http://therealsocom.com/2012/06/27/ex-zipper-employee-sends-anonymous-letter-to-therealsocom-com/

Some quotes

"Hi everyone,

So I am a former Zipper employee who worked on MAG and SOCOM 4. I will not tell anyone who I am as per the separation agreement with Zipper/SCEA, I cannot legally make disparaging remarks against either company."

"The biggest issue with SOCOM 4 was there were too many chiefs and not enough indians. Too many folks from within Zipper and SONY were making decisions."

"Ultimately S4 was a failing on two fronts, a developer which was not brave enough to fight for what they thought was right, and a publisher which felt that the best thing for S4 was to copy elements from Uncharted, Killzone, CoD and Infamous."

It's clear that this isn't the case for all of SONY's studios but I guess SONY lost a lot of faith in Zipper at some point.

Zipper was aqcuired by SONY in January 2006. They released SOCOM:Combined Assault for the PS2 and SOCOM:Fireteam Bravo 2 both on November 7, 2006 that year. Combined Assault got very average reception (PS2 game)  and Fireteam Bravo 2's reception was really positive (PSP). Fireteam Bravo 2 (PSP) has retail sales at 1.03M on this site and Combined Assault (PS2) is at 2.04M.

MAG relased January 2010 (about 3 years 1 month later) . Sales are at 1.24M and reception was between average and generally positive.

What elements of Infamous were in SOCOM 4?

Sounds like pretty bad mismangement by both Sony and Zipper itself then...

badgenome said: What elements of Infamous were in SOCOM 4?

Averageness. 

I troll, I troll.

Kinda sad to see when the developers are not allowed to unleash their creative potential, same thing could be said for Rare, who have been stuck making kinect games like Sports for the last few years, with nothing big budget by themselves :

ugh I call BS. Sony are known for giving more freedom to their devs with the games they make

and can someone who played the game tell me what parts they had that were taken from infamous/uc etc?

M.U.G.E.N said: ugh I call BS. Sony are known for giving more freedom to their devs with the games they make and can someone who played the game tell me what parts they had that were taken from infamous/uc etc?

I think this might be one time where they might not have encouraged freedom. Socom was so .. against everything that the fans wanted, there was a ridiculous outrage against it before release, can't see the devs doing it to themselves.

Unless they just suddenly changed or something.

 

And nothing was taken from infamous. Other than I guess the cover mechanic. But then the cover mechanic was present in uncharted as well.

The over the shoulder aiming angle is similiar to InFamous too, as with how the cover system works.

I'd imagine this all to be true. Socom 4 was a victim of the execuitive guys at the top who have no clue about the series making the 'big' decisions, and those decisions pretty much coming down to them looking at COD's sales and saying WE WANT THAT. The whole thing was a complete disaster and while it pains me to see Socom dead its probably better it was put to rest, as Socom 4 was just... woeful.

M.U.G.E.N said: ugh I call BS. Sony are known for giving more freedom to their devs with the games they make and can someone who played the game tell me what parts they had that were taken from infamous/uc etc?

Cover system, regenerating health, camera angle, etc etc.

I like that Sony seem to give a lot of freedom to their dev teams, but that really didn't seem to be the case with Zipper. Something went horribly amiss with Socom 4, so this does make sense. A shame.

mantlepiecek said: M.U.G.E.N said: ugh I call BS. Sony are known for giving more freedom to their devs with the games they make and can someone who played the game tell me what parts they had that were taken from infamous/uc etc? I think this might be one time where they might not have encouraged freedom. Socom was so .. against everything that the fans wanted, there was a ridiculous outrage against it before release, can't see the devs doing it to themselves.

Indeed, I can't imagine the core of Zipper making the mistakes they made with Socom 4. It seemed like someone up in management, through Sony or Zipper, had a position where they just didn't know what they were doing. Socom 4 was such a drastic turn from the past Socom games. If it didn't have the Socom name, I doubt anyone could find the similarities with past Socom games. I wish Sony would have allowed Zipper to make a cheap digital Socom game. Then they would not have been so pressured to sell so much, they would have had more freedom. But Sony's ambition can get the best of hem sometimes.