hukasmokincaterpillar said:
Are they still called Psygnosis? Either way I really really really hope a certain futuristic racer is cooking on a PS3 devkit somewhere in Liverpool right now.
SSX is correct, they're called Sony Studio Liverpool now (and have been since 2001). Both founders of Psygnosis are no longer still with SCEE, Jonathan Ellis and Ian Hetherington (the latter of whom I thought still was, but was corrected in a thread here a couple weeks back). Ian has moved onto Real Time Worlds, and Ellis is with Eidos. Neither were involved in the actual game development at Psygnosis however, as many forget Psygnosis was also a pretty decent sized publisher. Neither produced or designed any of Psygnosis' PSone titles.
More importantly is that a very large amount of programmers and designers from Psygnosis are still with Sony. The majority are at Liverpool, but quite a few are also with Sony Studio London (it was actually Studio Camden previously, the devs of Dropship, but Camden and Soho, The Getaway guys, were consolidated into Studio London last year). From what I've been able to find out, over 80% of the guys and gals that worked on Wipeout, Colony Wars, F1 and G-Police are still with Sony.
I just came across some more specific info awhile ago in regards to the forgotten shift of a few very key Wipeout designers to a new studio, Curly Monsters, a few years ago (of which Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts used to be a part of as well); notably the designer of Wipeout 1, Nick Burcombe, the lead artist on all the titles, Lee Carus-Wescott and lead programmer on all the titles, Martin Linklater. They went on to create Quantum Redshift for MS, but subsequently left the studio (which I think is still around) after the game bombed quite badly, and joined back up with Studio Liverpool. Lee and Martin both worked on Wipeout Pure, and Nick is now designing the F1 titles.