to judge if it has ‘harmed’ the PlayStation brand. I personally don’t think so. If anything, I am proud that people can play No Man’s Sky on PS4 as well as PC.”
Now, on a personal note Yoshida might have liked the game, but calling it a bad PR strategy seems to be a little too harsh, considering that back in 2015, Sony was apparently the biggest force backing up Hello Games and No Man’s Sky. Here’s an official statement found on WCCFTech:
“No Mans Sky has been treated as if it was from one of our internal studios,” he says. “We have been working very closely with the developers and bringing it into our release programme as if we had made it. We are not going to treat it any differently and we are going to put the full weight of PlayStation behind it. If it all comes together as well as expected, it will be treated like a first-party release; it is not a self-published small indie title on the platform.”
– Fergal Gara
If Sony had thought the game had so much potential that they felt the need to announce publicly that No Man’s Sky would be treated like a first party title and that they will be working “very closely” with the devs, the idea that they would downright contradict with their statement after the game’s failure seems like Sony doesn’t really want any part of it after all. As far harming the PlayStation brand is concerned, of course a single title can’t be blamed for bringing down such a huge name, but if Sony had supported No Man’s Sky as much as they had claimed in 2015, surely there’s more to it than just a bad “PR strategy”. Agreed, the claims made by Sean Murray and Hello Games about the features in the game may have been mostly false, but Sony trying to wipe every speck of dust off its shoulders doesn’t speak too well about them. Who knows, maybe this is a bad PR strategy.
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