Sony seems to give plenty of freedom to their devs... but sure, if they don't want to be bought they won't sell, so it's dev choice as always.

When it isn't in ill spirit it's ok =] ... but it's probable that the money sony bleed with TV and Cellphone could buy some studios =p

Too bad Sony is still bleeding in the smartphone department xD

Yet not enough. What they had Zipper do to SOCOM 4 was just ridiculous. And then shut them down.

Yep, I like their phones and TVs, their notebooks were never in the pricerange I felt confortable buying.

Even if they were totally independent from Sony, they could have been pressured to do it by shareholders and still be closed after.

Yet they weren't independent, and weren't pressured by investors. They were owned by Sony, and told by Sony to make it more like CoD, and then shut down when it (not surprisingly) failed. So again, the less studios MicroSony owns, the mo betta imho.

This, I prefer it this way since it's better for us and independent studios.

No shit sherlocks. This is business. These things happen. It's not like it doesn't happen to indie devs. Like Full Control, developers of Space Hulk Ascension. They didn't even finish the last job. Thus the trusty customers are being left with a broken game, a game they paid good money for. A game that is nearly unplayable now and propably will never be free of game breaking bugs. And guess what, it's still available on Steam. Yeah, indie gaming, woopdiefuckingdoo.

Speak for yourself. Seeing the low quality of "indie games" prove your words to be quite wrong. This corny idealistic attitude is just good for your own ego and nothing else.

Like it matters if Sony acquires a couple of more studios over the years with this vast number of existing developers and ever more forming studios. This point for itself makes it evident how rediculous this claim is. So don't worry. You still get your plenty o shovel ware. And from time to time... a high quality Sony IP... like Helldivers.

Moderated - axum

As already said it could come from Sony, investors of CEO of the studio. Being owned by Sony or not can't be put as the main reason the game looked like CoD. And I say this coming from several developers that developed what they wanted and said Sony didn't pressure them to make a specific game. They even allow some devs to stay developing a game for several years and hold their financial side... and if that dev was independent it would have gone under.

There are verified former Zipper employees on GAF who have said multiple times SOCOM 4 played the way it did because Sony wanted a CoD clone. Of course publishers don't pressure all developers on all games to change their work in various ways. But this one did here. You can continue to point out that probably maybe other pubs would have maybe potentially done the same Sony did to Zipper, but I don't need any maybes or probably or any of that, I have reality on my side. And in Zipper's case, if they were third party instead of owned by Sony, they could have been pressured into changing a game and ending up releasing a turd, but still came back to do other things. See: Fuse with Insomniac.

But in Zipper's case being owned by Sony meant they had to change the game and were shut down. I hope that helps, not going to reply to more hypothetical "other pubs too!" stuff. Not sure why you're really arguing here LOL.

If it makes you feel any better on the inside, I can reference a Microsoft example too. Ensemble Studios.

To be honest I have no fucking clue what you're ranting about here. It doesn't have to be one or the other. You can not be owned by MicroSony, yet also not make indie games.

I see. I take your word on it.

Since I see Sony taking a lot of risk on new IPs I don't think it was a pressure for a clone only for the pressure... but I can accept that it could had been better done.