inFamous Developer Sucker Punch Has Joined Sony's First-Party Development Ranks.

What a story to wake up to on a dreary (but strangely humid) Tuesday morning. Sony has announced that it's acquired Sly Cooper and inFamous developer Sucker Punch, adding them to the platform holder's enormous roster of first-party developers.

Sucker Punch are actually the 16th development house to join Sony's Worldwide Studios, and will develop content exclusively for Sony's platforms in the future.

“Sucker Punch Productions is one of the most highly acclaimed development studios in the industry and we have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with the company for over 12 years. We are delighted to officially welcome them to the SCE family,” said SCE Worldwide Studios gaffer and all around top guy, Shuhei Yoshida.

“The addition of Sucker Punch to SCE WWS reiterates our dedication to developing world class gaming experiences that can only be found on the PlayStation platform. With one of the strongest exclusive software lineups in the PS3?s history, combined with the diverse, innovate content in the works for PlayStation Vita, consumers have a lot to be excited about this year.”

Chatting with CNBC, Sucker Punch's Brian Fleming said that Sony was the only company Sucker Punch would ever consider entertaining discussions of a buy-out with.

“It’s just been such a productive and enjoyable relationship for us that I think that in all of our discussions the only group we really seriously entertained doing this kind of a transaction with was Sony,” he revealed.

Sucker Punch has developed games exclusively for Sony as a second-party for many years now, but WWS US exec Scott Rohde revealed that the platform holder's been keen to snap up the studio before someone else did for a while.

“I’d be lying if I said other groups weren’t interested in a group like Sucker Punch,” he said.

“The bottom line is, when you’ve got a group that’s been as successful as Sucker Punch, we want to ensure that we keep them in the fold. It’s that simple. It’s hard to find high quality developers like these guys.”

Fantastic news, and congratulations all around. Seriously, we are stoked about this. Sucker Punch are an amazing studio, and we're excited to see them officially welcomed into Sony's exclusive stable. They'll join the likes of Guerrilla Games, Media Molecule and Naughty Dog.

Sony's first-party ensemble continues to get more and more formidable. Perhaps we're biased, but we'd argue Sony have eclipsed even Nintendo in recent years to become the best publisher on the planet.