PlayStation Studios: State of Play — April 2022 update

Each studio has a Spotlight page, complete with a history, latest news updates, full ranking explanations, and projects. Developer Panels allow you to track your collection for each studio, just press the "View More" button — can you complete the list?

Naughty Dog Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

The Adored Explorer: An Uncharted Compendium — All you need to know about the series, as well as TT community memories and ranking.

Naughty Dog has been best in class for cinematics, story, environmental design, set-pieces, characters, and gameplay for a long time now. ‘Greatness Awaits’ is a PlayStation slogan best personified by Naughty Dog and the dev team deserve nothing less than the highest honour in the world of PlayStation.

Current Project: The Last of Us: Part II: Factions

Insomniac Games Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Two Crude Dudes: A Ratchet & Clank Compendium — All you need to know about the series, as well as TT community memories and ranking.

Insomniac Games continues to roll out ludicrously high-quality games. After only three years of making great first-party games under its ownership, Insomniac has already become invaluable to Sony. Giving the dev team an award for its complete trophy list of abilities, end-product, and fun IP is deserved for the PlayStation Studio!

Current Project: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (2023) and Marvel's Wolverine (date unknown)

Guerrilla Games Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Guerrilla Games made a success of the PS4 generation and compounded its high-level output with Horizon Forbidden West. The team is basically ground zero for PlayStation operations in Europe at this point, with more fingers in more pies than you could count. So, for having a corker of a game under its belt for PS5 and its essential role in PlayStation's European operations, this studio is at the top of the Gold pile for us.

Current Project: Horizon Call of the Mountain (2022)

Bungie Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Bungie is now a Sony-owned team, but isn't a PlayStation Studio and will remain functionally independent making multiplatform games. The team is 900-strong and the primary focus will be on live-service gaming and infrastructure for the PlayStation Studios set-up while providing Sony Pictures with ammunition for PlayStation Productions TV and film adaptations. We think Destiny and Halo are more than good enough games to warrant placing Bungie into the gold category of studios for now. Hopefully, once Bungie has settled down we will have a better idea of how the team is set to provide internal assistance.

Current Project: Destiny 2 expansions Lightfall (2023) and The Final Shape (2024)

Santa Monica Studio Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Santa Monica has talent, can make a game feel great, and exudes confidence right now. The team has helped curate fantastic experiences from other development teams too. But, as of yet, the team has not replicated that outstanding God of War-level output like a Naughty Dog or an Insomniac has. That feels very harsh to say, and harsher to give the team just a gold. Make no mistake though, that is certainly the mark of a great developer.

Current Project: God of War: Ragnarök (2022)

Polyphony Digital Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Though occasionally slow and laboured in the making of its games, Polyphony Digital is undoubtedly a fantastic and passionate team. The Gran Turismo series needs a kick in our opinion, but that isn’t really the responsibility of the studio. Instead, Kaz and the dev team make great simulation games and that gives them a hard to get gold.

Current Project: Gran Turismo 7 (March 4th, 2022)

Sucker Punch Spotlight —All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Sucker Punch is an interesting studio to award a trophy because it has made solid games over and over again without a single true ‘miss’. If we could give Sucker Punch something in between Silver and Gold, we would. We feel like the team needs to replicate the quality of Ghost of Tsushima and deliver a little more than a ‘refined’ classic open-world.

Current Project: Ghost of Tsushima 2 [rumoured]

Housemarque Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Housemarque's amazing arcade games have been staples of every iteration of modern PlayStation console: everlasting gobstoppers that don’t ever age badly. Returnal was the perfect step-up into the AAA-looking game. However, after years of struggle with Stormdivers and the slight imperfections with Returnal, a strong silver trophy feels like a suitable spot.

Current Project: Unknown

Bluepoint Games Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

That gold trophy is looming for Bluepoint, having hit it out of the park with the Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus remakes. We are less certain about the team creating “original content” for the rumoured new Bloodborne remaster and sequel. Bluepoint could do a great job with something fresh, no doubt. As of yet, though, the Texas team is nearly totally untested with making something wholly new. Honestly, if it was only remakes and remasters on the table, Bluepoint would be higher up. Therefore, we are putting the team at Silver until the team can be fully assessed in this new frontier.

Current Project: Bloodborne Sequel [rumoured]

San Diego Studio Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

San Diego Studio is clearly a team of talented developers capable of making great sports games. However, with MLB The Show 22, it appears the talent has stretched a little too far with the amount of platforms it is dealing with after the worrying signs from the last iteration. The latest entry has basic batting quality, but isn't as out of the park as it has managed in the past. San Diego needs to find a little more quality with more content the next update to get that silver RBI back up to gold.

Current Project: MLB: The Show 23 (2023) and Uncharted project [rumoured, potentially cancelled]

Team Asobi Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Team Asobi has proved itself to be capable of making excellent games with Astro’s Playroom and Astro Bot Rescue Mission. This places them as a solid, steady team that we can always bank on delivering for new hardware. However, that also leaves the group without a BIG project to really show its full talent. A hard one to rank, but a better-than-average grade makes sense.

Current Project: Astro sequel [rumoured]

XDEV Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

XDEV is very different from anything else on this list. Thinking about the team in a development capacity is limiting; XDEV is more like the connective tissue between lots of different components of PlayStation, Sony, and the development teams. Giving the team a silver trophy feels like a fair representation of its hard work, without overstating its presence as a developer.

Current Project: Establishing independent partners

Bend Studio Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

What a strange old studio! With Bend's long history with Syphon Filter and nearly as long downtime between recent projects, it appears to be back on track. So, we at TT are excited for the future of Bend Studio, but wish that the team had not been messed around so hard by Sony as of late.

Current Project: New IP

London Studio Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

The idea of a new IP on PS5 using everything that London Studio has learned could rocket the squad up the trophy list. A welcome return to PlayStation Home would certainly be a wild project for the team to take on, and we genuinely believe it could lead to success. Solid work, London Studio!

Current Project: New PS5 IP [rumoured]

PixelOpus Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

PixelOpus is clearly a "promise waiting to be fulfilled" kind of team, so striking that balance with a rating is tough. The catalogue is shallow, so a hidden trophy would be an appropriate representation of the embryonic output except for the fact we can already see the potential for the future of this team — silver, with room to soar! So, an odds-even bronze trophy is a fair representation of PixelOpus.

Current Project: PS5 IP in conjunction with Sony Pictures Animation

Media Molecule Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

You are mad at us for putting Media Molecule at the bottom rung, we get it. We are huge LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway fans, don't get us wrong. The problem is how Media Molecule's success is now intertwined with that of Dreams. Unlike most other studios under the PlayStation Studios label, Media Molecule has felt mismanaged by Sony. Can you imagine if Dreams had been a multi-platform game on PC, Game Pass, and as a PS5 pack-in? We are sad about not recognising the talent residing in the knitting basket of Media Molecule, but if Dreams makes the right changes or the next project plays the right hand, expect the team to grab a trophy.

Current Project: Unknown

Valkyrie Entertainment Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

The team works with art assets and development assistance and has done so in the shadows of big AAA games. We can't help but think this team loves to graft. Now, under the PlayStation Studios label, we hope it finds some fun in helping with a concentrated batch of PlayStation talent on a variety of projects. We might never understand the hard work going on at this studio, the Hidden Trophy reflects a mysterious talent at Valkyrie!

Current Project: God of War: Ragnarök (2022)

Firesprite Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Firesprite is a bit of an unknown entity. The Liverpool-based team has been primarily operating as a VR developer, but the rumoured next project is not necessarily going to be of that ilk. Indeed, considering the humongous amount of staff, it really does feel like the team is prepping for something big and different for its first PlayStation Studios project, so we feel comfortable plopping Firesprite in the unearned category until we get hands-on.

Current Project: Current Project: Horizon Call of the Mountain (2022) and Twisted Metal [rumoured]

Haven Studio Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Haven Studios, headed by industry veteran Jade Raymond, is leading the charge on the Canada-based development scene. The team is making a live-service social game that will last generations, but without anything playsble to show yet, we are going to place them in the unearned catagory.

Current project: Unnanounced AAA live-servce title

Nixxes Software Spotlight — All recent news, studio history, and ranking in one place.

Nixxes Software simply isn't an awardable team just yet. The team seems talented at what it does do: PC porting. If it can offer the same services to PlayStation, then we will hand the Dutch team a shiny trinket.

Current project: PC Ports