By CCN Markets: Fans of passionately crafted single-player narratives rejoice, as Sony has acquired Insomniac Games. Said acquisition has likely been on the cards for long but was likely cemented by the critical and commercial success of Spider-Man, which has sold over 13 million copies.
Sony has officially acquired Insomniac Games, developer of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank and more. https://t.co/YGgVZRr4wB pic.twitter.com/gG23Vxxdvc
— IGN (@IGN) August 19, 2019
Insomniac is one of Sony’s oldest and more valuable dev partners. Their relationship began right at the beginning of Sony’s gaming endeavor with the very first Spyro game for the original Playstation. This is good news for Playstation fans, as Insomniac has never failed when producing exclusives for Sony’s console. Even better when you consider EA’s stance that multiplayer games are the future, as it states gamers don’t care about single-player games anymore.
EA is lying, and wrong either way
EA shouldn’t be speaking for players, especially when not speaking the truth. The reason why EA doesn’t want to invest in single-player games is not that players don’t care about them anymore.
From article about EA exec commenting on Visceral game – “As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago,” Jorgensen said – oh dear god EA, just utter nonsense! pic.twitter.com/KN0JOPhnNq
— Cory Barlog 🎮 (@corybarlog) November 29, 2017
It’s because they are harder to monetize in the long run. Weirdly, even multiplayer games are hard to monetize when you are EA.
But single-player games, especially PS4 exclusives, are as big as they’ve ever been. Horizon: Zero Dawn got massive critical acclaim and sold over 10 million copies in 2017. In 2018, both God of war and Spider-Man did even better, with God of War winning numerous game of the year awards. Since God of War and Horizon are already from a Sony first party, it only makes sense that the maker of Spider-man would also get invited to the family.
Sony is preparing for the next-gen war
Sony is doing the right thing by acquiring a proven company. Microsoft announced in this year’s E3 it’s been buying a lot of game studios. This means that they’re ready to throw its hat in the ring of single-player games for the next-gen. Excellent, as they’ve been out for too long.
Interestingly, Despite working mainly for Sony, Insomniac made one of the few single-player titles for the Xbox one: Sunset Overdrive. Guess that one won’t be having a sequel. We’ll have to wonder whether this was just an Ironic twist of fate or clever war maneuver.
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