Horizon Call of the Mountain game director has been dismissed from Firesprite and Playstation

[Yurinka]

He started in Firesprite as one of the game designers of The Persistence and two unreleased games.

He started as Lead Game Designer in Horizon CoM and later became game director. Later became director of an unannouunced game.

He as been less than 7 years in the studio. Before joining Firesprite he was in an indie studio making a game and in other non-gaming places doing other stuff (animation, graphic design, CM/CS).

What's with sony buying companies and then their head dudes leaving

Every year many people leaves or gets fired from companies, owned by Sony or not. These companies also hire many people every year.

Meanwhile....

SONY CORP TO SONY PICTURES: Here, take this $10 billion and buy Paramount!

Paramount still is with exclusive talks with Skydance and seems things are progressing well to see a merge between them.

Sony aren't going to acquire Paramount, they just supposedly shown interest to start talks for a potential acquisition in a joint venture with an external investor in case that didn't happen.

And well, Paramount should be valued in way more $10B, they make $30B/year in revenue and $10B/year in operating profit, plus have a shit ton of assets like IPs, tv channels or services.

Regarading the money, Sony was going to spend $10B on acquiring the Indian giant Zee but the deal failed, so they could pay part of the Paramount acquisition (which I assume later would be split between Sony Pictures and Sony Music) with that money.

So interesting that this is your mentality.

He wasn't made redundant because Sony is broke, he was made redundant because Firesprite isn't a great studio and a project was probably canceled in which he was set to direct or play a part in. That project wasn't cancelled because Sony was broke, but rather that Sony didn't believe in the project as part of their portfolio.

I don't know in which alternate reality do you live, but the broke Sony doesn't exist in this one.

Their finantials are better than ever:

They simply want to improve their profitability mostly to compensate the unexpected cost increases for manufacturing hardware and also costs related to past acquisitions they are still paying.

And well, to cut the fat after half a decade of several acquisitions and hiring a shit ton of people, a period where they may have multiplied their manpower by 3 or 4.

So they canned a few projects -the less promising ones- and fired a tiny percentage -around 9%- of their workers (the less productive/promising ones). That guy got unlucky and he didn't pass the cut.

That's all, no drama involved.

 

[Gamernyc78]

He started in Firesprite as one of the game designers of The Persistence and two unreleased games.

He started as Lead Game Designer in Horizon CoM and later became game director. Later became director of an unannouunced game.

He as been less than 7 years in the studio. Before joining Firesprite he was in an indie studio making a game and in other non-gaming places doing other stuff (animation, graphic design, CM/CS).


Every year many people leaves or gets fired from companies, owned by Sony or not. These companies also hire many people every year.


Paramount still is with exclusive talks with Skydance and seems things are progressing well to see a merge between them.

Sony aren't going to acquire Paramount, they just supposedly shown interest to start talks for a potential acquisition in a joint venture with an external investor in case that didn't happen.

And well, Paramount should be valued in way more $10B, they make $30B/year in revenue and $10B/year in operating profit, plus have a shit ton of assets like IPs, tv channels or services.

Regarading the money, Sony was going to spend $10B on acquiring the Indian giant Zee but the deal failed, so they could pay part of the Paramount acquisition (which I assume later would be split between Sony Pictures and Sony Music) with that money.


I don't know in which alternate reality do you live, but the broke Sony doesn't exist in this one. Their finantials are better than ever:

They simply want to improve their profitability to compensate the cost growth for manufacturing hardware and costs related to past acquisitions they are still paying.

And well, to cut the fat after half a decade of several acquisitions and hiring a shit ton of people, a period where they may have multiplied their manpower by 3 or 4.

So they canned a few projects -the less promising ones- and fired a tiny percentage -around 9%- of their workers (the less productive/promising ones). That guy got unlucky and he didn't pass the cut.

That's all, no drama involved.

 

[voke]

Ngl, this studio doesn't seem to have the chops.

 

[mibu no ookami]

He started in Firesprite as one of the game designers of The Persistence and two unreleased games.

He started as Lead Game Designer in Horizon CoM and later became game director. Later became director of an unannouunced game.

He as been less than 7 years in the studio. Before joining Firesprite he was in an indie studio making a game and in other non-gaming places doing other stuff (animation, graphic design, CM/CS).


Every year many people leaves or gets fired from companies, owned by Sony or not. These companies also hire many people every year.


Paramount still is with exclusive talks with Skydance and seems things are progressing well to see a merge between them.

Sony aren't going to acquire Paramount, they just supposedly shown interest to start talks for a potential acquisition in a joint venture with an external investor in case that didn't happen.

And well, Paramount should be valued in way more $10B, they make $30B/year in revenue and $10B/year in operating profit, plus have a shit ton of assets like IPs, tv channels or services.

Regarading the money, Sony was going to spend $10B on acquiring the Indian giant Zee but the deal failed, so they could pay part of the Paramount acquisition (which I assume later would be split between Sony Pictures and Sony Music) with that money.


I don't know in which alternate reality do you live, but the broke Sony doesn't exist in this one.

Their finantials are better than ever:

They simply want to improve their profitability mostly to compensate the unexpected cost increases for manufacturing hardware and also costs related to past acquisitions they are still paying.

And well, to cut the fat after half a decade of several acquisitions and hiring a shit ton of people, a period where they may have multiplied their manpower by 3 or 4.

So they canned a few projects -the less promising ones- and fired a tiny percentage -around 9%- of their workers (the less productive/promising ones). That guy got unlucky and he didn't pass the cut.

That's all, no drama involved.

Unless extended the exclusive dealing with Skydance ends on Friday. If that happens, it's fair game for anyone and if Sony is aggressive and interested, they'll beat Skydance's offer pretty easily.

Paramount isn't valued at 10 billion.

They have a 9 billion dollar market cap and a TON of debt. 15 billion of it.

Apollo initially bid 11 billion dollars for just the movie studio, they then bid 26 billion dollars for Paramount Global.

If Paramount and Skydance close by Friday without allowing other bidders in, they'll almost certainly be sued by shareholders for fiduciary negligence. These shareholders don't have voting stock, but Paramount has a fiduciary responsibility to get them the best deal they can for their shares and that's probably going to be Sony-Apollo.

 

[Dr Bass]

Honestly, doesnt seem to be anything worthwhile, it's not uncommon for directors to leaver after a big ass project

Sounds like he was fired, not that he left.

Also he said the last few months have been tough, which point to some potential internal problems. It really doesn't seem like things are all rosy for Sony right now.

Or maybe they just thought he wasn't good enough. Who knows.

 

[ethomaz]

It didn't fail, it was the lack of demand for PSVR2 and the high price

It goal was to create PSVR2 demand…

People buy hardware because the games… not the opposite… nobody buys a game because a hardware.

 

[mibu no ookami]

Also he said the last few months have been tough, which point to some potential internal problems. It really doesn't seem like things are all rosy for Sony right now.

Firesprite was hit with major layoffs in the last couple of months when Sony announced layoffs across PlayStation. I'm sure that's what he was referring to.

According to LinkedIn Firesprite is down 14% in the last 6 months and I think they were down before these layoffs were even announced. Almost certainly had a major project cancelled, I think probably Twisted Metal, which word on the street wasn't greenlit, but that also doesn't exactly jive with what we've heard about the game or sound likely give the tv show.

The rumor was that lucid was working on it and then lost it to firesprite, with Matt Southern leaving lucid and coming to Firesprite around the same time. It looks like he is still there at least for now and I wonder if he'll be working on a racing game.

He was the studio director for a lot of the Evolution games racing games. And if he isn't working on Twisted Metal, I wonder if Sony would really have any interest in a more arcade style racing game at this point. The market is flooded with options.

 

[Yurinka]

Unless extended the exclusive dealing with Skydance ends on Friday. If that happens, it's fair game for anyone and if Sony is aggressive and interested, they'll beat Skydance's offer pretty easily.

I'd assume pretty likely they'll extend the talks before that period. What I'm not sure if they also extend the exclusivity and if other ones Sony in any case would wait until negotiation with them ends.

Rumors says that negotiations were wild: seems that the majority stackholder of Parmount just kicked out the Paramount CEO because he didn't agree with merging to Skydance, and the minority stakeholders weren't happy with the majority stakeholder because unlike him they weren't going to be paid a nice premium.

So who knows. And well, who knows what are Sony's plans. Maybe Sony goes there and say "hey, merge yourself and later I'll buy the merged entity".

Paramount isn't valued at 10 billion.

They have a 9 billion dollar market cap and a TON of debt. 15 billion of it.

Market cap is not the valuation price of a company, and even less the price to pay for it on a an acquisition. Regarding the debt, the Skydance owner would pay it as part of the merge payment.

Apollo initially bid 11 billion dollars for just the movie studio, they then bid 26 billion dollars for Paramount Global.

If Paramount and Skydance close by Friday without allowing other bidders in, they'll almost certainly be sued by shareholders for fiduciary negligence. These shareholders don't have voting stock, but Paramount has a fiduciary responsibility to get them the best deal they can for their shares and that's probably going to be Sony-Apollo.

26B + 15B to pay the debt ($41B) would make more sense, it's a more reasonable price.

They make $30B in revenue and $10B of gross profit, but they have some operating costs that eat them. Sony could heavily reduce a huge portion of these costs because a huge portion of the things they do are already done inside Sony, highly improving their profitability, plus also could shut down many unfrofitable stuff they may have like tv channels or services, moving their content to other Sony/Paramount stuff.

 

[Yurinka]

Also he said the last few months have been tough, which point to some potential internal problems. It really doesn't seem like things are all rosy for Sony right now.

Or maybe they just thought he wasn't good enough. Who knows.

Firesprite was hit with major layoffs in the last couple of months when Sony announced layoffs across PlayStation. I'm sure that's what he was referring to.

Yes, apparently he did talk about the layoffs period at Sony, or the industry in general.

According to LinkedIn Firesprite is down 14% in the last 6 months and I think they were down before these layoffs were even announced. Almost certainly had a major project cancelled, I think probably Twisted Metal, which word on the street wasn't greenlit, but that also doesn't exactly jive with what we've heard about the game or sound likely give the tv show.

The rumor was that lucid was working on it and then lost it to firesprite, with Matt Southern leaving lucid and coming to Firesprite around the same time. It looks like he is still there at least for now and I wonder if he'll be working on a racing game.

The "Twisted Metal game was under development at Lucid and was moved to Firesprite" rumor from years ago doesn't match with the Schreier comment of Twisted Metal being cancelled before it was greenlighted.

The most likely think is that the rumor regarding Lucid was fake, and Twisted Metal wasn't any of the two games Firesprite had under development. Maybe they were starting a 3rd team, prototyping a Twisted Metal, but didn't work out, cancelled it and fired the people working on it. plus some underperforming people from the other projects.

He was the studio director for a lot of the Evolution games racing games.

No, he never worked in Evolution. His only two games are Horizon CoM (where he started as Lead Game Designer and ended as Director) and The Persistence (where he was one of the game designers).

And if he isn't working on Twisted Metal, I wonder if Sony would really have any interest in a more arcade style racing game at this point. The market is flooded with options.

 

[anonpuffs]

I'd assume pretty likely they'll extend the talks before that period. What I'm not sure if they also extend the exclusivity and if other ones Sony in any case would wait until negotiation with them ends.

Rumors says that negotiations were wild: seems that the majority stackholder of Parmount just kicked out the Paramount CEO because he didn't agree with merging to Skydance, and the minority stakeholders weren't happy with the majority stakeholder because unlike him they weren't going to be paid a nice premium.

So who knows. And well, who knows what are Sony's plans. Maybe Sony goes there and say "hey, merge yourself and later I'll buy the merged entity".


Market cap is not the valuation price of a company, and even less the price to pay for it on a an acquisition. Regarding the debt, the Skydance owner would pay it as part of the merge payment.


26B + 15B to pay the debt ($31B) would make more sense, it's a more reasonable price.

They make $30B in revenue and $10B of gross profit, but they have some operating costs that eat them. Sony could heavily reduce a huge portion of these costs because a huge portion of the things they do are already done inside Sony, highly improving their profitability, plus also could shut down many unfrofitable stuff they may have like tv channels or services, moving their content to other Sony/Paramount stuff.

26+15 is 41 btw

 

[Yurinka]

26+15 is 41 btw

lol, true xD

 

[Danja]

It goal was to create PSVR2 demand…

People buy hardware because the games… not the opposite… nobody buys a game because a hardware.

Horizon alone isn't strong enough to make people buy a $550 accessory. The price simply killed this thing

 

[mibu no ookami]

Yes, apparently he did talk about the layoffs period at Sony, or the industry in general.


The "Twisted Metal game was under development at Lucid and was moved to Firesprite" rumor from years ago doesn't match with the Schreier comment of Twisted Metal being cancelled before it was greenlighted.

The most likely think is that the rumor regarding Lucid was fake, and Twisted Metal wasn't any of the two games Firesprite had under development. Maybe they were starting a 3rd team, prototyping a Twisted Metal, but didn't work out, cancelled it and fired the people working on it. plus some underperforming people from the other projects.


No, he never worked in Evolution. His only two games are Horizon CoM (where he started as Lead Game Designer and ended as Director) and The Persistence (where he was one of the game designers).

You really need to do a better job about reading what people say. I mentioned myself that rumors and that's still what they are even if Schrier is the one reporting that the game wasn't greenlit.

Check his LinkedIn, it specifically says he directed games that were developed by Evolution games. I didn't say he worked for evolution games.

 

[mibu no ookami]

I'd assume pretty likely they'll extend the talks before that period. What I'm not sure if they also extend the exclusivity and if other ones Sony in any case would wait until negotiation with them ends.

Rumors says that negotiations were wild: seems that the majority stackholder of Parmount just kicked out the Paramount CEO because he didn't agree with merging to Skydance, and the minority stakeholders weren't happy with the majority stakeholder because unlike him they weren't going to be paid a nice premium.

So who knows. And well, who knows what are Sony's plans. Maybe Sony goes there and say "hey, merge yourself and later I'll buy the merged entity".


Market cap is not the valuation price of a company, and even less the price to pay for it on a an acquisition. Regarding the debt, the Skydance owner would pay it as part of the merge payment.


26B + 15B to pay the debt ($41B) would make more sense, it's a more reasonable price.

They make $30B in revenue and $10B of gross profit, but they have some operating costs that eat them. Sony could heavily reduce a huge portion of these costs because a huge portion of the things they do are already done inside Sony, highly improving their profitability, plus also could shut down many unfrofitable stuff they may have like tv channels or services, moving their content to other Sony/Paramount stuff.

Again dude, you need to read what people actually write and respond to what they write as opposed to going on a tangent about what they didn't say.

I didn't say market cap was valuation. I specifically said they weren't valued at 10 billion, but their market cap was 9 and their debt was 15, which is why the offers are in the 20s. No one is offering 41 B for Paramount any deal is going to take debt into consideration.

Everyone understands why Sony would want them. It's obvious that they could streamline their operations and they would immediately get access to Paramount+ and in theory could push all of their content directly to Paramount+ rather than shop it or they could do both.

 

[Box]

I hope they do just annoy people at this point.

When their stock comes crashing down even more, we will have the last laugh.

Hopefully someone more competent buys the PlayStation brand off them like Apple

 

[Box]

Everyone understands why Sony would want them. It's obvious that they could streamline their operations and they would immediately get access to Paramount+ and in theory could push all of their content directly to Paramount+ rather than shop it or they could do both.

They would also inherit the mountain of debt from Paramount

 

[ethomaz]

Horizon alone isn't strong enough to make people buy a $550 accessory. The price simply killed this thing

Maybe different opinions here…

But what is killing PSVR2 is lack of games.
And to be fair the lack of killer VR games.

PSVR2 doesn’t have any mist to have game… neither from Sony or 3rd-parties… Sony attempt with Horizon failed to be that and platforms needs killers games.

 

[Vertigo]

Quietly shitcanning VR.

Easily Sony’s biggest blunder of the gen.

 

[Yurinka]

Horizon alone isn't strong enough to make people buy a $550 accessory.

But what is killing PSVR2 is lack of games.

Here you have 273 PSV2 games, it's not that Horizon is the only one. It had the biggest launch year catalog of any VR device.

The device is expensive for the maintream but well, Sony didn't expect that was going to be mainstream, they only expected to outperform PSVR1, something that is doing in the only official numbers we have.

 

[Yurinka]

You really need to do a better job about reading what people say.

Check his LinkedIn, it specifically says he directed games that were developed by Evolution games. I didn't say he worked for evolution games.

You really need to do a better job about reading what people say.

In this thread we're talking about Alex Barnes, who recently left Firesprite. I did check his Linkedin before posting in this thread and as I told several times in this thread he never worked at Evolution.

You also mentioned Matt Southern, who is creative director since January 2023 at Firesprite (before that he was game director, as was before at Lucid). And previously yes, he was the studio director of Evolution for Driveclub or Motorstorm RC, and director of MotorStorm Apocalypse, and also had other high level roles such as producer or product manager for other titles.

This one yes, he did work there.

Again dude, you need to read what people actually write and respond to what they write as opposed to going on a tangent about what they didn't say.

I didn't say market cap was valuation. I specifically said they weren't valued at 10 billion, but their market cap was 9 and their debt was 15, which is why the offers are in the 20s.

I did read perfectly what you said, said that this wasn't their valuation and then added the other as if it would indicative of their valuation, when isn't the case.

No one is offering 41 B for Paramount any deal is going to take debt into consideration.

The payment for acquisition/merge is one thing, and the payment to cancel the debt is another thing. But obviously whoever gets Paramount will have to pay both.

Apollo Global did offer $26B for the acquisition last month before partnering with Sony and got rejected. On top of these $26B for the acquisition, they'll have to pay the $15B for the debt, so the total costs of the operation would have been minimum $41B. And that would have been if they would have accepted that offer, but didn't.

If the merge with Skydance doesn't happen -seems that the top dog, with voting rights want, but the many smaller ones without voting don't-, then they'd listen for other offers, like a new one from Sony+Apollo, which shold be higher than the previous $26 one (+ $15B to pay the debt + whatever integration/retention/etc. costs that the operation will have, which won't be small).

This doesn't mean Sony would pay over $26. The payment would be split between Apollo and Sony, and pretty likely at least a good chunk of the payment would be done with Sony stocks. Regarding the debt, pretty likely Sony would pay the short/medium term one and would refinance the long term one with their banks.