The sun has barely risen in the west and PlayStation is giving fans big reasons to celebrate. This morning, Sony announced via a blog post that they have purchased Housemarque, making them one of PlayStation's many first-party studios. The Helinski-based studio is most recently known for the development of Returnal, the roguelike bullet hell that released earlier this year for the PlayStation 5.
Today is a big day for Housemarque and it has been over 26 years in the making. Our strong partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment started with Super Stardust HD on PS3 [...] We are so excited to finally join the PlayStation Studios family! This gives our studio a clear future and a stable opportunity to continue delivering on gameplay centric approaches, while still experimenting with new methods of narrative delivery and pushing the boundaries of this modern artform.
According to a Famitsu interview with Housemarque, it seems that this purchase has been in the pipeline for a while with talks beginning in 2020. Due to the development and release of Returnal, the conversation stalled for a bit. It's Housemarque's plan to expand their studio further and "go beyond" Returnal. Their plan is to still deliver quality releases. You can read more of the statement from Ilari Kuittinen, the co-founder of Housemarque at the PlayStation Blog post.
Sony Bluepoint Acquisition Possibly Leaked
While the above news is nothing to be glossed over it seems that Sony Japan announced the acquisition via twitter like its American and European counterparts but used a different image in the tweet. Instead of the PlayStation Studios and Housemarque logo the Sony Japan tweet has the PlayStation Studios logo and the Bluepoint logo. The text and link in the tweet all reference the Housemarque acquisition, but it's understandable how images might have been uploaded incorrectly. It's long been theorized that Bluepoint, the developers of the Shadow of the Colossus remake for PlayStation 4 and the Demon's Souls remake for PlayStation 5, would be a good contender for purchase, but it looks like we might have to wait a bit longer for confirmation.
What do you think of Sony acquiring Housemarque? Are you excited to hear that Bluepoint might have also been purchased?
