Destiny 1
Well, I was just talking about how Sony likes investing in small studios, and here we are again with a newly announced partnership to snag an exclusive game from Firewalk Studios. It’s a relatively new, unknown studio but with quite a collection of devs, given that its major players are ex-Destiny developers from Bungie.
There’s studio head Tony Hsu (former general manager and senior VP of Destiny), game director Ryan Ellis (former creative director at Bungie) and executive producer Elena Siegman (also from Bungie, additionally Irrational and Harmonix). Hsu just penned a blog post for PlayStation announcing the partnership, though Sony has technically been working with Firewalk for a few years now. But at this point, it’s news that a new, exclusive game is coming out of the collaboration. And it’s a new multiplayer IP.
Here’s Hsu:
“Today, we’re thrilled to announce a partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment for our new, original multiplayer game. For our team, the opportunity to create new worlds and inspire more amazing moments for players around the world is the fire and ambition that keeps us going. The PlayStation team has a deep love and respect for the medium of games, and some of the best expertise and capabilities in the world to help make big ambitions a reality.
We’re already hard at work on development and have been having a ton of fun playing our game as a team. In fact, while we continued to grow our team during this challenging last year, it was our daily online playtests that provided the most consistent point of joy and connection for our crew.”
The deal
PlayStation does not often miss with its exclusive partnerships (Godfall? Never heard of it), and if anyone knows how to make a good multiplayer game, it’s people from Bungie. There are no indications of what type of game this will be, hero shooter, battle royale, arena shooter, nor even that it’s a shooter period, though that would be my guess, given the team’s history.
Bungie itself has struggled lately with Destiny’s PvP mode, but at its worst, it’s still drawing hundreds of thousands of players a day. It’s kind of an open secret that Bungie is likely developing a more dedicated multiplayer IP as one of its incubated projects, which may be where some of the PvP team went, so who knows, maybe that game will go head to head with this Firewalk title at some point in the future.
Despite knowing pretty much nothing about this, it stands to reason that this is going to be something to keep an eye on between the pedigree of the new studio and the fact that Sony is confident enough in them to make a big deal about this game and partnership. We may not see the fruits of this for a while, but I’m looking forward to when that happens.
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