Sony Exec Saddened By Insomniac’s Desire For Open Relationship


A split from Sony was being discussed by Insomniac as early as 2008, it has been revealed. Shuhei Yoshida, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, has spoken out about how much the final decision saddened him.

“We grew up together,” he said, speaking with Develop. “Insomniac’s first title was on our first platform.”

Yoshida had a personal stake in several of Insomniac’s games, as he was the producer in Japan for Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank.

Insomniac was “very open about their need to grow and their intention,” according to Yoshida. “They want to reach the people they haven’t been able to, so it was sad to hear a couple of years ago what their intent was, but as we are growing, Insomniac is growing too.”

Yoshida remains optimistic about the developer’s deal with EA brokered back in May. He believes it will actually lead to more content for Sony’s platforms.

“When you think about it,” he said, “Insomniac is making multiplatform games. So PS3 owners should be happy because they are getting more Insomniac games as the studio hires more staff.”

A good point, but wasn’t Insomniac’s exclusivity to Sony’s consoles a big selling point for them? With that gone, what are Sony going to do if the developer’s games start kicking ass on 360 and failing to perform on PS3? And don’t multiplatform games sometimes suffer in quality, catering to the “lowest common denominator” of hardware capabilities?

Insomniac’s long relationship with Sony has meant that they have built up a loyal fanbase not only for themselves, but for Sony too.

But moves like this lend fuel to the fire of debate. If more and more developers decide to start developing their IPs as multiplatform, why have multiple platforms? Why not just have one single unified platform that everything gets released on?

The simple answer is that none of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo are going to roll over and play dead. And despite high-profile developers like Insomniac and Bungie jumping out of bed with their former benefactors, it brings their work to a much greater audience. And in the long run, that’s a good thing. Because a good game is a good game, whatever platform it happens to be running on.

There’s also nothing stopping developers putting unique special features on the different platforms’ versions of a game. This, of course, doesn’t mean that they’ll do it. But it’s possible. Were this to happen, PS3 versions could theoretically include a lot more content thanks to the storage capacity of Blu-Ray.

It’s certainly nothing to worry about for gamers, though. As Yoshida says, Insomniac will be able to take on more staff to develop more games. Which certainly sounds like a good thing.