This IMO was Sonys fault in the first place for green lighting Drive Club. I also think Days Gone shouldn't of been greenlight but Its actually sales did surprise me/high than I expected

Well if Driveclub sold 5M+ it was a good decision to have it there for 3 years collecting those sales while GT was still not there and 2 years while it was picking up content. Don't think it was a bad choice at all.

Days Gone was actually a cool project, it was reported to have issues at launch (I never played it) but it could get better with a second entry, and IMO they should have gone for it.

Closing Housemarque is dumb and a move Sony would not do, it would be like closing Bluepoint never gonna happen.

Housemarque make games. Bluepoint made two remakes using the original base code with new art assets in a new engine. 

Obviously; bluepoint felt atleast as an 0% anyway it better stops here with closures.

DriveClub didn't sell well when average revenue is taken into account; that was the problem. Evolution having a sales dud with the Motorstorm before it didn't help.

DriveClub and GT are 2 completely different racing experiences. They don't look the same, they don't play the same, their overall gameplay loop is not the same. Saying Sony probably didn't see the need for 2 completely different racing games would be like saying Sony doesn't see the need for 2 open world 3rd person action games, and yet they have many of those. 

if DriveClub has been the success they were hoping it to be, Evolution Studios would still be around and DriveClub would probably be on it's second or third game by now. It's strange seeing people look back at DriveClub with rose-tinted glasses: the game was incredibly poor at launch and that is what hurt any momentum it had. Evoultion did a good job patching it up, but the damage had been done at that point.

Japan Studios is a different conversation though. But yeah, they were closed when they failed to be turned into a more traditional first party studio. Japan Studios was mostly a support studio who helped other studios co-develop games. And very few of their successes came from them, but rather other studios.

I mean, it's not a very good comparison being made in the first place if you ask me. 

Evolution Studios were great. Driveclub's Metacritic is misleading because the game improved a lot through updates. One of Sony's most terrible closures for sure.

I like your optimism and hope you're right about Sony letting Housemarque live. I don't want to see any of you making excuses when/if Sony ends up shutting them down!

Nothing will ever hurt me more than the closures of Liverpool and Zipper

Housemarque is currently my favorite Sony studio, so that would suuuuuuck ass if they were closed lol

Completely agree about Evolution. Its arguably one of Sony's worst closures up there with Bluepoint. But there was also different leadership in place when they shut down these studios. 

But I believe current SIE leadership values critical reception and not just commercial success. The studios Sony has shut down this generation had major issues in their pipeline/ pre development phase. I'm not worried about Housemarque if they can release high quality single player games relatively quick. But of course Sony could always prove us wrong lol. 

Can't believe people are saying a studio that made Driveclub being closed is worse than Japan Studios, Sony best studio.