I wonder if Sony think they can reduce the partner stuff down now, with PS4 being so much more straightforward to code for than PS3? Most indies coming from PC wouldn't need a ton of help. Hopefully they keep enough of a team for projects like journey though.
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IGN: ~50 Layoffs at Sony Santa Monica, Project Canceled [Up2: Was Stig's New IP]
- Thread starter Jonboy
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I wonder if Sony think they can reduce the partner stuff down now, with PS4 being so much more straightforward to code for than PS3? Most indies coming from PC wouldn't need a ton of help. Hopefully they keep enough of a team for projects like journey though.
Y'know, there's a line for insensitivity here, and I don't think someone's willing to cross it less than 2 hours after the news breaks. Then again, I bet someone's working on that shop as I type. That'd be excessively sad to see that visualized though.
But, will they collapse by the end of the financial year. Wanna make a bet?
Galactic Barret
Member
How big was the studio pre-layoff? Were layoffs redundancies or established, long(er) term employees? Was the project cancellation/layoffs related to the re-hiring of Balrog? Could this be a sign of Sony buying RaD and folding them into SSM?This brings up so many more questions than answers.
Were they rumored to be working on anything besides The Order 1886?
Were they rumored to be working on anything besides The Order 1886?
LookAtMeGo
Member
Indeed this is bad news. But what about the start of this gen makes it shit? Compared to what?
It more than likely was not one of those games because if it was, it would be pretty far into production. Like others have suggested, it was probably a pre-production team.
Personally im doing my bit. Im not buying used games, all if I can help it, my games will be digital so my games wont be traded to water down the market.
Atleast I know with digital 100% is split with Sony and the publisher, not split by retailers, distribution and packaging, which is surely 50% or more.
hope with digital ease more follows suit.
They had 220.
He made some questionable decisions.
As a finance guy, I understand business realities and of course we don't have the numbers but he did make some wrong decisions in my opinion.
It may not be his fault that people don't buy Wipeout, but he plans the lineup of games so he could have had them working on other things (like the rumored agent game, which funnily got cancelled just like the similar sounding Black Tusk stealth game).
Wipeout HD as a PSN only title was probably still Harrison's decision so it is not his fault and I don't think 2048 did so bad for a Vita launch title. Actually, Liverpool isn't the one where I would list his bad decisions.
Looking at other dead studios though, there are some things that could have been done differently.
BigBig released a very good portable Motorstorm and than has to work on a minigame collection just to be closed. Instead, we get a top down Motorstorm from Evolution.
The Vita's launch lineup of racing games only had Wipeout as a stellar title (releasing modnation without MP, smh) and even today the racing genre is underrepresented without a GT even announced.
Zipper did seem to have a pretty tight release schedule, pushing out games on a yearly basis. That as a result, they lacked the overall polish, shouldn't be surprising. Releasing something like Unit 13 without online competitive MP when the whole launch lineup is missing such a game wasn't smart. Also, even though the Socom brand was damaged, it certainly would have helped the sales more than the new Unit 13 name.
Yes, he isn't the bad guy but for me he isn't the ultimative executive like everyone makes him out to be because of his piblic appearance. Actually, I liked Phil Harrison's stuff more so far.
GhostWriter24
Member
They weren't Santa Monica, were they? Pretty sure they were an independent taken in under the partners program.
So, my guess is the GoW:A team that got laid off, they tried to do something which didn't work and was canned in pre-production.
And with Barlog building up another team, that might be true.
Don't think Stigs team was influenced, well it's shit...
Hopefully they'll get another spot soon, maybe even inside the family.
And with Barlog building up another team, that might be true.
Don't think Stigs team was influenced, well it's shit...
Hopefully they'll get another spot soon, maybe even inside the family.
Sapphire Dreams
Member
The game was mostly developed by Giant Sparrow, SSM only gave them assistance.
The industry certainly needs a shake up, but this is just a typical year for SCE. Every year they either make lay-offs at one or some of their studios, or close down a studio.
In just the past few years SCE has shut down Incognito, BigBig, Sony Liverpool and Zipper.
Sword Of Doom
Member
The industry is evolving yes but I wouldn't say it's in serious trouble. Maybe gaming as we know it is in trouble but videogames will live on.
Seems the Ascension team release a game last year.
Doubt they were far into anything.
I'm pretty sure it is 20% retailers, not sure on distribution/packaging but yeah.
I think Steam for example take 30% of each sale. I'm not 100% but I swear I read that somewhere. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.
I remember an interview from a dev in Russia saying they made so much more money via sales on Steam than through packaged retail. There could be a bunch of reasons for that however. So you are doing your part, but it should not really have to come down to this though. Worth noting that there are plenty of companies where you never hear about having layoffs.
Can you offset that with the growth of sone studios getting 2 teams and the likes of bend moving to PS4?
RAD has 110 people.
TheSpaceBetween
Member
That photo they posted a month ago certainly didn't look like anywhere near 220. 150 tops maybe.
Edit: This photo
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/01/29/santa-monica-studio-update-new-site-new-hq/
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Sony is going to come to E3 and announce that from this day all their first parties will now be working on The Last Guardian. Then SE will be invited to say "Please Understand".
anexanhume
Member
But this is an AAA studio that has put out a lot of gems for Sony and partnered to release some of the most revered indie games of the past couple years. In addition, they've been hiring and added some high profile names. If there were any studio to expect layoffs from, this studio is probably second behind Naughty Dog.
iamvin22
Industry Verified
this sounds like a huge amount of the test team that was laid off. scea 1st party test and some 3rd party from the bay area were moved to ssm a couple years ago to make room for sen here in the bay. probably some dev in this layoff but they might have been temps. who knows. all i know is from experience this isn't anything new with all the california production/ publishers.
That number came from SSM themselves.
maquiladora
Member
Fuck, things must be bad if Sony is letting 50 go from one of its most talented studios. Surely there could have been a less damaging way of saving money.
Not to be a dick, but this is the best case scenario. GoW:A was really lacking and bombed, no reason to cancel a new project with a 'new' director (Cory Barlog) at the helm.
Galactic Barret
Member
So 170 now. I mean, no offense to anyone laid off and this is in no way intended to lighten that, but isn't that ALOT of people? I know Ubisoft are at that number as well with their AC team(s?)l, but they are multiplatform developers on one-year development cycles. Is 220 close to the bigger-studio average? Just from that alone, I could understand layoffs. That seems pretty damn big. What have they been doing to justify that staff size?
What rumored agent game?
If you're talking about Agent, that is not rumoredd. It was announced (and is still listed) on the game publisher's website. It was developed and published by Rockstar.
TheSpaceBetween
Member
You do realize that the vast majority of SSM worked on Ascension?
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Seriously I wonder the same thing sometimes. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. I feel bad for everybody who lost their job but its really weird to judge Shuhei or whoever as doing something unfair when its almost certainly a game nobody has heard of or seen yet thats getting canceled.
gutter_trash
Banned
this sucks, I wanted to work in Santa Monica
Yeah it seems unlikely now, they also help with The Order, Rime & Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.
Hopefully it's not a new IP that got cancelled.
Syphon Filter
Member
kickstarter and indies are here to save us .
If so, then no wonder they're hiring and doing layoffs at the same time.
Dragon1893
Member
Of course he makes mistakes, he was the first to admit it after the Demon's Souls fiasco.
We aren't really in a position to make any kind of judgement though. At the end of the day we don't know shit and are just speculating.
Yoshida does have a real passion for games and goes to great lenghts to make sure the projects he believes in see the light of day even when he knows they wont sell millions.
You just can't expect him to consciously make decisions that jeoperdize the company.
I think he was talking about a syphon filter game for the ps4.
look at how many games ssm involves themselves with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCE_Santa_Monica_Studio
they were rumoured to be working on 3 big games, i believe.
Why would this cause you to be concerned about the industry? Layoffs and studio closures surely aren't new events in the industry.
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