Sony’s acquisition of developer The Persistence, Firesprite, this week certainly surprised, but perhaps the biggest surprise is the large scale of the team: a total of 250 employees, is actually larger than the other two first based in the UK. studios, Media Molecule and London Studio, combined.
The truth is that the Liverpool-based team has several different projects underway: we had heard in the vineyard that it was getting lost in a virtual reality version of Horizon, but apparently it also has a multiplayer game and a “dark game ”. narrative overproduction ”in production. With such a colossal team size, expect this new studio to be quite productive.
Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, has already hinted that Firesprite’s production will be “quite different from the computers you know” at Sony, so that’s sure to have fascinated us. It is clear that the Japanese giant was already collaborating with the studio before deciding to acquire it completely. That means we could potentially see something announced during the day PlayStation Showcase.
Either way, we had no idea that Firesprite had come to such a huge size; to put its staff in perspective, Guerrilla Games, one of the largest developers in Europe, currently has between 350 and 400 employees, so it’s not a million miles away. It will be fascinating to see what the team has in store for us.