The PlayStation Studios brand features some of the industry's finest developers and is always looking for expansion. In a year of many acquisitions, PlayStation Studios takes in one more development studio, Valkyrie Entertainment, a veteran studio that has worked on many massive games.
Although this trend dates back to the earliest days of video games, exclusives are often a deciding factor when determining what console to purchase or primarily play on. Whether its the 16-bit legendary battle between Sega and Nintendo with Sonic and Mario, or the mid-2000s, science-fiction FPS clash between Microsoft and Sony with Halo and Killzone, every generation has seen competition over its first-party offerings. In the modern landscape, it has at times felt like a race between PlayStation and Xbox in particular to see which company can aquire the most studios. The affects of these moves can be devastating on the other side like Xbox acquiring Bethesda and leaving PlayStation out to dry.
Sony has announced that Valkyrie Entertainment is joining Sony's first-party development team at PlayStation Studios. The acquisition announcement comes from the Head of PlayStation Studios himself, Hermen Hulst, on Twitter. He speaks about where Valkyrie Entertainment will fit in the PlayStation Studios family, writing, "The studio will be making invaluable contributions to key PlayStation Studios franchises." Valkyrie Entertainment has already been involved with some first-party PlayStation titles like God of War (2018) and its upcoming sequel, God of War: Ragnarok, but has been around the industry as well, helping develop games such as Halo Infinite, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, and League of Legends.
The last studio acquisition by PlayStation was Bluepoint Games, the team behind the remakes of Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls. With Valkyrie Entertainment, the PlayStation Studios' developer count is now up to 17 major teams, not including the litany of external partners PlayStation also has relationships with. It is currently unclear whether Valkyrie Entertainment is currently working on or continuing support of titles published outside of PlayStation exclusivity.
PlayStation continues to play a different game from Xbox regarding its studio acquisitions. Like any sports team, it seems like PlayStation is trying to balance its big-name studios like Naughty Dog and Insomniac with smaller yet equally reliable studios in order to support the projects of the former group. AAA first-party games take millions of dollars to make, and can be spread across hundreds of people; by adding teams that are intrinsically involved in development as opposed to being outsourced, chances are game development will proceed much smoother and more in line with PlayStation Studios' overall vision.
