Sony has quietly shuttered Pixelopus, a first-party studio known for games like Entwined and Concrete Genie. They’re not games that set the world on fire, but I don’t think that was ever their intention. Entwined was released as a surprise during Sony’s E3 2014 press conference and Concrete Genie was a PS4 exclusive released later in the console’s life with a fraction of the budget afforded to games like Horizon Zero Dawn or The Last of Us Part 2. It was a sleeper hit with positive critical reception, and never graduated beyond that lukewarm identity.

Now the studio is no more, Sony has issued a fairly standard statement to the press letting us know that Pixelopus’s closure is merely a consequence of reassessing its future goals and portfolio, in which the likes of Entwined and Concrete Genie do not have a place. It just isn’t prestige enough, not fitting the mould of a continuous live service juggernaut or titles built upon narrative blockbuster conventions where emotive storytelling, deep characters, and sadly predictable gameplay mechanics are the bread and butter. This really bums me out.

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PlayStation used to be a more diverse platform when it came to its first-party games. Going back just one console generation, there was a clear attempt to differentiate its library from the competition with bold, unexpected exclusives that fell far outside predictable sequels and franchise entries. Even the sequels among these, like Gravity Rush 2, came to represent a dwindling part of the brand that Sony was systemically whittling down in service of going big or not going for anything at all. Helldivers, Escape Plan, Tearaway Unfolded, and Resogun all feel like first-party exclusives that wouldn’t be made anymore, or at least aren’t afforded nearly as much attention as they once were. Even Killzone, which never lived up to the grandeur of Call of Duty or Halo, still had at least five attempts at getting it right.

Concrete Genie

Major events like TGS, Paris Games Week, Gamescom, and E3 weren’t just about a handful of multi-million dollar exclusives bound to set the world on fire, but also the smaller efforts and experimental ideas that once represented the experiences PlayStation offered that nobody else did. That still rings true to an extent, yet now we are only concerned with expectant sequels and nostalgic revivals, seldom making room for creativity when far safer bets exist across an increasingly expensive landscape.

Turn the clock back to the PS3 era and you’ll be flabbergasted by both the frequency of games and the variety of genres they inhabit. I’m not a fool, I understand that Sony struck gold with The Last of Us and shifted into a future where the same formula is iterated upon again and again in the name of success. The sales figures speak for themselves, but I can’t help but feel what was once a bastion of imagination for this industry has grown stale and predictable. Sony is almost ashamed of what it used to be, acting as if releasing a plethora of smaller games alongside its blockbusters would be viewed in a negative light, like it’s afraid we suddenly won’t take it seriously anymore. I want more Fat Princesses and Modnation Racers with my lesbian apocalypse dead dad trauma simulators. There’s room for both in my heart, but not in Sony’s from the looks of things.

Gravity Rush 2 Promo Image Of Two Main Characters Floating Through Sky

With the gutting of Japan Studio and sudden closure of Pixelopus, we’re staring down the barrel of a future that only accommodates the biggest and best games Sony is capable of producing. Several live service

games are in development - many exist in universes we’re already familiar with - and we also have Ghost of Tsushima 2, Horizon 3, and who knows what else to look forward to. In my head I can already envision how these games will look and play, which from a platform holder who used to always surprise feels like an admission of defeat. PlayStation is on top of the world right now, but I mourn what it left behind to make that possible.

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