About 50 team members were recently laid off from Sony’s internal Santa Monica studio. Lay-offs are nothing new in the industry but this is Sony – a company which has been seeing nothing but phenomenal success in the past few months since launching the PS4. To make things worse, the lay-offs were due to a new IP being cancelled.
Many individuals have their own take on the solution, including The Witness and Braid creator Jonathan Blow who called out the “suits” responsible for such decisions on Twitter. “Game publishers like to talk about how new IPs are scary and risky and usually not worth it. But this is clearly poor thinking, because every single mega blockbuster franchise, that Mr. Business Suit Guy would rather put the money toward, was once a new IP.
“It is so obvious, how does Mr. Business Suit not see this? Maybe next time I meet Mr. Business Suit I will ask him to name an Old IP that was not once a New IP.”
Do you agree with Blow’s statements? Let us know in the comments below.