New Studio ‘Ballistic Moon’ working with XDev on Playstation exclusive

[Remember_Spinal]

Copied from resetera:

Found a newly created studio that is making a PS5 game published by SIE (XDev). The leadership appears to come mainly from Supermassive Games. The Creative Director for example was previously a Game Director at Supermassive.

Studio is called Ballistic Moon based in Farnborough UK, and they mention they are creating a game in Unreal Engine 5 working with a "world leading publisher":

In job listings its described as "early stages" with the team only being around 35-40 at the moment however its described as a "major new project" and they do mention above they are relocating to a bigger office soon.

We're currently working with a AAA publisher in the early stages of a major new project

Game has a placeholder name of "Project Bates" and very recently began motion caption. One of the actors accidentally included SIE as the company involved giving away who the major publisher is. I blanked out the characters name to make it a little harder to find:

The motion caption director (Joshua Archer) previously worked on Until Dawn:

Joshua Archer - IMDb​

Joshua Archer, Visual Effects: Godzilla. Josh has been working in Motion and Performance Capture since 2013 and has since become one of the UK's leading Performance Capture Artists. Working on titles such as Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016), Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), Ready Player One (2018)...

www.imdb.com

Doesn't give much away what the game actually is, but I'm assuming it's a single-player narrative game similar to Until Dawn based on who is behind the game. That's a total guess though.

Ballistic Moon | Creators of adventures | An independent game studio​

We are an independent game studio based in Farnborough, UK.

www.ballisticmoon.com

 

[Satoru]

Nice, more Sony games. Probably a PS5 / PC game.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

 

[Heisenberg007]

Nice find!

Now that studios like Firesprite, HouseMarque, Bluepoint, are all first-party studios, I reckon xDev will be working with a lot of "new" studios like these. New partners and possible first-party studios for the future.

 

[ksdixon]

Skunkworks SuperMassive?
Buy them in secret right now!

 

[kyliethicc]

Interesting. Hope it’s Knack 3

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Another anticonsmuer/anti competitive move form Sony. Please someone stop this tyrant!!!!!!

 

[IntentionalPun]

Where are you getting XDev out of this?

SIE isn't synonymous with XDev is it?

SIE is just... well.. Playstation basically.

Sony diversifying a lot is cool, but I have trouble getting excited over unproven companies building games. Lots and lots of people go into making any given game, and moving companies doesn't mean a "lead" will suddenly be producing the same level of content elsewhere.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Where are you getting XDev out of this?

SIE isn't synonymous with XDev is it?

SIE is just... well.. Playstation basically.

Sony diversifying a lot is cool, but I have trouble getting excited over unproven companies building games. Lots and lots of people go into making any given game, and moving companies doesn't mean a "lead" will suddenly be producing the same level of content elsewhere.

XDev typically works on all their 3rd party published games

• Death Stranding
• Sackboy’ s Big Adventure
• Returnal
• Destruction all Stars
• Etc

 

[Yurinka]

First time I heard about Ballistic Moon. Some research about their key staff mentioned in their website:

• Neil Mc Ewan (creative director): Director of Bravo Team (Sony / Supermassive, 2018) or Syndicate (EA / Starbreeze, 2012). Producer in The House of the Dead: Overkill (Sega / Headstrong Games 2009), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or some EA F1 games.
• Chris Lamb (technology director): former Supermassive programmer who worked on Until Dawn, Until Dawn Rush of Blood and Bravo Team.
• Joshua Archer (Motion capture director): in theory worked in the same position for Until Dawn but I didn't find him listed the gam credits.
• Duncan Kershaw (Production & business director): production exec with over 30 years’ experience in the games industry. Started in 8 bit computers, later became producer in companies like EA, Sega, Square Enix, THQ or Virtuos. Worked with IPs like Sleeping Dogs, Heavy Rain, Madden, Worms, Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo!, Finding Nemo, Nascar or SpongeBob SquarePants.

Seems that Supermassive didn't achieve the level of quality of Until Dawn until the recent The Quarry. Let's hope this team got their most talented staff.

SIE isn't synonymous with XDev is it?

XDev typically works on all their 3rd party published games

• Death Stranding
• Sackboy’ s Big Adventure
• Returnal
• Destruction all Stars
• Etc

SIE is a Sony division that has multiple teams and companies inside. It's the one that handles mostly PlayStation and its games and IPs. Inside SIE there are two main game publishers, Bungie and PS Studios.

XDev (short name for External Development) are the PS Studios teams that publish 2nd party games: 1st party published (so published by the platform holder, SIE/PS Studios) games developed by 3rd party studios (development studios not owned by the platform holder, Sony). But they also do other stuff like helping internally development 1st party games to find outsourcing when needed.

The original XDEV team was from UK and branched out from SCEE Liverpool Studio to become its own studio to publish Sony's European 2nd party games. Later in USA they also branched out the 2nd party publishing outside SSM into an XDEV team to do the same with the american games. More recently they banched out the 2nd party publishing team from Japan Studio into another XDEV studio who now manages their Asian 2nd party games (Death Stranding: Director's Cut was their first title outside Japan Studio). These XDEV teams now work together and don't report to any local internal development 1st party studio.

 

[kyliethicc]

XDev typically works on all their external 1st party games

• Death Stranding
• Sackboy’ s Big Adventure
• Returnal
• Destruction all Stars
• Etc

Fixed

 

[IntentionalPun]

XDev typically works on all their 2nd party games

Fixed 4 @kyliethicc

 

[Remember_Spinal]

XDev are the PS Studios teams that publish 2nd party games: 1st party published games developed by 3rd party studios.

Fixed

Fixed 4 @kyliethicc

 

[ParaSeoul]

What is it? Genre wise.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

What is it? Genre wise.

What do you think?

Probably a cinematic choice based game with QTE.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

What is it? Genre wise.

Narrative game most likely, like Until Dawn

 

[Yurinka]

What is it? Genre wise.

We have no idea but I'd bet it's going to be similar to Until Dawn.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Already done with mo-cap? The game must be closer to release than I thought.

Perhaps a trailer next month during the PlayStation Showcase and a 2023 release.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Already done with mo-cap? The game must be closer to release than I thought.

Perhaps a trailer next month during the PlayStation Showcase and a 2023 release.

Yeah, its weird, maybe its me but I feel like a lot of these studios are doing motion capture a lot earlier than not? Or maybe a lot of these games are deeper in production than i think.

Kojima just did mo cap for a game, Wolverine started mo cap a couple months ago, this game, Deviation has been doing mo cap, the actor who plays abbys father did mo cap recently probably for part 1…i wonder.

 

[Shmunter]

Yeah, its weird, maybe its me but I feel like a lot of these studios are doing motion capture a lot earlier than not? Or maybe a lot of these games are deeper in production than i think.

Kojima just did mo cap for a game, Wolverine started mo cap a couple months ago, this game, Deviation has been doing mo cap, the actor who plays abbys father did mo cap recently probably for part 1…i wonder.

Mo cap is so hot right now