Sony Buys Spider-Man Developer Insomniac Games (kotaku.com) 14
Sony has purchased the California-based game studio Insomniac Games, best known for last year's Spider-Man on PS4, which sold 13.2 million copies. Sony says Insomniac will become an exclusive PlayStation developer. Kotaku reports: Founded in 1994, Insomniac remained independent for 25 years, working largely with Sony on series like Ratchet & Clank and Resistance but also with other big game companies like Microsoft, which published the colorful open-world game Sunset Overdrive (unlikely to get a sequel any time soon). Insomniac has also worked on several VR games with Oculus, including the upcoming Stormland, currently announced as an Oculus Rift exclusive. Notably, Insomniac's previous VR games have not been released on PlayStation VR.
Not being satisfied... (Score:1)
with their attempts to destroy the Spider-Man franchise in movies they are back to ruin spider-man in a new medium!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That assumes that folks up top are not busy managing too far down the chain. I have worked for many businesses that have structures similar to Sony, it's just a mixed bag for how much influence the parent organization has over the children. If the person that had a negative influence over the Pictures division is also able to influence or interfere with the Interactive division then the same problem might occur. Practically every division of Sony has debacle of some kind it their histories.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Again... you are assuming something you cannot know unless you work for Sony. Is that the case here? Do you know who is responsible for the flop? Do you know for a fact they are not going to be involved? Are you an insider?
Into the Spiderverse was not bad, but it was not great either.
Do not forget that these kinds of deals can come with all sorts of limitations and stuff. Do we have those details yet? Sony may actually want to force some kind of spin-off that takes the IP in a new direction.
Re: (Score:2)
The poster specifically was worried that Sony would “ruin” Spider-Man. I specifically cited two very recent example of good Spider-Man properties by Sony. I’m not predicting the future. I’m citing the recent past.
As for what I know: Sony does not own the video game rights to Spider-Man. Marvel does. This is a fact. If Sony Interactive puts out a terrible sequel to Spider-Man, it doesn’t affect Marvel granting other studios rights to make another video game. Again I cited the up
Re: (Score:2)
I take it you aren’t aware of how well the most recent Spider-Man game was received? It’s one thing to dish on them if they had failed with the game, but they just knocked it out of the park. Plus, they don’t have the rights anyway, so it’s unlikely Sony bought them for that reason.
Re: (Score:1)
Past performance is no indication of future performance.
You are right, they might hit this out of the park too, but I am doubtful. Lets see what happens.
Re: (Score:2)
Past performance is no indication of future performance.
That statement applies to games of chance, not games of skill. I’m unlikely to bowl a 300 anytime soon, but a pro has a pretty good chance at it, which we can tell from their past performance. Likewise, Insomniac is proven company with a solid track record. They made (the good) Spyro games, the Ratchet & Clank series, and now this Spider-Man game. They’ve had some misses, sure, but they have hits more than misses to their name, and unlike with stock markets, past performance in the games ind
Huh, kind of thought they were already (Score:2)
Especially given all of the Ratchet & Clank games, I always thought of them as a Sony exclusive developer.
I will say that one thing Insomniac always seems to nail really well is controls for games. Every Ratchet & Clank, and also Spiderman had pretty excellent controls I found that seemed to feel really natural to use even for more complex movements or actions.
So I guess it's a little sad no other platforms will see what they produce but to my mind it seems like this will have very little effect in
Re: (Score:2)
> I always thought of them as a Sony exclusive developer.
They were considered a "second" party. Sony buying them moves them to first party status.
Re: (Score:2)
Well until Sony shuts them down in 2-5 years in the next "restructuring".
Hello? Spyro? (Score:2)
Have people really forgotten their FIRST hit, years before Ratchet and Dank?
Their best developer already left two years ago. (Score:2)
Mike Acton, one of the fathers of Data-Orientated Design [youtube.com] (*), left in 2017 [unity3d.com] and joined Unity. Hopefully he left a good team behind! Will be interesting to see what happens with Insomniac.
(*) OOP does NOT scale for high performance [wordpress.com] due to crappy cache usage. The game industry and high frequency trading ditched OOP almost a decade ago for simpler code and higher throughput.