Sony Interactive Entertainment has said on a number of occasions that it approaches acquisitions and mergers with caution, choosing instead to organically grow its in-house studios rather than going on blind shopping sprees to increase production capacity.
When it does acquire studios, Sony is known for nourishing them and allowing them to craft unique, diverse experiences – something previously echoed by Insomniac Games and now by Media Molecule studio director Siobhan Reddy. In an extensive interview with Push Square, she said that Sony has a “great” track record of “not meddling with the good parts of studios once they’ve been acquired” and revealed that Sony enabled Media Molecule to take “big risks” like Dreams.
Speaking of the acquisition, Reddy said:
All of us had experienced acquisitions before, so we took very seriously how we would help the team adjust. And you know, Sony has a great record of not meddling with the good parts of studios once they’ve been acquired. We set it up so that for a few years we still went in via the XDev group, so we had these sort of training wheels, and over time we gradually took them off.
So yeah, the big changes were the studio, the continued investment, and the ability to take these really big risks on things like Dreams. There’s obviously different trajectories for when you’re acquired vs. when you’re not, and for us it’s definitely been about us being able to double down on innovation, and what we can do in the [user generated content] space.
Media Molecule was founded in 2006 and was acquired by Sony in 2010. Its co-founder Alex Evans announced a break from game development last September.
[Source: Push Square]
