A Moratorium for Bluepoint Games — Looking Back at the Catalog of One of Sony’s Best First-Party Studios

Bloomberg's February 19 reporting, in which Jason Schreier broke that Sony had shuttered first-party studio Blupoint Games, took just about everyone by surprise. Just like that, one of the longest-tenured and consistently high-performing Sony studios was gone, having actually closed its doors back in January 2026. Things hadn't been great for Bluepoint in the last several years, with the studio having pitch after pitch rejected, a live-service God of War game spun up and then cancelled, and mostly relegated to providing support on other studios' projects as Sony continued to chase the live service golden goose. But during its heyday, Bluepoint was one of the most talented studios when it came to porting, remastering, and remaking beloved classics in the PlayStation library. To honor Bluepoint Games, we felt it best to go back through the developer's catalog and reflect on the great work it accomplished throughout the years.

• Release Date — November 17, 2006
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Shooter
• Review Aggregate Score — 68% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3

To trace Bluepoint's origins, we'll have to go way, way back to 20 years ago, where the studio cut its teeth on a PlayStation Network exclusive called Blast Factor. Truthfully, Blast Factor isn't much more than Sony's attempt at having its own best-selling Geometry Wars clone (which was, at the time, tearing up the charts on Xbox Live Arcade), but it's still a commendable attempt at a twin-stick shooter. Blast Factor ultimately proved that Bluepoint Games had plenty of talent within the studio, prompting Sony to put them to work on other, higher visibility projects, including giving them the reins to one of the brand's most important IP...

• Release Date — November 17, 2009
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Action
• Review Aggregate Score — 91% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3, PS Vita

With how little of a splash Blast Factor made in comparison to what it was aiming for, it's surprising to see that Bluepoint Games' next project would be none other than the first set of remasters and next-gen ports of the beloved PS2 God of War games. The God of War Collection for PlayStation 3 and PS Vita packages together two of the best-selling and highest-rated games in the PS2 library, gives them a bit of HD polish, and sends them off to the races in mostly unaltered fashion. And really, that's about all the first two God of War games needed back in 2009. What's most important about God of War Collection is how it established Bluepoint as Sony's de facto remaster studio moving forward.

• Release Date — September 27, 2011
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Action-Adventure
• Review Aggregate Score — 92% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3

The next remaster project from Bluepoint would be for yet another PS3 collection bringing together two beloved PlayStation 2 classics, only this time tackling games from beloved video game auteur Fumito Ueda. The Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection freed both titles from their PS2 prison and polished up their visuals and performance to truly shine on the PS3, while also adding in new bells and whistles like 3D TV support, special "making of" vignettes, and Trophies. Bluepoint once again knocked it out of the park by treating the original source material with the utmost respect, which would ultimately help the studio land the opportunity to remake Shadow of the Colossus almost a decade later.

• Release Date — November 8, 2011
• Publisher — Konami
• Genre — Action, Stealth
• Review Aggregate Score — 89% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3, PS Vita, Xbox 360

For Bluepoint's first non-Sony project (prior to the studio becoming owned by Sony as a proprietary first-party developer), Bluepoint Games would partner with Konami to put out a Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Bluepoint handled the HD remasters of both Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 (plus their Substance/Subsistence re-releases) while Genki handled porting Peace Walker to modern hardware, and the end result was the best Metal Gear collection available for its time. Many players actually still prefer Bluepoint's ports of MGS 2 and 3 over the more recent remasters that released as part of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection, thanks to the obvious care and attention to detail the studio put into preserving the core experience.

• Release Date — November 20, 2012
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Fighting
• Review Aggregate Score — 74% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3, PS Vita

Bluepoint's next project would be one of the first titles that Sony would assign the studio to as a critical support for, with it assisting Super Bot Entertainment on the PS3's very own version of Super Smash Bros.: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Mechanically, PlayStation All-Stars was pretty solid as a riff on the platform fighting of Smash Bros. and made great use of several iconic PlayStation IPs in its character and stage rosters, but the lack of a quality single-player mode and a general "thin" feeling to the amount of content on offer meant that players bounced off of it fairly quickly. It would go down as the one and only fighting game that Bluepoint would provide assistance on.

• Release Date — November 12, 2013
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Adventure
• Review Aggregate Score — 91% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — PlayStation 4, PS Vita

After getting assigned to assist with the development for and help ship PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sony gave Bluepoint something of a victory lap by putting the studio to work on the PS4 port of the beloved Flower. Flower had already wowed players back in 2009 on PS3, which made a high-quality, polished port for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita a slam dunk for Bluepoint. Sure enough, the PS4 port of Flower would go on to be yet another best-seller both in its physical and digital versions, further cementing Bluepoint's importance within Sony's stable of working studios as its quintessential porting and remastering experts, a full 8 years before finally making the move to acquire the developer.

• Release Date — March 11, 2014
• Publisher — Electronic Arts
• Genre — FPS
• Review Aggregate Score — 86% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — Xbox One

One of the only non-PlayStation projects that Bluepoint Games would ever work on was as a support studio for Respawn Entertainment's debut game, Titanfall, which ended up being one of the flagship launch titles for the Xbox One. Interestingly enough, Bluepoint helped provide an essential lift not with the Xbox One version, but with porting the game to the Xbox 360, which it already had experience with thanks to the Xbox 360 version of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Bluepoint managed to squeeze Titanfall down onto the Xbox 360 with minimal losses, resulting in it scoring an impressive 83% positive review aggregate score — just a few percentage points below the main Xbox One version.

• Release Date — October 9, 2015
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Action-Adventure
• Review Aggregate Score — 86% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PlayStation 4

Following its work on the Xbox 360 version of Titanfall, Bluepoint Games got the chance to craft what will likely go down as the studio's most impressive remaster project with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. Back in 2015, players hadn't gotten to experience Uncharted 4 yet, and The Nathan Drake Collection served as a perfect stopgap to get players caught up on the first three Uncharted games in advance, complete with some sharper visuals and more stable performance. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is more than just a compilation of some first-party PS3 games; it's one of the most essential titles in the PS4 library, to the point that Sony gives it away for free to PS Plus subscribers.

• Release Date — February 2, 2016
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment
• Genre — Action-Adventure
• Review Aggregate Score — 80% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PlayStation 4

The original Gravity Rush was a wildly unique game that deserved to be played by a wider audience than its Vita release could allow for. So what did Sony do? Why, put Bluepoint Games on the case to make a PlayStation 4 remaster, of course. To the shock of no one, Gravity Rush Remastered takes what was already a great game and makes it better by bringing it to a home console versus a handheld, with Bluepoint Games putting the muscle of the PS4 to great use in improving the game's visuals and giving it the framerate that its action deserved.

• Release Date — February 6, 2018
• Publisher — Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Genre — Action-Adventure
• Review Aggregate Score — 91% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — PlayStation 4

Following years of working on remasters or ports of beloved games, Bluepoint finally got to showcase a different side by reimagining one of the most important games in the PS2 catalog: Shadow of the Colossus. The 2018 remake of Shadow of the Colossus will go down as a monumental achievement from Bluepoint Studios' relatively short history, with it somehow taking what was already a timeless and iconic video game and making it better in some ways while still coexisting alongside the source material. And thanks to the success of Shadow of the Colossus, Bluepoint would be given the opportunity to work on an even more ambitious remake project...

• Release Date — November 12, 2020
• Publisher — Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Genre — Action RPG
• Review Aggregate Score — 92% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — PlayStation 5

Perhaps Bluepoint's most ambitious and impressive title is the remake of 2009's Demon's Souls, which many fans thought would never, ever happen. Somehow, Bluepoint pulled it off, and to such a degree that fans can appreciate both it and the original as separate but essential experiences, much like the comparisons drawn between the originals and remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4. Demon's Souls was the most essential launch title for the PlayStation 5, and its success prompted Bluepoint to pitch the oft-requested remake of Bloodborne; something that, reportedly, was greenlit by Sony before eventually being shot down by FromSoftware (owing to Miyazaki wanting to be involved and schedule not allowing). At least we have Bluepoint's masterfully crafted reimagining of Boletaria.

• Release Date — November 11, 2022
• Publisher — Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Genre — Action-Adventure
• Review Aggregate Score — 94% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — PS4, PS5

Ironically, it would be Bluepoint Games' assistance on God of War Ragnarok that may have eventually sealed its fate as a doomed studio, as the work done to help primary developer Santa Monica Studio polish and ship the game ended up landing Bluepoint ownership of the doomed God of War live service project. Still, God of War Ragnarok is a colossal achievement that took the tireless work of multiple different studios, Bluepoint among them, and turned it into one of the absolute best games of the last decade. It's bittersweet that the last project Bluepoint would work on would be as a support studio on one of the biggest first-party PS5 titles, but it's a fitting capstone to its legacy as a pivotal arm in Sony's software production efforts. It's honestly hard to think of what Sony's first-party operations will look like without Bluepoint.