Do you recall the creation of Sony’s Manchester studio? It was first put in place by Sony in 2015 where the studio was meant to develop AAA VR titles. While it been around for several years now, it looks like Sony scrapped the video game studio. Unfortunately, the video game studio didn’t get any of their projects out in the market, which has plenty of people wondering just what the studio had been working on before it was killed off.
PlayStation VR is still going to be a big part of Sony going forward. So when the PlayStation 5 launches, we shouldn’t see the PlayStation VR go away at least not anytime soon. As a result, it would seem that there should be some studios working on projects made specifically for the PSVR. There was also some hype building behind the Manchester game studio with their unannounced VR project.
Sony was able to confirm the news with Gamesindustry.biz who claims that the reason behind closing down the Manchester studio was to allow the company to improve on efficiency and operational effectiveness. What we don’t know is if the project that the studio was working on ended up being moved to another studio or if it was completely killed off. Likewise, there is no word on the staffing behind the studio.
We never like to hear when a studio closes its doors. Video game projects get killed off, but more importantly, there are plenty of jobs lost. As a result, the industry tends to help out by providing openings to various studios so if the employees at Manchester didn’t get relocated to other studios from Sony then chances are news will spread to other studios and offer a position to those formally at Manchester.
