Naughty Dog Talks "Terrifying" Transition To Next-Gen Consoles

The next time your console red rings or gets the yellow light of death, you might be replacing it with a whole new model from one of gaming’s big three companies. As Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony work on their hush-hush next generation of consoles, game developers are already developing titles with which to christen them. And while we gamers may be excited for what’s ahead, as Naughty Dog explains, the transition isn’t easy for everyone involved.

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells referred to the next-gen move as a “double-edged sword” for the company:

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. 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.

Wells said that the period of time during the PS2-PS3 transition was some of Naughty Dog’s “darkest days”, during which the studio lost employees every week due to the pressure.

Co-president Christophe Balestra echoed Wells’s comments but was decidedly more optimistic. “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!”

Although PS4 titles are clearly in development – albeit under wraps – and rumors are flying that Uncharted 4 will be on the next Sony console, the studio is currently focusing on its next original game. Titled, The Last of Us, the PS3-exclusive is a survival game set in a ruined city inhabited by zombie-like flower-mutants.

[via Eurogamer]