I Toured PlayStation's State-Of-The-Art Music Studio
Here's what Sony's new PlayStation headquarters in San Mateo, Calif., looks like from the outside.
Inside the lobby, there's a statue of the PlayStation Move controller in each corner.
They're right next to PlayStation 4 demo booths, like you'd see in a GameStop.
There are a few statues of Kratos, the hero of the "God of War" games, located around the campus.
A few more characters. I didn't expect to see them when I got out of an elevator and did a double-take.
Outside of the music studio, there's a lounge that would make any gamer drool.
This giant Sony TV and its ridiculous speaker setup makes my 32-inch set back home look downright puny.
A small statue of the protagonist from the upcoming PS4 game "Infamous: Second Son." They 3D print them on campus, so you can find memorabilia like this everywhere.
Inside the company's music studio. The projector and audio setup is so nice that employees sometimes come in here to do their gaming.
PlayStation Director of Music Chuck Doud gave me a walkthrough of their amazing setup and the studio's general workflow.
The centerpiece of this mixing room is the Euphonix System 5 board.
It's powered by a Mac Pro running Avid's ProTools audio software.
Like a good lens for a professional photographer, Doud says that besides the Mac, most of the equipment in this studio will be top of the line for years to come.
Moving on with our tour, I got to see the soundproof room where tracks are recorded.
The studio has a wide range of instruments to handle the wide variety of musical genres used in their games.
As a guitar player, I had to stop to ogle the wide range of guitars, basses, and amps laying around the room.
Here's one of the musicians Sony brought in for the grungy industrial rock used in "Infamous: Second Son."
Connected to the recording room is another state-of-the-art studio. I stopped here to have a chat with the guys responsible for making blockbuster-quality music for PlayStation-exclusive games like "Infamous: Second Son."
This is Bradley Meyer, audio director at Sucker Punch, the studio making "Infamous: Second Son."
He's responsible for all of the sound in Sucker Punch's games, from the musical score to the sound effects you hear as you walk around in the game's version of Seattle.
His counterpart at PlayStation is Jonathan Mayer, a senior music manager.
Mayer helps Meyer (I was confused, too) with the logistics of getting the music right, from lining up the right composers and lining up bands to the specifics of deciding what songs are working in the game.
I also got to meet Andrew Buresh, a music editor at PlayStation. He's the guy who makes it so that the music in a game changes appropriately when you enter combat or start a cut scene.
Mayer says that bringing music in-house lets PlayStation distribute common tasks among a core team while still letting the people making a game have the input needed to create a cohesive experience.
"I won't name names," he says, "but you can see it in plenty of games: you start playing and can instantly hear that the music just wasn't done before they shipped." Mayer says PlayStation can do better, even while working on 25 or more titles at a time.
This startup has a two-story slide in its lobby...
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