PlayStation Studio Spotlight: Bluepoint Games

Bluepoint Games has made a name for itself by producing some of the best remasters and remakes on the market, growing from 30 developers to 70 permanent core team members in 2021. Back in 2006, the year Marco Thrush and Andy O'Neil founded the studio, the team released one of the first digital-only PlayStation games called Blast Factor. The addictive top-down shoot ‘em up is notable for several reasons. It was one of the first digital-only games and somehow ran at 1080p with 60fps on PS3. Indeed, to date, it is still the only original IP to come out of the studio.

After Blast Factor, Sony gave Bluepoint the keys to God of War and the sequel for a PS3 and Vita remaster, which was released in 2009. Bluepoint's talent for taking the past and bringing it forward in a remastered form with better graphical output and trophy support was clear. The same process helped Bluepoint give Sony Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection in 2011, while Konami commissioned a Metal Gear Solid HD Collection — containing the second and third games — for PS3 and 360 in the same year.


The Texas-based team finished up this early remastering period and instead spent a few years working on porting games between systems. Sony, already in bed with the team, requested the underrated PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale get a day and date Vita edition alongside the PS3 version in 2012. This was followed by a Flower port to PS4 and Vita in 2013. A year later, Bluepoint released a backwards port of Titanfall for 360, which was an almighty impressive feat.

The return of the Sony remasters occupied the team's 2015 slate, with the Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection — including Drake's Fortune, Among Thieves, and Drake's Deception — and Gravity Rush Remastered both making their way to PS4. While both were good ports, they were the minimum requirement without any particular love given to the creation of the games or any extras. That would be swiftly rectified in the next period of Bluepoint’s existence, though. Shadow of the Colossus, the game the studio ported in 2009, got given a full-blown remake in 2018 that blew off some tunics. Bluepoint took the original files and data and brought the game into the modern era with sufficient class to prove that the team was a top-in-class and unique talent house.


FromSoftware’s beloved Demon’s Souls got a PS5 remake at the launch of the generation in 2020. It led the charge on what next-gen was capable of — the obliteration of loading times, high fidelity and framerates, and seriously detailed worlds — and only a year later, the team was snapped up by Sony for PlayStation Studios.

A remake project on a beloved franchise is a tough task, but there is no doubt that Bluepoint succeeded in bringing FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls back to life. Launched in 2020 alongside the PS5, the game really led the charge on next-gen only games. With a staggering [92 critical reception and a solid eight user review score on Metacritic (remember, it tends to be tens or zeros), there is no doubt that Demon’s Souls took Bluepoint up a notch. The huge bosses came to life with better animation sets, the graphics pumped up the atmosphere, the difficulty was retained… What more do you need to prove Bluepoint’s quality?

After the acquisition, president Marco Thrush stated that the team is keen on making “original content” for its next game. A rumour places Bluepoint at the centre of a new Bloodborne game. This has a few things going for it, one being that Sony still retains the IP and can assumedly do whatever it so pleases with it. The first choice, original developer FromSoftware, is very busy with Elden Ring and projects for other publishers. With Bluepoint, there is a team with the most literal kind of Souls-like development experience possible under a publisher who will do whatever it takes to get the game to succeed. It makes sense, but still take it with a pinch of salt.

While the most significant news was the acquisition itself, interviews with Marco Thrush and the head of PlayStation Studios, Hermen Hulst, suggested that Sony was ready for more purchases when the time and culture was right. However, if Demon's Souls is more your bag, the Noclip documentary about the making of the game is an utterly fantastic watch.

We feel like we say this frequently for studio rankings, but finding the perfect spot for Bluepoint is a really tough ask. There is no doubt that the team is meeting the gold standard for its recent work on remakes with both Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus being of a high bar of quality. However, we are uncertain about the new direction of a master in the field of remakes making “original content.” Bluepoint could do a great job, and we certainly trust it to, but the Texas team is nearly totally untested in this area. If it was clear that remakes and remasters were the only things on the agenda, it would be easy gold. But they haven’t earned a trophy in the “original content department.” So, we're putting them at Silver to balance to book a little, but expect the team to rise if the next project meets the high bar Bluepoint has set itself.