Sony just acquired the gaming industry’s biggest audio toolset

Enlarge / Wwise's logo, now slapped onto a Sony backdrop. What's to come of this new audio-toolset arrangement? (credit: Aurich / Sony / Audiokinetic)

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced its latest studio acquisition on Tuesday, but the company it is set to acquire, Audiokinetic, is a different kind of "development" studio. Instead of making games, Audiokinetic makes Wwise, arguably the gaming industry's most popular multi-platform audio middleware toolset.

Anybody who has played a video game in the past five years has a hint of how big of an acquisition this is, as those gamers have likely seen the "Wwise" logo in at least one game's opening or closing credits. That logo indicates that Audiokinetic's proprietary tools have been used to help developers more easily arrange sound effects, dialogue, and music in their games.

The acquisition will allow Audiokinetic to continue operating as an independent developer and licensor of tools like Wwise, the Montreal studio says, while letting Sony "tap into Audiokinetic's vast audio engineering expertise."

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