Sony recently announced the official acquisition of the Housemarque gaming studio. The Finnish game development studio is responsible for titles like Super Stardust HD and Dead Nation.
The new deal by sony has been viewed as a recent development in the so-called Arms race which has been going strong in the market. We have seen many high-profile gaming studios buying the other development studios to increase their portfolio. Recently we saw, Microsoft’s $7.5 billion deal to get Zenimax/Bethesda, and sony is trying to stay ahead in the race.
However, when enquired about such case, Sony’s CEO has this to say:
No, not at all. We’re very selective about the developers that we bring in. Our last new acquisition before Housemarque was Insomniac [for $229 million in 2019], which has worked out very well. I’m always looking for people that have a similar set of values, similar creative ambitions, and work very well with our team that we can further invest in and help grow as creators. It’s not like we’re going around and just making random acquisitions.
They’re very, very targeted acquisitions of teams that we know well. The amount of collaboration between our external development group and Housemarque on the technical side, the production management side, and even on the creative side has been so deep. So for us, it just makes so much sense to do that.
This is not something you do overnight. Ilari and my team have been working on this for quite a while, but we didn’t want to distract the core group at Housemarque that’s been working to get this amazing title out.
The recent AAA title from Housemarque’s was Returnal, and it has been a very successful title in the gaming market. and the company’s CEO said that Housemarque will henceforth not go back to smaller games; if anything, it’ll go even bigger.
Well, at least initially, I think we’re looking into what we’ve done now and building upon it. Certainly, Returnal is kind of a stepping stone for us. When we’re thinking about the future titles, they’ll maybe be even bigger and even more ambitious.
