The San Diego secret Sony studio has recruited yet another developer, James Martinchek, to the as-yet-unnamed team of coders and designers presumed to be hired to develop new first-party games for Sony. Martinchek, a former Naughty Dog animator who worked on both The Last Of Us and Red Dead Redemption 2, was revealed to be joining the secretive team in a tweet from Sony’s Quentin Cobb.
With a new Sony first party studio in the works, it seems that Sony is following in the wake of Microsoft’s recent studio acquisitions to prepare for the next generation of console gaming. Job listings have advertised for developers to help in “building a new game development team”, with the promise that the new studio’s games have “a high visual quality bar for the title”. With this in mind, the hire of heavyweight animator Martinchek comes as no surprise, joining a handful of other developers from Naughty Dog.
Additional listings for new senior positions in the secret Sony studio request for developers “with a penchant for high quality, third-person, Action/Adventure games”, hinting at the genre of games this new studio is likely to be developing. With references to games like The Last Of Us and Uncharted 4, a clearer image of this studio’s development focus becomes apparent, although the name of the studio remains unknown. Rumors surrounding the establishment of this studio began almost a year ago when job listings first went live for a handful of positions at the secret Sony studio.
With no Sony E3 conference in 2019, more news will likely be announced as part of Sony’s own press events in the coming year. In other PlayStation news, the major publisher was recently fined €2 million for “misleading” players about PS4 multiplayer, with regulator AGCOM ruling that Sony failed to make it clear enough that some games required a PS Plus subscription.
