It’s probably the worst kept secret in the industry at the moment, but Sony has a new first-party team based in San Diego, and it’s expected to be working on the Uncharted franchise. As a reminder that the studio continues to recruit talent, Naughty Dog environment artist Zak Oliver – who most recently worked on The Last of Us: Part II – has joined the team.
Oliver made the transition to the Visual Arts Studio Group last month, presumably having completed his work on Ellie’s sophomore adventure. He’ll serve as Senior Environment Artist on an unannounced project, which many expect to be some kind of Uncharted sequel or spin-off. While the VASG division is primarily responsible for motion capture, the Japanese giant has been building a development studio off it.
“PlayStation Visual Arts has a new game development team in partnership with a major Sony studio,” said PlayStation talent acquisition lead Fiona Cherbak in a Twitter post a couple of years back. It’s been staffing up pretty hard ever since, and we’d expect it to have something to show within the next 18 months or so – presumably for PlayStation 5
[source linkedin.com, via psu.com]
