Sony acquires Sucker Punch Productions!

[Toxa]

Sony believes it has a promising new video-game franchise in the “Infamous” series, developed by Bellevue-based Sucker Punch Productions. So the PlayStation maker is snatching up the company, which has roots in Microsoft.

Sony on Monday announced it has acquired Sucker Punch for an undisclosed amount of money. The studio of about 75 people is located across from Microsoft’s building at City Center Plaza in downtown Bellevue, and is now Sony’s second internal game studio in the Seattle area.

But Sucker Punch and Sony Computer Entertainment America, the U.S. gaming arm of the Japanese electronics giant, have been working closely together for more than a decade. Not since a Nintendo 64 title in the 1990s has Sucker Punch developed a video game for a platform other than PlayStation, said Brian Fleming, a manager partner at the studio.

“This in a strange way feels like it’s your longtime girlfriend you’re getting hitched to – not a lot is going to change,” he said. “It’s the same people that we’ve been working with for 10 years.”

Sucker Punch developed the hit “Sly Cooper” franchise for PlayStation 2. In 2009, it launched “Infamous” for PS3. In the hit game, the player controls protagonist Cole MacGrath, a former bike messenger who gets electrically charged superpowers after getting caught in an explosion.

The crime-fighter returned in “Infamous 2,” which launched in June. The PS3-exclusive title was the third-highest selling game that month behind “L.A. Noire” (PS3 and Xbox 360) and “Duke Nukem Forever” (PS3, Xbox 360, PC), according to NPD Group.

“They have produced some very key franchises for us,” Scott Rohde, senior vice president of product development at Sony’s Worldwide Studios America, said of Sucker Punch. “We have a very close relationship with them.”

Sucker Punch was founded in 1997 by three former Microsoft employees. Fleming said he and co-founders Bruce Oberg and Chris Zimmerman met while working on email technology in Redmond. The three were interested in video games and decided to open their own studio.

Today, about half of the company’s employees previously worked in the gaming industry – some from the Microsoft/Bungie world, Fleming said. The rest came from other industries or fresh out of school. About 30 percent are programmers and 60 percent are game artists.

“It’s kind of unusual, it seems, for studios to start independently instead of spinning off from a studio,” Fleming said. “But for a little while we were our own little Galapagos isle with our own unique culture.”

Sucker Punch now joins Redmond-based Zipper Interactive as a local Sony gaming studio. Among other titles, Zipper develops the popular “SOCOM” military games for PlayStation.

Sony’s other U.S. internal gaming studios include Naughty Dog (“Crash Bandicoot,” “Jak and Daxter,” “Uncharted”), LightBox Interactive (“Starhawk”) and Sony Computer Entertainment studios in Santa Monica, Calif. (“God of War,” “Warhawk”); San Diego (“MLB: The Show,” “NBA: The Inside”); Bend, Ore. (“Syphon Filter”); and Foster City, Calif. (largely supporting other studio titles). European branches have developed hits such as “Wipeout,” “Killzone” and “LittleBigPlanet,” and Japan-based studios have released titles like “Gran Turismo,” “Siren” and “Shadow of the Colossus.”

Rohde said it is only indirectly significant to have studios in the backyard of Microsoft, maker of the Xbox 360 platform. But it doesn’t matter much where Sony’s gaming studios are located – it’s the skill of the teams that matters, he said.

As noted on this blog before, Redmond-based Microsoft – and Bungie and others, in this case – has helped develop a sizable local talent pool of software and technology workers. Seattle has been attracting not only hot start-ups like PopCap Games and Zillow, but branch offices for companies like Facebook and Zynga.

Rohde said the transition from independent company to Sony studio will “feel pretty seamless.” Sony doesn’t plan to send any executives or reorganize Sucker Punch.

“I think Sony does a good job of allowing, even after an acquisition, all the studios operate like their own companies,” Fleming said. “We don’t want to lose a lot of that value that makes us unique. Because uniqueness is important in the entertainment world.”

http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/...o-game-studio/

it's a good move from Sony

[cheaitsjustin]

Woohoo!

Too bad Sony never bought Insomniac before they went multiplatform.

[Toxa]

Originally Posted by cheaitsjustin

Woohoo!

Too bad Sony never bought Insomniac before they went multiplatform.

Insomniac wanted to remain independent

[JonD7]

Great news.

[Al_The_Strange]

Oh...it's Sucker Punch the company, not the movie. I was gonna say, the movie would make an interesting video game.

[ps3bd_owner]

I thought it was the film for any reason.

I've never read Sucker Punch so many times on the internet as in these Blu-ray.com forums, dunno what the film's about, never saw it.

[mywhitenoise]

Originally Posted by cheaitsjustin

Woohoo!

Too bad Sony never bought Insomniac before they went multiplatform.

Not too big of a deal. Other than Ratchet and Spyro, they make generic shooters.

[Darkhawk9587]

Originally Posted by mywhitenoise

Not too big of a deal. Other than Ratchet and Spyro, they make generic shooters.

They may be "generic" but there's no denying the Resistance games were fun and fairly successful.

[Gamma_Winstead]

Originally Posted by Darkhawk9587

They may be "generic" but there's no denying the Resistance games were fun and fairly successful.

Resistance 2 wasn't really all that successful. And I doubt 3 will do gangbusters, despite the fact that it'll probably be the best entry in the franchise.

[SkillzthatKillz]

Good move on Sony's part, SP makes some pretty sweet games, plus they can now share their creative talents with the other Sony studios and vice-versa

[Snicket]

Now lets see them acquire Naughty Dog!

[Darkhawk9587]

Originally Posted by Snicket

Now lets see them acquire Naughty Dog!

Wasn't ND acquired by Sony in 2001?

[SkillzthatKillz]

Originally Posted by Snicket

Now lets see them acquire Naughty Dog!

[Snicket]

Originally Posted by Darkhawk9587

Wasn't ND acquired by Sony in 2001?

Originally Posted by SkillzthatKillz

LOL, epic fail post by me, my bad...

[Blu Ian]

Finally I say.

[doctorD]

Awesome news! I forgot that Sucker Punch was in my backyard. Great going Sony. I wonder if MS might have been sniffing at these guy's door and Sony caught wind of it.

[Shin-Ra]

Originally Posted by doctorD

Awesome news! I forgot that Sucker Punch was in my backyard. Great going Sony. I wonder if MS might have been sniffing at these guy's door and Sony caught wind of it.

It's a possibility but they don't seem interested in building up "core" gamer IP.

Just as well when you look at all the studios they've shut down, driven away or gutted (Rare ) just since Ed Fries left MGS.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

It's a possibility but they don't seem interested in building up "core" gamer IP.

Just as well when you look at all the studios they've shut down, driven away or gutted (Rare ) just since Ed Fries left MGS.

The word through the grapevine is that the MSFT corporate culture is toxic to a lot of game development studios. It's why FASA literally crumbled as soon as they were acquired, and Bungie eventually jumped ship, and why Rare hasn't produced much of anything notable under the aegis of Microsoft.

[Canada]

great news.

[Monkey]

I'm just glad they didn't waste money on acquiring that dud of a company Ninja Theory.