they are taken out because of the bad economy kid, if they would've made games on par with gta4, uncharted, resistance, or mgs4 then maybe they would have survived.

dev companies have made total flops before but they don't close because the economy was good.

Ohh well moving on, both HAZE and Lair were under mediocre games, Will that company really be missed?? I think not.

1st HAZE (Free Radical)
now Factor 5 (Lair)

hmmm anyone see something?

This is definitely a worrying trend. I would prefer to see these companies picked up by big powers like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision to stay alive, but they are probably counting the numbers too...

Look at the end of Need For Speed: EA canned it (probably because there are too many street-racers around these days and they kept making one every year).

After Too Flop being the biggest flop in gaming history, Silicon Knights should be disolved. 10 years down the drain... I seriously hope there is no "Too Human 2".

Edit:

@Foxslave:

A Too Human sequel affects me because I also own a 360 and I rather have developers make games to series that are good. Funny you say "stop trolling" when this concerns mostly PS3 and Wii fans, as Factor 5 hasn't even supported a Microsoft console. What are you even doing here?

@Clinteastwood:

"10 years development...really? So what you are telling me is that they were actively working on Too Human for 10 years straight...day in and day out. Just because they originally created the concept 10 years ago and couldn't do it on the PS2 doesn't mean it has been in development that entire time. "

I said 10 years development? Learn to read, I said "10 years down the drain". It doesn't matter how they were spent, we don't really know if they were active or not and even if they werent, we've known about this game since 10 years ago. So yeah, 10 years of concent bullsh1t and development to the drain.

GiantEnemyCrab:

"THEY SCORED BETTER THAN LAIR AND HAZE LOL"

Wow, so basically "yours flopped harder than mine" is an argument now? WOW. All sold like crap. All I'm saying is, Silicon Knights shouldn't be bailed out as they probably will be by Microsoft.

"Well said Crab.

People disgust me with their cheerleading and slamming. "

Who's slamming? Who's cheerleading? People disgust me with their false claims. All I'm saying is that if nobody is bailing out Free Radical and Factor 5, both very talented especially the former, then Silicon Knights shouldn't be bailed either. Especially after Dyack couldn't shut his big overhyping mouth.

tomfoolery

Step Closer.

I'll disolve you.

Hahahahahah this is soon to be for every other company that makes PS3 exclusives! Hahaha the only place to develop for is the 360 due to ease comfort and quality.... The PS3 is so badly designed that the only games that can be made on it are PS1 ports hahahah how sad that you people buy the PS3... if you fanboys hadnt of bought one Factor 5 would be making quality exclusives for the 360 and they would be doing very healthy business!!

But once again Sony has to go and ruin everythign!

Ha, this is the Lair's Curse! Free Radical suffered the Haze's Curse, now... Factor 5 is falling apart too!!!! The end is coming, the next is EA (noooot!).

Development time.
Staffing sizes.
Programmer knowledge.
Development kits and tools.
Middleware.
DEVELOPMENT TIME.

Many of these things are going to need to change and improve in the HD era. They are too bound by past console mentalities, and that is harming not only games in many, many cases, but it's harming the developers themselves.

This serves them right for making Lair, then crapping on the customers again with that horrible analog control patch. ;)

I loved Rogue Squadron, so WTF were they doing these last few years?

Still I remember when these guys jumped ship away from 360 saying it wasn't powerful enough, and went with PS3. I guess there regretting that move now because not only was it powerful enough, but it could of kept them afloat. These fanboy developers seem to be the ones heading into distinction, and should play smart if there's a next time.

nice 1 there cereal. M$ just closed one of the biggest names in the rts genre for there price cut. Its sad that FR had to close and now factor 5 if it continues who will be next mistwalker silicon or maybe some other developer. Well its a sad thing that its starting to hit the game industry i hope jaffe and his studio survives or does sony own em?

I disagree with Rogue Squadron 2 being a very good game for gamecube but it's certainly one of my faves on this system

Factor 5 were an extremely talented company that pushed harder on a machine's capabilities more than any other dev, but they never produced a truly amazing game in the same way that say a company like Treasure has.If purely looking at Factor5's game design philosophy you can clearly see they are not masters here

Very sad though as i enjoy playing much of their technically brilliant games.As part of the industry i never thought we would see F5 in this situation quite honestly

Either way oh well.

Second, they took a RISK on thePS3 early in it's lifehood, knowing the learning curve was steep. They tried something different with LAIR(one of the first few games to use Sony's Gimmicky SIXAXIS, and tried to give the PS3 a new Shooter to add to it's library.

All I see is PS3 fanboys pissin on factor 5.

It is what it is. High Risk no reward for Factor 5. Maybe they will make better business decisions next time around seeing some PS3 fans can act...

Maybe they should join RARE and get the old team back together...

I loved the Rogue Squadron series a lot, and I wanted a sequel. Oh well lol

isn't they the ones making White Knight Chronicles? what will happen to the game?

"Well if Haze and Lair were multiplatform or 360 exclusives, these studios wouldn't have tanked."

They seem to have magically forgotten the cardinal rule of gaming. Crappy games don't sell. A turd could be published on 12 different platforms, and will still sell bad.

Unless of course they're implying that 360 owners don't care about quality, which they obviously do.

AW MAN

I was hoping a new rogue squadron would release for me to play :(

F5 was a good company. This is scary though, and what this illustrates is the broken business model that HD development has adopted. Many smaller devs are one HD flop away from going belly up. Free radical also, another shame. Now I see why T2 was saying they "just can't ignore the Wii" all of a sudden.

I really think that the itunes model will replaced Physical copies sold in store by the time the new systems are out. I think with todays high cost development of HD games, if the Publisher and developers just cut out the middle man then they can sell less and make more to recoup their cost.
EA is already doing this by joining Steam. I don't like it because I like to have physical copies of my games but if it mean saving developers from going under I am all for it. As for gamestop, screw them as they been ripping gamers off for too long with their used games trade in values and then turn around and try to sell it at almost full price.

So much for the rumored Kid Icarus Wii...

Hopefully Nintendo scoops up the bulk of these guys and gives them jobs. They knew the GC hardware very well, so it stands to reason that they could push the Wii.

This is very sad. I hope it doesn't become a trend.

I wanted a next gen Turrican game!!!

i suppose when you look at what is costs to make a game these days, the losses are a lot heavier if the game does not sell well.

hence the companies are in bigger trouble. i feel bad for anyone who as lost there job in these times.

as for free radical, i feel sorry for the indevidtuals but not the company. i am sorry, but when you go shooting your mouth of trying to compare you game to games like halo, you better have the kill punch for sure. they said a lot of things about the game trying to compare it to the competition for no reason.

and to be honest i am not sure that the game going multiplatform would have saved it. i have always liked my shooters on the 360 and i can say this, before the game went exclusive i had no interest in it. i had seen pictures and read about it and didn't think much of it, infact i don't remember anyone hyping it. Then it went exclusive to the ps3 and suddenly it was getting all this hype.

anyway, back on lair, well i guess there is not much to say, but i hope these guys all find jobs quick.

Developing on the PS3 = Bankruptcy

Hope no one else goes down.

This is sad news. Both Free Radical and Factor 5 deserved a shot at redemption.

I don't know why they decided to become ps3 exclusive. They should of made a new rouge squadron multiplatform, then they would be sorted.

Same with Free Radical, shouldn't of made haze ps3 exclusive, should of just made TS4 multiplatform instead.

Extremely weak install base, with frustrating, non versatile architecture makes the PS3 an extremely unattractive platform to develop for. Especially when you are talking about something exclusive. The architecture, alone, makes PS3 development an expensive, super risky venture. Then factor in the case of excellent games like LBP and Resistance 2 not selling well at all despite critical acclaim you got one big mess to deal with. Labeling the current situation of the PS3 a "mess" is being extremely nice.

Let's just say for all the tears that have been shed by many PS3 fanboys, more are on the way-MANY, MANY MORE. Cheers

i just popped in my copy of rogue squadron two for game cube and blew up the death star ....
but then i looked at game it said lucas arts on it oh well either way i just blew up the death star...

games are becoming Hollywood projects now these days. their products must sell at least 1-2 million copies, or they wont make profit out of these games. Dont believe me?:

GeOW approx approx. $10 million
Halo 3 approx $30 million
Killzone 2 approx. $ 40 million
MGS4 approx. $40-60 million
GTA IV approx. $100 million

Concerning games like Lair, it was made by a small dev team, so its obvious why they are hitting the gutter. Dev teams must change their standards in order to keep up with not only next gen game development, but also with the crippled economy. that's one of the reasons why games are becoming Multi-platform BTW.

Now in terms of these two companies (Factor 5 and Free Radical) who made 2 PS3 exclusives which not only sucked, but bombed in sales, its apparent that if these games did not SUCK, it would of sold at least a million copies each. the advertising for Haze was there, more so than MGS4. So note to Developers who are making PS3 exclusives, Dont make crappy PS3 games, people did not buy a PS3 to buy games that suck. People bought a PS3 for games with not only almost CGI quality graphics, but gameplay that works and that is fun, in other words, Top Tier Quality.

Thanks a lot Sony. :(

What people don't realize is that it's a lot harder and more expensive to develop for on the ps3. Lair had a laughable amount of bugs and glitches and more than likely would not be the case if it was on the 360. Other franchises like GT, MGS4, or Killzone2 are getting a HUGE amount of manpower, development time, and $$$ and that is the only way to reach the "power" of the ps3. Smaller companies like Factor 5 just can't afford that. They made a decision to develop only for the ps3 and it was not a wise one.

that's disappointing

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau