Sony Interactive Entertainment today announced it is acquiring Firesprite, the developer of VR horror hit, The Persistence.
The acquisition was announced over on the PlayStation Blog, though no financial details of the deal were disclosed. Firesprite itself is based in Liverpool, UK and features members of WipeOut developer Sony Liverpool, which closed its doors in 2012. Alongside The Persistence, which launched as a timed exclusive for PSVR, the team worked on The Playroom VR too.
Sony Buys Persistence Dev
Neither Sony nor Firesprite confirmed what their next project will be, nor made any mention of working in VR specifically. That said, in February of this year we reported that Firesprite was hiring for a VR game based on one of the “successful multimillion selling console IP titles in the last 10 years.” The game will be a “whole new chapter” in a “highly original universe” and utilize “the full immersive capabilities in VR”.
Job listings for that game, described as an action-adventure, are still live on Firesprite’s website. At the time, we speculated that the project could be tied to Sony given the team’s close links to PlayStation. The company has several other projects in the works, though it’s not clear if these are VR-supported or not.
Notably, the news also comes after Sony closed another PSVR-exclusive developer in the nearby town of Manchester last year. That team was reported to have been working on a helicopter action game for the headset.
The headline also breaks as we await more information about the confirmed PS5 VR headset. We know it’s not releasing this year and that we won’t see it at Thursday’s big PlayStation Showcase, but we are expecting to hear much more in 2022. UploadVR was the first to reveal specs for the device earlier this year.
