Sumo Digital Shifts Focus: No More Original Games, Only Partner IPs!

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Summary

  • Sumo Digital will focus on collaborating with other studios.
  • The studio will no longer develop original games.
  • This decision comes after laying off staff last summer.

Starting from now, Sumo Digital is focusing more on collaborating with other game studios and working on external properties, rather than creating their own original games. This shift in strategy was announced following a series of layoffs that affected about 250 employees last summer.

For many years, Sumo Digital has been recognized as a cooperative game development studio, often assisting other teams in the gaming industry or working on projects based on other companies’ intellectual properties (IP). Some of the major games that Sumo has produced include Crackdown 3 for Xbox, LittleBigPlanet 3 and Sackboy: A Big Adventure for Sony, as well as multiple Sonic racing games. In addition to doing some conversion work, Sumo Digital also provided support development for big titles like Hogwarts Legacy, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, several Forza Horizon and Hitman games. However, it’s worth noting that despite working extensively on other studios’ IPs, Sumo has developed some original games of its own, with 2017’s Snake Pass being the most well-known among them.

It appears that Sumo Digital is choosing to concentrate more on its core strength: working together with other studios on their projects. In a recent communication to their staff, the company’s management announced they will be moving away from creating unique games and instead will dedicate all their efforts to functioning as an industry-leading co-development studio, as expressed in the statement “We have decided, after careful evaluation, to direct Sumo Digital solely towards development services for our partners.

Sumo Digital is Shifting Away From Creating Original IPs

It appears that the shift in question might involve job losses, although Sumo Digital’s leadership is working hard to keep this impact minimal. Furthermore, it remains uncertain how this change will affect Sumo Digital’s subsidiary studios, particularly The Chinese Room, creators of the hit indie horror game “Still Wakes the Deep” which was a success on Xbox Game Pass last year and has garnered a dedicated fanbase. If The Chinese Room is included in Sumo Digital’s announcement, it could potentially disappoint fans eagerly awaiting their next project.

Following thorough deliberation, it’s been decided that Sumo Digital will specialize solely in game development services for our partners. Whether it’s working on fresh ideas or established games, collaborating on co-development projects, offering expert engineering solutions, or providing porting services, we are certain of our teams’ outstanding capabilities.

Given the studio’s track record of teaming up, creating together, and transferring projects, it seems logical for Sumo Digital to fully dive into collaborating on other studios’ intellectual properties (IPs). Fingers crossed that they can keep a good number of their current team members after this move. The upcoming projects and IPs that Sumo Digital will tackle are intriguing, and it’ll be exciting to see if they continue to focus heavily on racing games. It’s possible that we might see new titles like LittleBigPlanet or the next iteration of Crackdown.

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2025-02-04 21:54