PlayStation Studios has added US-based developer Valkyrie Entertainment to its growing list of internal studios. Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst announced the news in a Tweet, revealing the developer “will be making invaluable contributions to key PlayStation Studios franchises“.
Valkyrie Entertainment has been supporting Sony Interactive Entertainment and their PlayStation Studios for quite a while. They’ve previously helped Sucker Punch Productions on Infamous 2, Eat Sleep Play with Twisted Metal, and Santa Monica Studio with God of War. They’re currently assisting the latter in the development of God of War Ragnarok. They haven’t always been a support studio though; they developed their own PlayStation-exclusive title Guns Up! that was released back in 2015.
Today we announce @valkyrieent will be joining the PlayStation Studios family. The studio will be making invaluable contributions to key PlayStation Studios franchises pic.twitter.com/sNTugminD5
— Hermen Hulst (@hermenhulst) December 10, 2021
Other studios have also benefitted from their assistance. Tey’ve worked on current PlayStation Plus offering The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, as well as Valorant, Halo Infinite, Forza Motorsport 7, League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, ARK Extinction, Middle-Earth Shadow of War, and State of Decay 2. They’re working on the upcoming Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 too.
Sony has been on a bit of a spending spree lately. Valkyrie Entertainment is the fourth studio to join PlayStation Studios this year following on from Housemarque in June, Nixxes Software in July, and Firesprite and Bluepoint Games in September. Firesprite themselves then acquired Fabrik Games to help “strengthen SIE’s catalog of exclusive games.” Earlier this year, there were more than 25 PS5 games in active development between the different PlayStation Studios, almost half of which are new IP. Some of those, like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, have since been released, but there’s still a fair number of games that are yet to be announced.
Not only is Sony planning on strengthening their console output, the most recent studio acquisitions will help them to “deploy games to PC and mobile devices” too. According to Sony’s Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki, they “plan to continue to aggressively invest in our development capability going forward”. Sony has denied they’re in an arms race with other companies like Microsoft to acquire companies, but bearing in mind the last studio acquisition before this year was Insomniac Games in August 2019, five studios in a single financial year is quite a bold move.
