Changes at MS UK & Denmark, Fable Legends Development Ceased

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I look forward to Tuesday where Sony announce their new completely original games Bafle followed by Wack & Blite.

'Bafle' had me confused for a moment, but I think 'Wack & Blite: Head Lion' would make an awesome two player platform game about a pair or dyslexic newspaper editors.

 

[eastmen]

If Sony hires the people, and brings back Molyneux then we could have another Syndicate or theme hospital of course they would need to change the names

I wonder if sony will hire back the EQ Next devs that will surely loose their job now that its canceled.

I don't think sony really knows how to manage studios , they closed a few during the ps3 days and now the spun off SOE stuff is slowly contracting and closing. They can take the few good studios they have and go third party at some point tho

 

[shredenvain]

If Sony hires the people, and brings back Molyneux then we could have another Syndicate or theme hospital of course they would need to change the names

Sony might hire a few of the lionhead staff but they most likely aren't going to hire the entire studio and give them a new name.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I don't think sony really knows how to manage studios , they closed a few during the ps3 days and now the spun off SOE stuff is slowly contracting and closing. They can take the few good studios they have and go third party at some point tho

Sony and Microsoft are running businesses, sometimes you just have to fire people if they value they offer can't be used. Selling off a studio, as Sony did a little over a year ago with SOE, is exactly the way to manage something that you can't fix. SOE arguably haven't turned out a hit game (using the commercially accepted MMO metrics of number of concurrent users and profit) since the original EverQuest. Selling a studio and getting paid for it is far more desirable than just closing it down where everything is a loss.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I wonder if sony will hire back the EQ Next devs that will surely loose their job now that its canceled.

I don't think sony really knows how to manage studios , they closed a few during the ps3 days and now the spun off SOE stuff is slowly contracting and closing. They can take the few good studios they have and go third party at some point tho

Nice try, but the parallel really doesn't work.

 

[eastmen]

Nice try, but the parallel really doesn't work.

yea I mean sony only closed down studios during the ps3 and ps4 era but it doesn't count because its sony right ? There is no difference really except Sony is on the verge of financial collapse and MS isn't

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ignoring the "financial collapse" hyperbole (there's a thread on Sony's financials), let's start with the fact that EQ Next wasn't funded by Sony. Sony sold SOE in 2015 to Columbus Nova.So Columbus Nova cancelled EQNext independently of what Sony are doing.

Furthermore, Sony has studios that make games people want to buy, managing how many studios they have for this purpose. MS has a handful of studios making games with a history of buying great devs and them ending up producing unwanted titles before getting closed and yet not 'replenishing' with new studios making relevant content.

As above, we have a few titles from MS - Halo, Gears, Forza, Crackdown, whatever Rare are now being allowed to make. Your example of Scalebound is not in house. And as per my above link, many of MS's 'studios' are experimental and not really outputting anything relevant.

Sony has something like 12 studios producing first party content. Things like MLB, Drawn to Death, Infamous, UC, GT, Dreams, Gravity Rush, Singstar, Driveclub, Killzone, Horizon Zero Dawn, Rigs, and such. Sony are still funding game development and studios in house even when they close the like of Liverpool. Sony operates as a conventional large publisher with in house studios, constantly evaluating projects and closing some early when it seems warranted, turning over studios as it deems nevessary. MS operates likes a company with money that buys successful studios, leaves them to fizzle out, then closes them.

If MS were good at handling studios, with all their money they should have the best talent and the best products and the best exclusive content driving people to XB/Windows. Instead they prefer 2nd party because it saves them from having to manage the studios and gives them flexibility. That's why they're closing Lionhead despite having plenty enough money to invest in them to create more content.

 

[eastmen]

You prove my point. Sony sold SOE because it couldn't make good games. The proof is in why the new company shut down eq next citing it wasn't fun. Sony sold the studios because they were failing

Sony has something like 12 studios producing first party content. Things like MLB, Drawn to Death, Infamous, UC, GT, Dreams, Gravity Rush, Singstar, Driveclub, Killzone, Horizon Zero Dawn, Rigs, and such. Sony are still funding game development and studios in house even when they close the like of Liverpool. Sony operates as a conventional large publisher with in house studios, constantly evaluating projects and closing some early when it seems warranted, turning over studios as it deems nevessary. MS operates likes a company with money that buys successful studios, leaves them to fizzle out, then closes them.

Driveclub ? Its a game people want ? People want a turd that was rushed out and took over a year after its release to deliever what they promised.

Killzone is another title that hasn't appeared in years and never sold very well.

Sony created SOE and watched it fizzle out and then sold it while they still could. But they shut down other stuios

Liver pool was closed in 2012 , Zipper Interactive was closed down ... Heck they cut half the staff of Evolution after that great game drive club came out.

The only thing is sony does these things and don't get the doom and gloom that follows anything MS does.

 

[Egmon83]

MS would have David Cage murdered in his sleep after Heavy Rain, not have him produce 2 more games afterwards That is the difference.

With Rare, MS held a giant meeting with all the staff, around Christmas probably: "who thinks Kinect is a great idea, raise hands... okay, those who raised hands can go back to work.. as for the rest, you are fired."
Sony putting future wipe out titles on hold though... yes Sony is evil as well

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Driveclub ? Killzone

The point it the number of titles is consdierable. Not 5.

Sony created SOE and watched it fizzle out and then sold it while they still could. But they shut down other stuios

SOE was started in 1995. It was closed when the market changed and the company couldn't change with it.

Heck they cut half the staff of Evolution after that great game drive club came out.

That's usual. Staff turnover between projects isn't the same as closing a studio.

The only thing is sony does these things and don't get the doom and gloom that follows anything MS does.

No, they invest in a wide range of studios with a wide portfolio and manage them typically with a range of project cancellations, upsizing and downsizing, and closures. MS tends to buy studios, run them dry, then close them, leaving them with barely any first party output. Despite having way more money and resources to powre software development than anyone else. If near-bankrupt Sony can operate 12 studios all producing content, why can MS only handle a few? Why is their first party exclusive portfolio so sparse?

 

[xexuxjy]

Can only agree with the various comments about the lack of fun in Fable Legends, tried it a number of times and felt bad that I must be missing something as I never really felt the gameplay side of it. It looked very pretty indeed, but the loading times, god the loading times, and the time delays in waiting on the villain setup before you could progress. Then moving very quickly from trialling the gold / IAP system to it being a real thing. Coming back after 3 weeks off it I very nearly ended up spending money just trying to play around with new characters and ideas. The game and town was so incomplete at that point that asking for real money down was obnoxious. Shame as Brightlodge was nicely done and the characters were great. I put a post on the fable beta board asking MS/LH to consider opensourcing some of the game, or at least providing access to the models

 

[eastmen]

The point it the number of titles is consdierable. Not 5.
SOE was started in 1995. It was closed when the market changed and the company couldn't change with it.

Its a nice excuse , So why can't the excuse for Lionhead be that it lost its founder and couldn't move forward without him. It existed for over a decade

That's usual. Staff turnover between projects isn't the same as closing a studio.

The game was horrible and Sony cut half the people , we don't even know if the studio still exists

No, they invest in a wide range of studios with a wide portfolio and manage them typically with a range of project cancellations, upsizing and downsizing, and closures. MS tends to buy studios, run them dry, then close them, leaving them with barely any first party output. Despite having way more money and resources to powre software development than anyone else. If near-bankrupt Sony can operate 12 studios all producing content, why can MS only handle a few? Why is their first party exclusive portfolio so sparse?

Look at what you wrote

MLB, Drawn to Death, Infamous, UC, GT, Dreams, Gravity Rush, Singstar, Driveclub, Killzone, Horizon Zero Dawn, Rigs.

MLB , Infamous , uncharted , GT , Singstar , Killzone are all sequals. Uncharted hasn't even hit 10 years and we are getting the 4th run. Why is this not sony running a studio dry. MS released the first halo in 2001 and we've only had 7. Also why include Singstar and not include Kinect Sports ? What about Minecraft for ms ?


As for Microsoft and its output , they release pc titles , phone titles and console titles . They have 9 First party developers still active. MS also supplements their First party with third party games. Their line up of exclusives has at the very least been on par with the exclusives for the ps4 if not better so far this generation

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You prove my point. Sony sold SOE because it couldn't make good games. The proof is in why the new company shut down eq next citing it wasn't fun. Sony sold the studios because they were failing

You don't know why Sony sold SOE, all you know is what Sony and the new owners said - which was very little. Personally I think Sony, who have a good nose for decent games, decided EQN wasn't going to do PS4 any favours and because SOE are really a PC devhouse whose games have found limited success on consoles, Sony decided to lose the PC studio while they were still worth something. That's called business.That's called smart business. You don't bin what you can sell.

Driveclub ? Its a game people want ? People want a turd that was rushed out and took over a year after its release to deliever what they promised.

I'm not a fan but visit the thread. A lot of people are digging this game. The game thread is on 50 pages and rarely drops off on the Console Gaming front page. Surely the sign of "a turd" that nobody wants to play! . DC had launch issues just like The Master Chief Collection. Both games, studios and publishers took well deserved shit for it.

Games being delayed can be frustrating, a frustration that dissipates when a game is released. Ask PC owners if they hate GTA V because it was released years after it first did on consoles and got delayed a bunch of times.

Killzone is another title that hasn't appeared in years and never sold very well.

Huh? It was a launch title for PS4. The same studio are releasing Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4 this year. How is this even relevant?

Sony created SOE and watched it fizzle out and then sold it while they still could. But they shut down other stuios

How do you equate Sony investing in SOE for almost 20 years, launching countless online MMO games, to "watching it fizzle"?. You can't will success. No amount of money can make it happen if the market isn't receptive. Some great games have been commercial failures. SOE was a prolific and diverse MMO developer but for every WoW or LoL, there are a bunch of MMOs that don't get the critiical mass to last longer than a year or two. It's an incredibly tough market to crack as evidenced by huge licenses not making it.

Liver pool was closed in 2012 , Zipper Interactive was closed down ... Heck they cut half the staff of Evolution after that great game drive club came out.

That's entirely normal. If you have 100+ programmers and no game in development, those programmers are sitting idle once patches are done. Studios inflate and deflate in size and engineer/artist compsition depending on the game(s) they are working on. It's quite common for peopole to leave a studio at the end of a project.

I don't quite get what you are railing against here. There is no doom and gloom and nobody is criticising Microsoft. A studio closing is unfortunate but it's a regular enough occurence that it shouldn't surprise eanybody. The games industry is not Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, it's a business that operates within the economics of the real world.

 

[Egmon83]

Naughty Dog is a good example Eastman, even though you won't like it:
Crash was successful but they were allowed to start a new franchise
Jak was successful but they were allowed to start a new franchise
uncharted was successful but they were allowed to start a new franchise

you know what happened with bungie, which was arguably MS's very best studio, when they were sick of making Halo and wanted to start a new franchise?

 

[eastmen]

You don't know why Sony sold SOE, all you know is what Sony and the new owners said - which was very little. Personally I think Sony, who have a good nose for decent games, decided EQN wasn't going to do PS4 any favours and because SOE are really a PC devhouse whose games have found limited success on consoles, Sony decided to lose the PC studio while they were still worth something. That's called business.That's called smart business. You don't bin what you can sell.

If SOE was successful sony wouldn't have sold it , they would have kept it and made money on it.

I'm not a fan but visit the thread. A lot of people are digging this game. The game thread is on 50 pages and rarely drops off on the Console Gaming front page. Surely the sign of "a turd" that nobody wants to play! . DC had launch issues just like The Master Chief Collection. Both games, studios and publishers took well deserved shit for it.

People also play destiny , there is no accounting for tastes. Drive club launched to horrible issues that took months to fix. It took a year for the free edition to come out , which is why i'm not surprised people play it.

Games being delayed can be frustrating, a frustration that dissipates when a game is released. Ask PC owners if they hate GTA V because it was released years after it first did on consoles and got delayed a bunch of times. I

Lots of people passed on the GTA V at the launch of the pc edition because it was delayed and they wanted the same value for it.

Huh? It was a launch title for PS4. The same studio are releasing Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4 this year. How is this even relevant?

Your right I looked it up , judging by the reviews it was extremely un remarkable and thus I don't feel bad for not remembering it. So that's 4 Killzones at this point huh

How do you equate Sony investing in SOE for almost 20 years, launching countless online MMO games, to "watching it fizzle"?. You can't will success. No amount of money can make it happen if the market isn't receptive. Some great games have been commercial failures. SOE was a prolific and diverse MMO developer but for every WoW or LoL, there are a bunch of MMOs that don't get the critiical mass to last longer than a year or two. It's an incredibly tough market to crack as evidenced by huge licenses not making it.

SOE was a company that never hit the peak of Everquest ever again. It Fizzled out . EQ gave way to galaxies which doesn't exist anymore , which had planetside that never took off. EQ2 never hit the hights of EQ , then they had matrix online , then vanguard. Then Sony took them and had them make psp games and untold legends on the ps3 before having the fun task of doing classic midway games for ps3. After that the company did nothing from 2008
to 2011 when they put out a facebook game. The studio certainly fizzled.

That's entirely normal. If you have 100+ programmers and no game in development, those programmers are sitting idle once patches are done. Studios inflate and deflate in size and engineer/artist compsition depending on the game(s) they are working on. It's quite common for peopole to leave a studio at the end of a project.

So then the driveclub studio isn't working on anything aside from driveclub content ?

I don't quite get what you are railing against here. There is no doom and gloom and nobody is criticising Microsoft. A studio closing is unfortunate but it's a regular enough occurence that it shouldn't surprise eanybody. The games industry is not Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, it's a business that operates within the economics of the real world.

I think you should reread some of the posts . Even your posts are very slanted.

Naughty Dog is a good example Eastman, even though you won't like it:
Crash was successful but they were allowed to start a new franchise
Jak was successful but they were allowed to start a new franchise
uncharted was successful but they were allowed to start a new franchise

you know what happened with bungie, which was arguably MS's very best studio, when they were sick of making Halo and wanted to start a new franchise?

Crash was successful for Vivendi universal the company that owns crash. Which is why vivendi went and had other companies make the games after their deal with SCE ended.

Jak is a series Sony owns but they even farmed it out to other developers in between naughty dog taking a wack at it.

Uncharted is a cash cow for Sony , I didn't know this but they made 6 of them not 4 like I thought. So 6 of them in 10 years. But this isn't running a franchise dry cause its sony. And that there is what bothers me about the posts in here.

 

[Egmon83]

If you're going to be making stuff up, why stop at 6 titles?

Naughty dog, the developer, did not make those 6 titles, they made 3 titles, while having the creative freedom to start a new IP.
TLoU, over 200 GotY awards, would have never been made if Sony went the Microsoft route and push Naughty dog to work on Uncharted exclusively.

Looking at past results from MS, if MS would have been in charge of Naughty Dog, not even Uncharted would have ever been made. Naughty Dog would have been shut down in 2005 following "JAK 4: ODST" not being able to break 2 million.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As for Microsoft and its output , they release pc titles , phone titles and console titles .

We're talking about console output mainly. Although it's not like their PC and phone titles are an extensive library.

SOE was a company that never hit the peak of Everquest ever again. It Fizzled out .

Yes, it fizzled out. And in the mean time Sony bought up Guerilla and Media Molecule etc.

Uncharted is a cash cow for Sony , I didn't know this but they made 6 of them not 4 like I thought. So 6 of them in 10 years. But this isn't running a franchise dry cause its sony. And that there is what bothers me about the posts in here.

On different platforms. So 3 on PS3, which was warranted because they sold. The fourth is on the new platform, wanted by the fans, and is the last in the series, ND moving on to something new. The other two were handheld titles. That's very different to MS having 7 (or whatever it is, lots more on Wiki) Halo console games, Bungie getting sick and eventually ditching MS.

Similarly, KZ was okay for four titles and then Sony let GG move on.

That's not to say Sony aren't beyond 'milking' a franchise, but they do allow studios to follow the market, or cut them off and replace them. To date, MS hasn't shown the same support. Rare were given some flexibility until Kinect launched. The other studios are single franchise factories, and when the franchises are no good (Fable), they get axed rather than allowed to redirect themselves.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

If SOE was successful sony wouldn't have sold it , they would have kept it and made money on it.

I don't think that's a given at all. Things are most valuable when they are doing well. SOE was an oddity within Sony, it had nothing in common with the majority of divisions of Sony Corporation and operated outside of Sony Computer Entertaining. It didn't fit anywhere in particular and was focussed on PC, a platform that Sony were departing on every level. If SOE were doing well I still think Sony would have sold it at a higher price and invested that capital into something else in Sony with growth potential. That's how businesses work.

People also play destiny , there is no accounting for tastes. Drive club launched to horrible issues that took months to fix. It took a year for the free edition to come out , which is why i'm not surprised people play it.

So you will just dismiss any game that you don't personally like. Regardless of it's apparent popularity. And again, if you bother the read the DC game thread you'll see people are mostly playing the paid-for version.

Lots of people passed on the GTA V at the launch of the pc edition because it was delayed and they wanted the same value for it.

What is the source of this fascinating customer research?

Your right I looked it up , judging by the reviews it was extremely un remarkable and thus I don't feel bad for not remembering it. So that's 4 Killzones at this point huh

And I still don't get the point? Are you saying that Sony are bad at managing studios because you didn't like the Killzone games? Because your metrics of value seem rather arbitrary given you've dismissed Destiny which has been commercially successful for Bungie.

SOE was a company that never hit the peak of Everquest ever again. It Fizzled out . EQ gave way to galaxies which doesn't exist anymore , which had planetside that never took off. EQ2 never hit the hights of EQ , then they had matrix online , then vanguard. Then Sony took them and had them make psp games and untold legends on the ps3 before having the fun task of doing classic midway games for ps3. After that the company did nothing from 2008 to 2011 when they put out a facebook game. The studio certainly fizzled.

So you think making a successful game is a matter of choice? That there are no factors beyond the control of the developer and publisher. You think Sony let SOE "fizzle out". You don't think that investing in expensive IPs like Star wars and DC Comics was a sign that they genuinely wanted to make a popular and successful MMO, but instead it was general apathy on Sony's part. Because that's be a pretty fucking weird conclusion if so. You can't engineer success, you can't make something commercially or critically successful. These are outside of the publisher's control.

So then the driveclub studio isn't working on anything aside from driveclub content ?

Not to the best of my knowledge, but wasn't that the original promise of DC? A base game that would be expanded upon with DLC and new content?

Jak is a series Sony owns but they even farmed it out to other developers in between naughty dog taking a wack at it.

So? How is this a bad thing?

Uncharted is a cash cow for Sony , I didn't know this but they made 6 of them not 4 like I thought. So 6 of them in 10 years. But this isn't running a franchise dry cause its sony. And that there is what bothers me about the posts in here.

You say Uncharted is a cash cow yet Naughty Dog make a conscious decision to create a new, potentially risky, IP in The Last of Us. Funny that.

 

[Clukos]

Let's not forget Bungie left MS precisely because they didn't want to make another Halo game. Who knows what would've happened had they let them do something different?

 

[MrFox]

I was on the alpha and internal beta of EQ Next Landmark for almost two years. I have no real information about what happened and can only conjecture. After Sony sold off the studio, the new management fired the wrong guy (they fired Dave, of all people), then nothing happened for a year until they finally closed. Ambition was not the problem, the talent was there, the system was working, but Sony was still selling off a sinking ship. They seemed to have internal creative conflicts, because the disagreements were noticeable during their developers round table discussions, despite the attempts at hiding it. It really felt like the open questions to the public were to resolve internal conflicts, I guess we'll never know....

I hope Dave Georgeson will get back on his feel with a new project elsewhere, he was by far the one I agreed with the most. Interestingly his profile on twitter changed recently to "VR architect", so good luck to him!