Housemarque co-founder and chief executive officer, Ilari Kuittinen, has told Finnish outlet yle that Sony wasn’t the only company interested in acquiring the studio.
Kuittinen understandably didn’t drop any names, but said that the interested parties were your “usual suspects, i.e. major players in the field from China, Sweden, and the United States.” According to a translation of the article (which was first spotted by The Game Post) provided by ResetEra user bigfoot, Kuittinen added that this has been “a very unusual spring for us and the fact that there has been competition to get us feels a little surreal.”
So why Sony? Kuittinen revealed that Sony made it clear that it was interested in Housemarque because it believed that the developer is “doing something that others are not doing.” “Their starting point has not been that we would start making games according to the formula defined by Sony,” he added, suggesting that the other interested parties wouldn’t have allowed Housemarque the creative freedom it desires.
As expected, people are already speculating which companies might have been interested in Housemarque. When it comes to China, Tencent is the first one that comes to mind, and the company from Sweden is likely to be Embracer Group. It’s harder to speculate which company from the United States was seeking to purchase Housemarque. Microsoft does qualify as the “usual suspect,” but we also have Take-Two Interactive, Epic Games, and Electronic Arts.
Considering Housemarque’s history with Sony, joining PlayStation Studios certainly makes the most sense.
[Source: yle, The Game Post via ResetEra]
