Evolution Studios

Evolution Studios was a British developer of driving games. Martin Kenwright and Ian Hetherington founded it in 1999, after Infogrames bought Ocean Software, the publisher of their studio Digital Image Design. Kenwright left that company with six members of staff to set up Evolution, first based in Frodsham and later in Runcorn, both in Cheshire. Mick Hocking is also listed among its co-founders.

Its calling card was a PC rally demo showing several cars racing on a circuit with cockpit views. Sony picked it up because it wanted a PlayStation 2 game built on the World Rally Championship licence. The result was World Rally Championship (2001), followed by a new instalment every year up to WRC: Rally Evolved (2005). On PlayStation 3 it created the MotorStorm series, which began in 2006 and continued with Pacific Rift (2008), Apocalypse (2011) and RC (2012).

Sony Computer Entertainment bought Evolution and its satellite studio in Warwickshire, Bigbig Studios, in September 2007. Kenwright and Hetherington left at that point, and Hocking took charge of Evolution, Bigbig and Studio Liverpool. Its last game was Driveclub, planned as a PlayStation 4 launch title and delayed until October 2014. In March 2015 Sony made redundancies to focus the studio on running Driveclub as a service, and on 22 March 2016 it announced that Evolution was closed.

The team stayed together: on 11 April 2016 it joined Codemasters as Codemasters EVO, later renamed Codemasters Cheshire. After disappointing sales of its next game, Onrush, several people were let go, including game director Paul Rustchynsky, and the division moved into a support role on other Codemasters titles. In May 2022 the team was merged into Criterion Games, an EA subsidiary.