Sony’s acquisition of The Persistence developer Firesprite this week certainly came as a surprise, but perhaps the even bigger shocker is the sheer scale of the team: totalling 250 employees, it’s actually larger in headcount than the platform holder’s two other UK-based first-party studios, Media Molecule and London Studio, combined.
Word is that the Liverpool-based team has a number of different projects in the pipeline: we’d heard on the grapevine that it was beavering away on a virtual reality version of Horizon, but it also apparently has a multiplayer game and a “dark narrative blockbuster” in production. With such a colossal team size, expect this new studio to be quite productive.
Hermen Hulst, boss of PlayStation Studios, has already hinted that Firesprite’s output will be “quite different from the teams that you are familiar with” at Sony, so that’s certainly intrigued us. Clearly, the Japanese giant was already collaborating with the studio before deciding to acquire it entirely. That means we could, potentially, see something announced during today’s PlayStation Showcase.
Either way, we had no idea Firesprite had ballooned to such an enormous size; to put its workforce into perspective, Guerrilla Games – one of the biggest developers in Europe – currently hosts around 350 to 400 employees, so it’s not a million miles off. It’s going to be fascinating to see what the team has in store for us.
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 27
Media molecules is at like 50+ Employees and Sony London is at like 100+ Employees.
It's around the same size as Insomniac or Santa Monica.
@4kgk2 yeah afaIk MM has ~85 employees
I have no experience with anything this team has done before so it's difficult to get too excited. I wish them luck though and hopefully their first Playstation published game puts them on the map.
Thought this team was for VR games?
I was wondering how this came to be, I thought they just made The Persistance but no. They're making the PvP skirmish mode for Star Citizen, made Playroom and the VR version and another game or two. Had no idea.
@RavenWolfe81 Some devs on the team have a very long history with Sony, having worked at Psygnosis / Studio Liverpool before it was shut down.
I was hoping Sony would have scooped up Sumo Digital since they do such great work with the Sackboy games.
@TheCollector316 Tencent acquired Sumo Group in July.
Got to love the games industry. The biggest teams in EU development are 250-400 people. Yet the credits go on for 35 minutes with thousands of names from 3 dozen companies on 6 continents.
@TheCollector316 Even before Tencent bought them Sumo Digital are pretty huge in terms of staff numbers with a lot of projects on the go, so it was probably not ideal for Sony to buy a studio that was deep into developing so many projects.
New Wipeout hopefully.
They have to be working on something big if I were to guess. By the way, did anyone else notice the PlayStation Studios intro in the new Death Stranding trailer? Could Kojima Productions be with Sony now?
I can't get excited by the term 'Dark narrative' - shudders. Are we back in the mid-2000's? When they throw out the term 'gritty realism' or 'dystopian future' i'll be very concerned!
In seriousness though, good luck to them. I'm sure they will be a great addition to Sony's growing stable of development studios
@mrtennis1990 Afraid not. Sony have previously said the splash screen will be used for certain exclusive titles by second and third party studios - which will be assessed on a case by case basis. Given playstation studios were heavily involved in supporting the development of Death Stranding (given Guerrilla loaned the Decima engine), i think its just highlighting this as an exclusive title.
All rumours point to Kojima's next game being a cloud based exclusive for Xbox
@nessisonett I know. It made me sad.
@NEStalgia Most major studios outsource heavily to other studios. For example, Naughty Dog only has around 500 employees, but about 2,000 people worked on The Last of Us II.
@Rob_230 ah that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
Sony buys Psygnosis, eventually renames them Studio Liverpool, eventually shuts them down, then the former employees make a new Studio, and Sony eventually buys them.
I guess they realised shutting the Studio down back in the day was a mistake. Funny how things turn out.
I want scifi first person shooter from this studio, it will be cool if it's like disruptor on psone 😃
@Rob_230 Dark narrative can be like bioshock 1 & 2 story though, and system shock 1 & 2 is a dystopian future story. I'm okay with it as long as it's not gritty realism, lol.
@Orpheus79V The narrative could easily be:
Shaun Leyden and Shu shut down studio, Herman and Jim bring them back.
Doesn’t fit the current narrative though eh
I like the UK Studios UK Studios and Japan Studios are PlayStation for me(hmm, poor Japan Studios tho)
@Carl-G
Well rumor is that former Japan studio was lazy and didnt work really well.
Sony tried to change that but didnt work out.
So shutting down that studio and rumor is they started a new Japan studio in 2020 before closing former Japan studio.
Firesprite have been on a hiring spree getting talent from studios like Naughty Dog, Rockstar, Rocksteady, and Ubisoft. I expect high-quality games to come from this studio.
@ChrisDeku True. Some people need to cool off a bit. Jim and Herman are basically the Anti-Christs of PlayStation apparently to some. Not everything they've done has been great, but the same could be said of all the previous management.
I wonder how these people felt in 2007.
@Orpheus79V in 2007 we were happy as we still had Evolution, Studio Liverpool and Japan Studio!
Regardless of whoever has been in charge, PS has made some poor decisions over the last 10 years and now we're missing some iconic PS titles. Hopefully some of the Firesprite team will remember the original PS1 WipeOut and try and recreate the feel of that old racer? Soundtrack wouldn't go amiss either!
@Voltan Oh I loved Colony Wars, it's good to know Psygnosis people are still creating.
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