-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Sony officially cuts ties with Superbot; All-Stars DLC now handled by Santa Monica
- Thread starter CrunchinJelly
- Start date
Shadow2222
Member
I'm a huge Sony fanboy, honestly, and my favorite exclusives and preferred versions of multiplatform games are on PS3, but this is Sony's fault, through and through.
The gameplay was excellent, but the UI was so awful, it wasn't even funny (okay, maybe this part wasn't Sony's fault).
The biggest issue was the practically nonexistent marketing, minus a terrible ad with an awful looking Sackboy and Kratos.
I'm hoping we will see more DLC than just Kat and Emmett.
The gameplay was excellent, but the UI was so awful, it wasn't even funny (okay, maybe this part wasn't Sony's fault).
The biggest issue was the practically nonexistent marketing, minus a terrible ad with an awful looking Sackboy and Kratos.
I'm hoping we will see more DLC than just Kat and Emmett.
>"Sony's problem is focusing on too many different IPs"
>"But wait actually bring back an IP you haven't used in years, Sony!"
Metallix87
Member
Why would you hire crap developers and then send their games out to die?
Crapitalism
Banned
So i guess the Smash clone was a resounding success then!
Hours Left
Member
That was fast.
SirIgbyCeaser
Banned
Well for PS4, sony has got to have all of its developers be best. There's going to be a lot of belt tightening during the launch of the PS4. If you're selling a system at a loss, you're going to need top notch software sales to make up that loss.
So sony cutting out studios which they see as a weakness. Due to whatever criteria. (some which surprise me, like liverpool and eat sleep play)
So maybe I can understand what yosp and the SCEA are trying to accomplish. Remember sony has legendarily good severance packages for its employee's. So keep good relations with the talent I think sony might still work with these people again, only under better circumstances.
Next gen is going to be brutally expensive.
So sony cutting out studios which they see as a weakness. Due to whatever criteria. (some which surprise me, like liverpool and eat sleep play)
So maybe I can understand what yosp and the SCEA are trying to accomplish. Remember sony has legendarily good severance packages for its employee's. So keep good relations with the talent I think sony might still work with these people again, only under better circumstances.
Next gen is going to be brutally expensive.
Supermanisdead
Member
It's like vitagaf!
CrazyTank940
Member
Honestly I can only think of two commercials that I saw over here for the game, hell the only one to feature gameplay was the Robot Chicken one, and they didn't show much of it.
Neat, they have Wi-Fi access points under bridges now.
shaowebb
Member
I honestly hope this doesn't kill Superbot. The guys they have their seem pretty solid in what they do and I was really hoping to see Seth Killian get to work on a more traditional fighter there in his future. An original Sony IP fighting game would be pretty hype in my eyes and they got the staff to do it...sad though that with no Sony ties that the studio may be in dire straights.
Maybe Sega would be interested in snatching them up to setup an online multiplayer game of some sort. I'd trust them to handle anything Sega has and surprisingly Sega has a lot more operating income to work with than a lot of other studios out there.
Maybe Sega would be interested in snatching them up to setup an online multiplayer game of some sort. I'd trust them to handle anything Sega has and surprisingly Sega has a lot more operating income to work with than a lot of other studios out there.
Duxxy3
Member
The vita would have died no matter how they advertised it.
leatherhat
Member
Wasn't superbot built by sony specifically for this game?
That's a lot of threads
The Mana Legend
Banned
I wish PSABR actually had a damn budget. Once you had done a few matches, you've literally pretty much seen everything. The levels were boring and the game was so damn unbalanced it wasn't even funny.
And the AI was atrocious.
The controls were smooth as fuck though. There's a decent game buried under there somewhere.
And the AI was atrocious.
The controls were smooth as fuck though. There's a decent game buried under there somewhere.
Metallix87
Member
With that attitude, yeah. Are you an SCEA employee?
To be fair like half those posts where from Carl and Loud Ninja.
Kotaku updated their post with a statement:
UPDATE: In an e-mail, SuperBot's president David Yang responded to Kotaku's request for comment, saying that the company is "excited about beginning the next chapter of [their] future."
The full statement follows:
SuperBot Entertainment can confirm that the relationship with SCEA has ended on good terms. We are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work on with Sony on Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, and are extremely proud of the work we have done. SuperBot Entertainment will continue working on projects that reflect our passion for games and our commitment to creating award winning titles. We are very excited about beginning the next chapter of our future and invite all of our fans and supporters to follow our journey.
UPDATE: In an e-mail, SuperBot's president David Yang responded to Kotaku's request for comment, saying that the company is "excited about beginning the next chapter of [their] future."
The full statement follows:
SuperBot Entertainment can confirm that the relationship with SCEA has ended on good terms. We are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work on with Sony on Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, and are extremely proud of the work we have done. SuperBot Entertainment will continue working on projects that reflect our passion for games and our commitment to creating award winning titles. We are very excited about beginning the next chapter of our future and invite all of our fans and supporters to follow our journey.
Superbot really seemed to be coming into their own with this Kat and Emmett DLC; ASBR might have had a messy history, but it's understandable that a new group would have to find their legs, and learn to walk properly with them.
There was obviously some passion behind the content creation; will future DLC be the same, without the same creative minds behind it? And why do they sound so positive about carrying on with the game, if it performed so poorly as to get it's studio closed? That just seems kinda underhanded.
The gamer in me is happy to hear they still intend to support the game, but I'm sad the people involved with it originally won't get to do it themselves...
I really hope the company can survive. They had a solid start, and deserve to be able to refine their craft and personal identity.
Edit: The post above sounds like good news at least. Good for them!
There was obviously some passion behind the content creation; will future DLC be the same, without the same creative minds behind it? And why do they sound so positive about carrying on with the game, if it performed so poorly as to get it's studio closed? That just seems kinda underhanded.
The gamer in me is happy to hear they still intend to support the game, but I'm sad the people involved with it originally won't get to do it themselves...
I really hope the company can survive. They had a solid start, and deserve to be able to refine their craft and personal identity.
Edit: The post above sounds like good news at least. Good for them!
velociraptor
Junior Member
It's the type of IP that can appeal to the masses though.>"Sony's problem is focusing on too many different IPs"
>"But wait actually bring back an IP you haven't used in years, Sony!"
slaughterking
Member
Maybe some of these posts actually are from the SCEA marketing team.
Huh? They're straight up ports.
Well PSASBR got several commercials and even a Robot-Chicken commercial. So yeah, it did have marketing.
I can't say the same about the others games, specially SLY4. But I learned about SLY 4 thanks to the cartoon they released a few weeks ago.
But yeah, Sony has fault on it, but some of the games were just bad. Even with the marketing. =/
I thought SuperBot was a super team of fighting game devs. ;/
Also, can somebody explain all the "not surprised" comments, please? Is it 'cause the game flopped?
The Sony second-party curse is the new Nintendo second-party curse.
Sony is the company that commissioned, approved, and funded these games and then did next to nothing to ensure their retail success. However, Sony did say that they wanted to focus on less IPs and make their best ones stronger. Looks like we have a future to look forward to where Sony's first party output is God of War, Gran Turismo, whatever Naughty Dog is making, and CG movies from David Cage.
This is a joke, right?
Eat, Sleep, Play: Releases a demo that is BROKEN and STAYS BROKEN until the "demo shuts-down" thereby no one gets a chance to play the actual game with anything but balls-hard AI that would turn anyone and everyone off it (partially Jaffe/ESP's fault, partially Sony's)
Nihilisitc: Had a history of making shitty games. Releases Resistance at launch, bad but shows potential. Gets farmed to Call of Duty, while has the "feel of CoD" doesn't have the soul nor bulletpoints that should be there, plus is Resistance's engine so the tight-gunplay of CoD isn't there (Activisions fault with Sony's fault only being money-hatting a portable CoD title from Activision, otherwise Activision giving it to Nihilistic and Nihilistic having to rushjob it is mostly Activision)
Dunno the next two
Lightbox: Totally their fault. HAD A BETA FOR A YEAR.
Fans: Game sux, here's why:
-Bullet list point of things to fix
Lightbox: LOL THAT'S JUST LIKE YOUR... OPINION, MAN...
*game Atomic-bombas*
Lightbox: Well, shit... maybe we should listen to fans.
*fixes game two-six months after launch but by then:*
Fans: no1currs
I thought Idol Minds was dead for two generations now... huh... didn't know they were still alive.
Superbot: Releases a demo that has an overpowered character and doesn't really show any of the other characters off (why not have Nate Drake, who is more popular than Radec for the "gun" user?) besides Kratos... Kratos everywhere since Kratos was overpowered as fuck with his normals against the demo/beta characters.
Oh, and it's a soul-less Party-game clone that only changed the KO requirements to make it more like a fighting game. Completely their fault, only fault of Sony's was trying to get licensed characters because Sony didn't have a stable of first-party characters that were memorable like Nintendo. Some success on that (Raiden filling in for MGS/Snake), some failure on that (Capcom: You'll use Poontchy or you won't get Devil May Cry included *Superbot not telling Capcom to fuck off with that shit*).
Majority of these are stupid design decisions (one of which is completely on the developers fault with the long lead-time between beta and launch), some of them are rushed products (so some of Sony's doing and some of the publisher farming out instead of canceling/breaking contracts), but most of them are on the developers themselves for not listening to fans and not trying to put in some effort for some phoned-in products.
SteeloDMZ said:
You're kidding right? Anywhere I went that had All-stars Bomba Royal ads plastered on TV's no one was the slightest bit interested in watching it. They simply wanted their game and go home. It doesn't help that the ads never showed actual gameplay
Ein Bear
Member
Poor Superbot.
It really doesn't seem like their fault at all. Sony told them to make a mascot fighting game, gave them some fairly crappy characters to work with and then didn't advertise the thing at all.
Superbot did the best they could with what they were given. It isn't fair for them to be punished for the game bombing, when Sony sent it to die in the first place.
It really doesn't seem like their fault at all. Sony told them to make a mascot fighting game, gave them some fairly crappy characters to work with and then didn't advertise the thing at all.
Superbot did the best they could with what they were given. It isn't fair for them to be punished for the game bombing, when Sony sent it to die in the first place.
leatherhat
Member
I think sony could have tried to give them another crack at this game on ps4. The core fighting is good but the fan service is terrible and its basically a skeleton of a game with very few modes.
Professor Beef
Banned
Unless they started making it immediately after inFamous 1...no.
This is pretty much my opinion on the game after extensive play at a friends house (didn't have enough cash to buy it at launch, which was probably for the better)
The gameplay and controls are rock solid, online mode worked really well, and I love the idea of franchise mix ups for stages, but everything else just felt undercooked, especially the UI. I'm sure a sequel could have been something truly special, but Superbot has been killed before it could happen. :/
Red Chocobo
Banned
I was always under the impression that Superbot were put together just to make that one game. Kind of like a temp-studio.
Does everyone realize how expensive marketing is? Even a modest marketing effort is going to require a significant increase in expected sales. Check out the threads where companies release sale forecasts. We're almost always laughing at those estimates. We can't have it both ways.
KillerTravis
Banned
If the Vita is any indication, GAF excitement doesn't really equal real life excitement.
Pretty much sums it up for me.
Pai Pai Master
Banned
Yeah Idol Minds is developing FFA Vita and Deadlocked HD I think. A pretty dumb tweet, but I do think that Superbot's demise is partially SCEA's fault.
Sammy Samusu
Member
PAS is not a bad game, why are you blaming Superbots?
Sony decides what characters make the list, marketing strategy, etc. Developers don't make business decisions, publishers do.
I don't understand this point of view.
What is their punishment? Are you seriously suggesting Sony should be forced to use a studio again just because their last game bombed? Pity publishing? Is that what you're suggesting?
leatherhat
Member
Wait... what? Suckerpunch made Infamous.
diffusionx
Gold Member
FWIW, I feel like they started making this game all jazzed about the awesome characters and then reality hit them in the face when they realized nobody wanted to give them any characters to use.
At that point the game was doomed. No amount of marketing was going to get people excited to play as the characters they put in.
I was excited about Starhawk until I heard the quite frankly terrible impressions from the beta. I don't see how dumping millions of dollars into commercials helps that situation.
Marketing isn't magic. You still need a compelling product.