The tragedy of Psygnosis....how Sony killed an industry juggernaut

onQ123 said:
Guess I was too young to really know who they were back then I'm not sure if I had an Amiga but I remember my mom buying us a The Commodore 64 from a yard sale or something
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Yeah I understand, Psygnosis became a giant on the Amiga so if you missed that then you missed their glowing 16-bit era. I guess it's like how it is for me and early Atari, I missed it all, the dominance and crash and all.

In total Commodore was around for just over a decade. A blink of an eye really. But for us who were there, especially in Europe, Commodore were the kings of gaming. C64 and Amiga 500 were both extremely popular, and that's where all the cool blood and sex was so that's obviously where you wanted to be as a 10-15 year old heh

Psygnosis weren't going all in on such content but Walker felt special when having mouse control aiming and stomping around mowing down poor tiny soldiers with a giant mech. Made by DMA Design which ended up as Rockstar and went to make GTA.
 
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Fess said:
Yeah I understand, Psygnosis became a giant on the Amiga so if you missed that then you missed their glowing 16-bit era. I guess it's like how it is for me and early Atari, I missed it all, the dominance and crash and all.

In total Commodore was around for just over a decade. A blink of an eye really. But for us who were there, especially in Europe, Commodore were the kings of gaming. C64 and Amiga 500 were both extremely popular, and that's where all the cool blood and sex was so that's obviously where you wanted to be as a 10-15 year old heh

Psygnosis weren't going all in on such content but Walker felt special when having mouse control aiming and stomping around mowing down poor tiny soldiers with a giant mech. Made by DMA Design which ended up as Rockstar and went to make GTA.
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Well what happened to Commodore is a whole thread in itself! I remember walker as well, it was like piloting an AT-AT!
 
It wasn't just there gaming side and development. It was their distribution and connections.

They were great on Amiga and ST. A lot of their games were all flash and graphics. A few amazing gems. They really became something else on PS1 though. I loved games like Ork, hired guns and some do their more PC like games like innocent until caught. Very diverse company with genres. True legends.
 
I knew of them before Sony bought them as I owned an Amiga 500 and Shadow of the Beast 1 and 2. Their early PS1 and PC output were amazing as I enjoyed G Police and the Colony War games.
 
Meanwhile Sony keeps this useless company

if2LVNj.jpeg
 
You can always tell who is childish. The second you see those open mouth pics, there you go.

Even dumber, you got some people on the floor sitting backwards.
 
The great thing this video showed was that devs back then experimented on different genres of games. Not all of it worked but they gave it a shot and it was at least interested. I miss those days of gaming...
 
A great developer/publisher through the late 80's & 90's, a shame they were just lumbered with F1 games for years and a few sporadic Wipeout games.

When you think back to their output from the Amiga through the PS1 era, it was pretty legendary. The few flops were covered up by many hits. They also had one of the best logos!

  • Lemmings & Lemmings 2: The Tribes
  • Shadow Of The Beast trilogy
  • G-Police 1 & 2
  • Destruction Derby 1 & 2
  • Colony Wars trilogy
  • Alundra
  • Wipeout series

To finish Shadow Of The Beast 2, it was recommended to have 10 pints. IYKYK.
 
I'll always remember getting the A500 one Christmas and getting a copy of (I think..) Amiga Format, and it having a demo disc that had Lemmings and Syndicate on the front cover

My arse didn't leave that chair for around 9 hours..

I didn't want to go to a christmas party that evening I was so hooked :messenger_tears_of_joy:

My poor old dad must have worked his arse off for that machine, god bless him. I'll never forget that.

Psygnosis played a massive part for me in the gaming scene, I don't think there is one of their games I don't own or haven't played

Loved em.
 
I really liked their early Amiga games one of their a500 launch titles Barbarian was great although I never got to grips with Terrapods which was another. Obliterater was another one of the earlier releases was also good.
 
Hudo said:
I think thats Media Molecule. They have made one good game, which was Tearaway for the Vita.
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If the GAAS game they were working on was cancelled with the other Sony GAAS games, I expect news of the studio shutting down at any moment.
 
Calverz said:
Their Saturn games and Nintendo 64 games were great. And on the other console I guess.
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Yes, Sony (in this case their subsidiary Psygnosis) also published for rival consoles and PC back then.

Ar¢tos said:
If the GAAS game they were working on was cancelled with the other Sony GAAS games, I expect news of the studio shutting down at any moment.
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There isn't any cancelled Media Molecule GaaS title. They did stop supporting Dreams (which was a GaaS) when didn't make sense financial sense to continue doing so, as happens in all GaaS.

All their games have been profitable and they win many awards with each new game. There is no reason to shut them down.

kiphalfton said:
People criticize Ubisoft and Activision all the time, but Sony deserves more hate. This gen they have seemingly done their damnedest to erase whatever good will they had established in the past.
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This is dumb.

Related to Psygnosis, this generation Sony did acquire and expanded Firesprite, which basically is the revived and combined SCE Liverpool (so Psygnosis) + Evolution + Bizarre Creations + old school Supermassive games.
 
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yurinka said:
There isn't any cancelled Media Molecule GaaS title yet. They did stop supporting Dreams (which was a GaaS) when didn't make sense financial sense to continue doing so, as happens in all GaaS.

All their games have been profitable and they win many awards with each new game. There is no reason to shut them down.
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FTFY
They have been working on a GAAS game since they stopped Dreams.
It's a ticking time bomb.
 
RAIDEN1 said:
Psygnosis, was a standout publisher in the 90s.....but when Sony showed up that changed everything...
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Yeah, they published a ton of awesome stuff in the Amiga, both internally developed and specially externally developed. Sony acquiring them did help them in the painful for everybody 2D > 3D transition. Later got renamed to SCE Liverpool and continued doing great stuff but sadly their games didn't sell well enough to be successful so ended being shut down.

A good chunk of their staff is now at Firesprite, which also has a lot of ex-Evolution, ex-Bizarre Creations and ex-old school Supermassive Games.

CamHostage said:
There's also the factor of Renderware; Criterion as far as I know has no connection to Psygnosis, but a Brit studio being a key middleware provider for PS2 mirrors what happened with Psygnosis and PS1 (Criterion even made a PS exclusive game, after giving up on Dreamcast,) and Renderware was key to making GTA3. Not a direct connection, but Xbox didn't have those European roots and Nintendo really was only interested in Rare (and even that didn't last forever...), but Sony had boots on those grounds because of the hand that Psygnosis always offered to shake for a deal.
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Criterion and their multiplatform game engine RenderWare weren't related to Psygnosis or Sony. Criterion and Renderware never have been owned by Sony. Fun fact: I had a producer who before did work at Criterion with Renderware during a lot of years.

Criterion licensed several studios to user that engine (back then people didn't have Unreal Engine or Unity). Many well known games from many companies of the time did use Renderware as engine:

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Battlefield 2, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, the Burnout series until as I remember Burnout Paradise, Call of Duty: Finest Hour, Dave Mirra, GTAIII, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, Kill Switch, The Warriors, Rayman 2 and Rayman M, Suikoden III, the original Persona 3 and Persona 4 games, Manhunt 1 & 2, Micromachines V4, Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Mortal Kombat Deadly Silence and Mortal Kombat Deception, Killer 7, KOF Maximum Impact 1 & 2, several entries of Pro Evolution Soccer series (can't remember which ones) and many more

Ar¢tos said:
They have been working on a GAAS game since they stopped Dreams.
It's a ticking time bomb.
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We don't know if the game they are working on is a GaaS or not. In case it is, Media Molecule made multiple profitable GaaS like the LBP series and (despite this one being 'not the huge financial success it was supposed to be') Dreams.

So pretty likely their next one will be too. They're a relatively small studio with a huge portion of the staff that was hired as recently graduated juniors or talented level creators of their games that never had worked as gamedev before. Meaning, it's very cheap to keep it running.
 
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RAIDEN1 said:
I think in some ways Psygnosis and Team 17 were one of the few publishers out there to really push the Amiga..
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These guys too:

Bitmap Brothers
Rainbow Arts
Microprose

Flight sims like F/A 18 Interceptor & F19 Stealth Fighter. Games with parallax scrolling (SOTB) and then there's Turrican 2 which included 7 channel sound when the hardware only actually supported 4. GOAT Huelsbeck.
 
I still reeeeeeeeee about how Pygnosis and Surreal Software made an awesome PC game called Drakan and how with Sony acquiring them, made them make the sequel only on PS2 and completely kill off the audience, part of why it was bombed and the series died with it.


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If it wasn't something you lived through, it's impossible to explain just how big of a deal Wipeout was at the time, and the part it played in changing gaming from a child's hobby into something cool.
 
Mattyp said:
What's the juggernaut of variety on PS1 then? Not just square enix did FF7 which is better. Honestly interested
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So now we are saying variety?
Variety doesn't always=quality.
I don't care for most of what they offered.

Capcom
Namco
SE

Off the top of my head were better.
 
T8SC said:
These guys too:

Bitmap Brothers
Rainbow Arts
Microprose

Flight sims like F/A 18 Interceptor & F19 Stealth Fighter. Games with parallax scrolling (SOTB) and then there's Turrican 2 which included 7 channel sound when the hardware only actually supported 4. GOAT Huelsbeck.
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Yeah Psygnosis was a big loss. Wipeout but their Amiga stuff was legendary. Blood Money and Shadow of the Beast.
Bitmap Brothers
Xenon 2
Legendary soundtrack
Miss the fuckin 80's

 
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John Wick said:
Bitmap Brothers
Xenon 2
Legendary soundtrack
Miss the fuckin 80's

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Nothing to do with Psygnosis though. And it also has to be said that the BB were mainly ST-focussed, the frame-rate of Xenon 2, Gods and Magic Pockets, hell almost everything they put out on Amiga was atrocious because they never really utilized the custom hardware.
 
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Phobos Base said:
If it wasn't something you lived through, it's impossible to explain just how big of a deal Wipeout was at the time, and the part it played in changing gaming from a child's hobby into something cool.
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Yep!
It literally sold PS in Europe. The soundtracks were legendary. Games and club culture combined........
 
Nonsense, pretty much all the big European developers of the 80s and early 90s did bit the dust by the mid 90s, first they couldn't transition well from 8/16bit computers to Japanese consoles and the PC of those days , and the next step towards 3D games on Playstation /Saturn/N64 was absolutely impossible for most of them, one flop and they were done for, and boy did they have flops.

If Psygnosus had stayed independent, it would have hit the dust by end 90s. Sony buyout gave them 15 more years of life, but then Shu Yoshida killed them off.
 
Hector Hall said:
Nonsense, pretty much all the big European developers of the 80s and early 90s did bit the dust by the mid 90s, first they couldn't transition well from 8/16bit computers to Japanese consoles and the PC of those days , and the next step towards 3D games on Playstation /Saturn/N64 was absolutely impossible for most of them, one flop and they were done for, and boy did they have flops.

If Psygnosus had stayed independent, it would have hit the dust by end 90s. Sony buyout gave them 15 more years of life, but then Shu Yoshida killed them off.
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That's not really accurate. Trying to break into the cartridge-based console market in the early 90's was where the damage was done, mainly because needing to pre-order production runs was higher than their traditional margins would allow.

Playstation actually reversed that trend somewhat for those who were at least able to get a foot in the door as CD-based distribution didn't require close to the same sunk cost. What it did require though of course was being supplied with devkits and other support hardware like SGi Workstations.

The next gen was a further escalation in cost however and what mostly finished off the independents.

Psygnosis were fortunate in that basically they found so much nascent talent in the Amiga scene, and allowed them to grow through the PS1 era to a point where they were able to become successful on their own terms.
 
Fucking legendary, man. Psygnosis should have been the heart of SIE in Europe, instead this bland and boring thing called Guerrilla.
 
AeonGaidenRaiden said:
I mean I get the Lemmings part but whats wrong with rave and club culture Wipeout?
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Well on this side of the pond it's Pride Month and I wouldn't care to say anything too unkind. So, we will have to agree to disagree as to whether those things were good or bad, or if we should lament or celebrate their loss. But the demo disc for Wipeout wasn't that much fun. Too floaty. Not that I was ever a huge racing gamer.
 
yurinka said:
Yes, Sony (in this case their subsidiary Psygnosis) also published for rival consoles and PC back then.


There isn't any cancelled Media Molecule GaaS title. They did stop supporting Dreams (which was a GaaS) when didn't make sense financial sense to continue doing so, as happens in all GaaS.

All their games have been profitable and they win many awards with each new game. There is no reason to shut them down.


This is dumb.

Related to Psygnosis, this generation Sony did acquire and expanded Firesprite, which basically is the revived and combined SCE Liverpool (so Psygnosis) + Evolution + Bizarre Creations + old school Supermassive games.
Click to expand...

How could I forget firesprite.

A super renowned dev that has released so many hits since being founded.

Oh wait...
 
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Avid Reading Horse said:
Well on this side of the pond it's Pride Month and I wouldn't care to say anything too unkind. So, we will have to agree to disagree as to whether those things were good or bad, or if we should lament or celebrate their loss. But the demo disc for Wipeout wasn't that much fun. Too floaty. Not that I was ever a huge racing gamer.
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What the fuck are you even babbling on about? Are you on that neigh neigh dust?
 
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