| Protendo said: You are comparing developers that were not close to Sony? Your examples are laughable. Factor 5 downfall: Just look at the list: Looks like they were a lot closer to Nintendo but never as close as Ready to Dawn is. to Sony Let's discuss Free Radical aquired by Crytek UK in 2009, never working closesly with Sony. Failed due to Crytek Financial blunders. Games were not published by Sony, all games were multiplatform (Haze was cancelled on Microsoft platforms but was made). How did they fail because they were close to Sony? We all know what happened to Silicon Knights. |
I never said those studios were close to Sony? =/
The companies I listed are relevant for a few reasons. Factor 5 was the same in the regard that they mostly focus on licensing games. They stuck mostly with Lucasart working with the Star Wars license. They then chose to make a game an exclusive. The game didn't end up that good. They then had none of their own IP to fall back on. The license work from Lucasart dried up and there was no reason for another studio to pick them up. Thy folded soon after
Free Radical on the other hand did something similar but the circumstances are different. They decided to make an exclusive game Haze. the game turned out to be a generic shooter. The license work they were doing dried up with Lucasart getting shy about game development. And they had a hard time finding a publisher possibly do to the unfortunate circumstances with Haze. They on the oher hand had a few IPs that they owned the rights to that were worth a little something so they were able to be picked up in the end.
Ready at Dawn fits the first category way more than the second. They have done almost 100% licensing work where they don't own the IP. The one exception is the Order which didn't turn out well and was published by Sony(So Sony probably has the rights). If the Order sells poorly they might find that other publishers would rather take their work to other devs. Then Ready at Dawn will be a studio with no original IPs and no value to anyone. I'm not attacking Sony... This isn'texclusive to them. These are just the two examples that I could think of off the top of my head
Sillicon Knights was a terrible example. It was my mistake for menioning them. SK owns most of the ips they worked on. They didn't fold due to lack of work. They had ongoing litigation with Epic Games due to the Unreal Engine. in 2012 Dyack left Sillicon Knights with several of the core members and formed Precurosr Games. They then watched from abroad as SK was taken down due to lawsuits... To put it in perspective after the exodus of employees to Precursor there were 5 people left working at SK when it went out of business
