Sony Acquires Firesprite Studios

[Gizmo_Duck]

After a number of years closely collaborating on several games together, including The Playroom (PS4) and The Playroom VR (PS VR), I couldn't be more delighted to welcome Firesprite to the PlayStation Studios family as our 14th studio! Quite a few members of Firesprite come from SIE's Studio Liverpool and we're thrilled to welcome them back.

Today is an incredibly exciting day for Firesprite as we join PlayStation Studios with the backing of Hermen and the entire PlayStation Family. We are very much looking forward to the next part of our journey!

Firesprite, headquartered in Liverpool in the North-West of the UK, was founded in 2012 with the vision of creating games that bring new innovations to any experience we develop. The North-West is steeped in gaming history, producing many iconic developers, publishers and games such as WipEout. Many of our 'Sprites developed and shaped titles from this era and we are very proud of those roots!

We've had the pleasure of working with many talented developers and publishers across the industry and PlayStation in particular has been a friend and co-development partner for the best part of a decade, collaborating together on many exciting projects including The PlayRoom, Run Sackboy! Run and The PlayRoom VR.

PlayStation also gave us the opportunity to create our own IP, The Persistence, and we were given the creative freedom to explore, innovate, and release a survival horror game we are immensely proud of. Now, as a first party studio, we know we have the full support of PlayStation in furthering our heritage of combining creativity and technical innovation to offer some truly unique experiences for PlayStation fans.

I firstly want to thank PlayStation and their community for the warm welcome into a family of incredible creators. I'd also like to thank all of our 'Sprites, past and present, who have helped shape the Firesprite we see today. I'm proud of the talent we have at Firesprite and you'll continue to hear and see more from us all very soon!

We can't wait to show you what we have been working on……we're just getting started

!

– Graeme Ankers, MD of Firesprite

We will probably hear about their new game tomorrow

#organicgrowth

 

[Rekkapryde]

VR shyt.

 

[Flykid567]

Almost 300 developers I hope Sony lets them work on a big project

 

[-DMP-]

So, today I learned that Firesprite != Fire walk studios.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

So, today I learned that Firesprite != Fire walk studios.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Prior to the acquisition, Firesprite had been recruiting for two titles: a 'game-changing huge multiplayer shooter and an ambitious dark narrative blockbuster adventure'. Ankers and Hulst couldn't talk about the productions the company is working on, outside of the fact that they will be in genres outside of PlayStation Studios' core offerings.

They’re already a two game studio

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

I do think this is interesting as this was a former sony studio that closed down and were reacquired with a much larger staff. It seems their “AAA story driven Dark single player game” is being lead by the lead designer of The Last of Us Part 2

We are looking for a Principal Animation Programmer to join our character strike team on a dark, story-driven next generation 'Narrative Adventure' with genre defining goals.

This huge, highly ambitious partnership project takes atmosphere, storytelling, player agency and narrative firmly into ground-breaking territory on next- generation hardware technologies.

 

[-DMP-]

Liverpool closed down 9 years ago. Plenty of time to regroup and find a niche.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Liverpool closed down 9 years ago. Plenty of time to regroup and find a niche.

Hulst and Ryan are putting the entire UK on this generation. Thats there like 3rd UK studio this year

I’m liking Sonys strategy of buying these studios and kind of giving them the resources to turn them into power houses. We gotta remember all Sony’s top studios had very small beginnings, even up until last gen. No one ever would have thought Insomniac would be the most profitable studio sony had.

 

[Diondon]

Kinda excited about next gen VR TBH

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Kinda excited about next gen VR TBH

Yeah, sony is feeding their VR Beast. I hope some of these games really are being dual developed though, like they said. Resident Evil 7 should be the standard for VR

 

[iceberg_is_on_fire]

Hulst and Ryan are putting the entire UK on this generation. Thats there like 3rd UK studio this year

I’m liking Sonys strategy of buying these studios and kind of giving them the resources to turn them into power houses. We gotta remember all Sony’s top studios had very small beginnings, even up until last gen. No one ever would have thought Insomniac would be the most profitable studio sony had.

That's easy when you make a good Spiderman as it simply prints money.

In any event, this is good news. Hopefully some psvr2 stuff comes from them.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

That's easy when you make a good Spiderman as it simply prints money.

In any event, this is good news. Hopefully some psvr2 stuff comes from them.

I would argue the idea of making a really good game in general is already a monstrous task. Making a game out of licensed property is a double edged sword.

Look at avengers

 

[iceberg_is_on_fire]

I would argue the idea of making a really good game in general is already a monstrous task. Making a game out of licensed property is a double edged sword.

Look at avengers

I could be simplifying it a bit but spidey seemed to be on the easy side to get right. You don't have to worry about gunplay as he doesn’t use guns. So, combat is just having a combo system for fighting. The biggest barrier to a licensed IP is can you 'feel' like the hero. Can we swing through NYC and it feel right? Once they nailed that, everything else was gravy. It's why Superman is hard. His powers break a game. It's why Batman works. He has limitations too.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

I could be simplifying it a bit but spidey seemed to be on the easy side to get right. You don't have to worry about gunplay as he doesn’t use guns. So, combat is just having a combo system for fighting. The biggest barrier to a licensed IP is can you 'feel' like the hero. Can we swing through NYC and it feel right? Once they nailed that, everything else was gravy. It's why Superman is hard. His powers break a game. It's why Batman works. He has limitations too.

The good (“easy”) thing about spider-man is he has a long established history with really good games, (and a lot of bad games) to build off. Still, you can’t give spider-man to any studio and expect to get arguably the best super hero game out.

Insomniac pretty much made the definitive spider-man game. kind of like Rocksteady made the definitive batman game.