Motorstorm creator starts Starship game studio in the UK

You don’t see a lot of major game studios created these days. But Martin Kenright, the creator of the Motorstorm video game series, has unveiled a new studio called Starship with a bunch of industry veterans.

Kenright’s team in the United Kingdom has veterans from his former company, Evolution Studios, and Sony Liverpool. They have built games including Motorstorm, Wipeout, Formula 1, and World Rally Championship.

The Liverpool, England-based company is working on original next-generation games as well as lifestyle, entertainment, and electronic health applications. He isn’t say yet what those games will be, or even if he’ll work on another racing game.

His chief operating officer is Clemens Wangerin, a former development director at Sony Liverpool. The company’s motto is “better through play.”

Kenright started Digital Image Design to make and built flight simulation games. He also started Evolution Studios, the maker of Motorstorm, which was published by Sony for the PlayStation 3. Kenright sold that studio to Sony in 2007.

Kenright spent about five years away from making games. During that time, he concluded that gaming investment was broken, and that forced real innovation into the backseat. Starship hopes to have the antidote.

He started Starship in 2013. Now he said via email that his new studio will have 20 to 30 employees, and it will use an outsourcing model to tap the talents of four external studios. All told, the team has shipped more than 69 games.

“What we’re setting out to create are first of kind products through a first of a kind business model,” he said. “We desperately need to do this to keep games development flourishing and advancing in the UK and beyond.”

He added, “Part of our business model involves not fighting with everyone else over the same piece of the pie, rather we’re moving our attentions to currently unloved demographics and sectors and using a world-class dev teams’ talents to create something that’s not been seen before.”

The first products will be revealed in June. Kenright has invested his own money in the project to date.

“The name Starship hints at the height of our ambitions,” said Kenwright, CEO. “Evolution and D.I.D paved the way for what we’re doing now, we’re aiming to disrupt the market with revolutionary products that fulfill a genuine use and need for consumers.”