Joint Sony-Namco Bandai studio handling Ridge Racer for Vita

Cellius, a studio originally founded together by Sony and Namco Bandai on R&D development on the Cell processor, is working on the Vita version of Ridge Racer, according to a Gamasutra interview.

"Ken Kutaragi -- who was running SCE at the time -- was in talks with Shukuo Ishikawa, the head of development at NBGI. They got to talking about how it'd be neat to create a company, and it sort of went from there," said studio VP Hideo Teramoto.

"Cellius got its start with the Cell processor architecture; the concept was to be an outfit that researched ways to use this technology to create neat things. So it's not exactly pure research; it's more about finding ways to expand the things that can be done with the PlayStation family."

Teramoto, who worked on Ridge Racer before Cellius, said that it doesn't have plans to turn into a full-time development studio, however.

"This Ridge project is in itself a sort of experiment to see what sort of Ridge game Cellius can come up with; it's a very different development atmosphere from when I was working on Ridge Racer in 2006. So if we do continue making games, I think we'll still remain different from normal game companies."