UPDATE: It has come to our attention that the entire report was likely fabricated and is entirely inaccurate. It should also be noted that user Afro Gunsou is not animation voice actor Jerry Jewell, despite him claiming otherwise. See here.
Update:
Since people are discussing this in the main PSASBR thread, it probably deserves its own post here. The following is from Afro Gunsou, who was given permission from his source to share this story.
Update:
I got a PM from someone who works for Superbot who will remain unnamed. He says the source's claims are false.
Our favorite Sony Ex-PR guy said "no truth to any of that, to my knowledge." on Twitter.
Since people are discussing this in the main PSASBR thread, it probably deserves its own post here. The following is from Afro Gunsou, who was given permission from his source to share this story.
I do frequent voice work with many of the teams at Sony and two of my good friends were part of the layoff, hence how I know about any of this.
It's a sad situation that was never really explained publicly but it's important to consider when you look at the current state of PSASBR pre-launch hype.
Long story short, Superbot and SCEA signed agreements with each of the third parties providing characters for All Stars (specifically Raiden and Dante) that their characters would be revealed "to best accommodate the needs" of the character's developers.
Dante and Raiden were each supposed to get character reveals trailers akin to the Sonic in Smash Bros trailer; the trailer would act as both hype for a new All Star and hype for their upcoming game (Revegance). These were gentleman's agreements. Once the leak happened, Superbot and SCEA went into panic mode and realized that the majority of their work on the title was just given an early blow-out, potentially killing any sort of carefully timed pre-launch hype.
In order to continue hype, SCEA's marketing team contacted Paul Gale, who first revealed the game on his blog as "Title Fight". Realizing that he could be used as a scapegoat for false advertising, they bribed him (though the extent of which is something I do not know the specifics of) and told him to quote "go nuts".
Realizing a potential destruction of his reputation if done incorrectly, Gale carefully timed out "leaks" and "teases" and purposely laced them with vague and false information in order to pump the fan base up for release.
Flashforward to about three weeks ago, SCEJ catches wind of Platinum's video interview where they openly bash the title, the way it's being handled (since they never got a full reveal akin to what Superbot and SCEA promised for Raiden) and do nothing to quiet or combat Kamiya's Twitter statement that the game is "a Smash Bros. rip-off".
SCEJ then sent an executive decision SCEA's way to make "necessary re-arrangements" of the marketing and PR team in North America and directly urged Superbot to begin development on downloadable content that lines up with the fake leaks in order to keep good will with their early consumers who are obviously informed of leaks and rumors long before release.
While the Sony PR firings had a lot to do with the way the holiday line-up was presented at TGS, the PSASBR issues acted as a major catalyst to the decision.
It's worth nothing that all but three of the SCEA PR and marketing staff originally assigned to PS All Stars is still working on the project. The others were either fired during the post-TGS lay-offs or were assigned to new projects.