Sony Worldwide Studios VP Michael Denny spoke to GamesIndustry regarding their purchase of Evolution Studios. In addition to this, he also spoke about a sequel to MotorStorm which the company plans on releasing some time next year.

In the interview, Denny said that both founders of the gaming company Martin Kenwright and Ian Hetherington have decided to leave the business. However, Mick Hocking will still continue as the managing director of the new subsidiary. These moves were done to further strengthen their new holding:

We want to protect and enhance our investment in Evolution Studios and Bigbig, and have no plans to reduce the overall number of staff in either studio. We believe that becoming part of the worldwide studios group within Sony will offer improved career opportunities for talented people.

Regarding the sequel to the hit PS3 title, Denny said "MotorStorm as a brand and as a network-enabled game will go from strength to strength. We're looking to follow up with a new Blu-ray disc release next year for MotorStorm".

All in all, it looks like Sony has very big things planned for its latest and hottest acquisition to date. If you want to read the full interview, click on the Read Link below.

Still can't get enough of Evolution Studio's video game MotorStorm? Well, that's alright because we're all in the same boat with the rest of North America, Japan, and Europe. Why haven't you heard? MotorStorm just topped the official PlayStation 3 (PS3) charts in all three territories.

Even Evolution Studios CEO Martin Kenwright is quite beside himself as he mentioned that this is amazing. He said that despite their reputation in providing quality racing titles in the past (five hugely successful Official World Rally Championship titles exclusively for PS2 mind you), the developers decided to come up with something extra special for Sony this time.

To see MotorStorm top the European, the Japanese and the U.S. PlayStation 3 charts is just fantastic. Developing MotorStorm to a standard we were all happy with was certainly a challenge – but the team here really delivered. We’re delighted that the public has agreed with the press and made MotorStorm a worldwide number one PlayStation 3 title.

We know we don't even have to discuss MotorStorm but for those who are not into racing games, it would probably be good to try this one out. The setting is off-road and is located in the hostile environment of Monument Valley. One unique feature of the game is the ever-changing course as vehicles deform the mud on the road every time they rev up their engines.

MotorStorm has been out for quite some time now, and we're currently waiting for its sequel, MotorStorm 2.

In a recent interview, Evolution Studios CEO Martin Kenwright talked about how his company is coming along in its software tool development efforts for the PlayStation 3 and gave his thoughts on gamemaking strategies and his company's new racing game MotorStorm.

Evolution studios is the creative force behind the memorable World Rally Championship franchise for the PS1 and PS2, and is one of the first companies to create game development resources for the PS3 platform- a fact that the CEO is appreciative towards Sony for.

Due to the success of their flagship title, other hardware firms were willing only to talk about Evolution doing a WRC for them. In the case of Sony, the CEO says he was able to justify the risks involved in doing a new game and Kenwright describes what happened after the talks as a case of it was a case of, "OK, let's go for it."

"I think you've got to think big now, or go home. We're in an industry full of hits, and an average product isn't good enough." he says and revealed "our production model now is much more akin to a Hollywood movie than a computer game. You do need this scale and scope to stay at the top tier of games development."

The work on MotorStorm, an off-road arcade-style racer also proved to be a refreshing creative experience for the Evolution team, saying that it was a lot of fun to throw all the racing sim rulebooks away and just let the players drive through dirt in a no-holds barred fashion. The experience was a bit mechanical, according to Kenwright, but he says the effort wasn't without some major achievements.

"We already have 12 cars running together without any latency or slowdown, and that's a remarkable achievement beyond anything else that exists on any format." says the proud Evolution chief.

To read the entire Q and A, follow the read URL.

With the game's release looming over our horizons, you can't blame Evolution Studios for going full swing in giving us even more sneak peeks and teasers for MotorStorm.

We've given you parts one and two of the Behind-the-Scenes videos from Evolution, but because good things come in three's, here's another one to provide you with even more insight on what goes on in the production of MotorStorm. We're joined once again by Ian Bickerstaff (Senior Simulation Engineer), Mike Brennan (Director of Photography), and Martin Kenwright (CEO of Evolution Studios) to share with us how their vision of the future of gaming is being turned into reality by pushing the limits of capturing realism and bringing it to games.

We'd love to give you a bit-by-bit reiteration of the things discussed, but we figure it'd be better if you got it from the dev team instead. That said, we'll leave you with the vid of Behind-the-Scenes Part 3 and hope you'll pick up some useful stuff. Enjoy!

If you don't live in Japan (where they've already gotten the game released), then you must be playing the MotorStormdemo to the bone. We can't blame you. We're guilty of that too. And maybe you're wondering, how the bloody muddy hell do they make dirt look so good?

Following through from the previous Behind the Scenes coverage (consisting of Parts 1 and 2) comes this next one where Evolution Studios creative lead Paul Hollywood proudly claims how they were able to develop the game into looking "More real than real life." He goes on with saying that the special effects you'd be seeing aren't what you're used to in movies. He's talking about real time high definition.

The CEO of Evolution Studios, Martin Kenwright, also has a bit to say about the photo-realism process that they had to go through in development. Atmospheric effects, lighting, the whole who-haa of different textures found on every single detail on the terrain; they had to use special technology - both hardware and software - for that.

This is the type of Behind the Scenes video that makes you feel as if the demo that you're playing would look like dirt compared to the actual game that will be released in March (6th in North America, 23rd in Europe). Sigh... Just a few more weeks of waiting.

Evolution Studios has just released yet another behind the scenes video to give PS3 users an inside glimpse into their upcoming game, MotorStorm.

Listen in as Mike Brennan, Director of Photography, and Ian Bickerstaff, Senior Simulation Engineer for the game, talk about the lengths they went to just to be able to bring the realism in the game's environments down to the teeniest tiniest speck of mud and dust. You'll also be able to catch Martin Kenwright, CEO of Evolution Studios, as he shares the experience of being a hundred feet up the ground as they shoot never-before-filmed places for the game.

But I won't bore you with any more chitchat, just click on the play button and see for yourself what the fuss is all about. MotorStorm is slated for release February 26th.

It's been around a month now that the PS3 got ushered into Japan. Among the launch titles they had lined-up, Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire was one of them. Some of us know how the entire Gundam franchise has such a solid fan-base in Japan. So, given that, it comes as one heck of a surprise that the top-selling title in their country right now is actually MotorStorm!

What's surprising about this? 1)Gundam came out during launch and MotorStorm just only a few days ago. They beat a game which had a few weeks' advantage! And 2) Evolution Studios is based in UK, and now they're topping international charts with their high-octane racer. You'd think that the Japanese would support Japanese-developed games like Gundam more than that of UK? Not necessarily, and this is proof of that!

Evolution Studios CEO Martin Kenwright has this to say:

It's a real coup for Evolution. Developing MotorStorm has certainly not been easy - but the team here really delivered... We really needed to up the ante with [the PS3]. We're delighted that the public has agreed with the press, and made MotorStorm the current Japanese number one [PS3] title. We can’t wait to see how it performs throughout the rest of the world.

Pop the corks and let the champagne flow! That's one clear-cut achievement they've pulled off!

Before we begin, take a look at the statement below. And before this ends, you'll understand why we have a picture of Qui-Gon Jinn here:

I know people are looking at PS3 now, and I'm not being glib, but we're actually looking at PS4. I'm thinking where will it be in five years, how will we get there? What will the marketplace be like, the games, and who'll be buying them?

Now, does this sound silly to you or is it pure genius by a good strategist? We guess only time will tell but for UK developer Evolution Studios, it is better to get started this early than face problems later on. The above statement was actually uttered by Chief Executive Martin Kenwright during an interview.

According to Kenwright, they have definitely learned from their past mistakes. It would be remembered that a few days ago, it was reported that their title MotorStorm has been pushed back to December 14. While the official maintained that hindsight is important, he mentioned that evolution is the key:

What we've learnt in the past is you can inclemently improve something by one per cent, and it takes two years and millions of pounds and all you get is more of the same. You polarise your market. You're offering more of the same instead of something new, memorable and exciting.

At the bottom of all these, Kenwright somewhat urged other developers and publishers to move away from sequels. As of now, quite frankly, the industry is reeking with sequels. Not to say that these are bad and half-baked follow-ups, but sequels can only carry the industry for so long. Kenwright concluded:

People like to tick boxes and play it safe but sequels are the bane of our industry. The last one was good so the board wants ten more of the same. That's actually harming the marketplace irreparably. People are waking up now to the fact that sequels are actually high risk rather than low risk.

On a more personal note, we suggest Evolution Studios listens to the advice once uttered by Qui-Gon Jinn to his former student Obiwan: "You should be mindful of the future but not at the expense of the moment."

IGN had a sit-down interview with Evolutions Studio's Martin Kenwright, who was more than happy to talk about their Motorstorm title that's hitting Japan in about two weeks. The interview covered details of Evolution's upcoming title, from its early conception based on Evolution's success with their World Rally Championship (WRC) title, MotorStorm's reception at E3, and future plans for both Evolutions and the game.

Based on their success with WRC, Martin's team had decided to follow it up and build a game that contained the ideas they always wanted to place in WRC, but never could. With MotoStorm, and with the Blu-Ray tech the PS3 offered, their team had the opportunity to let lose, if the Motocross' demo over at the E3 is any indication.

Because we started work on MotorStorm three years ago, we thought that maybe the hardware would be more potent than we expected, or possibly it would be less powerful. Looking back now we've actually exceeded in some areas considerably, which we're amazed about. Some of the lighting and HDR effects are much better than we ever expected. Other things, we haven't quite matched our initial ideas due to technical restraints.

Indeed. And as for future plans, Martin's still keeping his horizons open, and while he doesn't have any clear plans for the next five years, it looks like Evolution's planning to ride out MotorStorm's success until they can come up with a bigger, better title, or at the very least downloadables for this current title to make the most of its capabilities. For the full interview, feel free to read the source link.