Naughty Dog not keen on "terrifying", "tough" next-gen transition
Uncharted developer Naughty Dog isn't champing at the bit for a new generation of hardware, finding the shift from one machine to another something of a nightmare.
"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," co-president Evan Well told Eurogamer.
"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."
Naughty Dog has weathered transitions before, and Well described the move from PS2 to PlayStation 3 as the studio's "darkest days".
"We lost people on a weekly basis - people just couldn't get through it," he said.
"It's tough and we're definitely walking into it with open eyes," he added, describing hardware transitions as a "double edged sword".
Naughty Dog's other leader, Christophe Balestra, agreed, calling the prospect "terrifying".
"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," he added.
The Sony-owned Naughty Dog's second team is currently working on new PlayStation 3 exclusive The Last of Us, but Balestra said the Uncharted team, currently engaged in post-launch support for Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, hasn't settled on a new project yet.
"I think the team's going to regroup and we're going to figure out what's going to be the next move is for that team," he said.
"Next-gen, current-gen - that's totally in the air," Wells noted.
Thanks, Gamefront.