Housemarque turned down “big players” to join PlayStation Studios
2 min. read
Published on
Share this article
Improve this guide
Read our disclosure page to find out how can you help MSPoweruser sustain the editorial team Read more
After being acquired by PlayStation last week, Housemarque has announced in an interview with Yle that Sony wasn’t the only interested party.
Speaking to the Finnish publication, Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen said that they were approached by the “Usual suspects: big players in the sector from China, Sweden and the US,” according to VGC’s translation.
Even after Returnal’s critical success on the PlayStation 5, Kuittinen still couldn’t quite believe it as he went on to say that “I have to say that we have had a very special spring and the fact that we were being competed for even feels a little surreal.”
Under PlayStation’s management, it appears that Housemarque isn’t just being ground up to be part of a larger corporate machine, as in the interview Kuittinen revealed that “it was clear from our discussions that Sony wanted to buy us because we were doing something that other people weren’t doing. Their starting point has not been that we would start making games according to a formula defined by Sony.”
If developers are up for sale, it’s hardly a surprise that there might be a bidding war going on behind the scenes between interested parties. With Xbox picking up Bethesda and their haul of future exclusive games, it seems that the gloves are very much off when it comes to picking up new developers who don’t already have a committed publisher.
