Housemarque has been acquired by Sony

Housemarque, the developer of PS5 exclusive Returnal, is the latest in a long list of studios to be acquired by Sony, joining their growing PlayStation Studios family.

After first appearing on PlayStation consoles with Super Stardust HD in 2007, Housemarque has been officially acquired by Sony in a move that “enhances the creative force of PlayStation Studios” according to Hermal Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios in the announcement blog post.

Sony is obviously keen to bolster their PlayStation Studios family of exclusive developers after Xbox snapped up industry titan Bethesda, but this isn’t all about hoarding developers to make exclusives, as it also provides great opportunities to the developers within the PlayStation Studios family, as Ilari Kuittinen, Co-founder and Managing Director of Housemarque explained.

In the announcement blog post, Kuittinen explained that the acquisition “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.”

“With the backing of SIE and its family of studios supporting us, we can truly grow into our place in the industry and show what Housemarque can create with no limitations,” Kuittinen continued in the blog post, touting the benefits of the acquisition.

This acquisition isn’t exactly unexpected as since 2013 and their game Resogun, all of Housemarque’s games have been either self-published or published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, so there’s a strong precedent behind this official acquisition. 

Now under Sony’s PlayStation Studios banner, hopefully, we’ll continue to see great work from Housemarque going forwards as Kuittinen suggests we’ll see. Similar to Bethesda who’s now owned by and exclusive to Xbox, we can expect to see Housemarque’s games obviously be exclusive to PlayStation platforms going forwards.