Nixxes Software

Presentation

Nixxes Software is the kind of studio you can encounter for years without ever really knowing its name.

You play Tomb Raider on PC.

Deus Ex.

Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Horizon Forbidden West.

Ghost of Tsushima.

The logo appears somewhere in the credits, then disappears behind the name of the studio that originally created the game.

And for a long time, that was exactly where Nixxes worked: in the almost invisible space between an original work and the machine on which it had to run properly.

Founded in 1999 in the Netherlands by Jurjen Katsman, the studio specialized in technical development, platform conversions, optimization and support for other teams.

That job sounds simple when reduced to the word “porting.”

It is not.

Moving a game from one machine to another means understanding an engine you did not necessarily build, adapting its systems, performance, interface, controls and graphical options, then trying to preserve the original intent across configurations that can be radically different.

Nixxes built much of its history around that expertise.

In 2021, Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired the studio and brought it into PlayStation Studios.

Its role then became far more visible: helping bring games from studios such as Insomniac Games, Guerrilla, Sucker Punch and Naughty Dog to PC, while also expanding into technical, artistic and design co-development.

Nixxes does not necessarily create the worlds we visit.

It is one of the studios making sure those worlds survive the journey.

History

1999: building behind the scenes

Nixxes Software was founded in 1999 by Jurjen Katsman in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The studio quickly positioned itself in a very particular area: helping other developers adapt their games technically.

Its history was therefore built less around one major franchise of its own and more around a succession of collaborations.

That is a fundamental difference from most studios.

Naughty Dog can be told through Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted and The Last of Us.

Insomniac through Spyro, Ratchet & Clank and Spider-Man.

Nixxes, however, is often best understood through other studios’ games.

Early on, its name appeared around productions connected to the Eidos ecosystem and series such as Legacy of Kain. Over the years, that technical specialization developed into long-term relationships with several teams and publishers.

The studio did not necessarily seek to replace the original creator.

It became the team people called when the same game needed to work somewhere else.

Turning porting into a specialty

A port can sound like a mechanical operation.

Take the game.

Change a few settings.

Compile it.

Done.

Reality is obviously much less elegant.

Every platform comes with its own constraints.

Hardware architecture.

Memory.

Processor.

GPU.

Graphics APIs.

Controllers.

Storage.

Operating system.

And on PC, things become even more entertaining: instead of targeting one machine, you have to account for thousands of possible configurations.

Nixxes gradually built its expertise around that complexity.

The studio worked on full conversions, versions designed to launch close to the original release, platform-specific enhancements and more targeted interventions intended to help projects facing technical difficulties.

That flexibility became its real specialty.

A long history with Lara Croft

One of Nixxes’ most significant collaborations developed with Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider ecosystem.

The studio contributed to multiple adaptations of the franchise and played an important role on PC and console versions of several Lara Croft adventures.

For Tomb Raider in 2013, Nixxes worked with Crystal Dynamics on the PC and PlayStation 3 versions. The PC release notably included higher-resolution textures, tessellation, improved shadows and platform-specific graphical technologies.

A few years later, the studio was still involved with Rise of the Tomb Raider, including its Xbox One X adaptation, before producing the PC conversion of Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

The relationship became long enough for Nixxes itself to describe the team as veterans of working on the franchise.

And that continuity matters.

Porting a game does not only require understanding a platform.

It also means learning to understand the teams you work with.

Deus Ex, Tomb Raider and the Square Enix years

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Nixxes built a particularly strong relationship with Square Enix’s Western studios.

Its portfolio crossed through titles and franchises including:

• Tomb Raider;
• Rise of the Tomb Raider;
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider;
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution;
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided;
• various projects connected to the former Eidos catalogue;
• and later Marvel’s Avengers.

The pattern becomes clear.

Nixxes was not only called in to convert a finished product.

It could become more deeply involved in development, create additional content, adapt technology or collaborate directly with the lead teams.

Its own website summarizes that diversity quite well: some projects are full conversions, others are co-development assignments, while others involve rapid intervention on a game facing difficulties.

There is therefore no single Nixxes job.

There is one central skill: entering somebody else’s project, understanding how it works, and helping it reach another platform or another level of polish.

2021: joining PlayStation Studios

On July 1, 2021, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the acquisition of Nixxes Software.

After more than twenty years as an independent studio, the team joined PlayStation Studios Technology, Creative & Services.

The choice is interesting.

Sony did not acquire Nixxes because the studio owned a gigantic exclusive franchise.

It acquired expertise.

A team experienced in optimization.

Conversion.

Technical development.

And the ability to work with technology created by other studios.

Hermen Hulst, then head of PlayStation Studios, presented Nixxes precisely as a resource capable of helping PlayStation teams focus on creating their games while providing them with additional technical expertise.

Nixxes therefore officially became a PlayStation studio in order to keep doing what it had been doing for years: help other studios make their ambitions work.

Spider-Man and the new PC mission

After the acquisition, Nixxes’ role quickly became much more visible.

Sony was expanding its presence on PC.

And Nixxes had decades of experience in exactly that area.

In 2022, the studio worked with Insomniac Games on the PC version of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered.

The adaptation went far beyond simply making the game executable on Windows.

It introduced different graphical settings, support for varied resolutions, ray tracing features, multiple upscaling technologies and options intended to make the game work across a wide range of hardware.

A few months later, Nixxes also adapted Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

The studio then described one of the central challenges of its work very clearly: making the same game run on relatively modest devices while also taking advantage of high-end PCs equipped with recent GPUs and ultrawide displays.

A console version knows exactly which machine it is targeting.

A PC version has to learn to live with almost all the others.

Ratchet, Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima

Collaboration with PlayStation studios expanded quickly from there.

Nixxes worked with Insomniac on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

With Guerrilla on Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition.

With Sucker Punch Productions on Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut.

For the latter, the team notably had to adapt Sucker Punch’s internal engine to PC while implementing unlocked frame rates, multiple graphics options and customizable keyboard-and-mouse controls.

This is where the idea of porting reveals its full complexity.

Nixxes does not own some magical universal engine where a PlayStation game can simply be dropped in.

Every project arrives with its own technology.

Its own decisions.

Its own peculiarities.

Its own custom solutions.

The team has to learn a new technical language before it can translate it.

From conversion to remastering

With Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Nixxes’ role evolved again.

The studio was no longer working only on moving a game to another platform.

Its art teams collaborated closely with Guerrilla to modernize the experience.

Characters.

Environments.

Vegetation.

Textures.

Lighting.

Visual detail.

The work begins to resemble co-development and remastering far more than traditional porting.

That evolution also matches the way PlayStation Studios now presents Nixxes: engineering teams specializing in high-quality PC ports, but also art and design teams capable of co-developing games alongside other PlayStation studios.

The studio that once mainly helped games change platforms is therefore beginning to help them change eras as well.

A role that keeps expanding

That logic continues across other productions.

Nixxes contributed to the PC version of The Last of Us Part II Remastered alongside Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy.

Its support infrastructure also extends across PC versions of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut and other PlayStation titles.

In 2026, its expertise can also be seen around the PC version of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, with improvements involving upscaling technologies, frame generation, unlocked frame rates and ultrawide displays.

More than twenty-five years after its creation, Nixxes therefore continues to occupy an unusual position.

It still does not necessarily seek to be the studio whose name dominates the poster.

But it has become one of the teams PlayStation relies on when its games need to go further.

What sets it apart

Specializing in other people’s work

Creating a new franchise allows you to define your own rules.

Working on another studio’s game presents a different challenge.

First, you have to understand the rules that are already there.

The engine.

The rendering.

The tools.

The data.

The artistic choices.

The gameplay systems.

Then you have to intervene without breaking what makes the game itself.

That is probably Nixxes’ most important distinction.

Its work often begins where another studio’s work appears to be finished.

The quality of a port depends precisely on that ability to remain discreet.

If everything works correctly, the player should not spend their time thinking about the technical adaptation.

They should simply find the game.

Translating rather than copying

The word “port” can make it sound as though a game simply needs to be copied from one platform to another.

A good adaptation is closer to translation.

The meaning must remain.

The form must adapt.

On PC, that means accounting for things such as:

• many different hardware configurations;
• multiple resolutions and aspect ratios;
• keyboard and mouse;
• different controllers;
• high frame rates;
• upscaling technologies;
• ray tracing;
• graphical quality settings;
• expectations specific to PC players.

The game needs to remain the same.

But it cannot function in exactly the same way.

That is the space in which Nixxes has specialized.

Scalability as a discipline

A console is a fixed target.

The developer knows its processor.

Its memory.

Its GPU.

Its performance.

PC removes that comfort.

The same game may run on an older machine, a laptop, a mid-range system or a PC equipped with top-end hardware.

Nixxes regularly talks about scalability in its adaptations.

The goal is therefore not simply to make the game run.

It is to build a range of behaviors.

Lower certain settings without destroying the experience.

Allow powerful machines to go further.

Decide where resources should be spent.

And above all, avoid having one graphics option suddenly turn an ordinary scene into an unstable scientific experiment.

It is less spectacular work than creating a new character or a new world.

But it directly shapes the way millions of players experience those games.

A technical studio becoming artistic as well

The recent evolution of Nixxes may be the most interesting part of its story.

PlayStation no longer presents it solely as an engineering specialist.

Its art and design teams now participate in co-development alongside other members of PlayStation Studios.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered illustrates that transformation particularly well.

Modernizing a character or an environment is no longer just a performance problem.

You have to understand the original art direction.

Decide what deserves improvement.

What should remain untouched.

What a new generation of hardware allows you to add without erasing the game players once knew.

Nixxes is therefore gradually moving from:

“How do we make this game work somewhere else?”

to:

“How do we help this game evolve without losing what it was?”

The difference may sound small.

It fundamentally changes the job.

Good to know

• Nixxes Software was founded in 1999 in the Netherlands by Jurjen Katsman.
• The studio is based in Utrecht, in the Netherlands.
• Nixxes historically specialized in technical development, platform conversions and optimization, rather than creating major original franchises of its own.
• The studio has a long history with the former Eidos and Square Enix ecosystem, including Legacy of Kain, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and several other productions.
• Nixxes worked with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal for many years. Its contributions include different versions of Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
• Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired Nixxes Software on July 1, 2021. The studio then joined PlayStation Studios Technology, Creative & Services.
• Since joining PlayStation, Nixxes has become especially visible through PC versions of PlayStation productions, including Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition and Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut.
• Its current role extends beyond PC porting. PlayStation Studios states that Nixxes also has art and design teams involved in co-developing games with its other studios.
• Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered marks an important step in that evolution, with Nixxes contributing beyond technical conversion and directly participating in the artistic modernization of the game.
• In 2026, Nixxes continues to provide development and technical support across several PC productions, including The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.