As far as Sony’s first party lineup is concerned, perhaps the biggest question mark hovers over the new studio they set up in San Diego a couple of years ago in partnership with motion capture animation specialists in Visual Arts Service Group. Not only do we not know what game they’re working on, Sony also haven’t talked once about this studio in an official capacity. They don’t even seem to have a finalized name yet.
Either way, it seems work on whatever it is that they’re working on is progression. Thee studio has been on an aggressive recruitment drive for a while now, which has also seen them recruiting multiple former Naughty Dog members. In fact, recently, they enlisted another Naughty Dog alum- Zak Oliver, whose LinkedIn profile states that he left Naughty Dog for the new studio as recently as June.
Oliver joins as the studio’s Lead Environment Artist. During his time at Naughty Dog, he was an environment artist on The Last of Us, Uncharted 4: Among Thieves, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and the recently released The Last of Us Part 2. Prior to that, he was at High Voltage Studios for over six years.
Some rumours have suggested that Sony’s new San Diego development team is working on the next Uncharted, but such reports have remained unsubstantiated. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan recently mentioned that Sony has many more games in development for the PS5 that are yet to be announced, so perhaps we might find out more about this new project from the mystery studios sooner rather than later.