It's really weird (& not weird) to hear Sony laid off a bunch of people from their biggest developer and even cancelled a new IP they were working on. The cancelled project was Stig Asmussen's project, who was the director of God of War 3. Cody Balrog, director of God of War 2, is still working on his IP so SSM is doing something at least.

Source:

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2014/02/26/the-new-ip-in-development-at-sony-santa-monica-has-been-cancelled-dev-confirms/

This was all confirmed by the lead level designer Jonathan Hawkins on Twitter, who was also laid off.

Yesterday, I was laid off. It was a good 10 year run & I got to make three 90+ games. I lived the dream & got to accomplish all of my goals. Except one… making something out of nothing & creating a new AAA IP.

The saddest part of waking up today is I no longer get to work with my family. Secondly, the pain that I feel for my friends who have lost their jobs.

The saddest & most important part is the game I was creating for the player that will never be played. I’m sorry that I’ve failed you.

I’ve been awoken from my dream, but soon I will fall into a gentle slumber. My Vishnu skills will become better from this & I’ll dream again.

Layoffs suck. Hopefully all the people laid off find a job soon, which shouldn't be hard since they're based in California which has a bunch of developers. Sucks that the new IP got cancelled too. We need more of those and I wanted to see what SSM could do outside of God of War. Especially weird with the success of the PS4, new IP's and more exclusives should be Sony's priority. Maybe the game was complete poopy though. Well at least we still have Cody's game to look forward too.

Two huge and important studios for the last few gens just got hit with massive layoffs in the past week. Industry is a tough business. Hope the best for all and that they can find new jobs ASAP.

That sucks, but at least we'll get another God Of War game where Kratos yells and does the same three hit combo.(Maybe it'll even be a prequel!)

Sony Santa Monica has been an enigma for a while now. They were given control of Sony Smash Bros, I mean PlayStation All-Stars, and then proceeded to support the game in no way whatsoever.

@dallas_raines: I think Kratos is done for now actually and Kratos doesn't yell anymore. Did you not play Ascension? He was a very good boy in that one!

Actually, they did. They put out 4 DLC characters, 2(?) maps and patched the game a bunch of times. Pretty sure all future support for it was cancelled because the game sold like shit.

@awesomeusername: Huh. Shows how much attention I paid that game.

Well that fucking sucks. I have no interest in more God of War, so if that is the only thing SSM is working on now they are just wasting their time as far as I'm concerned. Even if the new GOW received great reviews I still wouldn't care about it at all.

We need new IPs more than ever. At least that is what I want to see more of with this newish generation.

I don't think that Sony would just cancel a game and layoff people without a justifiable reason. Maybe it's because Ascension didn't do well but it might also be that the new IP isn't working out so rather than release something they're not happy with they're willing to cut it loose. We won't know what happened behind the scenes unless people from the inside talk. This is just pure speculation at this point. As always though, it sucks to hear people are out of a job.

Damn, that's fucked up.

@probablytuna: Apparently the game's development started having problems when Destiny was revealed. Sony felt the two games were too similar, and with Destiny having a far bigger budget and development team they feared the Santa Monica game would just end up getting buried. So they tried to have the dev team retool it to make it more distinct, but it would seem they weren't happy with the new approach or it wasn't progressing like it should, so in the end they decided to cut their losses and refocus SSM on something else.

Can't imagine how much that much suck, to finally get your shot at leading that big game and then get it taken away.

I'd expect to see more of this over the course of the year. Studios grew a lot with the switch to HD in the previous generation and with that the budgets did too. Now that we're restarting with a new generation there are smaller install bases and those budgets can't be justified yet. SSM and Irrational were both successful but too big to survive the switch.

Irrational Games closed because Ken Levine commanded it to be so. He wanted to get back to his roots, what he was doing 17 years ago, if he didn't IG would still be around, and probably making yet another BioShock game, even if they wanted to go in another direction. With the SSM deal, that was probably because of pressure from previous projects not doing so well, and the fact is that we don't really now if this was yet another God of War game, or if it was going to be something slight different.

Well, Santa Monica is a odd studio, they do their own produces with one or two teams, but they also help other Sony 1st and 2nd party teams. So to some extent when they are not helping other groups they are in a bind, do they find skutt work for those people or just lay them off?

There is a push/pull about innovation and just doing what works. I think the whole industry needs to get better at planning and making games more efficiently. There comes a point where what works should be admitted to work and you make the next game in your series.

Irrational Games spent what, two years, making sky hooks work? The speed of travel, where they went, what was connected to what, and what those connections did to flow of story must have been tons of work; a lot of fun, but was it needed? Irrational Games got caught in senseless minutia about connecting floating islands instead of saying, "Well, our idea to have these separate floating things is slowing travel so lets make one city that floats."

Let's ask a question? What is Bioshock Infinite about? Is it about Booker's journey to fight himself? Is it about American exceptionalism gone wrong? Is it a sci-fi story about a princess that has great powers being freed by a flawed savior? Is it about whether you should free a princess with great powers if she is that powerful...should a human weapon have freedom? Sadly it all, none, some and parts of all that along with racism, classism, sexism too? In other words its a mess because it is really about nothing in particular.

When studios close, when anything close...a game company, a factory, a store, a widget maker...we have to ask ourselves if it might not be for the best.

The doubt the reason has much to do with game sales. Sony is in a bad way, yesterday they announced they are closing 65% of the stores they have in the US. 21 of the 30 stores are closing. I'm sure this studio closing, the stores closing, the HDTV restructuring and the selling of the PC division is just a way Sony is trying to stay afloat. I wouldn't be surprised if more closing are on their way.

I don't like how the only human resources related stories you ever hear are layoffs. It gives people the impression that every single person who has ever worked in this industry has been fired and unemployed ever since. If I went by games journalism, nobody has ever been hired or started a new studio. Until there's a new game by a new studio and then it's "these are the guys who made X".

Games will exist as long as there is demand for them, not as long as studios keep people employed.

Ugh I know Sony is in bad state finacially but Sony Santa Monica is obviously a talented studio would have been great to see a new IP and not another God of War game that has been teased for PS4. Why did they have to rush out Ascension? It did more harm then good.

Just to be clear, Sony Santa Monica as a studio is not closing, they just cancelled a new IP and laid off a bunch of people.

Oh, but my point still stands that this is an ongoing sweeping layoff/closure model going through Sony right now. They have no money and just today they announced they are selling off their founding HQ in Tokyo to get a much needed cash injection. Last year they sold off there New York HQ. Sony is running out of stuff to sell.

Sony's biggest studio is the God of War one?

Underwhelming to learn this.

The craziest thing about this is that they're cutting down on Sony Santa Monica because of (at least in part) an apparently aborted new IP project and yet they're still devoting resources in Japan Studio to work on The Last Guardian, which has gone from something everyone was excited about to the next DNF/Versus XIII-style running joke.

Hang on, that dude's last name is Balrog?

Yes

I think a lot of SSM is support. Don't quote me on that though.

@awesomeusername said:

Yeah, they're one of those 'quality control' sorta developers I think. While they don't have a lot exclusively to their name beyond God of War, they've otherwise pitched in for a lot of other games, like Journey for example.

I agree that Sony as a whole is in some deep financial trouble but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they have no money.

You're right. They do have money. But they really need to make some changes beyond selling off divisions and real estate if they want to get out of the trouble that they're in.

Well alright, so now I guess Stig Asmussen left SSM. I wonder where he's gonna go now. Indie?