The acquisition of Insomniac by Sony reflects the aggressive expansion of Microsoft

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Sony revealed this week having acquired Insomniac Games, its long-term partner studio, and the developer of Spider Man, Ratchet & Ratchet, and the Resistance series. Insomniac joins a range of conga gaming studios acquired by console manufacturers in recent years. In fact, this almost looks like a response to the aspirations of Microsoft studios left, right and center.

The acquisition of Insomniac was announced almost accidentally in a Twitter post, and Sony and Insomniac seem very happy with the situation. Of course, this could be because both studios have always had good relationships. In addition to the aforementioned titles, Insomniac is also the creator of the first PlayStation mascot (and the hero of my kid's game), Spyro the Dragon.

Although recently Insomniac has diversified a bit. In addition to an Oculus VR game called Edge of nowhere, the company also made Sunset Overdrive, an exclusive Xbox One. Given that Microsoft has acquired several independent game developers to work under its umbrella, the opportunity to make an attractive offer to Insomniac is probably not out of reach, and it would not surprise me at all if at least some of the Sony's motivation is an attempt to avoid that.

In the past year alone, Microsoft has acquired Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Playground Games, Compulsion Games, Obsidian and Double Fine. The latter is the developer behind the next Psychonauts 2and since then, there are many jokes about how Microsoft missed the opportunity to make a classic now cult psychonauts an Xbox exclusive in the day.

Given its important offers (and probably money for a little more), it is probably not completely excluded that it is possible to think of his former Insomniac employees. But now that Sony has absorbed Insomniac, I'm sure it will be with pleasure Spider Man next in a short time.

Everything seems very rosy given the proximity of the two studios in the past, but the consolidation and acquisitions of studios do not always give rise to good partnerships. On the other hand, remember that Bungie is separated from Activision Blizzard this year after an eight year partnership. It should be noted that Bungie was acquired by Microsoft before becoming independent in 2007 – in both cases it would appear that Bungie wanted to be independent after years of frenzy under corporate pressure.

And remember what happened to Rare after its acquisition by Microsoft? He had ten years of relatively unobtrusive releases before Sea of ​​Thieves has been announced. It was a little shameful for one of the most important and influential studios of the nineties.

So, what do we win, the players, the big players who absorb these studios? In theory, our favorite game makers can now focus their efforts on passionate projects without having to fear that their electricity is cut off. But now, developers have to accept these same projects with the money holder, and they are often housed in what the company wants to win. I'm just saying … Let's not celebrate consolidation until we know what kind of games we get from it.

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