Being one of the biggest publishers on the planet, it's only natural that PlayStation also seems as though it has at least some form of a plan. Now, in the past, PlayStation's plan may have been a tad misguided - like that time the PS3 retailed for $499-599 - but it still had a plan. For the last decade or so, PlayStation's plan has led to the creation of multiple AAA first-party exclusives, the vast majority of which have gone on to be some of the biggest franchises in gaming right now. But that might all be about to change.
PlayStation acquiring new first-party studios is nothing new. For decades, PlayStation has been slowly grabbing talented dev teams and tasking them with producing high-quality exclusives, and in the last few years, it seems to have really ramped this up. In 2022 alone, PlayStation acquired at least four video game studios, including the heavy hitter, ex-Halo developer Bungie. And with the recent announcement that PlayStation has just acquired Firewalk Studios, it seems as though PlayStation's new plan is about to come to fruition.
Firewalk Studios Is a Big Part of PlayStation's Multiplayer Plan
Back in April 2021, over two years ago now, Firewalk Studios announced that it was partnering with PlayStation to produce a AAA multiplayer project. At the time, this seemed a little odd, as Firewalk Studios was a fairly new studio that had never produced a game before. But when gamers dived into Firewalk's pedigree, the partnership began to make a lot of sense.
Established in 2018, Firewalk Studios is headed up by three core members. The first of these (and the Studio Head of Firewalk) is Tony Hsu, the previous General Manager and Senior Vice President of Destiny, responsible for much of the franchise's strategic plan. Ryan Ellis is another founding member of Firewalk, taking on the role of Game Director for its current unannounced project. Ellis previously worked as a Creative Director over at Bungie. And finally, Elena Siegman, an Executive Producer at Firewalk, had extensive experience in the games industry prior to joining the company, working with Irrational Games, Harmonix, and Bungie. Along with the rest of the studio's talented team, Firewalk is well-versed in all things online multiplayer.
When taking all of that into consideration, acquiring Firewalk Studios seems like a logical progression of PlayStation's current big plan. While Sony has stated that single-player exclusives are still going to be a big part of its future line-up, the company has also stated that it's looking to add a few multiplayer games to its roster. With Firewalk having an extensive amount of experience in this field, this recent acquisition makes complete sense.
But what's interesting is that Firewalk was already making this exclusive multiplayer game for PlayStation. This partnership has already been in place since 2021, and PlayStation would have had this Firewalk title without acquiring the studio. This acquisition could point to the sheer scale of PlayStation's current multiplayer plan. PlayStation has already made a few statements over the last year or so stating that it's focusing now on adding some live-service multiplayer games to its line-up. With PlayStation acquiring Firewalk, it could suggest that Firewalk's multiplayer game will be one such live-service title, with the acquisition meant to secure the developer's efforts for the next few years while they finish the game, and continue to add content to it over time. With the live-service model being under more scrutiny than ever right now, this decision might end up being quite a controversial one on PlayStation's part, but only time will tell.