Driveclub developer Evolution Studios shuts down, lays off entire staff

By Danny Cowan March 23, 2016

codemasters to hire evolution studios staff dcshutter header — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Sony confirmed that it has shuttered British game developer Evolution Studios, the team responsible for the MotorStorm series and 2014’s PlayStation 4 racing sim Driveclub.

Sony will attempt to reallocate affected staff to other teams under the SCE Worldwide Studios umbrella, but admits that it will “risk losing high caliber staff” as a result of the closure.

Rising to prominence during the PlayStation 2 era, Evolution Studios produced multiple entries in its World Rally Championship series before being acquired by Sony in 2007. While under Sony’s banner, the company released a trilogy of high-profile offroad racing games for the PlayStation 3 – MotorStorm, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, and MotorStorm: Apocalypse – in addition to the multiplatform series spinoff MotorStorm: RC.

The team suffered multiple setbacks during the development of its PlayStation 4 debut Driveclub, resulting in numerous delays and a fractured release schedule. Sony initially announced that a stripped-down version of Driveclub would be available for free to members of its PlayStation Plus subscription service upon the game’s launch. Driveclub‘s PlayStation Plus Edition ended up premiering several months after its retail debut, however, and all versions met with a lukewarm critical reception.

“We have reviewed and assessed all current projects and plans for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to the European studios structure,” Sony said in a statement this week. “As a result, it has been decided that Evolution Studios will close.”

Sony’s statement continues: “It is regrettable that this decision will lead to compulsory redundancies. We accept that this decision will mean that we risk losing high caliber staff but by focusing on other Studios that already have exciting new projects in development we believe we will be in a stronger position going forward and able to offer the best possible content of the highest quality for our consumers.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…

Computing

Best GPU deals: MSI, XFX, EVGA

An AMD graphics card in an external GPU enclosure.

Getting into gaming can be an expensive hobby, especially if you're building a new PC from scratch and want to get the best GPU that you possibly can. Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, GPU prices have skyrocketed, especially for RTX 40-series cards, and they don't look to be coming down any time soon, whether you're going for AMD or Nvidia. Luckily, there are still quite a lot of great deals you can take advantage of that will let you snag a card for a great price, and we've collected some of our favorites below. That said if you'd rather go for something that's already been put together, check out these gaming PC deals instead.
XFX SPEEDSTER SWFT210 AMD Radeon RX 6600 Core 8GB GDDR6 -- $230, was $280

XFX is a pretty well-known brand that makes AMD Radeon GPUs, so you're getting a good-quality device right out of the gate. It has an impressive 8GB GDDR6, at least for this price bracket, and will give you a bit longer life out of it when games start using up a lot more VRAM, even at lower graphical settings. While the base clock runs at 2.0 GHz, the boosted clock speed is 2.5 GHz which is pretty good, and the whole thing is unlocked, so you could theoretically boost it higher if you have the right cooling. This RTX 6600 can support resolutions up to 8K, but really, this is an ideal 1080p gaming GPU.

Gaming

All upcoming PC games: 2024 and beyond

Ships flying by giant purple towers.

While the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X might dominate the gaming news spotlight, the PC continues to be one of the best gaming platforms out there. 2024 has seen a variety of high-profile releases already, and there's still more to come.

If you're searching for your next big PC game (or want to see what's on the horizon before investing in a new rig), here are the best upcoming PC games set to arrive in 2024 and beyond.
Upcoming PC games 2024
Confirmed 2024 releases
Here’s everything that’s on our radar for 2024. The games immediately below have set release dates. We'll get into anything that's more up in the air below the confirmed launches

Gaming

All upcoming Xbox Series X games: 2024 and beyond

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

The Xbox Series X and Series S have now been out for three years, bringing better resolution, higher frame rates, and ray tracing to gamers around the world. And the upcoming Xbox Series X games on this list promise to continue to show off all those bells and whistles in fun, new experiences.

If you're eager to find out what Microsoft has in store for the years ahead, we've rounded up every game confirmed so far, including new offerings, franchise installments, and ports of existing titles. We're looking beyond the first-party projects here to encompass all the great games coming to this powerful piece of gaming hardware. Maybe some of them will end up being among the best games on Xbox Series X.
Upcoming Xbox Series X games 2024
The games listed below either have 100% confirmed release dates or solid release windows that we expect them to hit in 2024. Any games with more ambiguous release windows will be listed below the confirmed releases.