Sony has announced a new PlayStation Studios brand that it’ll be using for its first-party exclusives going forward as a way to let customers know that a game comes from one of Sony’s in-house development teams. Starting in the fall, it’ll release all first-party PS4 and PS5 games as PlayStation Studios titles, and it revealed an animated logo that pulls a trick or two from the Marvel Studios playbook.
Characters from key games and franchises including Uncharted, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn and The Last of Us appear on the classic PlayStation symbols before the logo pops up. There’ll be different versions of the video and logo, which will appear in trailers, ads and at the start of first-party games, Sony told games industry.biz.
Sony’s various studios already technically exist under the Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios organization (which has its own logo), but the new branding is simpler and more focused on the PlayStation brand. It can also help Sony easily highlight exclusive games for customers who may not know that Sony owns Polyphony Digital (Gran Turismo), Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us), Insomniac Games (Spider-Man), Santa Monica Studio (God of War), Media Molecule, or Sucker Punch (inFamous, Ghost of Tsushima).
The branding won’t be in place in time for the PS4 releases of The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima in June and July respectively, or Horizon: Zero Dawn when it lands on PC this summer. Sony will also apply the branding to games from external developers that it’s overseeing.
The branding is Sony’s answer to Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft’s umbrella title for its in-house studios. It’s a much simpler name than the mouthful that is Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios.