Capcom's Studio 8 Shut Down?

[fitbabits]

GameSpot (http://www.gamespot.com) has the details (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2006/03/22/news_6146430.html?part=rss&tag=gs_&subj=6146430).

Former employee says publisher has closed American development house responsible for Maximo series, Final Fight: Streetwise.

A former Capcom employee told GameSpot today that the publisher has closed its US development house Capcom Studio 8, laying off around 20 people in the process.

The studio had recently finished work on Final Fight: Streetwise and "was trying to figure out what to work on next" when the news came, according to GameSpot's source. While Streetwise was critically lambasted upon release, the source said there were no overt indications that the employees' jobs and the studio itself were in jeopardy, "aside from a general, vague feeling of 'things are going poorly.'"

Prior to taking on Streetwise, the studio handled the development of two better-reviewed efforts, the 2002 PlayStation 2 action title Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and its 2004 sequel, Maximo vs. Army of Zin. It seems gamers holding out hope for a third entry in that series can stop carrying the torch. When asked if the layoffs meant the Maximo series was dead and gone, the source said, "Seems like that was already true and is just true moreso now."
In the words of Queen, "Another One Bites the Dust."

[Phhhh]

Streetwise was so much fun at E3 for about 15 minutes. I guess thats how the whole game turned out. :/ I had high hopes.

[Jengaaa]

Wow... Harsh.

[Sensei-X]

Sucks for the people who worked there, and with a crappy game portfolio like that they'll be lucky to get a job at Burger King.

[TalkingOctopus]

Am I the only one who liked Maximo?

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

Capcom Japan was just TERRIBLE at dealing with North American studios. I seriously doubt the way FF turned out was a result (soley) on Studio 8

[Gamefreaks]

Maximo was great...just dammed hard :/

[danhoo]

Maximo was excellent. One of my favorite platformers on the PS2, which is just overflowing with platformers.

[EternalGamer]

Both Maximo games were fantastic. Very high production values and a lot of fun. They got killed because they didn't have huge marketing campaigns and the lame insta-scoring game rankings killed them with EGM and the like complaining about the second game for some inane detail.

A lot of the time I think there is so much time pressure that, rather than exploring a game and really seeing what it has to offer, they search for that one thing they can complain about or praise in a game so they have just enough to feel "justified" in whatever score they decide to give it. I know this impulse because I have it when I am attempting to grade a huge stack of papers in a small period of time. Your brain tends to try to focus on one thing to justify an extreme of some sort, because that's much quicker and less time consuming that a fully developed, sophisticated response. It's an impulse I try my best to avoid.

Dan

[Parias]

Capcom Japan was just TERRIBLE at dealing with North American studios. I seriously doubt the way FF turned out was a result (soley) on Studio 8

This statement is very true, I'm sad to say. Just look at how Steel Battalion: Line of Contact turned out for a very painful example of how Capcom Japan and it's North American divisions utterly failed at getting along - and in turn burned thousands of gamers who spent more than $200 on the broken game's crazy controller bundle assembly to play online.

[YoungAlCapone]

Thats bad news, the Maximo games were great.

[AniAko]

:( Capcom is da juice..... I love that company. My dream as a kid was to work for their coin-op division and work on "StreetFighter alpha 7: We're still the best fighting series ever" It's sad to see it come to this.

[emperordahc]

LOVED Maximo! Loved loved loved!