Playstation Studios [OT]: News, hype and rumors about PS Studios and Bungie

[Remember_Spinal]

And they’re working with Sony Pictures Animation..

Decent chance:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Spider-verse is a possibility, they also have a few more upcoming stuff in production.

I would love to see what they could do with ‘Black Knight’ which is being directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, of samurai jack fame.

 

[kyliethicc]

Spider-verse is a possibility, they also have a few more upcoming stuff in production.

I would love to see what they could do with ‘Black Knight’ which is being directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, of samurai jack fame.

I’ve never heard of any of those, except Spidey.

Wouldn’t shock me if Sony wants to shift PixelOpus over to making animated Spidey Marvel games.

Easy money, lines up with the films.

”Two sequels, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, are set to be released in June 2023 and March 2024, respectively. A spin-off film is also in development.”

 

[Yurinka]

They already have insomniac making Spider-Man games, I assume that if they give Pixel Opus a Marvel game would be a different IP. If they introduce Venom in Spider-Man 2 maybe Pixel Opus makes a shorter Spider-Man 2 spin-off about Venom, in the same way Insomniac did with Morales for the first game.

But even if they grew as studio, I think a Spider-Man or Venom, or any Marvel IP seems too big for them. I assume they'll do another artsy new IP but this time with the help of Sony Pictures Animation. So if it works then they can make an animation movie.

 

[Bryank75]

They already have insomniac making Spider-Man games, I assume that if they give Pixel Opus a Marvel game would be a different IP. If they introduce Venom in Spider-Man 2 maybe Pixel Opus makes a shorter Spider-Man 2 spin-off about Venom, in the same way Insomniac did with Morales for the first game.

But even if they grew as studio, I think a Spider-Man or Venom, or any Marvel IP seems too big for them. I assume they'll do another artsy new IP but this time with the help of Sony Pictures Animation. So if it works then they can make an animation movie.

I wonder how much growth theyve had in terms of man-power.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

I wonder how much growth theyve had in terms of man-power.

they were only like around 12 people when they started, i think they may be around 40-50 now? We’ll probably find out after the announce their new game and start doing press again.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

They already have insomniac making Spider-Man games, I assume that if they give Pixel Opus a Marvel game would be a different IP. If they introduce Venom in Spider-Man 2 maybe Pixel Opus makes a shorter Spider-Man 2 spin-off about Venom, in the same way Insomniac did with Morales for the first game.

But even if they grew as studio, I think a Spider-Man or Venom, or any Marvel IP seems too big for them. I assume they'll do another artsy new IP but this time with the help of Sony Pictures Animation. So if it works then they can make an animation movie.

Yeah i dont think there will be two spider-man games being made at the same time. I think if theres a spider-verse game it will just be insomniac that does it

 

[LightBolt]

PixelOpus could be just doing a New IP and Sony Animation is just helping with the bulk of the work?

 

[Remember_Spinal]

PixelOpus could be just doing a New IP and Sony Animation is just helping with the bulk of the work?

Yeah, but technically a in-production movie would qualify as a new IP as well and would satisfy sonys cross-division strategy. It would make sense for sony pictures animation to get involved if theres also a movie being made

Thinking about something that looks like mitchells vs the machines makes my mouth water.

Or spider-verse

 

[LightBolt]

Yeah, but technically a in-production movie would qualify as a new IP as well and would satisfy sonys cross-division strategy. It would make sense for sony pictures animation to get involved if theres also a movie being made

Thinking about something that looks like mitchells vs the machines makes my mouth water.

That would be so lit... Give it to me SIE!
What about Black Knight?

 

[ksdixon]

I wonder how much growth theyve had in terms of man-power.

Tbf I feel like I need a round-up on teams and rumored/announced projects.

Just the other week I was reading the ND back and forth about who was making TLOU Remake and I found myself thinking "so if your making that, and they're busy with this, who's making the new IP/Sci fi shooter possibly based on TLOU comic Savage Starlight, that I've seen rumored for years?"

 

[Remember_Spinal]

That would be so lit... Give it to me SIE!
What about Black Knight?

Don't really know much about Black Knight but anything from Tartakovsky has to be good and it looks action focused like Samurai Jack and Primal.

Coming Soon

“Black Knight” is an original, action-adventure epic that tells the story of a highly skilled and faithful knight who, after failing to protect his king, must transform himself into the Black Knight to save the kingdom.

Tbf I feel like I need a round-up on teams and rumored/announced projects.

Just the other week I was reading the ND back and forth about who was making TLOU Remake and I found myself thinking "so if your making that, and they're busy with this, who's making the new IP/Sci fi shooter possibly based on TLOU comic Savage Starlight, that I've seen rumored for years?"

Zuby on twitter has a good list.

Naughty Dog have 3 teams as of now. TLOU1 remake is being made by Shaun Escayg who made The Uncharted Lost Legacy and Matthew Gallant who was the lead game designer of part 2.

Factions is being co-directed by Vinit Agarwal. he worked on the last 3 naughty dog games. Im not sure who the other director for this one is.

Neil Druckmann and Kurt Margenau( also co-directed the last 3 Naughty Dog Games) are doing the new unannounced game. Im not sure if its gonna be Savage Starlight though. For all we know it could be another licensed property

 

[Yurinka]

I wonder how much growth theyve had in terms of man-power.

I didn't find anything on their wikipedia page and went to investigate it to LinkedIn (they are the main two sources I use to investigate manpower) but seems they don't have a proper studio LinkedIn page, only mentions basic info and regarding manpower only mentions the basic range (11-50 people). But I found messages of workers from there sharing job offers, or people announcing they recently joined the studio:

Recent hirings

• A former Ubisoft and Lucasarts Audio Lead https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerpiersall/
• VFX Technical Artist https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=pixelopus&sid=yLe&update=urn:li:fs_updateV2urn:li:activity:6947562599613943808,BLENDED_SEARCH_FEED,EMPTY,DEFAULT,false)

Recent job offers

• 1 month ago, Senior environment artist https://boards.greenhouse.io/sonyinteractiveentertainmentglobal/jobs/4504589004
• 8 months ago, Lead Level Designer https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2768480149/?refId=q2BqIxyZSH2n9YV/XbKy3w==

From there I went to their Greenhouse page (which they seem to use for corporate and some western studios) where they have job offers from many studios and found some interesting stuff, seems they are hiring more people for their California HQ and PlayStation Europe "portfolio & acquisitions" and "global publishers & dev relations" (deals with big 3rd parties) departments, in addition to a ton of HR and marketing staff for USA & UK. They also have a lot of job offers for "Platform Experience Group", "Experience Technology Group" and "Future Technology Group":

PlayStation Global

boards.greenhouse.io

If you scroll down a lot there are PS Studios job offers for Bend, Bluepoint, Insomniac, PD, Pixel Opus, San Diego Studio, Santa Monica, Nixxes, Valyrie and internal PD & Services.

In the open PixelOpus job offers (Character TD, Lead VFX Artist, Production Assistant, Senior Combat Designer, Senior Concept Artist, Senior Environment Artist, Senior Graphics Programmer, User Interface Artist) they mention:

• AAA PS5 Action Adventure
• Stylized art direction, beautiful worlds
• player-centric experience
• Unreal Engine 5
• Combat gameplay, bosses

Zuby on twitter has a good list.

Naughty Dog have 3 teams as of now. TLOU1 remake is being made by Shaun Escayg who made The Uncharted Lost Legacy and Matthew Gallant who was the lead game designer of part 2.

Factions is being co-directed by Vinit Agarwal. he worked on the last 3 naughty dog games. Im not sure who the other director for this one is.

Neil Druckmann and Kurt Margenau( also co-directed the last 3 Naughty Dog Games) are doing the new unannounced game. Im not sure if its gonna be Savage Starlight though. For all we know it could be another licensed property

We know that in addition to these they also overviewed/supported the TLOU tv series with writing and Druckmann even directing an episode. They also overview the port of Legacy of Thieves collection being made by Iron Galaxy.

We also know 3 years ago were working in an Uncharted spinoff with Bend until they got greenlighted the Bend new IP (where Bend is now focused). So maybe ND is still working on it by themselves or maybe together with other studio like Blue Point (who are working in "original content").

We also know Druckmann wrote a first draft of the main TLOU Part III story as a guideline just in case they decided to develop it somewhere in the future.

 

[Yurinka]

Firesprite hired in 2020 the lead designer of Hellblade 1 and (during preproduction) Hellbade 2 game director

I just noticed Firesprite hired Joe N. as Lead Designer/Principle Designer back in early 2020. I was going to post it in a new thread but saw it's from 2020 so since it isn't news I'll post it here.

He did work during over 8 years at Ninja Theory as:

• Junior level designer in DmC
• Lead designer in the DmC Bloody Palace DLC
• Lead designer in Hellbade (pretty much everything except combat)
• Game Director in Hellblade 2 (late 2018 to late 2019, seems early preproduction stuff)

He isn't working as game director in Firesprite, but instead as Lead Designer/Principle Designer. Regarding Firesprite I saw in LinkedIn they have the following game directors:

• Alex Barnes: Horizon Call of the Mountain game director
• Stuart Tilley (game director and cofounder): was game director in Wipeout 2048 or senior external producer in Killzone 2
• Matt Southern (game director hired from Lucid): was game director on MotorStorm Apocalypse, Motorstorm RC and did work on Driveclub
• Pete Ellis: associate game director working on a "Narrative Adventure game" (Horizon CoM?), previously was designer at TLOU2 and RIGS (VR game from Guerrilla Cambridge)
• Anna Marsh: associate game director with 20+ years of industry experience as designer or Producer in places like Creative Assembly, Deep Silver, Eidos, SCi or Acclaim. Started in 1998 working in SCEE Camden Studio (first time I heard about it)

This means Firesprite is working in at least 3 games. Maybe they have more game directors and I didn't find them on LinkedIn or aren't there. They have many former Studio Liverpool and Evolution staff, let's hope their announced games feature brand new Wipeout and Motorstorm PSVR2 friendly games.

 

[Satoru]

seems like pixelopus’ new game is a single player action-adventure AAA game.

Can we please not have it be open-world? There's a nice balance somewhere between linear and open world, and Sony has been having a lot of games in that middle gap (TLOU II, GOW, etc). I'd love to see a more linear experience...

 

[LightBolt]

It seems Team Asobi has been growing, they were around 20-30 devs when Astro Bot Recuse Mission shipped.

 

[Yurinka]

It seems Team Asobi has been growing, they were around 20-30 devs when Astro Bot Recuse Mission shipped.

Yes. After the release of Astro, time later they restructured Japan Studio and people from other Japan Studio internal development teams were absorved into Team Asobi, and since then they have been hiring like all the other SIE teams and have open job positions in a dozen areas.

 

[LightBolt]

Yes. After the release of Astro, time later they restructured Japan Studio and people from other Japan Studio internal development teams were absorved into Team Asobi, and since then they have been hiring like all the other SIE teams.

I really do hope Sony goes for more japanese studios in the future..

 

[Yurinka]

I really do hope Sony goes for more japanese studios in the future..

They have Polyphony Digital, Team Asobi, their Japanese XDEV team, Forwardworks, Aniplex and Lasengle but yes, I think they may buy a Japanese gamedev studio or publisher during the next year or so. I assume they'll wait to announce the next ones until they close the Bungie and Haven acquisitions.

I think it would specially fit one with important sales in Asia (not only Japan, also China or Korea), which means someone with a big presence in PC and mobile. With big pluses being to be a key player or the market leader in a console+PC genre where Sony 1st party has very little presence (like MMORPG, JRPG, fighting, soulsborne, survival horror, monster hunting, arcade), having a good amount of old PS classics for PS+ and popular IPs they could use not only in gaming but also in movies, tv shows or anime.

Square Enix and (maybe too expensive) Bandai Namco would be the best fits followed by Capcom and Kadokawa/From Soft. The main cons from Japanese publishers -other than maybe they don't want to sell- would be the parts of these companies where Sony may not be interested even if I think some of them could be a good fit (arcades/pachinkos, toys, books, magazines, resorts, real estate, licenses for game adaptation of manga and animes they don't own, etc).

But who knows, they could buy another mobile gamedev like Lasengle (who made them $1B/year in revenue) or maybe some new AA/AAA studio headed by some popular former Square/Sega/Sony/etc dev.

 

[LightBolt]

They have Polyphony Digital, Team Asobi, their Japanese XDEV team, Forwardworks, Aniplex and Lasengle but yes, I think they may buy a Japanese gamedev studio or publisher during the next year or so. Specially one with important sales in Asia (not only Japan, also China or Korea), which means someone with a big presence in PC and mobile.

I agree with everythink. Speaking of China/Korea? I think Sony might buy Shift UP *Project Eve dev* and Lost Soul Aside dev?

 

[Yurinka]

I agree with everythink. Speaking of China/Korea? I think Sony might buy Shift UP *Project Eve dev* and Lost Soul Aside dev?

I think they are testing the waters with a marketing deal (who knows if they turned this previously multiplatform game into a timed exclusive). Who knows, if it works they may buy them or test first asking them a full exclusive/2nd party game.

Sony prefers to buy proven people who has a long tradition of working with them. I think it's too early for these Korean guys, first they have to prove they know how to release very good and successful games. I don't know if they did some hit game before.