Naughty Dog: Moving Development to the Next-Gen is “Terrifying”

With rumors that one Sony developer is already working exclusively on PS4 games, Naughty Dog has revealed the difficulties they faced transitioning from PS2 to PS3 and their fears over the next “difficult” move.

Speaking to Eurogamer, studio co-president Evan Wells said that the transition was a “double-edged sword”, continuing:

The geek inside you is always excited about a shiny new toy, but then the practicality of it starts to set in: this is going to be a lot of hard work.

When you’re going to new technology, every day is a slog, progress is slow and it really takes a different kind of attitude and mentality to get through that kind of push and it’s not right for everybody.

The shift from PS2 to PS3 was “the period that Naughty Dog had its darkest days and we lost people on a weekly basis – people just couldn’t get through it”, but the experience of already going through one transition should help them, with Wells saying:

It’s tough and we’re definitely walking into it with open eyes.

Fellow co-president Christophe Balestra described the move as “terrifying” and added:

We made some mistakes with our move from PS2 to PS3 and we won’t make those again. I guess we’ve done it a couple of times!

After Uncharted 2 was released, Naughty Dog split into two teams – one working on Uncharted 3 and another working on the newly announced The Last Of Us. Most of the Uncharted 3 team is now on vacation or working on DLC, but it’ll be interesting which platform their next game will be for.

Would you like Uncharted 4 on PS4 or an entirely new IP? Let us know in the comments below.

Uncharted 3

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