As much as I hate to say it, I think the PixelOpus closure makes business sense.
Compare to Supergiant, it is in the ballpark of the same size of studio. And yet they're consistently putting out games every 3 years that are pretty much all reviewing better than Concrete Genie, which PixelOpus took 5 years to put out. PixelOpus has some very sweet origins, but they are not a big value add to PlayStation.
Supergiant Games | PixelOpus |
Transistor (83) Pyre (82) Hades (93) | Entwined (59) Concrete Genie (75) |
Transistor and Entwined came out in 2014. In that time frame, Supergiant put out two games to PixelOpus's one, and one of which was a GOTY contender, compared to even AAA games.
It doesn't feel surprising.
The more "at risk" studios:
London Studio
Media Molecule
Team Asobi
Team Asobi is a critical darling, and puts out high quality games in a pretty quick amount of time. Not sure if they're breaking even, but they're putting out high quality stuff.
Media Molecule is a critical darling as well, but with worse budget issues. I could see their next game being a make it or break it, but I think they're fine.
London Studio is probably the worst one off. They're at least a pretty productive studio. Blood and Truth was definitely better received than anything PixelOpus put out. So there is that.
I could see any of them getting closed down at some point, but I doubt it (and I hope not).