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Sony Interactive Entertainment announced Monday that the company was acquiring Insomniac Games, a gaming studio rich in history and one of the most experienced in the development of virtual reality in the world. The studio has developed three exclusive Oculus titles, including the fourth and largest ever. Stormland, whose launch is scheduled for 2019.
Founded in 1994, Insomniac Games was best known for creating the Spyro and Ratchet & Ratchet franchises that have collectively covered over a dozen titles, many exclusively on PlayStation consoles. In recent years, the studio is well known in the world of virtual reality, having developed three exclusive titles for Oculus Studios: Edge of nowhere (2016), The unspoken ones (2016), and Iron Rights (2016), not to mention the non-VR hit Marvel's Spider-Man (2018) which was a PlayStation exclusive.
The main reason why Sony bought Insomniac is undoubtedly the quality and success (more than 13 million units) of Spider Man (alongside decades of studio experience on PlayStation consoles). Sony will consolidate the studio into the SIE Worldwide Studios group, which has produced some of the company's most popular exclusive games (VR and others).
While Sony will undoubtedly take a short-term look at leveraging Insomniac's talents to acquire more AAA non-VR titles, the acquisition is a strategic advantage for PlayStation's VR ambitions and a blow for Oculus. Sony has actually taken one of the most experienced virtual reality development studios in the world after several years devoted to Oculus' acquisition of its expertise in virtual reality.
In addition to the three exclusive Oculus titles that the studio had already published, Insomniac continues to develop its fourth and most important title for Oculus Studios, Stormland, which should be released in 2019. The acquisition will certainly have no impact on the release of the title, but most likely on its future.
Yes Stormland It turned out to be a hit for Oculus, and if Insomniac had remained independent, Oculus would probably ask the studio to start working on additional content and eventually a sequel. But now that the studio is owned by a direct competitor in the virtual reality space, Insomniac is unlikely to take on this job.
It all depends on who the owner is Stormland IP. If Oculus owns the rights to the game, the company should look for another studio to take over Insomniac (although the friction of changing teams on a project of this magnitude is considerable); If it was found that Insomniac retained the rights to the game, it could be totally forbidden for Oculus to pursue it, unless they want to pay Sony a license fee. use of intellectual property.
It is likely that the Stormland deal between Oculus and Insomniac specifies a certain period of "content and post-launch support" that the studio will be obliged to respect regardless of the acquisition.
However, in general, a studio like Insomniac would like to do a good job on post-launch content, so the publisher (in this case, Oculus Studios) would be encouraged to pay for even larger content development. But since no further agreement is likely to be reached as a result of what was originally negotiated (taking into account the acquisition), Incomiac has little incentive to fully devote Stormland content.
In this sense, it was a very good move for Sony on the virtual reality front. Not only do they benefit from years of insomniac talent in virtual reality – what Oculus has paid for – but they have also put in place some major hurdles. Stormland future and private Oculus Studios from one of its main collaborators; The VR game design is so new compared to a non-VR game design, it's not as if Oculus could just buy another studio with the same level of VR expertise as Insomniac which means that Oculus Studios has less access to great talents in VR development. towards the front.
Oculus Studios has always worked with a small number of independent game development studios over the years to offer exclusive games on its platform. Oculus may be looking closely at sites like Ready at Dawn, Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru Games, 4A Games, etc., to make sure they are not being fooled, especially given the made the Xbox Game Studios of Microsoft shopping spree in the studio.
Although this is not the studio's top priority, it seems unlikely that Sony will include part of the Insomniac Games game in an exclusive PSVR title; At least half of the current teams at Sony's global studios have been working on PSVR games. If this materializes, it seems likely that the studio is starting to work on a launch of PSVR 2, which Sony has virtually confirmed.
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