I don't think Zipper themselves wanted to keep making Socom games though. Like, I'm pretty sure they had the freedom to do what they want when they made Socom 3 - and that showed they wanted to do more then the close style combat of socom 1 or 2. They're long term company vision or whatever was making huge scale vehicular combat type online, and I guess MAG was their end game - but it just never really caught on. I think their vision was always to make something like MAG, but technical limitations made socom 1 and 2 what they were. Ultimately what Zipper wanted to make wasn't what the fans wanted them too. The plan was probably to get Slant Six to keep the Socom fans happy while Zipper make what was in their 'vision', but Confrontation was a complete mess and MAG didn't do terrific commercially.

 When it came to falling back on Socom 4 the core of the company had left and for a variety of reasons they decided to try make Socom into a COD. Given that imo the original Socom games were never Zipper's vision it doesn't really surprise me they couldn't reproduce them, they were the product of a company pushing the technology available to them to the limits. They had no idea how to organically craft something like that.

 It's a huge shame as Socom was a pretty special online game during it's prime. I just hope the clamity that was Socom 4 will encourage Sony to take a step back like you say, and turn Socom into a digital only online game based on the early games. It doesn't need a huge budget or anything to get the core fans back, just plenty of content and a game which actually works when it's released. Oh and a way to play with your friends would help lol.

The only SOCOM I ever played was SOCOM 4 with MOVE and in 3D.

It was actually pretty fun. I only played the single player campaign though. I've never played the COD campaigns so I don't know how they compare.

It sounds like the SOCOM games were losing popularity, and everyone was scrambling to come up with a solution to the problem. This type of thing happens a lot and in every industry. It's just part of life.

I think your confusing that with EVERY GAME THIS GENERATION.

Honestly those mechanics are not new or exclusive to any of those titles. If this is true then they were trying to push forward generic successful game mechanics that are "oh so popular" among current gamers and mainstream 3rd person shooter titles. Nothing wrong with tested and true mechanics if you're trying to make money and appeal to an audience already receptive to it, just a lack of creativity and originallity can easily be sacrificied placing those mechanics above all else.

I find the mentioning of those titles and the wording used in the letter highly suspect to being fake or at best involving someone at Zipper of little importance. Poor leadership can surely be detrimental, but maybe this was, in part, a ball drop from the Zipper side not being able to handle the transition. 2006 was a rough time to be developing PS3 games and at that being acquired by SONY. A stuggeling studio is not the studio you want to be during Sony's rough financial years. Zipper probably would have faired better by itself, going multiplat, then being acquired by Sony a couple years later. I'm not going to pretend I know anything regarding this situation, so take everything I wrote as speculation.

It's sad that Sony is controlling and directing developers but all big publishers do the same.

It's good to have SOCOM and Resistence gone. Sony has had too many shooters. I'd rather have Sony invest in action games and RPGs.

oh wait lemme be a cynical wise ass and take an annonymous email that was sent to therealsocom at 100%

I am not that stupid...or I will think wiiU is last gen or something

And the fact that sony have given more freedom is not PR...it's shown in the games and also the devs without being annonymous have said so. The games speak for themselves.

I wanted to clarify few things before anything...and so far the things that were implimented doesn't sound like that big of a deal..at least not enough to create such a horribly critically and user recieved game like socom 4. Given how socom and zipper games have performed sales wise I honestly wouldn't be surprised if sony did put some preassure on them for this game...however the overall fault lies mainly with the dev for poor execution. 

Lesson of the day, take stuff like this with a mountain of salt...even if this guy actually did work for zipper, taking a disgruntled employees words as 100% accurate is a stupid thing to do

the guy's hair.

In any case, one thing's for sure. Those features were extremely foreign to SOCOM. Even Confrontation stayed away from most of that which while slammed by reviews at launch, was a very active game that the fans still embraced and kept alive.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/29/socom-confrontation-bigger-than-killzone-2-resistance-2-says-so/

The SOCOM community was enraged when we first got a sight of what SOCOM 4 was turning out to be. No one was excited for it.