RiME PS4 PlayStation 4 1

PlayStation’s enjoying one of the most prolific periods in its history. The start to 2017 has seen the release of several high-profile first-party games, like Gravity Rush 2 and Horizon: Zero Dawn. But being a glass half-empty kinda guy, I feel it could have been even better: what the heck happened with What Remains of Edith Finch and RiME?

For those of you who don’t know, both of these titles were originally scheduled to be published by Sony, and both got dropped. Giant Sparrow’s successor to The Unfinished Swan was published by Annapurna Interactive (which I’ll get to in a minute), while Tequila Works’ colourful puzzle platformer was promoted by Grey Box – a company I’d honestly never heard of until a few months ago.

Both of these games are, for the record, excellent. What Remains of Edith Finch is probably my favourite release of the year thus far, though my list’s changing all of the time. And as for RiME – wow! My expectations were really low before I started that, and it completely blew me away – it’ll certainly be in the running come Game of the Year.

But there’s a much bigger story at play here that goes beyond these two titles. Sony has a long history of publishing interesting, unusual games from independent studios; Journey is the most famous of them all, but there’s also been stuff like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Murasaki Baby, Resogun, and Bound.

And yet they seem to be coming to an end. Housemarque’s next title, Nex Machina, is not a collaboration with Sony XDev Europe – it’s an independently published shooter for PS4 and PC. With Matterfall still apparently on the way, this may just be an anomaly – perhaps the studio wanted to keep that one in-house. But we have more examples.

At PlayStation Experience a few years back, Sony Santa Monica revealed a couple of externally developed games: The Modern Taxi Company and Wattam. Neither of these titles appear to be associated with Sony anymore – they’ve both fallen off the radar hard. Meanwhile, the excellent Edith Finch was – as mentioned – adopted by Annapurna Interactive.

But here’s the interesting thing: Annapurna Interactive consists of several ex-Sony Santa Monica employees. Deborah Mars (who was once a key figure in the studio’s external projects) and Nathan Gary (who dreamed up the bloody share button for goodness sake) are both in charge of the publisher; Hector Sanchez and Jeff Legaspi are also former Sony and near the top of the chain.

And this suggests to me that, unless there are some big announcements at E3 2017 next month, this is all very much a change in tact from the platform holder. But why? The company has had so much success with these outlandish indie collaborations, it’s baffling to me why it would cut them out of its portfolio – especially when they come out as good as Edith Finch and RiME.

What Remains of Edith Finch PlayStation 4 1

Of course, both of those games have released on the PS4 anyway so it’s not like the console is missing out on them, and maybe the platform holder feels it doesn’t need to be involved in their creation anymore seeing as it’s the market leader. But would Journey have been approved anywhere else? Datura? Sound Shapes?

Nathan Drake and Kratos may be the bread winners for PlayStation, but it’s the bizarre experimental stuff that’s defined it over the past decade or so. If this trend continues then the manufacturer’s portfolio is going to be worse for it, and without Sony putting money behind bizarre pitches, who knows how many Journeys may never get made.


Are you worried by this current trend in Sony's output? Do you think it's beginning to exit the indie publishing space, or is this all just a big coincidence? Ditch the Game of the Year in the comments section below.