Today, Sony formally announced the acquisition of Housemarque, the Finnish game development studio that has been a close partner since the PlayStation 3 era with the likes of Super Stardust HD and Dead Nation.
PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst and Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen were also interviewed by GQ. When the interviewer asked Hulst whether the many studio acquisitions witnessed recently by large publishers (such as Microsoft's $7.5 billion deal to get Zenimax/Bethesda, for example) were turning into an 'arms race' of sorts, he said that was not the case at all for Sony.
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.
Obviously, this is not something you do overnight. Ilari and my team have been working on this for quite a while, but we obviously didn't want to distract the core group at Housemarque that’s been working to get this amazing title out.
Returnal was Housemarque's first foray in the triple-A sector, and it was a very successful one. CEO Ilari Kuittinen said Housemarque isn't going 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.
Are you excited to see what's coming next from Housemarque? Let us know below.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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