7 Video Game Developers KILLED After Corporate Takeovers

Much of the marketing for the initial release of Sony’s original Playstation console was how ‘cool’ it was. Choosing to target a different demographic to rivals Nintendo and Sega, they installed booths in London nightclubs to attract young adults to their system, with some emphasis placed on Wipeout, the anti-gravity racing simulator that tapped into the burgeoning electronic music scene at the time with its techno heavy soundtrack.

Purchased by Sony ahead of the Playstation’s launch, Liverpool-based Psygnosis launched themselves to the top of the pile of the company’s portfolio of European studios with Wipeout’s success, following it with the equally brilliant Wipeout 2047 and Destruction Derby 2. This gave them a reputation as a developer that broke the mould of what was expecting from racing games with fantastic innovations.

Prolific in their output, they made around 10 games per year in the mid to late 90s, including licensed Formula One titles and other successful at the time but now forgotten games like G-Police, Overboard and Rollcage.

Much of their identity was stripped after a name change to Sony Studio Liverpool. They were tasked solely with making Wipeout and F1 games, though the license for the latter ran out in 2007 and the only games released for the former franchise on PS3 was an upscaled bundle of two PSP titles, Pure and Pulse.

Shuttered by Sony in 2012, many of Psygnosis’s creations are amongst those screaming out for a modern day revival that we’ll likely never get.