Sony acquires the maker of popular middleware tool Wwise

Sony Interactive Entertainment has purchased Audiokinetic, creator of Wwise.

Wwise's logo shows up in the opening splash, and end credits of many games today. Wwise is a middleware software that's part sound engine, and part authoring suite.

The middleware solution has been in use by plenty of game developers, and you'll no doubt have seen its logo in most of the games we play. Audiokinetic will be a wholly owned subsidiary of SIE, but continue to operate independently, meaning the company is free to license its products to developers.

It wouldn't make sense for Sony to limit the use of Audiokinetic's portfolio to first-party titles, so the acquisition is likely a means to generate more revenue. Audiokinetic could also be working on promising technology Sony wanted to invest in early.

This is akin to Microsoft's acquisition of Havok in 2015. The physics software continues to be licensed to all developers to this day.

Sony is not a software company, of course, unlike Microsoft, but this could be a step on the road to expanding SIE's reach in the development side. Maybe we'll next hear about a Sony game engine being offered to partner studios.