Ilari Kuittinen, co-founder and managing director of Housemarque, has left the PlayStation-owned studio. In a final message shared by the studio on August 31, Kuittinen said it was his last day after 31 years at the company and 33 in the games industry.
After 33 years in the games industry and 31 incredible years at Housemarque—the studio I co-founded with Harri Tikkanen—today marks my last day at the company.
The handover is not sudden. Kuittinen said studio veteran Sami "Haxu" Hakala took over as managing director on July 1, 2026, and that he, Hakala and the rest of the team had been carefully planning the transition behind the scenes. He said he is taking a break after 33 continuous years without one, while staying connected to the industry by attending trade shows, consulting and more.
Three decades of Housemarque
Kuittinen started out in 1993 with Terramarque and joined forces with Tikkanen to establish Housemarque in 1995. The Finnish studio built its name on high-tempo, arcade-style action and burst onto the fore with 1999's Supreme Snowboarding, which sold over a million copies. Sony published Super Stardust HD in 2007, beginning a partnership that continued through the twin-stick shooter Dead Nation and Resogun, which helped launch the PlayStation 4 in 2013, with Alienation and Nex Machina following in 2016 and 2017.
In 2017 Kuittinen wrote an open letter declaring that the "Arcade is dead", saying the studio would do something different going forward because its arcade-style games had sold relatively poorly. That change produced Returnal, the story-driven PlayStation 5 roguelike released in April 2021, after which Sony acquired Housemarque and folded it into PlayStation Studios; the studio had been fiercely independent for 26 years. Its follow-up, Saros, arrived in April this year, and IGN scored it 7 out of 10 at launch. In his letter Kuittinen singled out Housemarque's evolution into a AAA developer, its games, and its status as a pioneering Finnish studio as the achievements he was proudest of.
Saros sales and a run of departures
Polygon reported that Saros got off to a slow start, citing figures from Alinea Analytics that put it at 300,000 units sold, and that the studio downplayed the situation in an interview with The Game Business by pointing out that Returnal also had slow sales at launch. Polygon added that it is unclear whether there is any relationship between those sales and Kuittinen's departure.
He is not the only PlayStation Studios co-founder to leave of late. Insomniac Games co-founder Ted Price stepped down in January 2025, and Sucker Punch co-founder Brian Fleming did the same in December 2025.