The Getaway London Studio

Update: Once again, Gematsu has noticed that Soho Engine has now been trademarked by Sony in Japan. We're still none the wiser as to what this entails, although we're beginning to think it may be the name of a game rather than a piece of software.


Original Story: As first spotted by Gematsu, Sony registered a trademark for a mysterious Soho Engine in Europe last year, and it’s since followed that up with documentation in Switzerland and New Zealand. But just what is this referring to? It’s an interesting turn of events, to say the least.

Many of PlayStation’s first-party developers have their own, unnamed internal technology that they use to make games. In the case of Guerrilla Games, the Decima Engine used for Horizon Zero Dawn has been licensed out to external developers, like Kojima Productions, who famously leveraged the software for Death Stranding.

The name Soho Engine certainly rekindles memories of Team Soho, which was the former name of first-party developer London Studio. This group is perhaps best known for its work on The Getaway, before it was eventually fused with Psygnosis’ Camden Studio to create the developer we know today. It obviously went on to create the likes of EyePet and Blood & Truth.

We know that London Studio is working on a brand new, next-gen IP for the PlayStation 5, but we’ve no idea what it will entail yet. Could said title be powered by this so-called Soho Engine? The links are tenuous right now, but it’s possible. Could Sony be planning to license this technology out to other teams, perhaps?

We were lucky enough to visit London Studio a few years back, and it did seem like a relatively small group, so we’d be surprised if it had designed a full-scale game engine in the years since Blood & Truth released. Could Soho Engine, then, literally be the name of a new game? Honestly, we’re stumped when it comes to these trademarks – we’re going to have to wait and see on this front, we suppose.

[source twitter.com, via resetera.com]