Sony is slowly but surely getting ready for the launch of its PlayStation 5 game console later in 2020. Today, the company announced a long overdue rebranding of its first-party game studios brand. Previously known by the long and tongue-twisting Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios name, the new brand is now simply PlayStation Studios.
All PlayStation 5 games that come from Sony’s first-party development studios will be under the new PlayStation Studios brand name. In addition, all games released by PlayStation Studios teams will get a cool opening animation as well, showing some of the Playstation’s most well-known characters.
In case you are wondering, PlayStation Studios teams include Naughty Dog (the Uncharted and The Last of Us series), Insomniac Games (Resistance, Spider-Man), Sucker Punch (Infamous) and Guerrilla Games (Horizon Zero Dawn). The new branding and animation will not be used for Sony’s last two major PS4 releases; Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us: Part 2 and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima. Both are due for release later this summer. GamesIndustry.biz reports that the brand will also be used by developers not owned by Sony, but are working on first-party PS5 titles.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the new brand, Eric Lempel, senior vice president and head of global marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment, stated that part of the reason for the brand change was that many consumers were unaware that great games like the Uncharted series, Spider-Man, and Horizon: Zero Dawn came directly from its studios.
It’s likely that Sony also wanted to simplify the PlayStation Studios brand in part because rival Microsoft did the same thing. The company renamed its first-party studio’s group from Microsoft Studios to Xbox Game Studios in 2019. Both brand changes clearly identify games made or published directly by Sony and Microsoft as PlayStation and Xbox titles, respectively.
Sony has still not revealed details about the release date for the PS5, nor what PlayStation Studios titles will be available at launch.
