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Private Division: PS5 And Xbox Series X/S Transition 'Less Painful' As Publisher Inks Four New Deals

Private Division announced four new publishing partnerships today, adding to a group of developers that includes the studios behind Kerbal Space Program and OlliOlli World.



They include Yellow Brick Games, the Quebec-based studio founded in part by Mike Laidlaw, who is best-known for his work on the Dragon Age series. Private Division also signed agreements with Piccolo Studio, the Barcelona-based outfit behind Arise; Evening Star, which is working on a "fully original 3D action platformer," and Die Gute Fabrik, which most recently produced Mutazione.


The new agreements mark Private Division's steady evolution from an indie publisher into what it hopes will be something of a prestige label. According to Vice President of Marketing Tom Bass, Private Division is motivated to work with "some of the greatest creative talent in the industry."



Evening Star is emblematic of the studios that Private Division is seeking to work with in 2022. The studio is a darling among retro fans, having been founded by several key members of the Sonic Mania development team, including Australian programmer Christian Whitehead. The studio is using a more powerful version of Whitehead's pixel art game engine, which Sonic Mania helped make famous.


Meanwhile, Bass says that Private Division was drawn to Yellow Brick Games because "we really wanted another RPG," calling it a gap that needed to be addressed. Yellow Brick Games is currently working on an action RPG in a fantasy setting with an emphasis on "emergent systems" that will help it create a "rich, interactive world."


As for Piccolo Studio, it drew Private Division's attention because of the strong word-of-mouth afforded Arise: A Simple Story, "an emotional journey of losing the love of one's life."


"Part of the reason we got drawn to Piccolo Studio is we started hearing about Arise when it started getting nominated for Game of the Year categories," Bass says.

"[T]he transition is not as hard as it has been in the past"



A Take-Two Interactive subsidiary originally founded in 2017, Private Division provides support to smaller studios depending on where it feels it can "add value," whether that's in marketing, production, or distribution.

In the five years since its founding, Private Division has borne witness to the acquisition fever that has overtaken the games industry. One of the first games it worked on was Obsidian's Outer Worlds, which was announced less than a month after Microsoft acquired the famous independent RPG studio. It has also acquired studios of its own, adding OlliOlli World developer Roll7 to its stable in 2021.

Right now there's a lot of consolidation, and I think in a couple years, we'll see the pendulum swing the other way

Murray calls the recent trend, which has seen Xbox acquire Activision Blizzard and Sony gobble up Bungie, "cyclical."


"I've been in the industry for over 20 years and I kind of step back and look at the cyclical nature of things and how this has happened before," Murray says. "Right now there's a lot of consolidation, and I think in a couple years, we'll see the pendulum swing the other way, and we'll probably see a bunch of new independent studios flourish, and then they'll build cool IP and then those will get acquired and they'll make new independent studios and so forth. So it feels like right now, we're definitely in a consolidation phase, and the prices for things are going up astronomically and that's pretty incredible to watch."


Amid all this, Murray says that Private Division will try to go on being a "viable funding source and a publishing partner" for studios who want to their game to market. To date, Murray says, Private Division's portfolio has performed "really, really well," showing the publisher that it's "on the right path."


In the period since Private Division opened its doors, Xbox and Sony have also launched new consoles, which are now both in their second full year. Private Division released OlliOlli World on the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 last month, but like most publishers has actively continued to support the older consoles as well.



"It used to be that there would be this hard console transition every five years," Bass says, "and it would be very painful for developers and very painful for publishers. That's become less and less of a case."


Bass says that Private Division is still seeing "a lot of demand" for Xbox One and PS4 games, and that the publisher has plans to support them going out to next year. "We're still publishing on [PS4 and Xbox One] because it's making sense, because the transition is not as hard as it has been in the past."


Bass also credits programs like Xbox Smart Delivery and backward compatibility tech for the smoother transition. Murray, meanwhile, acknowledges that "even trying to find a PS5 is a challenge" due to supply chain disruptions and other issues.


Private Division's next release, Kerbal Space Program 2, is currently slated to appear on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5, having suffered multiple delays since its announcement in 2019. In 2020, original developer Star Theory closed its doors as a large portion of Kerbal Space Program 2's development team moved to Private Division's Intercept Games Squad. The move was controversial, owing to reports that Take-Two was seeking to acquire Star Theory before the closure.


"Private Division opened our own studio, Intercept Games, to bring the development of Kerbal Space Program 2 for our beloved and owned KSP franchise in-house," Private Division said in a statement at the time. "In doing so, we are empowering our deeply passionate and talented team to focus on quality, and we are thrilled with the progress that they are making on the game." Kerbal Space Program 2 is currently set to release later this year.

In the meantime, all four of Private Division's new partners are working on new games, all of which are "early in development." The first of them is expected to launch in Take-Two's 2024 Fiscal Year.


Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

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