Insomniac Games

History

Founded in 1994, Insomniac Games are a California-based studio that were already developing PlayStation exclusives as a second-party developer decades before Sony acquired them in 2019. Examples include the Spyro the Dragon and Resistance trilogies on PS1 and PS3 respectively, as well as over 10 Ratchet & Clank titles across PS2-PS4.

Unfortunately, by the early 2010s, Insomniac were over a decade removed from their last Spyro title, Resistance had been overshadowed by Call of Duty (as most FPS IPs were), and R&C titles were experiencing declining sales due to IP fatigue from the volume of entries. This downward trajectory caused Insomniac to adopt a spreadshot approach, developing games for a variety of publishers and platforms. The most notable titles from this branching out were 2013's Fuse for EA, 2014's Sunset Overdrive for Xbox, and 2016's Edge of Nowhere for Oculus VR.

While these games were also commercial failures, Insomniac still continued working with Sony, and coincidentally, it was back home where they found solid ground again. Insomniac released Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4 in 2018 as a second-party title, which became not only their highest-selling game ever, but also the highest-selling Sony-published PS4 title. With this unprecedented success, it's no surprise that Sony acquired Insomniac just a year later to start work on their many PS5 games.

My Analysis & Predictions

Considering Insomniac's output in previous generations, it's no surprise that they've already shipped 4 PS5 games to critical and commercial success, 3 of which were new experiences. Furthermore, even though Insomniac have already released more PS5 titles than most developers will in the entire generation, their next game, Marvel's Wolverine, is also nearing release.

Unfortunately, even though the 2021 CG announcement trailer stated a 2024 release, Wolverine has had a troubled development. Not only did it lose its original directors, but the infamous Insomniac leak also resulted in playable development builds online and the early reveal that Wolverine is the start of a PlayStation-exclusive X-Men trilogy. Fortunately, despite these issues, Wolverine was first shown off again in 2025 with a gameplay deep dive, followed by more trailers and other marketing that have been positively received.

Even if Wolverine underperforms critically and/or commercially, though, with 4 great games already released on PS5, Insomniac have more than pulled their weight in a generation where PS Studios are primarily known for too few releases due to PlayStation's failed live-service execution. By simply being there for gamers with consistent releases, they've been the most important and arguably best PS Studios developer of the PS5 era.

Insomniac's PS5 Portfolio

PS5 Games