Well they all have a high value, so I hope not! The only studio closed could maybe be SOE, but with MAG and DC online, I don't see that coming.

If they wanna save money, they should leave the cell phone market, nobody wants a sony-ericsson! It's all about Iphone, samsung and nokia!

Isn't MAG a Zipper game?

MMMhhhh yes it is ^^

So yeah, let them shut SOE down!

Yep it is. I think zipper might be the one to go, as much as I like them.

They've already started marginalising their IPs from last gen.

WipeOut HD is an upscaled PSP games and Socom has done away with the singleplayer, The Getaway 3 was canned and isn't likely to surface ever again, they did away with the F1 license. god of war 3 is the last one and Jaks/Sly Coopers' are dead franchises and Insomniac keep hinting they may go multiplatform.

At the end of the day with IP's that aren't really sticking to the markets wants and needs, they need to get some better ones or cut back on staff.

The issue is not with IPs from the last gen.  Its with the studios that created them.  The studios that created those IPs are universally fantastic (they all proved they weren't one-hit wonders), and there's no reason to believe that Sony would want to get rid of any of them -- unless they had plans to axe some of what are probably Sony's most profitable 8000 employees (SCE) -- of the some 150000 that make up Sony, as a whole.

Sony axed 8000 employees recently.  5% of their workforce, most of them in the flailing electronics division, which is bleeding money.  SCE's software studios are *making* money.  Why would Sony axe them?  They might call for a 5-10% workforce culling across the board, but they will *not* close any studios.  They'd be foolish to do so. 

Most of Sony's 1st party studios are having a release this coming year.  As a matter of fact, if "Ico 3", M.A.G., and God of War 3 all ship in 2009, ALL of them do (unlike previous years).  If Sony plans to axe studios, it likely won't be until 2010... and frankly I doubt they would do so, even then.

Sony might kill a studio but doing anything too extreme is going to hurt their own image with other developers. If you have had Sony telling you that the PS3 is a strong platform and there should be no question of viability then watching them start cutting back on their own software development for the platform will not support that argument. I can understand the need for SCE to do this but it would be better to sell stuff. If they do this it will hurt their future.

Ok, to prove you wrong because you obviously have no clue what you're talking about, I'll throw some numbers at you.

Gears of War has sold 5.74 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=843

Gears of War 2 has sold 3.77 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=16548

That's not bad considering Gears 2 is still selling very well. It's actually very good for any game really, more than the publisher could ask for. However...

Gran Turismo 1 has sold 10.85 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=884&region=All

Gran Turismo 2 has sold 9.37 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=885&region=All

Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec sold 14.87 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=886&region=All

Gran Turismo 4 has sold 9.53 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=887&region=All

That's full retail..now lets check out their 'Demos':

Gran Turismo Concept 2001 Tokyo has sold 1.56 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=3426&region=All
(only sold in 1 region, as well)

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has sold 2.6 Million.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=6972&region=All


Ok..so what do we take from this? The lowest selling full retail version of Gran Turismo is Gran Turismo 2, selling 9.37 Million. That's their lowest selling iteration. And you honestly think it won't sell as much as Gears? It EASILY has the potential to sell twice as many as the first Gears, and we'll have to see where the 2nd ends up to determine that, but if it sells anything like Gran Turismo 3, which is unlikely but very possible, it could easily double the sales of Gears 2 which I'm estimating to sell around 7 million LTD.

Did I miss anything? The numbers are on the table..now where's your reasoning?

With GT5P selling over 2.5M in a year, I would not at all be surprised to see GT5 at 5 mil within the first year, and 7-8 mil lifetime. The only reason GT5 won't be the best selling racing game of all time is due to the PS3s low marketshare.