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Jason Schreier: heads rolling at Sony for the cancellation of The Last of Us Online after 4 years in development

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Fire Herman Hulst for buying Concord devs and killing a game from Sony's best studio because some feedback from Bungie who have been a C-tier studio since Destiny 2 shipped in 2017.

Demote Druckman to simply a director from his current position of President of Naughty Dog. Guy is an artist, not someone who can manage run day to day studio operations. Plus, he abandoned his team to go work on a fucking tv show leaving talented ND developers to work on a fucking remake that was already half way done. We are now 4 years in and they havent shown us a next gen game. It's embarrassing and he needs to fall on his sword.
 

Saber

Member
No way he gets held responsible. He seems like a dude who can talk his way out of anything using other successes or shifting the way information is presented.

I know, but one can dream xD

Damn Neil hurt some people really bad.

People mock everyone, Phil, Miyamoto, Jim Ryan, Kojima and even Miyazaki...

But when comes to Neil, oh no now you cross the damn line. Best of all it's aways the same monologues.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Give me my elden ring money back you cunt

4ZyApCI.gif
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
Fire Herman Hulst for buying Concord devs and killing a game from Sony's best studio because some feedback from Bungie who have been a C-tier studio since Destiny 2 shipped in 2017.

Demote Druckman to simply a director from his current position of President of Naughty Dog. Guy is an artist, not someone who can manage run day to day studio operations. Plus, he abandoned his team to go work on a fucking tv show leaving talented ND developers to work on a fucking remake that was already half way done. We are now 4 years in and they havent shown us a next gen game. It's embarrassing and he needs to fall on his sword.
I doubt it was only Bungie's feedback that led to Factions getting killed. The game seems to have had major issues and was in development hell when Sony cut their losses.

Concord looks like a turd but it is a finished game coming out on time.
 
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Loomy

Thinks Microaggressions are Real
Calm down everyone. The heads rolled already.

Damn Neil hurt some people really bad. The constant whining about him. Let it go. Funnily enough he seems to go from success to success too.

Personally i would like some more Uncharted. Love TLOU but the summer adventure feeling that Uncharted had is a nice change from all the doom and gloom of TLOU.
That's what happens when you're objectively good at your job. Some people are delusional

Neil Cuckman is one of the worst things ro happen at Naughty Dog, dude think's he's Kojima
He end up hurting ND even more lmao.
Exhibits 1 and 2. Look at his work at Naughty Dog and the revenue/accolades it generated for his studio and publisher and tell me, objectively, that he's the worst thing to happen to Naughty Dog.

Just because you think his games are "woke", doesn't mean they're made bad games.
 

poodaddy

Gold Member
Thanks for the summary OP, I was curious about the information but I only made it about two sentences into Cryer speaking before I couldn't stand the sound of his voice any longer and had to shut it off.

Remember folks, always summarize the video for people with low tolerance to males with mousey voices.
 
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Fake

Gold Member
Exhibits 1 and 2. Look at his work at Naughty Dog and the revenue/accolades it generated for his studio and publisher and tell me, objectively, that he's the worst thing to happen to Naughty Dog.

Just because you think his games are "woke", doesn't mean they're made bad games.

Heads are rolling and you bring 'woke' to the conversation.

Congratulations.
 
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Saber

Member
I doubt it was only Bungie's feedback that led to Factions getting killed. The game seems to have had major issues and was in development hell when Sony cut their losses.

Concord looks like a turd but it is a finished game coming out on time.

I honestly don't think it's that far of. If anyone at the current situation could give a honest feedback if your GaaS gonna be a hit or not, probably would be Bungie.
 

Flabagast

Member
I've been saying for years that this was a much bigger deal than ND claimed it was and they were lying when they said they put barely any time and resources into it. It was obviously their next major project after TLOU2 and they spent years and tens of millions of dollars (at least) on it. They even said it was a much bigger project than they initially anticipated, and it failed.

It likely cost them an actual game release on PS5, a Sony console without a ND game is like Saturn without Sonic but here we are.
Back then they said it was their biggest project ever by far. Everyone thinking otherwise is completely delusional and a miserable person who likes to lie to oneself
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Nope. They said it in their cancellation post. They never entered full production.

Jason Shrchrier is just playing low information people like fiddles.
"Full production" is whatever they say it is. It's a term of art. If they sunk major time and resources with a huge staff, that's what they did, whether or not they classify it as "full production."
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
A lot of people called this a while ago and had to endure a blizzard of defense force BS. Ryan was shown the door. Booth was fired. There were major issues in the PS productions pipeline and studio management and its still playing out. Jaffe was right the whole time. Lots of people were. It wasnt even a difficult call. This was all out in the open.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
"Full production" is whatever they say it is. It's a term of art. If they sunk major time and resources with a huge staff, that's what they did, whether or not they classify it as "full production."
Until we get specifics, I'm going to take what the **** stirrers say with a grain of salt. I don't know why some of ya'll trust these people so much.

Perfect Dark and Fairgames released CGI trailers early into development to attract employees to work on the games as they ramped up production.

Naughty Dog literally released 2 drawings. If you think this game was anywhere near release, I have a bridge to sell you.
 
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Loomy

Thinks Microaggressions are Real
Heads are rolling and you bring 'woke' to the conversation.

Congratulations.
Do ctrl-f on the thread. And heads rolled over this in the last quarter of 2023. This is an old story.
 

Trogdor1123

Member
I don’t see how this was canceled. The universe is already built and the foundation for this game was already set. What were they doing?
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
Until we get specifics, I'm going to take what the **** stirrers say with a grain of salt. I don't know why some of ya'll trust these people so much.
I didn't need Schreier to deduce that ND was lying about what they put into this game, I've been saying it for a while now. It's obvious that the game was a much bigger production than they let on. Whether or not they classify it as "full production" is irrelevant. And even if they did, they don't need to tell us that. They were lying, end of story.

My guess is they cobbled together that unnecessary TLOU2 Remaster just to scrounge up some revenue as they will not be seeing a full game for some time.

Naughty Dog literally released 2 drawings. If you think this game was anywhere near release, I have a bridge to sell you.

I don't think the game was anywhere near release, that's the problem. The game had hit major, major issues in development and Sony decided to cut it loose instead of proceed further.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I didn't need Schreier to deduce that ND was lying about what they put into this game, I've been saying it for a while now. It's obvious that the game was a much bigger production than they let on. Whether or not they classify it as "full production" is irrelevant. And even if they did, they don't need to tell us that. They were lying, end of story.

My guess is they cobbled together that unnecessary TLOU2 Remaster just to scrounge up some revenue as they will not be seeing a full game for some time.



I don't think the game was anywhere near release, that's the problem. The game had hit major, major issues in development and Sony decided to cut it loose instead of proceed further.

You reached a conclusion with 0 relavent data. You have no idea how many employees were working on Factions 2 because we don't have access to that information.
 

yurinka

Member
Yes, we already knew that somewhere in 2019 it was branched out from being a TLOU2 MP mode to become a standalone game that got cancelled mid December 2023.

It was a AAA GaaS games, so yes, obviously hundreds of people, pretty likely over a thousand or two, were working on it. And yes, we also got confirmed that people got fired at ND and related teams (like in the San Diego PS Creative/Visual Arts team) around the time the game got cancelled.

Something that makes sense specially considering ND won't no longer make MP/GaaS games and will focus on SP only, so people in related positions like in online MP stuff, economy, progression, metrics, etc. aren't no longer needed.

This includes firing the producers and designers who in these years weren't capable of decently predict aproximatedly the costs and resources needed. It's hard to predict these things and always there's variations and delays and budget extensions, but isn't normal to reach the point of having to cancel the game when it has been 4 year in production.

Plus also they won't release their next game for a while, so people related to being close to a launch like testers won't be needed during many months or years at least in the scale they were using if the game was around a year or two from being released.
 
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SJRB

Gold Member
As it should. A project that's been in production for 4 years, worked on by hundreds of people getting canned because it sucks?

Insane amount of money lost.
 
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Toons

Member
Damn Neil hurt some people really bad. The constant whining about him. Let it go. Funnily enough he seems to go from success to success too.

Personally i would like some more Uncharted. Love TLOU but the summer adventure feeling that Uncharted had is a nice change from all the doom and gloom of TLOU.

The level of vitriol directed at Neil over time for the crime of pretty much being good at making the games he wants to make is always surprising to see after so many years.
 

proandrad

Member
Good that heads rolled, what idiot would risk their single player most premier studio to make a a highly volatile favor of the month game genre. A type of game that is the complete opposite of what the studio is an expert in, with an extremely high miss rate in the market. Make a new studio to experiment on shit like this.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
That's just called making stuff up. Not big into that.
Four years of silence after being branched out from TLOU2, radio silence on any other projects (they announced TLOU2 six months after U4 came out), talked about how they expanded it to be much bigger than they thought it would be, then canceled out of nowhere while releasing some crappy remaster of the last game they made, no word on any other project that was in "full production" while F2 was being developed (presumably a game that would be near release now), it's pretty obvious what happened. Companies are never going to go into detail on their bombs and major failures, we figure it out later.

Like Metroid Prime 4, it's obvious that Retro went in there and started development from scratch considering the timing. We didn't need Nintendo to tell us that. Either you get it or you don't.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Oh look, Sony mismanages their studios too!

everyone chasing trends and looking like clown shoes in the process.

Maybe, Jim was pushed out the door?
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
A lot of people called this a while ago and had to endure a blizzard of defense force BS. Ryan was shown the door. Booth was fired. There were major issues in the PS productions pipeline and studio management and its still playing out. Jaffe was right the whole time. Lots of people were. It wasnt even a difficult call. This was all out in the open.

Its like all platforms, shills defend their brand no matter what and try deflect any negativity. I think its obvious that Jim was shown the door.
 
Finally some accountability. You waste fucking 4 years spending tons of money to cancel the damn project and still think everything will be OK?

I hope Neil Cuckman is on the list. Look at this shit:
-Was In development for ~4 years
-With a team in the hundreds"
-An expensive project


This is fucking insane. Team of hundred, expensive project and you still cancel. This guy fucking deserve to be fired.

Because of one fuck up you expect Sony to get rid of Neil? After delivering all the UC and TLOU games. Sony would have to be insane to go that far over this one mistake.
 

yurinka

Member
People really think Jimbo retired ? ...
Yes. There was absolutely no reason to fire him, it would have been plainly retarded and nonsensical.

Despite challenges like covid, chips shortage, Switch performing great etc. in his 5 years generated more profits than in the entire previous SIE history, and also generated this generation in 3.5 years (so around half of the generation) almost -will achieve it in a few months- more revenue than in any previous generation.

And this is because basically all SIE business areas, both recent ones and classic ones, are in all time highs and in a multi year growth trend. They

And well, if fired he wouldn't have been there in his position for over half a year and wouldn't have made the goodbye parties. Nothing leads to think he was fired and there was no -at least known- reason to fire him.

Is this first time happening at Sony??
No, games have been cancelled all the time since the 70s in all companies, and that includes Sony (in their case they started to make games in the '80s). But the development time and manpower needed to make AAA games increases every generation.
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Yes. There was absolutely no reason to fire him, it would have been plainly retarded and nonsensical.

Despite challenges like covid, chips shortage, Switch performing great etc. in his 5 years generated more profits than in the entire previous SIE history, and also generated this generation in 3.5 years (so around half of the generation) almost -will achieve it in a few months- more revenue than in any previous generation.

And this is because basically all SIE business areas, both recent ones and classic ones, are in all time highs and in a multi year growth trend. They

And well, if fired he wouldn't have been there in his position for over half a year and wouldn't have made the goodbye parties. Nothing leads to think he was fired and there was no -at least known- reason to fire him.

What did he contribute to any of that? Covid made demand go to insane levels across the board. We don't know how much he actually contributed. Anyone could have potentially rode that wave. We have no way of knowing whats going on behind the scenes. Sony were coming off their most successful console since the PS2.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
I don’t care what anyone says, Returnal and GT7 can’t change the fact that this has been a disaster generation for Sony’s in-house studios and the future is bleak. Heads should be rolling, and no, Cuckmann should not be spared simply because he uses L’Oréal shampoo and allows other people to make love to his wife whilst he watches.
 
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