Sony's endured many forks in the road to become the video games powerhouse it is today. You have the early collaboration with Nintendo, the PlayStation 3's boomerang controller, and now, the revelation the corporation nearly acquired both FIFA and iconic British studio Bullfrog in the mid-'90s.
Martin Alltimes, former senior producer at Sony, spoke about it in an interview with The Game Business for the PlayStation's 30th anniversary. As he recalls, Peter Molyneux, co-founder, producer, and designer at Bullfrog, was shopping around his upcoming projects.
"One of the producers, who was a friend of Peter's, I remember sitting opposite him when he was having his phone call," Alltimes states. "Peter pitched Dungeon Keeper, a game that never came out called The Indestructibles, and another thing. At the end of it, we decided that it was easier and cheaper to buy them and that’s how they ended up being bought by EA."
By this point, Molyneux was a hitmaker in the industry. Populous and Theme Park were particular demonstrations of his talents and savviness for the market. Publishers wanted to work with him and fund his wares.
When Sony took a swing with an offer, competitors, namely Electronic Arts, responded in kind, and swiftly. "[EA] didn't want to miss out. They just literally launched Theme Park as well, which I think was Peter’s fourth or fifth hit in a row," Alltimes recalls.
On the trot, then, Sony made another bold move for FIFA. "We were creating a football game at the time. The technology was there, it was pretty good, and we were very close to getting the FIFA license. Very, very close," Juan Montes, former VP of software development at PlayStation, says.
"But in the end, we decided not to pursue it [in order to have] a good relationship with a third-party. But we were very close to being in that space."
Though technically losses on Sony's end, FIFA has long been extremely successful on PlayStation consoles, and many Bullfrog games found their way onto the platform at one point or another. Still, imagine a world where FIFA was exclusive, Bullfrog thrived and Fable was a PlayStation 2 game instead. Perhaps in another timeline, I'm happily enjoying Dungeon Keeper 4 on my PlayStation 5. Actually, has anybody got a time machine?
