Sony Continues Its Aggressive Expansion in 2021 by Acquiring Valkyrie Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment, the mega house to iconic titles like God of War, Spider-Man, and Returnal, has added a new studio to its family. The company has acquired Seattle-based support studio Valkyrie Entertainment. The latter is known for working on many popular games, including the recently released Xbox exclusive Halo Infinite from 343 Industries. Sony’s acquisition of Valkyrie is its fifth this year as it’s working to add more first-party studios for the PlayStation platform.

PlayStation Studios’ head Hermen Hulst announced the big news on his official Twitter account. His tweet mentioned that Valkyrie “will be making invaluable contributions to key PlayStation Studios franchise.” The veteran support developer is currently working on the upcoming God of War sequel. Apart from this, it has previously contributed towards titles like Forza Motorsport 7, League of Legends, and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.

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Sony and its growing family of PlayStation

In case you missed it, Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired Returnal developer Housemarque earlier this year in June. After that, the PlayStation maker also bought PC port studio Nixxes, Firesprite, and Demon’s Souls PS5 developer Bluepoint. Following the recent acquisition, PlayStation now has 17 internal teams. And the number might increase further as well, with more future buyouts. However, it will also depend on the quality of the new additions, as the focus always remains on providing the best possible gameplay.

In the words of Hermen Hulst himself, the fans deserve “diverse experiences” with the inclusion of different teams under one roof. He also said that Sony is not expanding itself just to be bigger. According to him, it’s because Sony wants to make something better with new teams.

It will be interesting to see how this strategy of buying more studios plays out eventually. So far, it has been very effective and profitable with new developers like Housemarque. The latter has become a widely known studio following the success of Returnal. Not to mention that the game also won the trophy of Best Action title in The Game Awards 2021 event.

Apart from planning on more acquisitions, Sony has been investing in numerous PlayStation exclusives. It is doing so by partnering with some of the amazing developing studios. The company is also funded on an original IP by an AAA start-up studio. Former Stadia games boss Jade Raymond is its founder.

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