Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that they will be acquiring iSIZE, a UK company that helps with bitrate and quality enhancements. The announcement comes not long after several layoffs throughout the company.
PlayStation has had a very successful 2023. In October, they released Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which has been their fastest-selling game to date. It is unknown how they intend to use iSIZE to benefit both their gaming and streaming lineups. More information will likely be revealed in the coming months.
Sony Acquisition of iSIZE
Sony officially announced the news on their official website. On it, they stated the following:
We are thrilled to announce that Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (“SIE”) has entered into an agreement to acquire iSIZE, a UK-based company specializing in deep learning for video delivery. iSIZE builds AI-powered solutions to deliver bitrate savings and quality improvements for the media and entertainment industry. The acquisition provides SIE with significant expertise in applying machine learning to video processing, which will benefit a range of our R&D efforts as well as our video and streaming services.
Founded in 2016 and based in London, iSIZE has a team of talented engineers and technical experts who have developed a suite of software solutions to optimize video. For example, the company built an AI-based perceptual preprocessing solution that allows conventional, third-party encoders to produce higher quality video at a significantly lower bitrate.
We look forward to welcoming the iSIZE team to SIE.
Based on iSIZE’s portfolio, it is likely they will be helping PlayStation with their cloud-streaming services. PlayStation just released a new cloud-streaming platform as part of their PlayStation Plus Premium service. Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation will likely reveal more details about the acquisition of iSIZE in the coming months. Lastly, PlayStation’s most recent game, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, is available now exclusively on the PlayStation 5.
