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Farsala on 13 August 2018
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LudicrousSpeed said:

 

Farsala said:

7 Studios in 24 years vs 9 in 17 years hmmm.

We also have to look at the quality of the closed studios.

Sony:

989- Sports and Twisted Metal similar to XSN

BigBig- Worthless

Guerilla Cambridge-  Medievil and small games

Contrail- JRPG and technically just absorbed and not defunct

Evolution- Racing

Incognito- After 989 closed they continued Twisted Metal

Liverpool- Racing

Zipper- Socom

MS:

Aces- Hard to say how important the closure of this studio is, but their games definitely have a rich legacy.

Digital Anvil- Worthless

Ensemble- Legendary game developer of RTS series Age of Empires and Age of Mythology

FASA- Mechassault and Mechwarrior, one of my favorite Xbox games

Hired Gun- Port / worthless

Lionhead- Fable, and Black & White. Quite a good studio.

MS Japan- A studio in Japan is pretty important imo, but they didn't do too well.

Press Play- not much pedigree.

XSN Sports- Similar to 989 with sports titles.

 

So Sony shuts down some racing studios, Twisted Metal devs, and some worthless studios as well as a decent developer or 2.

While in my view MS shuts down a legendary developer, and 2 or 3 good devs as well as some worthless developers and in much less time. And that is not mentioning the deal with Bungie and shutting down their creative freedom, as well as mediocre Rare (with which both were legendary developers in the past).

There’s no point to list wars when it all boils down to your opinion on a developer. I mean for example you’re being dismissive of 989 as a “Twisted Metal and sports” but they had their hands in a lot of classic PS1 franchises. Cool Boarders, Jet Moto, Rally Cross, Syphon Filter. Not to mention all the sports games. Also Sony didn’t just close down Zipper, they made Zipper turn SOCOM 4 into a shitty third person CoD clone and then when the game naturally bombed (no one wanted a CoD SOCOM, plus it came out right before the network hack) they shut them down and washed their hands of the franchise. There’s no way a developer like Ensemble is a big deal and Zipper is not.

Also Incognito didn’t just “continue Twisted Metal” after 989, they were made of former Singletrac developers, they created Twisted Metal. They also made War of the Monsters and Warhawk. You seem to be minimizing the Sony closures and exaggerating the MS ones. Ensemble was great, I love RTS. But “legendary”? Their games were not mass market games. It’s a huge loss for nerds like us, not in the grand scheme of things. I’d rank them the same as Zipper. SOCOM was the best online shooter in the PS2/Xbox era. It was a shame to see what Sony did to them.

Of course it is subjective.  Doesn't change how much I disliked the closures. Legendary is just my opinion.

Out of the defunct studios from MS, these are the games made by them in my top 50 games.

7: Halo 2 (Bungie)

15: Age of Mythology

36: Mechassault

And the same for Sony

48: Twisted Metal Black


So clearly I have much annoyance with MS's boneheaded decisions. However the argument is that not only do MS close a lot of studios, but also a lot of quality studios. About 1 studio every 2 years and 1 quality studio every 5 years. Sony on the other hand closes a studio every ~3-4 years, and a quality one every 6 years.

Closures happen I get it, especially in the UK with recent law changes.