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Monday, February 07, 2005 

Sammy trims and turns focus to dev

[premature sidebar]I am not sure if anyone noticed, but 1up has contracted Christian Nutt for a good portion of the news at Ziff's 1up.com. Imho, this means check his news before anything else!
[sub-premature sidebar]When I was searching for C's Rotten Tomatoes link in my Firefox browser, the radest result was returned:


text reads: "Could not find a result for 'Christian Nutt'. Did you mean Christianity? Christian Church?"
(please keep in mind I still attend church so this is not to offend anyone)
[/sub-premature sidebar][/premature sidebar]

"Sammy Studios, located in Carlsbad, CA, has recently let go of much of its sales and marketing staff in a transition from a publisher to a pure development house. Sammy released a statement on the reduction in forces, which reads:

'Earlier this week Sammy Studios reduced its sales and marketing staff as part of an effort to put the company's focus squarely on game development. It is difficult having to release some of the very same people we hand-selected to join the company. Yet our development capabilities and our creative and technical talent are intact, and we are confident that we will emerge from this transition as a top game studio.'"
[via: 1UP.COM]

1:18 AM |

k4c(me) agrees with Sammy Studios' decision.
Dont let sales and marketing get you kicked out of a job for some "oh we can do it before the schools holidays" decisions. Instead, Kick sales and marketing out first!!! Get the R&D job done right.
BTW... I never found a definition for
"Hand-selected". Which to me says something!!!!

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous | 8:22 AM, February 07, 2005   

'Tis the season for corporate cutbacks. R&D can only take you so far. You have to be able to market it correctly in order to make money. You could have the best thing since sliced bread on your desk. But if you can't market it correctly and to the right audience...it may not become the thing everyone needs.

That's looking at it from the business aspect though, which is skewed with making money instead of delivering the right product.

Posted by Blogger burticvs | 9:46 AM, February 07, 2005   

They do have the Sega name now to release games under, and that usually works, right?

Posted by Blogger Robert, the DCD | 11:28 AM, February 07, 2005   

I definately agree with you burt.
The following is not relating to Sammy Studios
It seems that Sales and Marketing is sometimes branching so far away from reality with promises, and over positivity (blindly walking past obvious problems) and company cash falling out their very own pants (sometimes to an extent and cannot find believable) to showcase a possible product with a delivery date already stamped on it.
Then we all float softly down from the marketing cloud and back to reality.
Quality and maturity will rid the fine cruel scrutiny cast upon a new product, be it first carefully marketed of course. A rushed product would otherwise be crushed through media's first reviews if it is in the slightest way disfunctional, buggy, lacks imagination, lacks creativity and in the end quality... (play it once and ebay it and everyone knows its chod)
It seems there is some sort of fine line between the two parties R&D and S&M. Good communications and understanding between them will make it work. Then you just need the brains behind them and of course an idea.
I have now been in 2 sucessful and two unsucessful products due to these very reasons.
Just thought I would get that off my chest.
K

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous | 11:36 AM, February 07, 2005   

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