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Sony have closed a number of their game development studios these past few years, while supporting certain others in their place. While Wipeout developer Studio Liverpool was closed down in 2012, Uncharted developer Naughty Dog has thrived. While SOCOM developer Zipper Interactive no longer exists, Killzone developer Guerrilla is still around. And those are just a couple of the studios that Sony have closed this generation.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Sony’s Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida provides some insight as to why this is. The issue, Yoshida says, is that mid-sized console studios are facing challenges across the industry in general. Due to this, Sony have been closing down some of their studios while investing in what they view as their top teams.
“So we have supported some studios—Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, and Guerilla—to become able to produce multiple projects at the same time, while we shut down mid-sized studios who were struggling to compete… that’s in reaction to the changes of the time,” Yoshida shares.
Getting consumers to spend $60 is hard, and the only way to do that is by offering bigger titles that far outclass those of the mid-sized titles, Yoshida feels. He goes on emphasize: “It’s been a bloodbath of medium-sized games for the last two years… the market is extremely hard for smaller, mid-sized games these days.”
Mid-sized studios have a serious question to ask themselves, Yoshida says: “if you are making a studio, like 40 or 50 people studio, it’s a really tough age—whether they try to grow and compete to become triple-A, or if they try to do indie-style small development. It’s really a good, critical question for many of the mid-sized studios.”
