A Big Shift For PlayStation Could Be Bad News For One Of Its Best Studios
In the same year that Sony launched the PlayStation 5, the console maker also began moving away from keeping its exclusive games on its own hardware. Horizon Zero Dawn, which had launched on the PlayStation 4 just three years prior, became the first big Sony-published game to launch on the PC, marking a shift in strategy as Sony attempted to find a larger audience in the same way that Microsoft had been doing for some time. It's a bet that led to one of Sony's most-notable acquisitions just a year later, with the company purchasing renowned porting studio Nixxes to support its PC efforts going forward. But just five years later, Sony is reportedly taking a step back from this strategy, which leaves one of the best studios in the industry in a precarious position.
Prior to its acquisition, Nixxes made a name for itself by supporting Square Enix-published titles, primarily working with studios such as Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics. Nixxes, which has been doing porting work since its founding in 2000, was behind the exceptionally well-optimized and feature-rich ports of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and more. It had, in fact, been doing a lot of this work for a long time, but it was around this time that the studio gained a more well-known reputation for creating exceptional PC ports, something which you couldn't take for granted then like you generally can today.
It's this reputation that likely attracted Sony, which initially tasked Nixxes with assisting Guerrilla Games on patching Horizon Zero Dawn shortly after it launched on PC. It was a disappointing launch, with various performance issues and bugs showing how Guerrilla, and perhaps Sony by extension, underestimated the complexity of a port. Nixxes not only helped stabilize it, but clearly showcased how skilled it was at this exact type of work, which more than likely made it an easy choice for Sony to purchase it a year later.Continue Reading at GameSpot
