Sony also has studios in Liverpool and Cambridge. So, is London top dog these days?

"Recently, we've been more about sharing," Haigh says, diplomatically. "We, for example, have people helping out with products like LittleBigPlanet and Killzone 2, along with people from Cambridge, and the external development team at Liverpool."

[...]

Haigh leads us on a tour of the London Studio, starting on the second floor, where the Eye Toy team resides. Sony hasn't yet confirmed it is making a version of Eye Toy for the PS3 and its new PlayStation Eye camera, but heavy hints are dropped, suggesting that in the "medium-term" just such a game will be released, and we see some interesting technology demos that use a torch and polystyrene ball as a pointing device, and also recognise pictures that you draw – this, the team points out, would let you use Eye Toy to create your own landscapes and environments.

Moving up from floor to floor, we see Eight Days – which is just ramping up to full production. To get an idea of the scale of development required on next-gen consoles, the team, currently numbering 63, will expand to about 80 with a further 40 or so outsourced workers. A small team is working on pre-production for the next iteration of The Getaway, in preparation for being joined by the bulk of the Eight Days team when the latter is completed.

"The idea is to have two pre-production teams and one production team, which flips onto whatever product, at that point of time, is ready to have that team working on it," says Eight Days senior producer Phil James.