To the surprise of few people who have been following PlayStation Studiosâ progress over the last year, Sony finally confirmed its acquisition of Bluepoint Games today. In an interview with IGN, Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst stated this was unlikely to be the last studio to join them either, but developers will only be welcomed into the PlayStation Studios family if they share the same âquality-first mentality.â
Bluepoint Games is just the latest team to become part of PlayStation Studios. Within the past few months, Sony has added Housemarque, Nixxes Software, and Firesprite. The latter then announced it had acquired Fabrik Games to join its own team. Between the five studios, this has added approximately 500 personnel to the PlayStation Studios family according to Escapistâs The Joy of Gaming host Shinobi602. It has been Sonyâs biggest year in terms of acquisitions and this doesnât look to be stopping anytime soon. Hulst said:
We are open always to building new relationships or bringing people in-house, but only if we adhere to the quality-first mentality and the right kind of innovative content, new experiences, diverse experiences. Because all of these teams, they share a lot, but theyâre also very different from one another, and thatâs what I really like. And I think thatâs what the PlayStation audience, the PlayStation fans, deserve, itâs that diverse slate of games coming out of PlayStation Studios.
He later elaborated on what he meant by the âquality-first mentalityâ:
The way we look at our group of studios, and we now have 16 internal teams as part of PlayStation Studios, is very much the way we look at our games. It needs to be right, it needs to fit what weâre about in qualitative terms, itâs got to be the right games. Same with the teams. The teams stay have to have a very collaborative mindset. They need to be quality-oriented. Weâre not buying teams to just be bigger. Weâre only buying teams because we feel that together, weâre going to make something that is going to be even better than if we did it separate from one another.
Hulst had already described PlayStation Studios as a âtruly globalâ company with âuniquely different creatorsâ and it seems like Bluepoint Games is adding to that ethos. With the studio now working on âoriginal content,â weâll just have to wait and see what comes from them next.