Looks like Sony Computer Entertainment Europe promoted Killzone: Mercenaries developer Guerrilla Cambridge to the big leagues, as the studio has been explicitly revealed today for the first time to be at work on an unannounced PS4 game, also giving some indication on what can be expected from the game's environments.
Former SCE Cambridge Studio Closes After Subsequently Missing Sales Targets. The U.K. First Party Studio Leaves Behind 20 Years Of PlayStation Exclusives.
Too bad. They shouldn't have closed them like that after they released RIGS. They still got 10 studios so it is not like they are lacking. But a loss is a loss
It's unfortunate the Rigs owners lost out in the additional content and support that was being worked on.
It's a real shame, but at least they got to release their game that they had been working on.
My hope is the Blue Point Games is working on Medievil 1 remaster/remake for PS4. It'd be cool if the PS Classic they are working on turns out to be Medievil.
In response to your reply to ruefrak about Media Molecule, you have to bare in mind that the studio are smaller now than Guerrilla Cambridge were and they've had a better hit rate than Cambridge did.
Tearaway was also developed with a fraction of the Studio's resources, critically rated higher than Killzone Mercenary and Tearaway's sales weren't far off of Mercenary's.
Tearaway could have cost less than half of the dev price and marketing budget compared to Killzone Mercenary.
Media Molecule have probably made a good profit for Sony on each project they've put out, even Tearaway, Cambridge undoubtedly cost Sony, if that wasn't the case they'd like still be around now.
Tearaway Unfolded was a pretty quick turn around title, which required minimal resources for MM, it also probably sold enough to break even.
Dreams is probably not a high cost investment for the studio by modern standards and the prospects for what's possible in the game are huge, from creative, user generated content, to professional dev made worlds and game elements from every conceivable game genre make Dreams a highly marketable title.
I doubt it's cost more than $20m to make, even if you said it's been in full development for 4 years, it could probably be profitable if Sony released it at $40 and sold 500k, but it could easily top 1 million unit.
OMG I completely forgot about the hours and hours of fun I had with that game until now.
Thanks for bringing back memories.
That would be awesome, remember playing the first one and it was so much fun. Sony could surprise us.
Sony's mismanagement of Guerrilla Cambridge is what caused the studio to close. This is on you Playstation execs.
Actually Sony tends to let their studios manage themselves, which has been reported numerous times by their 1st Party devs, even when they're let go and ex Sony staff would be incentivised to say negative things about Sony's management they praise them for giving them a chance.
Cambridge didn't have to make the games they did, looking at their history they've had numerous projects which sold well under a million units, for a Studio with dozens of staff, working on projects for years Sony would need to at least top the million mark to break even.
It's clear that Sony gave the Studio multiple chances, even after their past releases sold badly and eventually Sony has to think of the bottom line, instead of continually throwing more cash at the studio.
The Cambridge situation is exactly the same as the other Studios Sony have closed since the 7th gen, they give Studios freedom, fund and support them well, but eventually something has to give if the projects those Studios are making aren't bringing in the funds to pay for the current project and set up a budget for the next game.
Totally agree with you. They should have focused all their energy on Medievil in my opinion. Other Sony studios are known for at least one big seller: Naughty Dog (Uncharted, many others), Santa Monica (God of War), Media Molecule (LBP), Poliphony (Gran Turismo), Sucker Punch (Infamous), etc.... Guerrilla Cambridge instead was all over the place. They tried lots of new IPs: C-12, Primal, Ghosthunter, RIGS, alas none where neither critically-acclaimed nor at least sold a million.
343
But it's a difference if a studio has a sense of freedom to be creative or be strangleheld like say the few ms' studios with almost no creative freedom outside of their respective ip.
What??? I'm sorry but this studio has been around since the 90s. They have had plenty of chances to prove themselves and made many games in the process. I'm thankful Sony stuck with them this long.
I'm sure a lot of their games didn't even make a profit. But what am I talking about, clearly you know more than us as you said in your comment. Thanks for the inside scoop.
O_O
I don't think their games were ever the problem though. Most of their games were actually quite good.
Edit: I edited my comment because I realized I misread the article, and assumed that this was an official statement from one of the devs involved, and then came to realize that it was just some speculation piece.
I think you're on to something. Cambridge supported Sony's crazy side projects like Vita and PSVR. Had they just played it safe and made a PS4 game, they'd probably still be around.
Now I think Media Molecule are deliberately stalling on releasing Dreams because they know once it flops, the studio is getting shut down.
Assuming you're replying to CrystalFantasy, this person you're replying to isn't on to anything.
Cambridge weren't forced to develop for Vita or PSVR, they chose to make games for those platforms, plus they even made games for basically every other Sony device and technically RIGS has to run on PS4 to play, but their titles didn't sell well for the most part, yet Sony still kept them around since 1997.
Media Molecule have had great success with LBP 1&2, Tearaway sold well for a Vita game and Unfolded didn't require more than a small fraction of the Studio's resources to be made, so it's sales didn't need to be that high to be considered a success.
There's every indication that Dreams will do very well with it's target audience, hell it's going to have a huge core adventure, as well as be the evolution of the creative style of content the Studio have become famous for. You can basically make anything you want digitally, which will mean Media Molecule can create a tonne of content, along with the game's core audience being able to expand the game's universe in a seemingly endless way.
If content creators can make anything from any game genre, their own assets, animations, movies, music and so on then the possibilities are quite literally only limited by the creator's imagination (and current processing/RAM limits).
Media Molecule aren't stalling, they began making the tools to make their game, but that was a long undertaking because they didn't just want to slap a game engine, asset rendering, audio maker and content editor into a basic package, they wanted to make all of that work seamlessly together, while also being fun to use. They started actually building their core Dreams game when they revealed Dreams to the public at E3 2015.
BTW Media Molecule are a smaller studio than Guerrilla Cambridge were, by a good 20 people, so MM's costs are quite a bit lower.
MM may also be working on something else besides Dreams, since content creation is very fast with the game's tools. They could be building multiple games with Dream's tools.
@ ruefrak
I fear the same for Media Molecule. Tearaway on Vita had less sales than Killzone Mercenary at the end and the Tearaway Unfolded on PS4 bombed saleswise really hard. Dreams failure in sales could be the last straw.
In turn, I feel that since RIGS was a VR game that missed sales targets, Sony London and the Machester Studio's new VR games better make some decent numbers or Sony will pull out of the U.K. altogether and avoid such high taxes in the process.
Agreed
I believe that team could have been put to better use.
I agree that Sony give them a lot of freedom but at the same time it over the years they were making a bunch of lackluster games I think Sony should have simply combine them with another team because it's sad that it had to come to this.
Technically Cambridge were a part of Guerrilla, but how closures effect staff employment within the wider publishing company depends on the individual people getting laid off, whether they want to join another studio within that pubs family of devs or location, because maybe people can't move their lives to another part of the country or another country entirely for a new job, families may not want to move to London if they're happy in Cambridge and the dev may not want an almost 3 hour round trip every day to get to and from work.
Nearby studios may not need your particular skill set.
In some cases maybe developers don't have the budget to hire someone new.
There could also be issues with a developer, maybe they have a bad reputation and only had employment within Sony because of their longterm experience at that one studio and it was only that studio that were happy to put up with that person's ways.
Things aren't always clear cut and easy to work out because we wish it.
The real reason? It's still the same speculation as when it happened and a rundown of the games they made. This doesn't add anything new...
PlayStation VR launch title RIGS: Mechanized Combat League will receive no further DLC following the closure of developer Guerrilla Cambridge, while all of the title's Beat the Dev community events have also been cancelled.
honestly it wasnt... dumb idea the demo sucked game sucked. I am big fan of PSVR and own several of the games and this one was one i was never interested in at all i tried the demo since it was free and didnt like it at all.
Disagree. Heck it's probably the only game that demos a really good system of movement in VR for 3D environments. So many games where the player is very slow moving or almost immobile, Rigs showed how to put together a really cool FPS style game in VR, really fun in that respect.
The actual game, especially on Pro is fantastic. The visuals on Pro are excellent, the locomotion and controls are among the best on VR, and the game is pretty packed with content now. It was a great idea, are u joking? A mixture of Titanfall and Rocket League, it was brilliant, but PSVR manufacturing problems really destroyed this game. A multiplayer centric game like Rigs needs a fairly large install base to be successful and the fact that PSVR has been out of stock since launch absolutely diminished its potential install base from an estimated 2.6 million to 800k. I honestly believe had PSVR not had these issues it would've come close to the lofty sales estimates and Rigs mp base would be thriving thus helping the game succeed. It's a terrific game.
You are entitled to not like something. But you are also not indicative of the gaming community as a whole. I respect your opinion, but I also respectfully disagree with it.
But they just gave us an awesome holiday update and a terrific pro patch. So, Rigs has received some nice, free post launch support but obviously the studio closure is the reason why we won't receive any more.
yeah, I just meant moving forward it's sad. This game was one of the ones with a little more thought put behind it compared to some of the other PSVR titles.
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It's bc GC got shutdown. Rigs sold fine, it would've sold 3x what it did had Sony not had the PSVR manufacturing problems. GC makes great games on new hardware, but they just don't sell as big as they should. Killzone Mercenary is phenomenal yet it did mediocre numbers.
I bought it. But it was very very expensive. With no demo in all of Europe i think.
That sucks that they shut them down right after their game dropped. I haven't played it myself, I've yet to get a PSVR, but it seemed to have a positive reception from the community. I wonder if they had some kind of falling out or something.
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Hopefully this will be their rumoured RPG. There's only one small request I'd like to make of Guerrilla Cambridge: Please for the love of God, hire someone who knows how to direct and write good stories.
Damn Sony sure knows how to hype people Up!
definitely Killzone. KZSF2? KZ4? who knows.
but I like how Sony use/d VITA/PSP as a "B team" kinda thing. if you're a small studio they give you one of their IPs to work on for PSP/VITA and if you prove yourself there, they then give you a full game on the main console.
also interesting to see how Sony are more willing to give their smaller studios a chance on the flagship console this gen. this didn't happen too often on PS3, probably due to the complicated beast that was CELL.
Wut? But i thought sony was twiddling their thumbs
So maybe Guerrilla Cambridge is taking over the Killzone franchise now, and the main Guerrilla are only focusing on their new RPG.