Sony to give £10k grants to five new UK studios

After a two-day pitching workshop for companies from the Northwest of England in December last year, five attendees who presented their ideas to a panel of Sony executives on the day have now been awarded £10,000 to develop their concepts over the next three months.

All the attendees pitched to representatives from PlayStation Network, Northwest Vision & Media and Pixel-Lab. Liverpool’s Citrus Suite, Catalyst and Onteca, and Manchester’s Ucan.TV and Bollington-based The Game Creators emerged victorious as a result of their pitches.

Toby Barnes, managing director of Pixel-Lab said: “The initial two-day workshop we ran in Liverpool gave some of the region’s newer game companies a real grounding in the realities of pitching.

“The real work starts now – with £10,000 to develop the prototypes, executive production support from Pixel Lab and SCEE, and support from Northwest Vision & Media, the teams have to really impress the judges in March.”

Part of the Get in the Game program, the development commission will include a visit to SCEE’s XDev Studio Europe with the possibility each project going into full production.