Sony close Studio Liverpool

[Dallinor]

Chandler said:

Dallinor said:

Chandler said:
Hmm Wipeout...imagine Nintendo hiring those devs and putting them on a new F-Zero. With Sony shutting down all their good studios, outsourcing to nihilistic must be really cheap.

I'm sorry...what? 

Well I really liked the Destruction Derby games and Rollcage and I consider Wipeout a huge franchise in name. Also, Zipper produced at large good games, Unit 13 is one of the better games on PS VITA, shutting them down for one bad game sucks. So yes, I consider them to be good studios.

You might consider Wipeout to be a huge franchise in name, but the reality is it's probably a successful small tier title in the playstation portfolio, with it's glory days in the past. According to the data on this site the franchise didn't break a million with a single release.

Zipper was not closed for one bad game, far from it. They were closed for producing nothing critically or financially sucessful over a 6 year period. They are SCEWS least successful developer this generation. Their two biggest projects combined have sold less than 2 million copies, despite over 100 staff working at Zipper. An online-only Socom game from Slant Six Games, a much smaller less experienced developer, has sold more copies than Zippers main entry sequel in the series; Socom 4. That was the writing on the wall. They were incompetent and the reality is they have probably been nothing but a money sink for Sony this entire generation.