Evolution Studios Ltd.

Evolution Studios was a UK game development studio formed in 1999 by Martin Kenwright, Michael Hocking and Ian Hetherington. The first two came from Digital Image Design, a studio Kenwright had co-founded in 1989. When DID was acquired through an aggressive takeover of the French company Infogrames, who had acquired DID's publisher Ocean Software in 1996, they both left the company. Taking along five other developers, Kenwright and Hetherington walked away and established Evolution Studios in Frodsham, Cheshire, England together with Ian Hetherington who previously established the UK development studio Psygnosis Limited.

After creating a PC racing demo, Sony offered a contract to develop a PlayStation 2 game based on the FIA World Rally Championship license. Between 2001 and 2005 the studio released five racing games in the series. Together with Sony, Evolution also established Bigbig Studios as a satellite studio in Warwickshire.

In September 2007 both Evolution and Bigbig were acquired by Sony to become part of its SCE Worldwide Studios. Kenwright and Hetherington left the company, and Hocking took over as the studio's group director for both companies along with SCE Studio Liverpool. The acquisition happened one year after the release of the first game in Evolution's MotorStorm series, a launch title for the PlayStation 3 console.

On 22nd March 2016 Sony confirmed the studio's closure. In April 2016 Codemasters, known for its racing games, announced to hire a large part of the Evolution Studios team to join the company. The hired staff would become part of a new internal studio, Codemasters EVO. Another part of the staff is said to have continued at Sony North West Studio (later renamed Sony Manchester Studio).