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IGN: ~50 Layoffs at Sony Santa Monica, Project Canceled [Up2: Was Stig's New IP]

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N

Nightengale

Member
Labadal said:
I was very surprised to see this happen at first, but then I thought to myself: Have any of their games really sold gangbusters? The anwser is no.
Click to expand...

Approximately 5+ million copies for GoW 1/2/3 each.

Even the 'bomba' Ascension sold 3+ million.

In total, the God of War franchise has sold close to 25 million copies.

No, indeed. /s

eighty(one) said:
Although David Jaffe left SSM a while back, I wonder (how heavily) the impact of the cut, how severe to top level former colleagues? Maybe he saw this coming (writing in the wall)?
Click to expand...

Jaffe left in 2007. Seven years ago. Sony was king back then. SSM was less than half the size it currently is. ( well, was before the 50 dev layoff )

No way he saw this coming.
 
1

1.21Gigawatts

Banned
My unqualified thoughts:

I always thought they actually had three teams working on new games since Ascension shipped.
I guess Sony thought that was to much and canned the weakest looking project of the three.
I guess they cancelled the project they started right after GoW: Ascension shipped. I have no idea what that could have been, but I don't think Sony would let the Ps4 be without GodOfWar. Maybe it was something new and it just didn't came together well and it wasn't far in developement, so they canned it.

Santa Monica is a huge studio. In addition to the three teams(or now two) they have a lot of people helping out other studios. They did the tech for games like Journey and Flower, they're also helping ReadyAtDawn with TheOrder1886 and much more.

If I had to guess I'd say they got to big. Sonys studios always talk about how great it is to keep a small office environment going, even if you have 100 or more people working there.
Santa Monica was probably way beyond 200, maybe even 300 people. Maybe they noticed that this hurts their office culture and Sony thought that they may rather invest their money in other, smaller studios who still could take some growth, like BEND or SuckerPunch. BEND is under 100 I guess and SuckerPunch should be around 100 people.
Or maybe Sony plans on acquiring some studio soon. QuanticDream and ReadyAtDawn would be good candidates. People see them as Sony studios anyways since they only develop for Sonys plattforms.
 
F

F4r0_Atak

Member
andycapps said:
Not Ascension. This is seemingly a reaction based on that combined with a project that got canned, for reasons that we're not privy to.
Click to expand...

http://www.********.com/gamedb/?name=god+of+war

The main games (1,2 & 3) are all over 4 million copies (retail).

Labadal said:
I was very surprised to see this happen at first, but then I thought to myself: Have any of their games really sold gangbusters? The anwser is YES.
Click to expand...

The only games they have internally been working are the God of War series and the Kinectica, no matter how much input they have on other projects from other teams.


Here's a few list of a few games they have either internally developed or co-produced with other teams/studios:

Kinetica (Internally developed)
God of War I (Internally developed)
God of War II (Internally developed)
God of War III (Internally developed)
God of War: Ascension (Internally developed)
Unannounced Game[5] (most likely Internally developed)

God of War: Chains of Olympus (Ready at Dawn)
God of War: Ghost of Sparta (Ready at Dawn)
God of War: Origins Collection (Ready at Dawn)
The Order: 1886 (Ready at Dawn)

Blast Factor (Bluepoint Games)
God of War Collection (Bluepoint Games)
God of War Saga (Internally developed/ + collab of Ready at Dawn and Bluepoint Games)

flOw (incubated - Thatgamecompany)
Flower (Incubated - Thatgamecompany)
Journey (Incubated - Thatgamecompany)
The Unfinished Swan (Incubated - Giant Sparrow)
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (Incubated - SuperBot Entertainment

Calling All Cars! (Incognito Entertainment)
Warhawk (Incognito Entertainment)
Starhawk (LightBox Interactive)

PixelJunk Racers (Q-Games)
PixelJunk Monsters (Q-Games)
PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games)
PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe (Q-Games)
PixelJunk Shooter (Q-Games)
PixelJunk Shooter 2 (Q-Games)
PixelJunk SideScroller (Q-Games)
PixelJunk 4am (Q-Games)

Everyday Shooter (Queasy Games)
Sound Shapes (Queasy Games)

Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition (Eat Sleep Play)
Twisted Metal (Eat Sleep Play)

The Con (Think & Feel Inc.)
Neopets: The Darkest Faerie (Idol Minds)
God of War: Betrayal (Javaground)
flOw (PSP) (SuperVillain Studios)
Linger in Shadows (Plastic)
Everyday Shooter (PSP) (Backbone Entertainment)
Fat Princess (Titan Studios and Atomic Operations)
.detuned (.theprodukkt)
Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake (Super Villain Studios)
Carnival Island (Magic Pixel Games)
Escape Plan (Fun Bits Interactive)
Datura (Plastic)
Sorcery (The Workshop)
Hohokum (Honeyslug)
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (The Chinese Room)
 
N

Nightengale

Member
andycapps said:
Not Ascension. This is seemingly a reaction based on that combined with a project that got canned, for reasons that we're not privy to.
Click to expand...

They revealed that 62k players got Platinum for Ascension.

Platinum rarity for Ascension is 2.2%.

That means that there's at least a minimum of 2.9 million Ascension games out there connected to PSN.

There's always an small minority of games that aren't.

So close to 3 million copies of Ascension out in the market.
 
L

Labadal

Member
Kazuma Kiryu said:
And the bullshit keeps on coming.
Click to expand...
How? The GoW games have sold a lot, but not always above expectations. You can't live off the sales of GoW 1/2 for eternity. The budget for GoW 3 was huge as far as I remember. Ascenion did well but below expectations. Journey was praised but I haven't heard much sales talk. The GoW PSP games were never going to compare to the console games' sales. Financially, this move makes sense. That it sucks for the workers is another matter of discussion.
 
S

Sid

Member
Nightengale said:
They revealed that 62k players got Platinum for Ascension.

Platinum rarity for Ascension is 2.2%.

That means that there's at least a minimum of 2.9 million Ascension games out there connected to PSN.

There's always an small minority of games that aren't.

So close to 3 million copies of Ascension out in the market.
Click to expand...
Doubt that,I think there are more trade-ins in there than you think.
 
C

Caronte

Member
Nightengale said:
They revealed that 62k players got Platinum for Ascension.

Platinum rarity for Ascension is 2.2%.

That means that there's at least a minimum of 2.9 million Ascension games out there connected to PSN.

There's always an small minority of games that aren't.

So close to 3 million copies of Ascension out in the market.
Click to expand...

Multiple accounts and rentals.
 
J

johnny956

Member
1.21Gigawatts said:
My unqualified thoughts:

I always thought they actually had three teams working on new games since Ascension shipped.
I guess Sony thought that was to much and canned the weakest looking project of the three.
I guess they cancelled the project they started right after GoW: Ascension shipped. I have no idea what that could have been, but I don't think Sony would let the Ps4 be without GodOfWar. Maybe it was something new and it just didn't came together well and it wasn't far in developement, so they canned it.

Santa Monica is a huge studio. In addition to the three teams(or now two) they have a lot of people helping out other studios. They did the tech for games like Journey and Flower, they're also helping ReadyAtDawn with TheOrder1886 and much more.

If I had to guess I'd say they got to big. Sonys studios always talk about how great it is to keep a small office environment going, even if you have 100 or more people working there.
Santa Monica was probably way beyond 200, maybe even 300 people. Maybe they noticed that this hurts their office culture and Sony thought that they may rather invest their money in other, smaller studios who still could take some growth, like BEND or SuckerPunch. BEND is under 100 I guess and SuckerPunch should be around 100 people.
Or maybe Sony plans on acquiring some studio soon. QuanticDream and ReadyAtDawn would be good candidates. People see them as Sony studios anyways since they only develop for Sonys plattforms.
Click to expand...

I think it comes down to sales and head count. Sucker Punch is reported to have around 80 and they are releasing Infamous next month. Ready at Dawn supposedly is around or under the 100 mark. I'm thinking Sony is wanting to keep its head count under control. I think the one exception is Naughty Dog as they have proved with every PS3 game they made that they blew away expectations.
 
T

Triggerhappytel

Member
Labadal said:
I was very surprised to see this happen at first, but then I thought to myself: Have any of their games really sold gangbusters? The anwser is no.
Click to expand...

Define 'gangbusters' then. It's one of the most important PlayStation franchises, with 21 million sales as of June 2012:

http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/05/god-of-war-series-sells-20-million-units-since-inception/

GoWI - 4.6 million
GoWII - 4.2 million
GoWIII - 5.2 million
GoW Collection - 2.4 million
CoO - 3.3 million
GoS - 1.2 million
GoW Origins - 700,000

And based on comments from SSM that around 62,000 players have got the Platinum in Ascension, we can derive that it has been played by around 2.8 million people. How many sales one would assume account for that, I don't know. Between 2 and 2.5 million perhaps?
 
S

Sid

Member
Nightengale said:
Okay, so I remove 500k from the total as a guesstimate of loss sale from trade-in/multiples/rentals.

2.5 million, then.
Click to expand...
Maybe,I think it'll be at 2.1-2.2 million by now & may end up at 2.7-2.8 million.

Labadal said:
Ascension dropped in price very quickly over here. This was not the case for GoW 3. Not every sold game is bought at full price.
Click to expand...
This too,it was sold at half the price a month after release IIRC.
 
L

Labadal

Member
Ascension dropped in price very quickly over here. This was not the case for GoW 3. Not every sold game is bought at full price.
 
J

johnny956

Member
Nightengale said:
They revealed that 62k players got Platinum for Ascension.

Platinum rarity for Ascension is 2.2%.

That means that there's at least a minimum of 2.9 million Ascension games out there connected to PSN.

There's always an small minority of games that aren't.

So close to 3 million copies of Ascension out in the market.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately with marketing and the sale numbers I doubt Sony made money on Ascension. Not to mention a expensive Super Bowl ad to boot.
 
K

Kazuma Kiryu

Member
Labadal said:
How? The GoW games have sold a lot, but not always above expectations. You can't live off the sales of GoW 1/2 for eternity. The budget for GoW 3 was huge as far as I remember. Ascenion did well but below expectations. Journey was praised but I haven't heard much sales talk. The GoW PSP games were never going to compare to the console games' sales. Financially, this move makes sense. That it sucks for the workers is another matter of discussion.
Click to expand...

Seriously, read other posts and look up sales of games SSM developed. And don't confuse internally developed titles with co-developed ones.
 
N

Nightengale

Member
Burning Vigor Attack said:
That's a pretty random estimate.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I can't think of any source or study that can give me an educated guess of the size of the rental market for the big AAA-titles, % of rentals vs sales, much less the multi-account scenario for games like GoW. Even more so since it is the first title to have MP.

So I threw out a 15% value benchmark. 10% might be too low, and 30% might be too high, so 15% then.
 
A

andycapps

Member
Nightengale said:
Okay, so I remove 500k from the total as a guesstimate of loss sale from trade-in/multiples/rentals.

2.5 million, then.

Mind, that is still a poor performance and a bad number to put out in PR, regardless whether or not Ascension was profitable or not.
Click to expand...

2.5 million copies for what was rumored to be a game costing in the mid double digit millions. And I think 2.5 million is more than what it actually sold. How many of the total number were when it was half price? That's why you're seeing cuts at SSM.

500k seems like a rosy idea considering how much money Gamestop makes on tradeins. I'd be interested to see the total amount of people that played a game 6 months after release. Since we're throwing out random numbers, for console titles I wouldn't be surprised if 1/3 of the total players played a secondhand copy.
 
F

F4r0_Atak

Member
Labadal said:
How? The GoW games have sold a lot, but not always above expectations. You can't live off the sales of GoW 1/2 for eternity. The budget for GoW 3 was huge as far as I remember. Ascenion did well but below expectations. Journey was praised but I haven't heard much sales talk. The GoW PSP games were never going to compare to the console games' sales. Financially, this move makes sense. That it sucks for the workers is another matter of discussion.
Click to expand...

Here are the only internally developed games: (numbers took from Vg-Chartz)

Sales-wise, the total units moved by their games could roughly reach 10 millions if not a bit over.

Kinectica (Internally developed)
God of War I (Internally developed) )
God of War II (Internally developed)
God of War III (Internally developed)
God of War: Ascension (Internally developed)
Unannounced Game[5] (most likely Internally developed) (canceled)

omonimo said:
Thank you again Ascension to coming out. I don't think it's a coincidence. Now I'm worried about Gt6 & polyphony.
Click to expand...

Based on the numbers took from Vg-Chartz (about 15 millions total... including over a million sales of GT6)

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (Internally developed)
Gran Turismo 5 (Internally developed)
Gran Turismo 6 (Internally developed)
 
N

Nightengale

Member
F4r0_Atak said:
Sorry, I didn't know. Although, I don't know the specific reasons, I understand. What is the reason for that though? Are the sale numbers wrong?
Click to expand...

Guesses, mostly.

They do occasionally grab numbers from announced sales figures, update and add their guesstimates to them, but generally, not reliable.

Any number you see at Chartz, it's best to double-source them and see whether or not such figures were actually announced.
 
Corpsepyre

Corpsepyre

Banned
shinobi602 ‏@shinobi602 11m
@thuway Haven't gotten a response from the dev I talked to. I was told just a few days ago everything couldn't be any better, very strange.
 
F

F4r0_Atak

Member
Corpsepyre said:
shinobi602 ‏@shinobi602 11m
@thuway Haven't gotten a response from the dev I talked to. I was told just a few days ago everything couldn't be any better, very strange.
Click to expand...

So it does seem like not only people there knew about it, they planned it and they fired people for the better. Is SCE planning a substancial acquisition? or Santa Monica Studio planning on hiring big numbers of recruits?

Loch Doun said:
That makes absolutely no sense.

Companies don't lay off 50 people at once just to replace them immediately afterwards.

This was a cost cutting sacrifice, plain and simple.
Click to expand...

If it is in the context of cutting the Senior staff, it would. People who have worked for over 10 years on the same franchise tend to be tainted by the gameplay features and to do new things that are really similar to their previous projects. See the situation of Bungie new Destiny IP. It is very reminiscent of Halo, in terms of design (creatures, characters, architectures, environments) and scale.

I would not be able to see them coming up with a new IP more akin to the Donkey Kong games or the Ratchet and Clank or even Conker Bad Fur Day.

See the Naughty Dog last offering The Last of Us, which many people seem to point various similarities with "their" Uncharted franchise.
 
M

msdstc

Incredibly Naive
Nightengale said:
They revealed that 62k players got Platinum for Ascension.

Platinum rarity for Ascension is 2.2%.

That means that there's at least a minimum of 2.9 million Ascension games out there connected to PSN.

There's always an small minority of games that aren't.

So close to 3 million copies of Ascension out in the market.
Click to expand...

What about used copies and borrowed ones though
 
A

AAK

Member
StuBurns said:
Team ICO is over, Ueda already said he finished design work long ago. The design was probably complete when it was delayed originally, and since it's just been moved to PS4 and awaiting a release window that's most effective.
Click to expand...

Game design is continuously changing across a game development's life cycle. Original designs for games are VERY rarely retained in the final product.
 
M

Matt2thefuture

Member
I feel bad for anyone that lost their job but GOW Ascension was bad. Buggiest GOW game I had played, fell through the environment multiple times, fought the camera like crazy, terrible story, and it just wasn't as epic as the others. Felt like a step back and multiplayer (like Batman) felt really unneeded.
 
K

Kazuma Kiryu

Member
F4r0_Atak said:
*bad numbers*
Click to expand...

god-of-war-sell-in-numbers.jpg


13.9M with only the first 3 GOW games. With Kinetica (i'm going to guess 0,5M and ascension, lowballing it to probably 1.5M, just a guess), that's ~16M units sold.
People are just making stuff up.
 
F

F4r0_Atak

Member
StuBurns said:
Team ICO is over, Ueda already said he finished design work long ago. The design was probably complete when it was delayed originally, and since it's just been moved to PS4 and awaiting a release window that's most effective.
Click to expand...

You most know something. No matter how good is Fumito Ueda, his design work will never be over, especially if they switched to another platform. He does not the abilities to foresee possible problems that could come up.

Design always evolve through the development process. You adjust the pacing, the level art, the navigation, the lighting, the AI, etc. Shits can easily go down in a build-review and in the playtesting.

Kazuma Kiryu said:
god-of-war-sell-in-numbers.jpg


13.9M with only the first 3 GOW games. With Kinetica (i'm going to guess 0,5M and ascension, lowballing it to probably 1.5M, just a guess), that's ~16M units sold.
People are just making stuff up.
Click to expand...


The numbers might have been bad ones, but they were close enough to the ones you found though.
 
B

Boombloxer

Member
Kazuma Kiryu said:
god-of-war-sell-in-numbers.jpg


13.9M with only the first 3 GOW games. With Kinetica (i'm going to guess 0,5M and ascension, lowballing it to probably 1.5M, just a guess), that's ~16M units sold.
People are just making stuff up.
Click to expand...

That tends to happen quite a bit with actual sales. I really wish people would do a basic search before posting garbage points.
 
3

3rdamention

Member
First of all, I care about people, and I hope all of those laid off rebound quickly!




However, we do not know the experience, positions, duties, etc. of hardly ANY of these people that were laid off. Some could have had absolutely nothing to do with Game Development (secretaries, PR, custodial, etc.). Layoffs are bad news, but this could be just as much with wanting to run a more efficient development team and not just doom and gloom, omg!


I posted this before, and I will say it again. With all the collaborating that SSM has done, all the incubating they help with other titles, this could have been many of these workers. People they may no longer need with the ease of PS4 development going forward.


The game cancelled could have been anything, PSN title, PS3 title PSPlus Title, Vita Title, a title they were collaborating with other developers. They work on WAAAAY more smaller games than just AAA megatons. They could have been working on a big AAA title, but it just wasn't working out the way they wanted. So they cancelled it an laid off some of those working on it, and reassigned the rest.



MY WHOLE POINT IS, WE JUST DONT KNOW, and some of the speculation and concern trolling in this thread is both hilarious and sad (honest truth, I never knew what concern trolling was until some Gaffers pointed it out very early in this thread, so at least I have learned something from this thread).
 
Corpsepyre

Corpsepyre

Banned
Aaron Kaufman ‏@Just_Tank 2m
Sunken feeling today, but time to #RiseUp

He's safe, it seems, But it seriously must be hurting knowing so many people you've known for years are now gone in a heartbeat.
 
L

lmbotiva

Junior Member
It's hard to keep up with this thread at work, specially doing it on a mobile, so, what do we know about stig asmussen? Is he still with SSM?
 
S

StuBurns

Banned
AAK said:
Game design is continuously changing across a game development's life cycle. Original designs for games are VERY rarely retained in the final product.
Click to expand...
I think it's more akin to SotC HD being the same design as SotC, they just didn't give us the original version this time.

We'll see, either another director has taken over, which I don't think is likely, or the game was complete and just being re-engineered for PS4, which makes a lot of sense given the only two snippets of gameplay we saw of TLG ran at like ten frames per second, and that team have a history of hugely overestimating their engineering competency.
 
M

MillerEP

Neo Member
Man the layoffs this year alone have been pretty big, and it is only Feb still. I don't know how anyone outside looking into the industry could ever see themselves in a career in video games. The job security is terrible.
 
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