Earlier this week, Sony made the decision to finally close down it’s floundering motor-sports developer Evolution Studios. After five years of releasing games that received so-so reception, Sony came to the conclusion that it was better to cut the cord rather than trying to keep the British developer on life support.
When You Didn’t Want NASCAR
Evolution Studios is best known internationally for the popular World Rally Championship racing game series and also for off-road racing series Motorstorm. However, after 2005, Evolution Studios abandoned its signature franchise due to heavy competition against other popular racing games such as Forza. From there, Evolution Studios began to focus more on developing Motorstorm, hoping to fill in the niche of off-road racing. While starting out strong, the Motorstorm franchise began to decline with its last two titles: Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and Motorstorm: Apocalypse.
And Here Comes The Dagger
To save themselves from being closed down, Evolution Studios then released Driveclub in 2014 to take advantage of the stumbling efforts of Need for Speed at the time. Unfortunately for Evolution Studios, the game was not well-received. Because of this and the revival of Need for Speed, Sony decided that Evolution Studios was more trouble than it was worth and began reducing the company. In March 2015, around half the studio was let go by Sony. After a year of malaise, Sony then made the final judgment on Evolution Studios and closed it down on March 22, 2016.
