Sony registers trademark for Insomniac’s Xbox shooter Sunset Overdrive

Sony Interactive Entertainment has registered a trademark for Insomniac’s Xbox exclusive Sunset Overdrive.

As spotted by Twitter sleuth Nibel, Sunset Overdrive was successfully registered by the PlayStation firm late last month at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Released in 2014, Sunset Overdrive is an action-adventure shooter for Xbox One which has players using outlandish weaponry to fight armies of mutants.

The game was a rare foray into Xbox development for Insomniac, which had spent almost all of its 20-year existence working on PlayStation. Following the huge success of Marvel’s Spider-Man, the studio was acquired by Sony in 2019.

Insomniac has previously claimed that it owns the Sunset Overdrive IP, but the original game remains an Xbox One console exclusive (it released on PC in 2018).

Although the trademark registry isn’t indicative of any plans to revive the game, it coincides closely with Sunset Overdrive’s director re-joining Insomniac earlier this year, after a period working as the most senior designer at Xbox’s new The Initiative studio.

Insomniac is currently working on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which is scheduled for release exclusively for PlayStation 5 on June 11, 2021.

Last week PlayStation’s game boss claimed Sony is committed to releasing more experimental games, in addition to continuing the blockbuster single-player releases it’s known for.

PlayStation has spent most of the past console generation focusing on story-driven single-player games like God of War, Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima, but PlayStation Studios boss Herman Hulst told GI.biz its latest signing, an original multiplayer project from new studio Firewalk, showed it was committed to coming up with new ideas too.

“I think that the games that we make are as distinct and diverse as they can be,” Hulst said. “From Sackboy to Astro Bot to Dreams to these kind of games that you’re referring to, like The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghosts of Tsushima.

“And you can bet that we will carry on making these games, because they are the heart and soul of what we do here at PlayStation studios. But at the same time, we are just as committed to making these quality experiences as we are to experimentation and to coming up with fresh ideas.”