LO1 Business report.

Sumo Digital

Andre Brown

Sumo Digital

Andre Brown

Company Structure:

The name of the company that this business report is based on is called Sumo Digital. Sumo digital is an independent game developing company that is based in Sheffield. They was set up in 2003 and over the course of 12 years they now have two bases, one in Sheffield and the other one in India, Pune. The company was formed in 2003 by four people who had previously worked for Gremlin Games, theses members where Carl Cavers, Paul Porter, Darren Mills and James North-Hearn. In 2007 Sumo digital was acquired by Foundation 9 entertainment and it had joined Foundation 9’s collection of independent studios. As of November 2014 the executive team of Sumo digital completed a buyout, which meant that they had gained independence from Foundation 9 entertainment.

Platform technology:

Sumo digital develops game for a number of platforms and these are:

XBOX	PLAYSTATION PORTABLE
PLAYSTATION 2	PLAYSTATION 3
WINDOWS	XBOX 360
Wii	NINTENDO DS
PLAYSTATION NETWORK	ARCADE
MAC OS	XBOX LIVE ARCADE
Ios	ANDROID
BLACKBERRY	PLAYSTATION VITA
MICROSOFT	XBOX ONE
PLAYSTATION 4

When it comes to getting games ready for release members of the production team the will stay overnight to make any tweaks that they need to do. Alongside editing the game they will have game members of the QA team testing the game. Their main job is to try and break the game so to see if the there are any faults in the game that need fixing.

One of the main things that Sumo digital is mostly known for is making games that have been released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox one compatible for the older generation consoles ( Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) For example Forza horizon 2 was made for the next generation consoles however Sumo digital had re written the all of the coding that does into the game to make it compatible for the older generation.

Game types:

The company had made a name for its self for the making those 1 pound machine arcade games into a game suitable for the PlayStation 2 consoles.  This was one of their main projects and one of the directors of Sumo said that it was quite difficult to make as they had to drastically change the game from a quick 1 minute game to it having a viable story. One example of this was the game Outrun 2, outrun 2 was originally an arcade game with actual storyline. The main objective was just to drive and drive fast. However the directors of Sega had contacted Sumo ask them to converter the game for the Xbox. This game ended up being quite successful which resulted in Sega returning to Sumo and asking them to produce two more games for the Outrun franchise. Sumo are now working with Microsoft studios and are responsible for converting the forza franchise to the older generation of consoles. The reason for Microsoft wanting forza on the older generation of console is because many people still have the older generations and they still view it as an important audience to target.

Regulatory bodies:

Like all of the other game developing companies Sumo has to follow the rules and regulations that are set by PEGI, PEGI stand for Pan European Game Information and ti has a rating system for video games for age appropriate content all across Europe. Each game has a base age category rating. There ratings are:

                                                                                                   

Since the games the Sumo digital produce all child friendly the rating system doesn’t really affect them much. Most if not all of their games are fit into the three and up category.

Developmental Software:

To create a game like Forza horizon Sumo had to use two different types of game engines for it to be able to run on Xbox 360, these engines are the Drivatar Technology and the Forza Horizon engine which was heavily modified to so it could make Forza Horizon 2.  To make the virtual tennis franchise they had used the Sega Lindbergh arcade system. For this game they had planned to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 as the basis for the arcade board.