***Update - CFO of Silicon Knights has said the initial story by 1UP was blown out of proportion. They only laid off 40 staff members not 72. He also explained that the layoffs were not to save the company. He stated that they had too many staff “We just finished a project with [Activision Blizzard] that got completed,” explaining also “We had another project lined up that had been in the works for months, which had been green-lit and at the final second, at the high corporate level, the project got canceled. We don’t know why. Probably something to do with the publisher on their side, but that resulted in us having too many people so we had to do a layoff.”
Also the CFO confirmed that "The company is currently refocusing and returning to its roots, working on one of its most requested titles for the next generation." This could very well be Eternal Darkness 2 or another Blood Omen. In fact what other most requested title could Silicon Possibly be referring too?
Well we all know Silicon Knights for their glory days working for Nintendo. Silicon made two of the GameCubes greatest games creating the now legendary Eternal Darkness as well as the MetalGearSolid GameCube adaptation Twin Snakes. Both titles were superbly made and were of almost EAD quality. The studio appeared to have a very bright future and had there own secret weapon the franchise that founder Denis Dyack had always dreamed of making. This super franchise began its development on PlayStation but moved to GameCube after Nintendo partnered with them. The big gun they had was a trilogy and that game trilogies name was Too Human.
However word has it Nintendo didn't see the promise in Too Human. The studio ended up parting ways with Nintendo Canada. Silicon approached Microsoft with their big gun Too Human and Microsoft was impressed with the proposal. Too Human was supposed to be the next massive franchise selling millions of copies.
When Too Human launched it immediatly ran into trouble. Its sales were lack luster and the game got mediocre reviews. Too Human 2 is rumored to have been in development and some say it may still be. The Too Human game was supposed to be a three game series and the original while failing to break any records did sell over 700,000 copies which is admirable.
However the recent X-Men Destiny game wasn't well received and already is failing to generate sales. In fact it is one of the poorest performing multiplatform titles released in recent memory. It appears that this massive failure could spell the end of a once promising studio. Andrew McMillen the famed game journalist who broke Team Bondi's stories when they began mistreating staff and going under reports that Silicon Knights just laid off the majority of its staff.
Apparently the studio laid off 72 employees going from 97 full time staff to a meager 25. The studios capabilities to produce big budget high end software appears to be shot. It is unclear which games are currently in development at Silicon Knights the rumoured Too Human 2 is possible but not that likely. Another game could also be in the works but a team of 25 would have a hard time completing it.
Just prior to X-Men's release Dyack had promised the Ontario Government and people that the studio would hire another 80-staff members to bolster its current 97. However after Xmen launched Dyack stated the studio would still hire the 80 staff upon X-Men reaching over a million copies sold. Of course the game will not likely reach a million copies sold and the massive lay off paints a very bad picture for the studios survival!
Could this be the end of what was once one of Canada's most promising studios? How long can the company survive with 25-staff?
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
