Sony Buys Bluepoint Games and Housemarque

[dakk55]

8 hours ago, Obscure_Ale said:

I hope the complete opposite in that if Sony do indeed buy Bluepoint they have done so to greenlight them to make an original game. I know there were some rumours quite some time ago that Bluepoint wanted to break away from Remasters/Remakes and work on their own project so hopefully this acquisition will give them the funding and support to do so I don't see much value in buying them otherwise.

 

True enough. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a secondary team to do the ports. It would be a nice way to keep a steady stream of income to keep funding the bigger IPs.

[AJ_Radio]

14 hours ago, dakk55 said:

I hope that if Sony does end up having Bluepoint under their "Umbrella", they would put them to work making HD ports of the popular PS2/PS3 games. It sure would be nice to be able to play the older games on the newer consoles.

 

Backwards compatibility would of been the best thing, but unfortunately you can't do that with anything older than the PS4.

 

I'm glad that stuff like Dead Nation got an updated version (Dead Nation Apocalypse) when it was still early in the PS4's lifecycle. Super Stardust HD was a lot of fun and I plan to get Super Stardust Ultra sometime in the near future. I probably can't get that DLC because VR gives me extreme motion sickness. 

 

A lot of stuff in the PS2 and PS3 library that could either go with a remaster/remake, or be a direct PS4/PS5 port. I could go on and on.

[Vergil]

Another studio 

 

https://www.gematsu.com/2021/07/sony-interactive-entertainment-acquires-nixxes-software

[DrBloodmoney]

1 minute ago, Vergil said:

Another studio 

 

https://www.gematsu.com/2021/07/sony-interactive-entertainment-acquires-nixxes-software

 

They're primarily a port-house right? I think they did the Windows versions of a lot of the Square Enix brands.

[DaivRules]

Direct source of Nixxe Softwares announcement:

 

https://www.nixxes.com/nixxes-joins-playstation-studios/

 

 

Edited July 1, 2021 by DaivRules

[Sailar91]

[TheArcadeKid]

Quote

 

Said evauluation is based on games that were sold on Sony, Nintendo, Xbox, PC, and mobile platforms. 
MS getting that money back isn't even worth dreaming about since MS doesn't post or share sales numbers for their games anymore. 
However, 3rd party publishers have offered a window into how thier multiplat games perform on various consoles, sales wise. So MS making that money back in sales without Nintendo and Sony is very slow process. Still, owning that many studios do bring up the matter saving money from not needing to pay for gamepass and exclusive deals. (more contract and money stuff that isn't being openly disclosed) 

Perhaps the shell game being played by MS can pay off. It won't be from conventional dominance or marketshare like we can easily see from Sony, Nintendo, and all other normal businesses. 

 

 

ZeniMax games only recently started appearing on Nintendo consoles, and usually several months after their original console release. That's not going to hurt Microsoft in the slightest. Sales will take a hit if they're not available on PS5, sure, but so will sales of PS5 itself. When Xbox becomes the best console for FPS and western RPG - and it will, if Sony doesn't do something about it - it's easily a win/win for Microsoft. Give it ten years, and the acquisition will have paid for itself.

 

Quote

SEGA rushed and was beaten to market in terms of hardware and software. Sony out played them, clearly and conventionally. This win you are assigning to Xbox is odd since they are still behind on games, still seems to have a weird contention between Windows, their two consoles, and their azure gaming services. They are chasing all the rabbits. Sony is complacent? You conclude this because they actually put out new games with new ideas for the launch window of their new console? Intriguing. 

 

Microsoft's strategy is disruption. They had a hell of a time last gen, but they've got the time, money and ambition to shake things up, which is exactly what they're doing. And some of those rabbits Microsoft's chasing - like GamePass, with 23,000,000 subscribers and counting - are already paying out. 

 

Sony's answer? Business as usual, apparently.

 

Quote

Not when one stops measuring reception by the number of memes 4chan and twitter can generate per hour. 
In the last 6 months, Insomniac alone has put out content that surpassed Zenimax/Bethesda publishing's output of the last 3 years.

 
I don't know about metacritic but I know when playing games such as God of War, Spider-man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon Zero Dawn that each game felt like an extremely well coordinate experince that defined the generation they were a part of. I feel that this feeling was be a part of new PS5 games from Sony this gen.(many have already happened). Whatever number is paired with Bethesda published games from last gen none gave me a similar level of mastery or euphoria. FO4 was neat and ambitious but pails in comparison to previous games in the series. Skyrim is a PS3 game not PS4. It didn't feel fresh on PS4. Doom. I'll say Doom pulled it off. It was near perfect. 

 

My question remains. If Bethesda games are so good, then why have they not surpassed Sony games yet? What is it about Xbox exclusivness that somehow makes these games now leagues above Sony games? Have you even seen any gameplay from an Xbox exclusive game from Bethesda/Zenimax? Yet, Bethesda's standard 1st person forumla isn't failing them but Sony's 3rd person games is a failing point. If having and showing and publishing games in a timely manner for the new generation isn't a winning formula then I may need to find a new planet to live on. 

 

This is entirely subjective. All you're telling me is that you tend to like Sony games more than ZeniMax. Which is fine - but denying the mass appeal of ZeniMax games is short-sighted, and ignores the obvious success of most of their games. ZeniMax is a big company. They make big games, and those games will be missed on PlayStation. There's absolutely no evidence to the contrary. 

 

I'll repeat myself and say that the issue here isn't about one company "surpassing" the other. It's about the simple fact that Sony's over-reliance on third-person action-adventures is worsened by Microsoft's ZeniMax buy-out. When your console doesn't have a single FPS exclusive and the closest competing console suddenly has Halo, Doom and Wolfenstein all to itself, you've got a problem. When several major western RPGs have disappeared from PlayStation overnight, you've got a problem. 

 

Will Sony have lots of amazing stuff to show off over the next five years? Of course - but so will Microsoft, who now own around 5 more studios than them. And where Microsoft can and will cover several mainstream genres, the vast majority of Sony's own studios still seem to be tied up with - you guessed it - third-person action-adventures. That's a dangerous game to be playing.

[EcoShifter]

Bluepoint Games have not been acquired by Sony and are still an independent company.

Edited July 2, 2021 by EcoShifter

[Abby_TheLastofUs]

Bluepoint acquisition has been officially confirmed.

 

 

Some additional info.

 

The Demon's Souls remake has sold 1.4 million copies to date.

BluePoint's next project will be an original game, not a remake/remaster.

Sony's not done with acquisitions.

 

My guess, Ember Lab (Kena) is one of the studios Sony's interested in buying.

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Abby_TheLastofUs

[ziggypossum]

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by ziggypossum

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

Well, it was fun while it lasted Bluepoint

[bmg_ps]

Although expected, still good news. 

 

[TrophyChief]

Another feather in Playstation's cap. Looking forward to seeing what Bluepoint has in store for us. Welcome to the family of superb studios.

[Paperclip1776]

Great news!  Continue the assault of amazing games Playstation!

Edited September 30, 2021 by Paperclip1776

[ziggypossum]

 

 

[EDGES]

great move, can't wait to see more from them, but hopefully they stop with "body type A/B" nonsense in their games and bring back male/female like common sense intended

[mcnichoj]

"That’s a lot of big games in the works"

From three studios that have made nothing.

I don't care who is in the studios, I love both Inafune and Itagaki but post them leaving the AAA studios they've put out mixed to average reviewed games.

 

I also love the Bluepoint news. The first thing that was announced after their acquisition was that they're working on an original game. Pretty much debunks that theory from another thread where people were trying to tell me that a remaster/port studio can only do that. Feels pretty vindicating.