Studio closures happen all the time, it’s just anunfortunate reality of life in the video game industry. What doesn’t happen very often is when a studio appears to close before it’s ever been officially established, which seemed to be the case this week with the development team that’s been rumored to exist within Sony’s San Diego studio.
Since early 2018, there have been claims that Sony Interactive Entertainment had formed a secret secondary studio at its California-based branch. While San Diego Studio is best known for sports games like theMLB The Showseries, job listings have suggested that the secondary team was established to collaborate with one of Sony’s major first-party studios. It’s never been said what this project could be, but it’s been widely believed that the studio in question is Naughy Dog andthe project is a newUnchartedgame, since a number of Sony SD’s hires in the last couple of years have included people who worked on that series.
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However, it looked like that might no longer be the case. It came to light this week that multiple high-profile developers had recently departed fromSan Diego Studio, including senior game designers Quentin Cobb and John Bautista. Following his departure earlier this month, Bautista shared a message on Twitter wherein he described his time at Sony SD as a “crazy ride” and stated that he was proud of what the team was able to achieve despite the craziness, “but things just didn’t work out this time.”
That left people assuming that the secret development team might have been shut down, joining theother Sony studios that have been shuttered this year, but there were a few signs that maybe it hadn’t. For one, employees were still listing the studio as their current job on their resumes, while San Diego Studio was still hiring for positions that appeared to be related to the team. Finally, earlier today Bautista followed up on his original post and confirmed that the team is still there and its mystery project is still in the works.
While that clears up the confusion regarding the fate of the studio, whatever it’s working on remains a mystery, though a newUnchartedgame does seem like a reasonable possibility given the IP’s popularity and the evidence so far. The franchise is certainly big enough to tell other stories outside the adventures of Nathan Drake, and with theUnchartedmovie coming out next year, it would make sense for a new game to release alongside it. Of course, since the studio and this project don’t officially exist yet, it may be a while still before gamers find out what it’s up to.
