Insomniac Games, Inc.
Overview
Insomniac Games is an independent game development studio based in Burbank, California (USA) and founded in 1994. Prior to starting Insomniac Games, CEO/President
Ted Price spent a few years as controller of a start-up medical company. Together with the two programmers
Alexander Hastings and
Brian Hastings the studio's first title
Disruptor was released in 1996.
All of Insomniac Games’ titles from 1996 to 2012 have been developed exclusively for the PlayStation platforms, with franchises such as
Ratchet & Clank,
Resistance and the first three
Spyro the Dragon games. Insomniac Games first received worldwide attention upon releasing
Spyro the Dragon in 1998. Together with the follow-up titles
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage (1999) and
Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000), more than 12 million units were sold globally.
In June 2008, the company announced plans to open a new studio in North Carolina by January 2009. In June 2011 Insomniac Click was revealed, a new division with a focus on web and mobile platforms. Even though Insomniac Games has always been independent, it had a close relationship with
Sony working on Sony franchises exclusively as well as other studios close to Sony such as
Naughty Dog,
Sucker Punch,
High Impact Games,
Idol Minds,
SCE Bend Studio,
Nihilistic Software and others. They often shared technology and libraries and worked together on games. The last PlayStation-exclusive games for Sony were
Resistance 3 and
Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, both released at the end of 2011.
In an interview in February 2012 CEO Ted Price explained they moved away from Sony to work on new franchises and on multiple platforms. Both
Ratchet & Clank and
Resistance always remained the property of Sony. In May 2012 two new games were announced for
Electronic Arts: the Facebook game
Outernauts and the cooperative shooter
Overstrike. A third new IP called
Fuse was announced in September 2012, though it may well be the continuation of
Overstrike with a new title.
Trivia
Before shipping its first game, Insomniac used different names before settling on the current one. They previously used Planet X Software, Outzone Software and Xtreme Software to refer to the studio.
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