SCE Worldwide Studios - Global Technology

The Global Technology division is dedicated to working with all the SCE Worldwide Studios development teams to create high quality, innovative, entertaining products through the provision of expertise, technology and creative services.

The technologies and services provided are used in all major WWS titles and are also available to our external development partners. The division also retains strong links with Sony Computer Entertainment International headquarters in Tokyo and develops several technologies which are released to all PlayStation® developers including a Scheduling IO system, a GPU performance analysis tools and a set of SPU optimised libraries.

The Global Technology division comprises several teams located in the UK and US. In each case they are co-located with WWS games development staff. Each team is responsible for maintaining a standard of excellence in the areas they work.

Graphics, audio, systems run-time and tools technologies are developed by the ICE team (based within the Naughty Dog studio in Santa Monica, CA), the Tools and Technology Group based in Foster City, CA, and the Advanced Technology Group based in the London and Cambridge studios. Examples of technologies they provide are graphics libraries, lighting and shading tools, file IO management systems, tools frameworks and asset pipelines.

The Online Technology Group provides network technology and expertise, both client and server, to the teams. Their focus is on providing large scale, high availability systems in areas such as matchmaking, real-time network play, ranking, file storage and moderation. They are located at the San Diego campus and London Studio.

The Services Group is based in the US and provides multimedia, sound, music and video arts services, including motion capture. Its aim is to provide world class, cost effective and timely, content, development and design services to WWS teams. It is located in San Diego and Foster City and at sound facilities in certain game studios.

The SHIP team, based in Foster City, is responsible for providing internal web-based communication, collaboration and sharing solutions for WWS.

The Global Technology organisation is an ideal place for personnel to perfect their technological skills in a supportive, collaborative environment. Teams have the satisfaction of knowing that their tools provide the backbone to many of the world’s most innovative and technically advanced games published across the PlayStation® platforms.

Global titles require global support: Titles released globally receive both pre- and post- launch systems support from the Global Platform division formed in June 2008.

Global Platform:

- provides global support to WWS offline and online titles and
- is the key implement point for WWS global initiatives.

With its worldwide view, Global Platform supports WWS America, WWS Europe and WWS Japan. Headquartered in San Diego, California, Global Platform has employees in Santa Monica and Foster City, California, Liverpool and London, England and Tokyo, Japan.

Global Platform is comprised of the following organizations:

- Global Hosting
- Global First Party Quality Assurance (GFPQA)
- Project Management Office (PMO)
- Product Development Information Technology (PDIT)

The Global Hosting team ensures WWS titles released across all regions are provided with the optimal hosting location, performance and support they need to perform against challenging global demands

Global First Party Quality Assurance tests and verifies all WWS titles to ensure they are robust and ready to be released to the public. QA testers are passionate about every aspect of gaming and are required to push each title to the limit using both industry standard and proprietary testing systems.

The Project Management Office provides title-related coordination of tasks related to online game play. They also provide project management on internal Global Platform projects. An important element in overseeing the implementation of new processes, systems and organizational changes is the people side of change. The PMO applies organizational change management on those projects where warranted. The PMO also provides workflow mapping and process improvement services on select Global Platform and WWS initiatives.

The Product Development Information Technology (PDIT) organization within Global Platform provides desktop support and online storage to all of WWS America. They provide mission-critical support to the organizations that develop all of SCEA’s first party titles.