PlayStations Disastrous First-Party Leadership Culm...

What’s Happening

Breaking it down: In an increasingly dark day for video games, Sony’s disastrous leadership of first-party studios has taken yet another casualty.

Dark Outlaw Games, led by Treyarch veteran Jason Blundell and officially acknowledged last year, has been shuttered before it can even ship a game. Read the full article on pushsquare. (wild, right?)

Com News Sony PS5 Industry PlayStation’s Disastrous First-Party Leadership Culminates in Yet Another Studio Closure Dark Outlaw Games dead by Sammy Barker 32 mins ago : 0 In an increasingly dark day for video games , Sony’s disastrous leadership of first-party studios has taken yet another casualty.

The Details

Dark Outlaw Games , led Jason Blundell and officially acknowledged last year , has been shuttered before it can even ship a game. Many of you will recall that the Los Angeles-based studio was born from the ashes of Deviation Games , a studio partnered with PlayStation and working on a first-party project before it was closed a couple of years ago.

It continues a dreadful decade of Sony decision making, which has seen it acquire and shutter a slew of studios, including most just Bluepoint Games . Here’s a list of all PlayStation first-party studio closures since the PS5’s launch year: 2020 Manchester Studio 2021 Japan Studio 2023 PixelOpus 2024 London Studio 2024 Firewalk Games 2024 Neon Koi 2026 Bluepoint Games 2026 Dark Outlaw Games Obviously there’s no attachment to Dark Outlaw Games as we never got an opportunity to know what it was working on, but it continues a disastrous run for PlayStation’s first-party, which has stumbled its way through the PS5 generation.

Why This Matters

Blundell’s best known for working on Call of Duty Zombies , so it’s likely Dark Outlaw Games would have been working on a first-person shooter. We know Deviation Games before it was beavering away on some kind of sci-fi game . More layoffs today: PlayStation is closing Dark Outlaw Games, a studio formed last year of Duty lead Jason Blundell (his previous PlayStation studio, Deviation, was shut down in 2024).

Gaming fans have strong opinions about moves like this, and for good reason.

Key Takeaways

• PlayStation is also making other cuts including in mobile development.
• Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.
• 888Z Elsewhere, a “small” number of layoffs will also be carried out across the wider PlayStation family in the US and Europe.

The Bottom Line

Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier. 888Z Elsewhere, a “small” number of layoffs will also be carried out across the wider PlayStation family in the US and Europe.

Are you here for this or nah?