The weaPons of wipEout (Part 2)

For most games, three years is a pretty standard development cycle, especially when developing for a new generation of hardware. In the 3 years between the release of Wip3out and Wipeout Fusion however, a lot changed in gaming and for the series itself. From the Fall of 1999 to the late-Winter of 2002 (Wipeout Fusion's European release) the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and Xbox all had their launch, and the Dreamcast lived most of its retail life and then died. For the Wipeout franchise, a similar level of change took place. The Designer's Republic, largely responsible for the look of the franchise since its inception were no longer attached to the series. Instead another UK-based design firm, Good Technology, was brought on to design the look for Wipeout Fusion. Sometime after the release of Wip3out Psygnosis' was merged into Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe proper (they had been owned by the company since 1993) and their named changed to SCE Studio Liverpool to fit a more unified corporate naming scheme.