Kotaku Australia are reporting that the Melbourne branch of Visceral Games is to shut on Monday and the AAA game they have been working on has been cancelled.
The anonymous source has said that Patrick Soderland, vice president of EA’s Games Label, had decided the game was ‘not profitable’.
Visceral have a number of games in development including ‘The Ripper’, a downloadable title based on Jack The Ripper.
Source: Kotaku Australia
Origami Killer
Another studio bites the dust…
Tuffcub
It’s not all of Visceral, they still exist, just the Melbourne branch
Origami Killer
I know but it’s still a studio kind of.
FalconRedux
I’m curious what the game was, and how Pat decided it was ‘not profitable’ – does that mean it was bad, or that it was niche (i.e. not an FPS or a sports game)
Smallville2106
Could have been a new IP? Shame that it is happening whatever it is.
Crazy_Del
Dante’s Inferno 2?
gazzagb
The Ripper game sounded quiet good…
Origami Killer
I believe that one is still being developed, the article doesn’t mention that the Melbourne studio was working on that, Visceral as a whole. So you can change your sentence to “sounds”
nemesisND1derboy
They’re part of Sony’s Japan studio, I doubt they’ll be going anywhere :)
bacon_nuts
Especially not after the masterpieces under their belt already..
MayContainEvil
There goes another Aussie studio. I know it’s the rise of our dollar that is causing a lot of the problems, but it makes Amazon so cheap…
DRCD1
It’s a shame.
Visceral is a great studio (I specially like 007: EoN). It’s unfortunate one of their branches has been shut down…
enroene
Another sad day.
scotty34
Indeed
Liam
AAA? Dead Space 3 canceled? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, Well I hope not at least.
The Lone Steven
Maybe if EA gave the triple AAA game a chance, it may have been profitable. Is it me or are we seeing more studios get shut down nowadays. I hope the rumour is false as i would hate to see more gaming folk lose their jobs.
OneDown
More and more nowadays it seems that bigger studios will just get bigger, and the smaller ones, well, you see…
Whats mainly sad is that a lot of innovative stuff comes from the smaller studios.