The co-presidents of Naughty Dog have said the company has learned from its mistakes during the leap from PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3, and as such is better prepared for the transition to Sony’s next-generation platform.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Christophe Balestra and Evan Wells admitted the move from PS2 to PS3 wasn’t the best experience for the studio.
“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,” said Balestra.
Fortunately, he said that Naughty Dog has had a “little more time to think about” the “always scary” prospect of a transition this time around.
“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 commented.
“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 explained that the advantage this time around is that the company won’t be starting from scratch.
“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,” said Wells.
“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 is working on The Last of Us for PS3, which is scheduled for release in June. The company achieved great success with its Uncharted series during this current generation, with the adventure series selling 17 million units worldwide since its inception in 2007.
Sony is hosting a PlayStation Meeting tomorrow, where it is expected the PlayStation 4 will get its formal reveal. Naughty Dog is likely working on a title for the new system, though whether or not it will be revealed at the event is unknown.
PSU.com will be hosting a live stream of the event, so be sure to stay tuned for more updates.