Insomniac Games Is Sony’s Latest Game Studio Acquisition
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) made a surprise announcement on Monday during Gamescom 2019: The publisher had acquired Marvel’s Spider-Man studio Insomniac Games.
While Sony and Insomniac have a history of working together on PlayStation exclusives, the studio has always been independent and even worked with Sony’s gaming industry rival, Microsoft, on the 2014 Xbox One exclusive Sunset Overdrive. Hence why this acquisition news was pretty shocking!
But why acquire Insomniac now? Well, according to SIE Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden, the remarkable success of last year’s Spider-Man game and the studio’s past success were significant reasons for Sony’s acquisition of Insomniac. According to a recent SIE press release, Marvel’s Spider-Man managed to sell over 13.2 million copies worldwide as of July 28th.
“Spider-Man underscores how consequential Insomniac is to gaming in the overall,” Layden told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview about the acquisition. “They are an impact maker. They are a style-setter. There are just a clutch of studios in that independent sphere who are at an accomplishment level of something like Insomniac. They are a very rare bird and we felt that this was the time to formalize the relationship.”
As for how this acquisition will affect Insomniac, Layden said that Sony will continue to let the studio do its own thing. “I don’t think anyone will go in there and tell them how to make a game,” he said. “They certainly got game of their own.”
Layden also said that it’s currently unclear who owns the rights to Sunset Overdrive. Layden said that Sony “really haven’t turned over the files on that one to see what that actually means, to be honest.”
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