The creators of some of the best PSP games and the graphically impressive The Order: 1886 have closed, as plans for a sequel are belatedly revealed.
While there’s been a lot of bad news for the games industry in general lately, in terms of console sales and developer layoffs, things are looking even worse for anyone involved in VR.
Sony abandoned the PlayStation VR2 immediately after launch and it was recently revealed that Meta has lost $50 billion, so far, in trying to make VR a thing. And even for a company as big as them there comes a time when enough is enough.
As a result, they’ve closed down developer Ready At Dawn, who were responsible for the well-received Lone Echo series of VR games and the considerably more controversial The Order: 1886.
Meta bought Ready At Dawn in 2020 but according to an internal memo obtained by Android Central the closure is in order to ‘meet the new Reality Labs [the new name for Oculus VR] budgetary ceiling rather than as a proactive cost-saving initiative.’
Staff are being ‘encouraged’ to apply for positions at other Meta but there’s no indication that the Lone Echo franchise will continue.
Last month, Meta indicated it was cutting Reality Labs’ overall budget by 20% by 2026 and closing Ready at Dawn is intended to help meet that target.
However, according to Android Central, Meta has also signalled that this isn’t part of wider cuts, so while there’s no confirmation of why Ready at Dawn alone has been singled out, it may be because the only game they’ve released since being purchased is Lone Echo 2.
Despite their more recent VR work, Ready at Dawn is still best known for their partnerships with Sony, with titles such as Daxter and the two God Of War games on PSP.
It’s 2015 PlayStation 4 exclusive The Order: 1886 for which they are most famous (or perhaps infamous) which featured highly impressive graphics but very disappointing gameplay and storytelling.
Prior to its release, it seemed as if Sony was lining Ready at Dawn up to be a major second party developer, and were perhaps even considering purchasing them, but the game’s poor reception meant the studio never made another console game again – except for little known multiformat fighting game Deformers.
According to insider Shinobi602, Ready At Dawn were planning to make a sequel to The Order before the Meta acquisition, with the intention to focus more on the gameplay.
There’s seems little chance now that the series will ever continue, although Sony does still hold the rights to it, so it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any reference to it in the upcoming Astro Bot.
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