PlayStation To Acquire AAA Multiplayer Developer Firewalk Studios

PlayStation has agreed to acquire Firewalk Studios, the AAA multiplayer developer that is working on a live service game for PS5 and PC. From a report: If the name sounds familiar, it's because Sony had already announced it would be publishing Firewalk's first game back in April 2021. It is the third dedicated live-service game studio that PlayStation has acquired over the last 18 months, alongside Bungie and Haven Studios. Firewalk was set-up in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters (a collective of AAA game developers). It was formed by a number of Bungie veterans, including studio head Tony Hsu (previously general manager and senior vice president of Destiny at Activision) and game director Ryan Ellis (previously creative director at Bungie). It now boasts almost 150 employees. Firewalk is the 20th developer to join PlayStation Studios.

Paging Microsoft.....

[codebase7]

"Your rival has acquired yet another development studio that could potentially threaten your own market share."

To be fair in Microsoft's case, Sony is acquiring Bungie's creative director which may allow Sony to create a rival to Halo. Of course in reality, any statement from Microsoft to that effect would just be Microsoft getting revenge for Sony's lawsuits.

Personally, at this point I'd rather just see all of these oligarchs broken up. So much in the industry is decided by the big three (think hardware capabilities limiting creative choices, or their constantly changing censorship policies) that pretty much all of them are guilty of having too much power over the market in one way or the other.

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[Locke2005]

I'd prefer the hit games be forced to go multiplatform, rather than being used to leverage hardware sales. I'm still disappointed we don't have a multiplayer games that divides players into two sides depending on whether they are running on an Xbox or a PlayStation... that would shut up all the "my console is better than yours!" nerds!

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[Opportunist]

Then we would finally get some real e-sports take off. Not because anyone gives a fuck about watching geeks play computer games, but because the console makers start trying to hire the best players to ensure their team got the upper hand in a popular game to convince more suckers to buy their console so they can play the winning team.

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[bn-7bc]

Well viewers of twitch streams not histed by lightly clad big boobed femles would like to disagree with you. But hay thar demographic might fall into the definition of geek so...

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[rossz]

This may come as a shock to you, but boobs always win. It's not just limited to geek stuff.

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[Opportunist]

This is SO not true.

Nobody wanted to watch me play topless.

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[bn-7bc]

That's up to how you point the camera, if your cintent is good a camera might not even be needed, imho strams are often better without cams and overlays as they usually coner som part of the game ui i might be interrested in glancing at

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[Opportunist]

When a sizable neckbeard covers your moobs... find a cartoon character to represent you.

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[Locke2005]

Dude, he said "boobs", not "moobs"! In my experience, even straight females like looking at boobs.

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[Opportunist]

This is sexist!

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[bn-7bc]

Not allways maybe 99.999% of the time but imorefere a quier stream with a game i lije to a crap stream that is about a game that does not interest me with a hist that haooens to have a nice rack

Sony's Hypocrisy At Its Finest

[JenovaSynthesis]

So they should have absolutely zero problems with Microsoft acquiring ActivisionBlizzard now.