Naughty Dog Has to Avoid an Unfortunate Role Reversal With Its New IP

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 8, 2024 14 Views 7 Min Read
Naughty Dog Has to Avoid an Unfortunate Role Reversal With Its New IP



Naughty Dog is undoubtedly one of the premier development teams under the illustrious PlayStation banner. Acquired by Sony in 2001, Naughty Dog made a name for itself in its early days with the highly successful Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter franchises. 2007 marked a turning point for Naughty Dog, as the studio released Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune that year and consequently spawned a beloved treasure-hunting series. Naughty Dog kept up its winning streak in the following decade with 2013’s The Last of Us, 2016’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, 2017’s Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and finally, The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020. A track record this strong is difficult for many PlayStation studios to match, much less exceed.




However, there is one PlayStation first-party team that has delivered hit after hit for years – Santa Monica Studio. Established in 1999, Santa Monica Studio has overseen the lauded God of War series for nearly two decades. As one of PlayStation’s longest-running franchises, God of War has sold over 66 million copies as of November 2023. More impressively, not a single mainline God of War game has dipped below an 80% critic score on Metacritic, and the series’ 2018 reboot even took home the coveted Game of the Year award. It’s commendable how Santa Monica Studio and Naughty Dog have kept their respective franchises fresh, but both teams must be cognizant of a big potential overlap in their rumored upcoming projects.

the-last-of-us-ellie-naughty-dogjpg

Related
If Naughty Dog’s New IP is a Hit, The Studio May Have Found a Winning Combo

Should Naughty Dog’s next IP be as successful as its past games, it could have found the ideal development and launch cycle with The Last of Us.

Santa Monica Studio and Naughty Dog Are Reportedly Developing New Sci-Fi IPs


After exclusively developing God of War games for almost 20 years, Santa Monica finally has a new IP in the works. This was strongly rumored after the release of God of War (2018), and Santa Monica Studio job listings in recent years outright confirmed the development of a new IP. Interestingly, one of Santa Monica Studio’s internal teams was working on a brand-new sci-fi IP prior to God of War (2018), but the project was unfortunately canceled. Therefore, there is some precedence for Santa Monica Studio’s upcoming new IP to feature sci-fi elements as well, potentially even carrying forward a lot of the work done for the canceled project.

Rather serendipitously, Naughty Dog is also working on a new IP after 17 years of alternating between The Last of Us and Uncharted series. The secrecy around Naughty Dog’s new IP almost matches that of Santa Monica’s, but there are more rumors surrounding the former. For one, Naughty Dog president Neil Druckmann is heavily rumored to be directing the new IP, and reports claim it could feature a large degree of player freedom. Naughty Dog’s new IP might also be its next game instead of The Last of Us 3. The genre of Naughty Dog’s new IP remains unknown, though, with rumors pointing to either fantasy or sci-fi. Naughty Dog fans are inclined towards the latter as many of them believe that The Last of Us Part 2‘s Savage Starlight comic collectibles may have been hinting at a new sci-fi game from the studio.


Sharing the Sci-Fi Genre Might Lead to an Unfavorable Situation for Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio

While PlayStation fans are delighted at the prospect of all-new sci-fi IPs from two of the brand’s most decorated first-party studios, this potential overlap in genres could turn out unfavorable for either Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studio. To add context, there could arise a similar situation to the one faced by Days Gone in 2019. Bend Studio’s open-world zombie horde game launched during an era when the open-world and zombie genres flooded the market. Bend Studio did attempt to differentiate Days Gone from other zombie games, but it didn’t do much to slow down comparisons to The Last of Us. Moreover, the release of The Last of Us Part 2 just over a year later further dimmed the flickering spotlight over Days Gone.


Therefore, if Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio are indeed working on new sci-fi IPs, the one that makes it to market first could become the benchmark for fans, and the one that releases after may suffer as a result of the comparisons. Moreover, the sci-fi genre has substantially grown thanks to recent high-profile releases like Starfield, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, The Outer Worlds, and more, as well as upcoming games like Judas, Mass Effect 4, Directive 8020, etc., so there’s a lot of third-party rivalry for Santa Monica Studio and Naughty Dog to contend with in the coming years. It remains to be seen what their games ultimately look like, but given the vast breadth of the sci-fi genre, Santa Monica Studio and Naughty Dog may just come up with remarkably distinct experiences.

Source link