SOCOM 4 dev discharges staff

@P0T No. You misunderstood me. I didn't say 5 was the average score for SOCOM 4, I simply said 5 is average, which I suppose was vague. My point was that the center of the scale is 5, and therefore anything above has more qualities than problems. I know very well that the 1-10 rating system has problems. In fact, that's part of what I was talking about, you're part of that problem. Games should not be rated 6-10, and most people don't. That's why sites like gamespot clarify with . So you don't think a decent game is absolute crap just because it didn't get a 9.9.

@parrot_of_adun LOL What? I said it has an average score of 67. Metacritic is an aggregate site that takes all of the critic reviews and averages them out to give one score. Averaging all the scores of professional gaming reviews on Metacritic, it has a 67 which is bad for games this generation. Games are rarely ever scaled on a 1-10 scale in reality, most games are scored in the 6-10 range these days which is a very common complaint about modern video game reviews. Your reading comprehension is troubling.

@P0T 5 is average. Your sense of scale is troubling.

@parrot_of_adun It has an average of 67 on Metacritic. That is bad, sorry.

It's a shame Sony has to let go of some the greatest talents under their wing. Zipper Interactive is a studio filled with great assets to the SOCOM franchise. Confrontation could have been the SOCOM PS3 premiere fans were looking for, if they were behind it. Zipper Interactive put online gameplay on the map for Sony back on the PlayStation 2. To fire these people is adds to the long list of mistakes Sony has made (PSPGo, PSN security, letting go of exclusives).

I'm sure it didn't help that the day after Socom came out, PSN was down for a month. Ruined.

@minhas27 atleast on psn we dont trash talk like you trolls do on xbox live.

well-received? socom 4 was horrible in most of the eyes of socom vets that arent totally ignorant. Sales right now are horrible and that's what zipper gets for selling out.

MAG was okay, it left a lot of room for improvement for a sequel, but Socom 4 is a pass for me, i just couldn't get into it in the beta or and 3rd person shooter for that matter (except Lost Planet 2).Though a lot of ps3 exclusives have been disappointing for me lately like LBP 2 mostly because it felt too much the same for me.Killzone 3 was disappointing for me too, I guess the people I was talking to that made me buy it must have been major fanboys.

@Jarhaed876 One day you'll look back at all the time you wasted trolling one console while blindly supporting another and think, "......." because your brain will have literally become the size of a pea due to lack of use.

yeah give me a negative xbox fanboy

This game is pretty cool and better than all the other socoms. GEARS OF WAR 3 is the same SH** as the first two! this website is run by xbox 360 fanboys. i'll bet they'll give GoW3 a good review.

Mag was okay, the gaphics were not very nice but i think this is a good start for a new kind of gaming, I hope they will work on Mag2 and take more time to make things perfect. For Socom4, sorry I really dont like this one, Its nice maybe but the gameplay and clan rooms and options are a major fail... Thats what happens when they change so many aspects, lets hope we are going to have a Socom 2 HD, the best shooting multiplayer online game ever made!!!

People Who Make Flops Get Droped I Have Been Playing Socom Sense Socom 2 And I Have Watched The Qualty Go Down

MAG was fun but a game completely centered around multiplayer I felt it was definitely lacking. The maps got tiresome. It didn't have a big selection of maps and the maps they did have were just plain ugly. I loved the team work element in MAG. As well as Socom. But other than that they dropped the ball in all other aspects.

I'm sure they'll be able to find jobs elsewhere with their resumes.

MAG was one of the most innovative shooters in the past decade. Unpolished and ugly as it was, there is no denying it tried to change a stale market, and just because it wasn't pretty or had some bugs doesn't change the fact that it's intentions were noble and deserved more praise.

I hate when this happens and I think in the long term, bringing together teams and then disbanding them, floods the market with inferior games that have more of a commercial slant than trying to create and develop interesting titles. Ironically it's the opposite of what the corporate suits want to achieve and instead of strengthening and advancing the industry were stuck in limbo with more studios going for 'safer options' rather than risk trying something new.

Thats what they get for not listening to the hardcore fans.

Gears of war 3 preorders top 1 million and look socom 4 fail xbox 360 rules

@KainofLegacy Or maybe people like a product enough to buy it every year? I'm going to buy the next Call of Duty just to piss off the fools at this website that can't seem to understand the concept of consumers purchasing products that they enjoy. No one forces people to buy iphones or Call of Duty. If people like it, they will buy it, and that's all there is to it. Get over it.

Sucks to be an actual creator when the industry's rules are defined by money-grubbing scumbags.

i actually think the game is fun, but lets keep dishing out COD games that's 80% the same every year because THAT'S good business...yeah right. people wonder why apple is doing well...it's because consumers aren't educated enough to know they're buying the same crap year after year.

Some games does not get good scores, but are still well received by the community. Review scores are subjective.

@chrisvandergaag I assume you consider 7.5 to be average then...

Glad I never bought these games. Nobody lost his job because of me buying some shooter.

I still don't understand the decision to make one of the "seals" in this game a woman, since woman cannot join the navy seals. Maybe they should fire the people making these kind of realism killing decisions instead.

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Metacritic score - 63. I wouldn't call that "well-received." Regardless of how many reviews you can point to, where it got an 8 from some site you've never heard of.

I did not enjoy Socom 4 much at all. Hopefully they get it together...

Sad to see this happen no matter what company it is.This day and age there isn't any room for mediocrity . Development costs are so steep and if the game isn't a big seller, it may cause this to happen. The sad thing is I bet the big CEO of said company is probably making a killing, while the entry level employees are the first to go.

add this company to the wall of shame.

If the game were better this will not happen,but is not cool lose your job :(

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"This is of normal business practice and a result of cutting back on production resources after the launch of two major franchises." It's a pretty crummy setup, if you ask me. And not all developers follow this kind of model, either. I don't remember the last time Valve or BioWare had layoffs after a major release.

@P0T - [URL=http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/socom-4/review.html?mode=web&tag=scoresummary%3Bcritic-score]This one.[/URL] Both users and critics seem to agree that it's good (well, not all users, some despise it for not being socom 2 with better GFX). Maybe not outstanding, but good.

Well, this is the nature of project contract based work. Its not so much people are getting laid off. Their contracts have simply been completed, and there's no additional projects or other work for them to continue employment there. The same thing happens in a lot of R&D type work. Sometimes this sort of thing can be pretty stubborn as well. Remember Clover? They're the studio Capcom made in order to make their more stylish titles, such as Okami and Viewtiful Joe. The studio was made with a contract of four games, and once that fourth game was done, Capcom axed the studio, despite all of their games being hits. That's just how it works out under contract :/

@BeanoFatardo Plenty of people will shell out for multiplayer only. In fact, 95% of the time I play a game I'm playing the multiplayer component of the game. I could care less about single player. Artificial A.I. sucks.

huskerman34 ... the price you pay for putting out a good game??! many companies have put out good games and got shut down COMPLETELY! and think about it, people. sony needs to cutback somehow with how much money they lost with the psn outage (and the ... ugh ..... MOVE). what better way to save money than layoff people from zipper interactive? their name sucks, their games suck. their claim to fame was socom and, well.... socom is so 2000!

where do i start? first of all, who even cares about socom anymore?! socom 4, check the facts, hasn't sold well. whether this is due to psn blackout remains to be seen, but i highly doubt sales are going to rise at any point. second.... MAG?!! the game didn't sell that well, got mediocre reviews, and, lets be realistic, not many people are going to shell out a fistful of cash for a MULTI-PLAYER ONLY shooter. finally, LAYOFFS ARE NORMAL FOR VIDEO GAME COMPANIES WHEN THEIR GAME(S) ARE RELEASED. nanorazor ... i'm not even going to comment. you are misinformed.

It's always sad to lose your job. : (

This is what happen when hackers steal from companies... people loose jobs, who support these ignorant selfish game hackers. These hackers are like parasites feeding on money that other people pay.

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Well the game didnt sell its shame but i think Mag 2 could be in the works since they could be given up the series of Socom since i think was best since ps2 first game but i think about time zipper do MAG 2 to save postion in Sony.

Sony sure has been winning confidence lately.

To save money for the new CHIEF OF SECURITY INFO post that SONY has announced after the PSN outage.........

the price u pay for making a good game =?

That ain't cool... the layoff part.

Well received? In what universe?

That is some cold $^&*! However, SOCOM Confrontation & SOCOM 4 both feel like downgrades when compared to SOCOM 2 & 3/Combined Assault oline MP. Sure the graphics are better, but they don't feel like they've evolved overall. I'm not defending SONY in anyway but i thought the quality of the SOCOM games dropped once they hit PS3.. I prefer MAG to SOCOM on PS3..