While Sony has insisted they don’t want to get into an acquisition war with Microsoft, the company has quietly been amassing their own collection of new studios this year. They started with Housemarque, then added port specialist Nixxes Software, and now they’ve announced another addition to PlayStation Studios – Firesprite.
Firesprite is arguably Sony’s biggest acquisition of the year, as it’s the spiritual successor to one of Sony’s oldest studios, Psygnosis, which created series such as Wipeout, Lemmings, and Colony Wars. In the early 2000s Psygnosis was rebranded SCE Studio Liverpool, but was then was shut down in 2012. Most of the Psygnosis/Liverpool Studio bigwigs went on to found Firesprite, which has assisted with the Playroom series and created The Persistence in recent years (you can check out our interview with them about the latter here). Firesprite currently has over 250 employees, immediately making it one of Sony’s largest individual studios.
According to a GamesIndustry.biz interview with PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst, Firesprite will be focusing on new, original projects going forward…
It is just the right time for them to join us and double down on the projects that we’re doing with them. To solidify the relationship and to give them a proper seat at the table where we have formal knowledge exchange with other studios. They already have some strong ties with certain first-party studios, but I want to be clear that we want them to lead the development of several game projects, rather than helping other teams out, even though they have collaborating with us before. As Firesprite has grown and evolved, we think that this is a role that it’s now ready for, which is developing exclusive games for PlayStation Studios.
Before joining PlayStation Studios, Firesprite was actively hiring for both a “game-changing huge multiplayer shooter” and a “ambitious dark narrative blockbuster adventure.” It’s unknown if that’s what they’re still working on.
What do you think about PlayStation Studios’ latest addition? Most importantly (to me at least) — do you think there’s any chance we get a new Wipeout now?
