Housemarque Staff Has Tripled in Recent Years: ‘We Are Now Truly a PlayStation First Party’

Saros and Returnal developer Housemarque has enjoyed a great last few years since being snapped up by Sony and PlayStation. The company has grown exponentially recently, and the team considers itself a leading first-party studio.

The rise of Housemarque is a perfect case study of an independent studio finding success with a niche, having that talent recognized, and then having it showcased to a mainstream audience. I’ve waxed lyrical about the best Housemarque games, but it’s over to the team itself to talk about the journey and where it sees itself.

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Housemarque Has Gone From 40 Staff to 120

In an interview with The Game Business Show, it’s discussed how Housemarque went from ’40 to 50 people around the release of 2017’s Nex Machina,’ whereas now the team ‘has a staff of nearly 120, and all focused on one game.’

Studio head and co-founder Ilari Kuittinen said:

“It’s quite different jumping into this scale of doing one game at a time with this amount of people. That’s been a big change in the studio to learn how to make these bigger experiences, and how to organize that.”

He also added:

“We are now truly a PlayStation first party as we have shipped the game. We are here [in California], and peers from the best developers in the world are high-fiving us, giving congratulations, and praising the game. It’s pretty amazing, coming from [1997’s] Super Stardust, a little game studio with 10 or 12 people, to where we are at the moment.”

Housemarque established a reputation for arcade-inspired games and bullet-hell shooters before establishing excellence in twin-stick shooters like Dead Nation and Alienation.

Returnal and Saros have been massive leaps forward with huge improvements in production and polish.

As for the team’s future? Well, it might be more Saros, and it might not:

“There are interesting opportunities we’d like to look at that might not be at the scale of Saros. There are so many things that we want to explore, and we will find whether it’s possible or not.”

Let us know in the Insider Gaming Discord what you’ve made of Housermarque’s library so far.

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