Naughty Dog won't repeat "mistakes" of previous console transition

Naughty Dog learned from the PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3 transition, co-presidents Christophe Balestra and Evan Wells have said, and is better prepared for the jump to PlayStation 4.

"We had a pretty bad experience when we moved from PS2 to PS3, because we made some stupid mistakes. And that was totally our fault," Balestra told Eurogamer.

The executive said the huge leap between PS2 and PS3, with an entirely new kind of shaders, was part of the problem, and that Naughty Dog "had a lot to learn". This time around, the team has "little more time to think about" the "always scary" prospect of a transition.

"It's about the quality of the tools, and about whether you can make something smarter. My guess is that they will expand - you'll have more this, and more that - you'll always have something more," he said.

"In terms of our art, we always create our assets at a higher resolution than what you see in-game. A lot of our pipelines are already ready to move to something superior to the PS3. But it's scary."

Wells said things should be easier this time because Naughty Dog isn't starting all over again like it did with the PS2.

"We did start from scratch going from PS2 to PS3, and that's down to the fact that on PS2 we'd written our own programming language. Everything on Jak and Daxter was written in a language called GOOL - game object oriented list," he explained.

"Moving on to PS3 we are entering this group of developers that we could share technology with. We wanted to get into the more traditional development environment that other studios are developing with, so we did have to start from scratch. It was a tough road to hoe."

Naughty Dog's next release is The Last of Us, due in May, it's not known if the studio has a PlayStation 4 game in development ahead of the console's expected reveal at the February 20 PlayStation Meeting.

Thanks, Kotaku.