Another studio victim of Sony’s failed gaming strategy
Jason Schreier announces to us this evening that Bluepoint Games is no more. Sony decided to close the studio this March, which had around 70 people in its ranks. In an email relayed on ResetEra, Hermen Hulst, CEO of PlayStation Studios, gives us the usual refrain (not to say bullshit) of the difficult market and growth too slow to justify this decision, and this after having praised all the recent successes of the group:
“ At the same time, we are operating in an increasingly difficult industrial context. Rising development costs, slowing growth in the sector, changing player behavior and a more gloomy economic context are making game creation more complex. To face this reality, we must continue to adapt and evolve. We have carefully reviewed our business to ensure our current success while positioning ourselves favorably for the future. Therefore, we will be closing Bluepoint Games in March. This decision was not taken lightly. Bluepoint is an incredibly talented team and their technical expertise has helped deliver exceptional experiences to the PlayStation community. I would like to thank everyone at Bluepoint for their creativity, expertise and commitment to quality. »
Bluepoint Games was however acquired rather recently by Sony, since it was in 2021 that it joined the ranks of PlayStation Studios following its remake of Demon’s Souls. Lately, the studio has been absent, even though it had served as a support studio for God of War Ragnarok. He also had to continue working on the license with a game service God of War (the idea is still so far-fetched), which was finally canceled last January.
We must therefore believe that in one year, Sony did not know what to do with Bluepoint, which is quite incomprehensible given the studio’s CV. The latter had not experienced any major financial failures recently, and its only project which did not see the light of day came from a strategy which had been put in place by Sony itself, which it bitterly regrets today if we rely on the number of canceled service games. In short, a very sad fate for this studio which deserved much better.