One of the biggest surprises during the last gen era was the announcement of The Last of Us from Naughty Dog. Till that point, Naughty Dog had managed to release one Uncharted game nearly every two years. With the announcement and release of The Last of Us, all that changed as it marked a shift for the studio which had managed to just release Uncharted 3 the year before. Soon after, we learned that a few years prior, Naughty Dog had crafted a second team which was quietly working away on the new IP. Can the same be expected from Sucker Punch, the developers of inFamous?

If you are to believe what inFamous: Second Son producer Brian Fleming has to say, then the answer is no.

 Our studio really prizes focus. We’re a one-team studio; we’ve always been that. Anything that steals focus from that is something that we’re trying to eliminate, whether that’s starting a second team to work on another game, or working on another platform simultaneously. All of those things compete for our focus, so we’re very driven by the ability to isolate anything that’s a distraction from what we’re trying to do. 

Of course Naughty Dog had the same mentality until they didn’t and it turned out to work for them. Equally, their decision to have two internal teams hasn’t negatively affected the outcome of their most recent titles which include Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us. On the other hand, Naughty Dog also enjoys a critical and financial success that Sucker Punch does not with the inFamous franchise not managing the same level of sales (despite their quality). It’s also worth noting that it’s the job of studio heads to discredit such claims in order to surprise the gaming world versus simply confirming that the studio is working on several projects at once. This of course doesn’t mean that every exec out there is playing with your head and they very well could just be a one-team studio.

Sucker Punch is currently developing the highly anticipated inFamous: Second Son for the PS4 which saw the team take one year to completely rewrite the enemy AI.

Discuss:

Do you think it hurts studios when they work on multiple titles?

[Via Edge]