Founded in 2006, Bluepoint Games were a Texas-based developer known for their excellent remasters and remakes of primarily PlayStation IP. Examples include the God of War Collection (PS2's GoW 1 and 2) for PS3, and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (PS3's Uncharted 1-3) for PS4. In fact, Konami's Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for PS3 and 360 was Bluepoint's only multiplatform release.
After these successful remasters, Bluepoint scaled up to full remakes for their final 2 projects. Both the PS4 remake of PS2's Shadow of the Colossus in 2018 and the remake of PS3's Demon's Souls for PS5's launch were even more critically acclaimed.
With Bluepoint now considered the industry's premier remake studio, Sony, unsurprisingly, announced they had acquired them just 10 months after DS shipped. This was an exciting time. What PlayStation IP would be remade next from such a prestigious, now first-party studio, with all the advantages that come with it? After all, DS was the highest-rated PS5 launch title with a 92 on Metacritic and is still considered one of the best-looking games of the PS5 generation, 6 years later.
Unfortunately, DS would be Bluepoint's final game as Sony surprisingly closed the studio in 2026. While the hardcore PS5 base were crestfallen as Bluepoint were thought to be immune from this fate, the information that inevitably leaked in the fallout of their closure is the real story. No one could've possibly predicted the train wreck Bluepoint had become post-acquisition.
While Bluepoint found great success with remasters and remakes, studio leadership surprisingly wanted to develop original content after DS. At first, this was as support for Santa Monica Studio's God of War Ragnarok. However, once it shipped in 2022, Bluepoint's ambitions combined with Sony's live-service push resulted in the worst-case scenario - a live-service God of War.
It doesn't take a genius to know a 70-person remake studio that mostly had expertise in art and engineering, not design, shouldn't have led a live-service. They hadn't even made their own single-player title since 2006's Blast Factor. So naturally, after 3-4 years wasted struggling to make progress, Sony did the inevitable and canceled the live-service in January 2025.
Bluepoint leadership then continued to show their incompetence over the next year. While they did pitch a Bloodborne remake that couldn't be greenlit for reasons out of their control, their other pitches made no sense. For example, they pitched a PS5 version of their PS4 Shadow of the Colossus remake that already looks and plays great on PS5.
Bluepoint also pitched new games around other PS Studios IP, like a Ghost of Tsushima spinoff. This was never happening, as studios like Sucker Punch didn't want to dedicate significant resources to another team's project when they were facing financial pressure themselves in such a poor economic climate. Sony rightfully turned these bad pitches down, and closed Bluepoint in February 2026, after a year of no greenlit projects.
Given Bluepoint's track record up until DS, it was understandable to blame Sony when news of their closure first broke. However, as new information came to light, it's clear that Bluepoint's failures were mostly on their own leadership's ambition to pivot to original content by any means necessary. Sony, however, are still partly to blame, as they should've never even entertained a live-service project from a studio they had just acquired for their remakes.
At the very least, the PS5 got 1 great Bluepoint remake with DS. However, the train wreck after was so severe that this masterpiece will be more of a footnote in their history. That alone is the biggest indictment of how badly Bluepoint and Sony leadership mismanaged the studio in the PS5 era.
Genre: Soulsborne
Release Date: November 12, 2020
Days Since Their Last Game: 1011
Metacritic Score: 92