Founded in 1984[1][2] by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ellis, and David Lawson, the company initially became known for well-received games on the Atari ST and Amiga.

[3] Staff members were told the news by Michael Denny, vice president of Sony Worldwide Studios Europe.

[15][18] The name of another Imagine Megagame (the proposed but never developed Psyclapse) was later used by Psygnosis as an alternative label for some of its releases,[19] such as Ballistix and Captain Fizz Meets The Blaster-Trons.

For the next few years, Psygnosis' releases contained increasingly improved graphics, but were marred by similarly difficult gameplay and control methods.

During the early days, artists were employed full-time at the headquarters, offering third-party developers, who were often just single programmers, a high-quality art resource.

The original artists were Garvan Corbett, Jeff Bramfitt, Colin Rushby and Jim Bowers, with Neil Thompson joining a little later.

This short scene would pave the way for increasingly sophisticated intro animations, starting with 2D hand drawn sequences, and progressing into FMV and 3D rendered movies created with Sculpt 4D on the Amiga.

Its multi-layered parallax scrolling and music were highly advanced for the time and as such led to the game being used as a showcase demonstration for the Amiga in many computer shops.

The PlayStation marked a turning point in Psygnosis's game design, moving away from the prerendered graphics and limited gameplay that the company had become associated with.

[28] As Psygnosis expanded after the Sony buyout, another satellite office was opened in Century Building with later offices opening in Stroud, London, Chester, Paris, Germany, and Foster City in California (as the Customer Support & Marketing with software development done in San Francisco), now the home of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Despite being owned by Sony, Psygnosis retained a degree of independence from its parent company during this period and continued to develop and publish titles for other platforms,[30] including the Sega Saturn[31][32] and the Nintendo 64.

[38] Psygnosis had a subsidiary studio at Camden Town which developed Blast Radius, Kingsley's Adventure and Team Buddies.

[40] In 1999, a process to consolidate Psygnosis into Sony Computer Entertainment was underway, resulting in the bulk of Psygnosis' sales, marketing and PR staff being made redundant and the development teams reporting directly into Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's president of software development.

During the year, as its American division was shut down, Midway Home Entertainment acquired the remaining titles of Psygnosis' PlayStation lineup.

Next they developed Wipeout Pure for the PlayStation Portable, which launched alongside the handheld in 2005 to significant acclaim, with many media outlets heralding it a return to glory for the series.

[5] Eurogamer was told by an unnamed source that, at the time of its closure, Studio Liverpool was working on two PlayStation 4 launch titles.