Back in August, Sony announced that they were going to fully acquire developer Insomniac Games, whom they’ve had long affiliation with. It was quite a mystery as to how much Sony paid to outright own the studio, until now. According to a filing made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Sony went above and beyond to make Insomniac part of their family, to the tidy sum of $229 million and mostly in cash.
The filing also reveals that the acquisition took place in November of 2019, just a few months ago. With this action, Sony now has complete ownership over the Burbank based studio, making them a first party developer in the process. Due to the long time collaborations between the two companies, this really comes as no big surprise, especially given the amount of franchises that Insomniac has produced for the PlayStation brand for the better part of 20 plus years.
Starting with the original PlayStation, Insomniac created the first three games for the Spyro The Dragon franchise, and all three would go onto be considered all time classics. Then when Sony launched the PlayStation 2, the studio made another series called Ratchet and Clank, which went onto have success on the PlayStation 3 as well. Speaking of the PlayStation 3, Insomniac ventured into unknown territory with the FPS Resistance series. While the franchise had a solid fan base, it’s arguably the least successful of their IP’s thus far.
Despite all of these excellent franchises being a part of the Sony library, it’s more than likely that they weren’t considering the buyout until Insomniac released one of the most successful title in the brands history, Marvels Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4. Smashing expectations, the game broke selling record for Sony and in the process became the fastest selling PlayStation exclusive in the companies history. It was also accessible to everyone who played it, as it also has one of the highest Platinum Trophy completions an exclusive PlayStation 4 title.
Between their commitments to Sony, Insomniac also branched out to some other companies such as Microsoft when they developed the Xbox One title Sunset Overdrive. Now that they are a completely owned by Sony, it’s safe to say that the days of working with other companies are well behind them, notwithstanding the possibility of other Sony studios. With the impending holiday release of the PlayStation 5, we wouldn’t be surprised if Insomniac is hard at work on yet another amazing entry for the upcoming system, maybe even another Spider-Man game.