Sony to acquire Insomniac Games

Sony is buying Insomniac Games, the Japanese company announced Monday, making Insomniac the 14th internal studio under the Sony Interactive Entertainment banner.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the acquisition, which has not yet closed.

“Insomniac Games is one of the most highly-acclaimed development studios in the industry and their legacy of best-in class storytelling and gameplay is unparalleled,” said Shawn Layden, chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, in a news release. ”We have enjoyed a strong collaborative partnership with the studio for many years, and are thrilled to officially welcome them to the Worldwide Studios family. The addition of Insomniac Games to SIE WWS reiterates our commitment to developing world class gaming experiences that can only be found on the PlayStation platform.”

”Joining the WWS family gives Insomniac even greater opportunities to achieve our studio vision of making positive and lasting impressions on people’s lives,” said Ted Price, Insomniac Games founder and CEO. “We’ve enjoyed a special relationship with PlayStation practically since our inception. Our partnership amplifies our potential, and Marvel’s Spider-Man was a testament to this. We’re excited to take the next step in our growth alongside our longtime WWS partners. Most of all, we look forward to delivering fresh, new experiences for our fans.”

Insomniac was founded in 1994 as Xtreme Software by Ted Price, who is still the company’s CEO today. The studio has been independent until now, although it is best known as the creator of franchises that debuted exclusively on PlayStation platforms, like Ratchet & Clank, Spyro the Dragon, and Resistance.

The company’s most recent title is the acclaimed action game Marvel’s Spider-Man, which launched in September 2018 on PlayStation 4 and has sold more than 13.2 million copies worldwide as of July 28. Recent non-PlayStation titles from Insomniac include Edge of Nowhere and Stormland on Oculus Rift, and Song of the Deep on PS4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.

Once the acquisition closes, Insomniac’s current management team will continue to run the studio, in conjunction with Sony’s internal studio in San Mateo, California. Insomniac’s headquarters is located in Burbank, California, and the company has another branch in Durham, North Carolina, that opened in 2009.

This is the first new PlayStation internal developer in a long time. Sony announced ForwardWorks, a studio working on smartphone games, in March 2016. The company’s last major studio acquisitions came at the start of the decade, with Dreams developer Media Molecule in 2010 and Ghost of Tsushima maker Sucker Punch Productions in 2011. In the meantime, Microsoft has been beefing up its development portfolio by buying up studios left and right, with seven acquisitions since E3 2018: Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs, InXile Entertainment, Obsidian Entertainment, and Double Fine Productions.

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