Good observation.

Right, they are second party which is why they’d be retasked and not closed like in Evolutions case. I was just pointing out I can’t see MS sustaining two different racers for the same reasons Sony isn’t and I think that’s more the reason for the closure than wanting to go the second party route.

Microsoft doesn’t own Playground Games the Forza Horizon studio though, they only own Turn 10 who makes the mainline Forza series. So Playground Games is essentially another example of the big 3 investing in the 2nd party route.

True, but like you said Sony already has a racing studio and you really don’t need two in this day and age. Obviously Evolution studios was more the arcade racing studio and Polyphony is the sim. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Forza Horizon devs to get retasked to other projects in the future for the same reason. I am really not a fan of the racing genre but I felt the urge to get Motorstorm Apocalypse and really enjoyed it.

Sony seems to be okay taking smaller risks with new studios. They recently put together North West Studios in the UK, which is the VR studio. They also grabbed PixelOpus (Entwined) a couple years ago which is a really small studio too.

I did have a feeling though that they were going to be shut down sooner or later as you could argue they were one of Sony’s weakest 1st party studios along with several other factors. Motorstorm Apocalyse bombed sales wise largely due to the timing of its release but Sony gave them another shot with Driveclub in which Sony even let them delay the title a whole entire year but it still had a terrible launch. Couple with the fact that the racing genre just does not sell the way it did in the past it doesn’t make sense financially for Sony to support two exclusive racing studios and of course they will keep Polphony over Evolution as GT is arguably Sony’s biggest franchise plus they have a longer history. However despite Driveclub’s launch blunder I was hoping Sony would still keep the studio alive since Driveclub still managed to sell 2+ million and even become a respectable game with great monthly updates from the team.

With this being said I am starting to notice a trend with the big 3 in which they all seem to be sticking with the few 1st party studios they have and instead of adding anymore new studios to their 1st party line up they are doing more 2nd party deals
ex. to name a few
MS(Crytek – Ryse, Remedy – Quantum Break, Platinum – Scalebound)
Nintendo( Platinum – Star Fox/Wonderful 101/Bayonetta 2, Namco – Pokken/Smash Bros, Atlus – Shin Megami Tensi X Fire Emblem)
Sony(Ready at Dawn – The Order 1886, SuperMassive Games – Until Dawn, Quantic Dream – Detroit Become Human, Kojima Prod. – New IP)

2nd party deals are a lot less risky for if the game doesn’t turn out the way they hoped for critically or most of financially to the big 3 they can easily cut ties with the studio without huge losses for the big 3 in fact both Sony and Microsoft have already done this with several studios Ready at Dawn and Crytek are perfect recent examples.

Maybe they think the Lionhead devs are more talented?