PlayStation eventually killed Wipeout developer Psygnosis despite it helping define the PS1 era, but the companies nearly fell out years earlier over Wipeout 64: "What the f*** was Psygnosis doing on the N64?"
You can't tell the story of PlayStation without acknowledging Psygnosis. Sony acquired the British studio in the early '90s ahead of the launch of the PS1, and games like Wipeout, Colony Wars, and its Formula 1 series would help define the console's identity, especially in Europe. You might be confused, then, about why Psygnosis went and made a Nintendo 64 version of Wipeout at the height of the console war. As it turns out, so was Sony.
"Yeah, let's talk about that," former PlayStation PR head Alan Welsman tells The Game Business when asked about Wipeout 64 at a recent PlayStation anniversary event. The newsletter's text transcript of the interview censors it a bit, but Welsman is quite animated about the whole thing in the video interview: "What the fuck was Psygnosis doing on the N64? Traitors."
That "traitors" line is certainly a joke – he points right at former Psygnosis PR lead Glen O'Connel as he says it – but there was certainly some genuine animosity before Wipeout 64 happened, when gaming magazines reported that Sony was looking to sell off Psygnosis. Rumors suggested that it was because Psygnosis was making games for Sega Saturn as well as PS1 and PC, but apparently, the studio was too valuable to get rid of – and these days, that part of the story is disputed.
"Psygnosis, whilst very much aligned alongside Sony, ran as an autonomous company," O'Connell says. "That was down to the founders. They loved the Psygnosis independent spirit. So, we carried on making games on other platforms. The first two Wipeouts principally were on PlayStation, but they appeared on the Sega Saturn, which I don't think was an issue for Sony."
Whether or not the Saturn games had caused a rift between Sony and Psygnosis, the parent company sure wasn't happy about the sudden appearance of Wipeout 64 in 1998.
"Certainly, at one of the E3s when it appeared on Nintendo… it just arrived on the booth," O'Connell says. "And there were some faces that were going… what's going on here? That was down to Psygnosis managing to retain an autonomy to make the games they wanted. But… that maverick spirit perhaps created some challenges later on within the wider Sony group."
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